official artwork and logo for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl the cartoon platform fighter

Despite starting off strong and generating a fair bit of buzz, the 2D platform fighter Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl sadly didn't manage to stick around for very long. It took a single month to go from a peak of 9,120 players to 472, and things only get worse from there.

However, rather than let the whole idea die, the developers have now rallied and are working on a much more ambitious sequel. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 will come with additional characters and more complex movesets, crossplay and an updated lobby system, an improved training mode and a variety of minigames, as well as a roguelike inspired singleplayer mode.

Total War: Warhammer 3 artwork showing off the armies of Tzeentch

[Update]: Total War: Warhammer 3's Shadows of Change DLC is coming this August 31st with a much higher price tag.

While the details about the upcoming DLC featuring Tzeentch, Cathay and Kislev are still nonexistent, Creative Assembly has now revealed some of the changes and tweaks that will be accompanying it. Most notably, you can expect to see a variety of new landmarks to conquer, an improved tutorial for Immortal Empires, as well as additional difficulty options to mess around with.

First things first, the new tutorial will come in the form of simple missions that will guide you towards things like your first battle or first additional settlement, as well as offer advice about city building and similar concepts. While the initial system will be mostly devoid of flavor and purely focused on functionality, future updates will add more narrative and specific tutorials for each faction's unique mechanics.

Dota 2 artwork showing off a close-up of Techies

[Update #2]: Dota 2 is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a bunch of thematic (and free) cosmetic items.

[Update]: Dota 2's Patch 7.34 has now arrived with an avalanche of balance changes and gameplay tweaks.

In a bit of an unexpected announcement given how secretive Valve tends to be, the Dota 2 team has now introduced a new development blog feature that will detail some of their challenges, interesting bugs and "occasional happy accidents" encountered while working on a game as ridiculously complex as Dota 2. The first of these development blogs is about Techies and their endless hordes of mobile Sticky Bombs!

This bug appeared with The New Frontiers update back in spring and it allowed Techies players to create an army of infinitely lasting and fully controllable Sticky Bombs. This not only allowed them to be used like an additional mine field, but also as a way to hunt down unsuspecting players without Techies ever putting themselves at risk. In other words, it was a brief nightmare!

Exoprimal, Capcom's dinosaur vs mech action-shooter, official key art and logo

Capcom's freshly released action-shooter Exoprimal is quite a curious game. It's not only thoroughly unique because it's all about high-powered mechs fighting against hordes of horribly mutated dinosaurs, but also because it attempts to merge both competitive PvP and cooperative PvE gameplay within a single match.

The way it works is that you first compete against the opposing team by attempting to complete your objectives faster than them, and then towards the end the gloves finally come off and you're able to square off against your opponents directly in order to secure yourself the win. Most entertainingly of all, you will occasionally even get the ability to transform yourself into a giant dinosaur so you can really mess up your opponents and their plans.

Warhammer 40k Darktide screenshot of the trailer Guardsmen crew

[Update #2]: Darktide will be getting RPG-like talent trees and an Xbox version on October 4th.

[Update]: Patch #12 has now arrived, and I'm happy to say it's quite a good one!

While the actual moment-to-moment gameplay in Darktide is some of the best I've ever seen, the systems surrounding it are... messy, to put it politely. Playing multiple characters is needlessly grindy since nothing is shared between them, trying to create weapons you like involves layers upon layers upon layers of randomness, and worst of all, you can't even choose the exact flavor of missions you want to run - it's all random!

Thankfully, after months of this nonsense, it seems that Fatshark is finally looking to address many of the long-standing community complaints. The details are still few and far between as this is an 'announcement of an announcement' type of deal, but you can look forward to some changes dealing with account based currencies, perk refinement, crafting locks and options on the mission board.

Diablo 4 Season of the Malignant official artwork and logo

[Update #2]: Patch 1.1.1 has now arrived, and I'm pleased to say it's looking quite good so far!

[Update]: Diablo 4's August 8th update will buff Barbarians and Sorcerers, increase enemy density and improve boss rewards.

In a bit of a bizarre decision, the Diablo 4 team decided to take the freshly released Season 1 as an opportunity to nerf just about everything related to play power. Damage and survivability went down across the board, cooldown reduction and leveling speed both got reduced, while classes like Barbarians and Sorcerers collected so many random nerfs that their late-game potential cratered compared to the pre-season. Long story short, the update was a mess.

