The Eternal Lords expansion for Age of Wonders 3 looks like it may be stuffed to the gills with content. Not only will it add dead people, cat people, and ice people, the DLC features so much more. Cosmic events are random occurrences like a sudden rampaging troll army or a rain of luck-infused shooting stars that can spice up the map for a few turns. Race governance adds an element of race relations to the game by making players care about their long-term interactions with other species. New map locations and a new Unifier victory condition adds further wrinkles. Finally, a whole new story campaign gives folks a reason to work through the goodies.
An epic battle of the forces of creation: fire versus ice, life versus death. As Arvik, heir to a broken Frostling kingdom, you awaken forbidden necromantic powers to reclaim your realm. You will find unlikely allies, and must choose between your Frostling roots and the full potential of your new found powers.
For old-school strategy gamers, Eternal Lords also comes with asynchronous play-by-email functionality. What doesn’t this DLC come with? Free time. You may have some issues getting enough of it to enjoy all the new stuff. You’ll have to work that out on your own. Eternal Lords for Age of Wonders 3 releases on April 14th for $19.99.
State of Decay is full of wieners. Not the guy that won’t stop taking all the bandages, or the idiot that keeps messing up guard duty, oh no. We’re talking about hidden penises. According to Undead Labs’ Geoffrey Card, a contractor busied themselves with putting male members into various parts of State of Decay which couldn’t be seen until work started on higher resolution textures for the upcoming Year One Survival Edition.
“Some of our contractors worked a ridiculous amount of genitalia into the background.”
The next time Jacob starts blubbering about his family while wasting your food, just remember that there are wangs all around.
This War of Mine, 11 bit studios stark survival game about civilians in the Siege of Sarajevo, now offers DLC with a charitable donation. The War Child Charity DLC adds collectible street art to the game and 100% of the proceeds go to War Child UK, an organization dedicated to helping children caught up in violent conflicts. The in-game pieces were created by well-known street artists M-City, Gabriel “Specter” Reese, SeaCreative, Emir Cerimovic, Fauxreel and Mateusz Walus.
The War Child Charity DLC is available in three tiers to accommodate people who would like to make a larger donation.
Batman: Arkham Knight is rated M, which is a first for the series. According to the ESRB, the game gets the mature classification for sequences involving torture, and some of the characters have a potty mouth. The 17+ rating took developer Rocksteady by surprise. PreviousArkhamgames had cursing and violence as well, but they got the teen classification, so why did Arkham Knight get the hammer? Game director Sefton Hill said it’s likely because they take Batman to some grittier territory.
“As the end of the trilogy, we have every villain in Gotham working together to destroy Batman. It’s unavoidable that some bad stuff is going to happen. But that doesn’t mean we changed our approach. We’re not including gratuitous blood or swearing. We want to deliver a true end with no compromises, and it takes us to some dark places.”
I want a campy Rocksteady Batman game done in the style of the old TV show. Ka-blooey! Pow! Batman: Arkham Knight launches on June 2nd for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
The most successful piece of DLC for Borderlands 2 was Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep. It was a satisfying piece of content because the premise, Vault Hunters play a fantasy role-playing game with a psychopath as GM, allowed Gearbox to blend all the crazy ideas that didn’t fit in the main game with a fantastic bit of character development. The Claptastic Voyage, coming for Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel looks like it may provide opportunities for the same kind of storytelling. In this fourth chunk of Pre-Sequel DLC, the Vault Hunters get zapped into Claptrap’s brain to retrieve a MacGuffin from his source code.
These anti-heroes will have to deal with Claptrap’s personal insecurities, his malware, and digital representations of his crushing loneliness.
Claptastic Voyage also includes the Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack 2 which will raise the level cap to 70, and give each character 10 more skill points to earn. It will be available on March 24th for $9.99 separately or as part of the season pass.
Blizzard announced Hearthstone’s second DLC adventure, coming next month. Blackrock Mountain takes players’ decks into Blackrock Spire to flop cards against fire-based enemies. Playing through the full adventure will net players 31 new cards and a new virtual game board to add to their collection. Like Curse of Naxxramas, the DLC will be released as five installments over five weeks. Each installment will cost $6.99 separately, or the full bundle can be purchased for a discount.
I’m mainly telling you this so I can use that headline up there, but Marvel Heroes’ latest playable superhero is Iceman. From Gazillion’s press release, it seems Iceman was one of the original fab five X-Men:
Making his debut in THE X-MEN #1, Iceman was one of the first five mutants to sign on as a student at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, alongside Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey’s codename at the time), Beast and Angel.
Wait, Marvel Girl and Jean Grey are the same person? Man, comic books are confusing.
And speaking of icemen, another recent Marvel Heroes addition is the Winter Soldier, Captain America’s nemesis from the last movie. He was also probably in some comic book or another.
You can buy a deluxe Iceman pack with costumes and a few other gee-gaws for $18 here or you can get him in-game for the usual rate of 900 Marvelbucks for a new character. Marvel Heroes — which is free-to-play, but not in a dirty way — remains the finest Diablo clone that isn’t actually Diablo 3.
Harmonix has announced Rock Band 4. According to the developers, they want the next Rock Band to be a platform rather than an annual release. In keeping with that strategy, their goal is to keep all your previously purchased song DLC licenses valid within the same console line. That’s good news as some dedicated fans have bought hundreds of dollars worth of tracks for their Rock Band games on the older consoles. (It’s not such great news if you switched from Xbox 360 to PlayStation 4, but there was zero chance of them cooperating to share licenses.) Speaking of old hardware, Harmonix intends to work with Sony and Microsoft to make your old plastic guitars and drum sets compatible with the new consoles. If you want a new faux Fender, don’t worry. They’ll be creating new instruments as well.
