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Given that Shiro Games have literally just released Dune: Spice Wars into Early Access, I figured they would take a little break from Northgard in order to give the new game a bit of a head start. However, in a refreshing twist, they've instead decided to unleash a rather chunky and quality-of-life focused update for Northgard!
The freshly released Sword & Solace brings with it an assortment of UI improvements to fix inconsistencies between the various menus, as well as to make creating and accessing custom games an easier process. Similarly, the multiplayer ranking system (Glory Points) has been greatly broadened, on top of making it so only players within a certain Glory Point range can join the same lobbies. This should hopefully result in much more balanced matches all across the board.
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[Update #2]: After seven years of updates and support, the Dying Light team is finally moving on.
[Update]: Dying Light studio Techland is working on a massive, fantasy themed open world RPG.
While Dying Light 2 has some serious issues that will need to be sorted out before it becomes the premier bandit-kicking simulator, I have absolutely no doubt that Techland will manage to succeed purely because of how well they've treated the original. In fact, despite Dying Light 1 being over seven years old at this point, Techland has just released a brand new update for it!
More on that in a second, because the most important part of the announcement is that everyone with a Standard Edition has just been upgraded to the Enhanced Edition for free! So regardless of when you've bought Dying Light you'll now have access to the excellent The Following expansion, along with the Bozak Horde, Cuisine and Cargo, Ultimate Survivor and Crash Test skin DLCs. The DLCs aren't all that impressive if memory serves, but getting The Following expansion for free is definitely a neat gift.
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[Update #2]: Sifu will be coming to Steam in March 2023 alongside a new Arena Mode.
[Update]: Sifu's summer update has now arrived with 11 gameplay modifiers to tweak and 8 'cheats' to mess around with.
Whether you're looking for a relaxing experience or a heart-pounding challenge, the martial arts roguelike Sifu's latest update should have you covered. On the easier side of things you now have the Student difficulty mode that gives you more life to work with, while also making enemies less aggressive and reactive. On top of that bosses have simpler patterns for you to memorize and counter, which should make the whole experience a lot less punishing.
Unsurprisingly, the Master difficulty mode is the complete opposite. You have less life to work with, enemies are going to do their best to inconvenience you at every step and react far faster to your attacks, while the bosses themselves are getting tricky new patterns for you to contend with. Master difficulty isn't something I'd recommend for your first playthrough, but if you don't mind repeatedly sweeping the floor with your face while you master the combat, it could be a rather fun challenge.
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[Update #2]: Overwatch 2's PvP mode is going free-to-play and launching on October 4th, 2022!
[Update]: Overwatch 2 is looking to rework Junkrat, Symmetra and Moira, as well as give Mercy a proper super-jump.
While most of the reworked tanks in the Overwatch 2 beta felt straight up amazing to play, the support heroes desperately needed a bit more work as they just didn't gel well with the new 5v5 environment. So in an effort to bring the support class up to speed, as well as correct some of the more obvious balance issues, Blizzard has now released the very first beta update.
Lucio's self-healing has been toned down due to how well it compounded with the new support role passive healing, while Ana's biotic grenade has had its duration reduced in order to make it less of a tank killer. On the completely opposite side of things, Baptiste's healing ammo has been increased, Brigitte's shield bash knockback has been doubled, and most excitingly of all, Zenyatta has received more health alongside a new passive ability that boosts his melee damage and makes him punt enemies a good few meters!
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[Update #2]: MTG Arena is getting the Commander focused Battle for Baldur's Gate set on July 7th.
[Update]: MTG Arena's May 12th update has once again banned Tibalt's Trickery and Winota, Joiner of Forces, though this time in the Explorer format.
Ever since its arrival in the Zendikar Rising set, the four-color Omnath, Locus of Creation has been nothing but trouble. At one point it had such a stranglehold on the Standard meta that Wizards of the Coast moved with previously unseen speed in order to get it banned.
Eventually, with the appearance of the digital-only Alchemy format, the Arena team figured it's finally time to give Omnath another chance... though in much less powerful form. As it turns out there is a very fine line between a card being insanely overpowered and almost irrelevant, and unfortunately for Omnath, its new incarnation ended up firmly on latter side.
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[Update]: Total War: Warhammer 3's Update 1.2 is bringing new units and much-needed fixes on the week of May 16th.
While the porting process took a little bit longer than usual, I'm happy to say that Total War: Warhammer 3 has now made its way to macOS as well. Best of all, if you already have a copy of Total War: Warhammer 3 you can just download the macOS version without any additional hassle or charges.
As for whether Total War: Warhammer 3 is worth getting into right now, that's a bit of a tricky question to answer. It's not a bad game by any stretch, but it does have some major annoyances that will most likely take a couple of months to sort out if the recent roadmap is to be believed. So unless you're extremely eager to dive in, I would advise giving Creative Assembly a bit more time to get everything polished up and ready for the massive Immortal Empires combined campaign map.
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[Update #2]: Dota 2's hotly anticipated Patch 7.32 has now arrived with a brand new lane creep and tons of changes!
[Update]: Dota 2's "larger than normal" Patch 7.31d will be launching on June 8th, 2022.
Valve may be slow, but they sure do have impeccable timing. Just as the Dota 2 community started to whip itself into a frenzy over a lack of updates, Valve swooped in and unleashed Patch 7.31c!
As you might imagine from a smaller, more balance-focused update, Patch 7.31c is mostly here to sort out some of the overpowered heroes and strategies left behind after 7.31. Primal Beast has been smacked by a variety of nerfs to his damage output and survivability, Death Prophet's ultimate no longer tears through buildings like a hot knife through butter, while heroes like Necrophos, Medusa and Chaos Knight have been toned down without really impacting their usefulness.
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After a disastrous first showing followed by multiple delays, it started to become obvious that the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake is having some development troubles. Judging by today's announcement those issues may have been far greater than anyone could've expected, however, as the series' original creators Ubisoft Montreal have just decided to emulate a disappointed dad and essentially yell 'fine, I'll do it myself then!'
"This decision is an important step and the [Ubisoft Montreal] team, building upon the work achieved by Ubisoft Pune and Ubisoft Mumbai, will now take the time they need to regroup on the scope of the game to deliver you the best experience for this remake of an all-time classic, when it's ready," explains the brief update. "We want to thank you all for your continued support and patience throughout the development."
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It took many updates and a little bit over a year, but the dark fantasy turn-based RPG King Arthur: Knight's Tale has now been released in full. As is to be expected, the launch was accompanied by a chunky update that has brought in the story's finale, as well as a whole host of new heroes and side-missions to play around with.
You can also expect to see four new enemy factions to beat up, an expanded morality chart and adventure map, a brand new CGI cinematic for each act, and naturally, a whole boatload of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements. You can check out the exact details over at the patch notes.
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[Update]: Following in Age of Empire II's footsteps, Age of Empires III is adding two new civilizations and a brand new 'Tycoon' game mode.
Age of Empires II may be ancient at this point, but its popularity only seems to be growing with each passing year. That is also unlikely to change any time soon as Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition has just received a brand new expansion to help spice things up!
The freshly released Dynasties of India, as the name might suggest, brings with it three new playable civilizations: Bengalis, Dravidians and Gurjaras. Each one also comes with a voice acted campaign, as well as an assortment of new units, buildings and achievements to play around with.