Thankfully, it looks like Blizzard has realized this as they have already announced a variety of major improvements. First and foremost, the Sorcerer and Barbarian classes will be getting some significant buffs in the next few weeks, though the exact details have not been revealed just yet. Personally, I really hope the changes will increase the amount of skill diversity for Sorcerers as having to run all of the defensive abilities on every single build has gotten rather old at this point.

Cities: Skylines 2 official artwork and logo

After nearly a decade of updates and expansions, Cities: Skylines will soon be getting a bigger and more technologically advanced sequel. Once it arrives this October 24th, Cities: Skylines 2 will bring with it fully realized transport and economy systems, a wide variety of new construction and customization options to mess around with, as well as a much better simulation of how each city and its inhabitants operate.

Perhaps most importantly, Cities: Skylines 2 will follow in its predecessors' footsteps and come with a suite of modding tools to help players add all-important features like a Sponge Bob themed sewage pipe. There is unfortunately one bit of bad news. Since Cities: Skylines 2 has been built from scratch, it's highly unlikely that any of the more interesting mods from the original will be easily ported to the sequel. Instead, they'll almost certainly need to be rewritten from scratch as well.

Diablo 4 artwork showing off the demonic hordes

[Update #2]: Diablo 4's August 8th update will buff Barbarians and Sorcerers, increase enemy density and improve boss rewards.

[Update]: Following the disastrous Season 1 update, Diablo 4 devs have announced many major improvements.

As a part of the pre-season update, Diablo 4 dished out a whole bunch of nerfs to player power, survivability, cooldown reduction and leveling speed, while offering only paltry buffs to underused skills in return. This made it so most characters played pretty much exactly the same as before, just slower and weaker.

My hope was that the Season 1 update and its new systems would help compensate for some of these tweaks, but so far it looks like Diablo 4's first season is similarly uninspired. Season 1 brings with it seasonal realms that offer a fresh start to all players, a brand new questline to explore, a fancy new boss to poke for loot, as well as a variety of new gems to acquire by slaying malignant monsters. While all of this is definitely a nice change of pace and something fun to mess around with, the problem is that this is pretty much the entirety of Season 1.

Overwatch 2 artwork and logo for the free-to-play competitive shooter

[Update #2]: Overwatch 2's next hero, the dual chaingun wielding Mauga, is fully playable until November 5th. After that, he'll be launching alongside Season 8 on December 5th.

[Update]: Overwatch 2's Anniversary Event 2023 has arrived with 'free' cosmetics and reruns of popular events.

In a bit of an unexpected announcement, Blizzard has just revealed that they're planning to bring a "selection" of their games to Steam. The free-to-play, competitive shooter Overwatch 2 will be the first one to test the waters as it'll be launching onto Steam this August 10th.

“It’s our goal at Blizzard to listen to players and try to exceed their expectations in everything we do,” explained Mike Ybarra, President of Blizzard Entertainment. “While Battle.net remains a priority for us now and into the future, we’ve heard players want the choice of Steam for a selection of our games, starting with Overwatch 2 on August 10th. We’re happy to work with Valve to make that happen.”

MTG Arena artwork for Primeval Titan from the Historic Anthology 7

[Update #2]: All of MTG Arena's upcoming Wilds of Eldraine set and accompanying Enchanting Tale bonus sheet have now been revealed.

[Update]: MTG Arena is getting Khans of Tarkir in 2023, while Modern Horizons 3 and Pioneer Masters will be coming in 2024.

After a brief yet surprisingly eventful round of teasers, MTG Arena's Historic Anthology 7 and Explorer Anthology 3 have now finally been unleashed. Each anthology brings with it 25 'new' cards to mess around with spanning everything from competitive staples to fan-favorite jank.

Just like the previous ones, each of the two anthologies will set you back 25,000 gold or 4,000 gems and will come with a full playset (four copies) of each card. While the Explorer anthology is somewhat mediocre, its Historic counterpart is definitely worth the asking price as it's filled to the brim with fun cards from eons past like Primeval Titan, Bloodbraid Elf or Sword of Fire and Ice.