Rock Band 4 will launch later this year for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
What’s better than one real-time strategy game? Two, of course! Stardock announced Servo and Ashes of the Singularity. Servo, developed by Bonus XP, pits war machines with interchangeable parts against each other. This ties into an RPG progression mechanic that lets you open up more tactical options.
Designing your ideal team of giant war machines is only the first step in Servo. The parts you earn after every battle can be freely swapped on all your Servos between matches, opening up new strategies and team compositions with every game you play.
Ashes of the Singularity features Oxide Games’ new Nitrous Engine technology to render thousands of units on the screen at once with their own A.I. routines. Players with less-than-fond memories of roping tanks together and hoping they don’t wander off can rest easy. In Ashes, these units can be combined into “meta-units” for easier control.
By grouping units together into a meta-unit, you make them aware of each other and alter their behavior to fight intelligently together and support one another. Because a meta-unit can take care of itself within its means, your attention is freed to direct the overall war effort – a good thing, as Ashes of the Singularity’s maps and unit counts are an order of magnitude larger than in a traditional RTS.
That’s a tall order Stardock. Previous demonstrations of Nitrous have been promising, so let’s hope they are able to deliver on the concept.
At the start of Wolfenstein: The New Order, MachineGames put the player at the end of an alternate reality WWII. It was a smart way to ease players into a tutorial while setting up the story of a world in which the Third Reich would stand triumphant. The player, as B.J. Blazkowicz, would go on to battle the 1960’s Nazi regime, and the WWII antics would get left behind thanks to a convenient bout of catatonia. (Perhaps “inconvenient” would be more appropriate?) For those players that would’ve liked to have seen some more of Blazkowicz’ special forces wartime escapades, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood will take players back to 1946.
In an effort to turn the tide in the Allies’ favour, B.J. Blazkowicz must embark on an epic, two-part mission deep within Bavaria. Part one of Wolfenstein: The Old Blood – Rudi Jager and the Den of Wolves – pits Blazkowicz against a maniacal prison warden as he breaks into Castle Wolfenstein in an attempt to steal the coordinates to General Deathshead’s compound. In part two – The Dark Secrets of Helga Von Schabbs – our hero’s search for the coordinates leads him to the city of Wulfburg where an obsessed Nazi archaeologist is exhuming mysterious artifacts that threaten to unleash a dark and ancient power.
Bethesda and MachineGames announced the $20 standalone title will be available on May 5th for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
Valve made a slew of announcements at GDC. First, Steam Link is a small hardware device meant to facilitate Steam game and media streaming to your TV from a local PC. It will be available in November for $49.99. A Steam controller can be added for another $49.99, giving us the price and rough launch period of the elusive Steam-centric gamepad. Valve also announced Source 2 would be free for all content developers to use, but did not give details of royalty or Steam exclusivity requirements. Finally, Valve unveiled Lighthouse, which is their VR room tracking technology meant to work in tandem with the HTC Vive VR headset that was revealed yesterday. More information on all of these items will be coming at GDC and the weeks ahead.
Wasteland 2 is coming to Xbox One. The inXile Entertainment crowd-funded sequel to Wasteland that launched on PC last year is getting a makeover for its console appearance. Along with revamped character models, new rendering thanks to Unity 5, and a better balanced perk system, the developers are adding controller support. As anyone who’s played Diablo III on console can tell you, leaning back in a sofa and using a controller is the best way to play an isometric RPG. PC owners needn’t fret however. They’ll be getting some of the enhancements according to inXile.
Electronic Arts and DICE have released the Winter update for Battlefield 4. It contains bug fixes, further adjustments to netcode, minor map geometry changes, a new 5-vs-5 Squad Obliteration mode, and collision enhancements for player characters. It’s all good stuff, but buried in the list of changes is something that should make ground troops fear the skies again.
All helicopters have new more agile physics applied (you can do both barrel rolls and loops!)
From now on an upside down helicopter is not a sure sign of distress. That pilot could just be lining up for the perfect kill.
Electronic Arts and Visceral Games have announced Battlefield: Hardline Premium. Like previous premium packages for the Battlefield series, it offers incentives like map packs, priority in server queues, “battlepacks” – the virtual loot boxes that can give you weapon accessories or XP boosts, and cosmetic do-dads that normal players won’t get. Along with these bits and bobs, EA has locked “legendary” progression behind the premium membership. That’s when a player maxes out his XP and cycles back to the beginning to jump on the treadmill again. It’s a staple of Call of Duty multiplayer (known as prestige mode) and some players invest a ton of time into doing it. Previous Battlefield games didn’t offer any incentives for resetting multiplayer progress, but it seems EA is eager to keep people grinding.
Battlefield: Hardline Premium is $50, and requires ownership of Battlefield: Hardline.
Frozenbyte Games has announced Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power. The third in the physics puzzler series appears to move from an entirely 2D side-scrolling presentation and mixes things up with different points of view. In the announcement video the wizard Amadeus, portly knight Pontius, and nimble archer Zoya don’t just run along the gorgeous environments sideways, they break into the third dimension for limited sequences. Stacking crates and platform-hopping in 3D! What will they think of next?
