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That’s about standard for one of Steam’s free weekends, but Sega has used the occasion to add some new content to both games.
The original Dawn of War is receiving a new, official multiplayer map, while its sequel is offering up some extra gear. Here’s a rundown from Sega of what’s included:
“The Temple of Cyrene is a brand new, official multiplayer map we’re adding into the Dawn of War I rotation. This map will be playable in DoW I, as well as the Dark Crusade and Soulstorm expansions. The Temple of Cyrene sits on the blasted landscape of a world scoured clean by the Exterminatus of the Imperial Inquisition. Homeworld of Gabriel Angelos, Cyrene is now a ghost-world of ruined cities and ashen fields. Fight for supremacy amidst the remains of Cyrene’s once-mighty temples. Claim the three critical locations at the heart of the ruins or drive into enemy bases and deliver annihilation.”
Dawn of War II is getting some love aswell:
“In Dawn of War II, we’re giving away four free sets of Wargear; The Vanguard, Sniper, Sternguard, and Destroyer, to equip in the main campaign that were previously only available as pre-order DLC, or as rare loot drops. Now everyone will be able to equip items like the Veteran’s Grenades, Blade of Ulyus, Armor of the Destroyer, and many more to complete your sets!”
Expansions for games tend to be released at the most a few years after the release of the original game, so it’s a surprise to hear that Forgotten Empires and SkyBox Labs are working on an expansion for Age of Mythology – a game already 13 years old.
Called Tale of the Dragon, the expansion will be Eastern-themed. Not many other details are known yet, but the team will be having a livestream on October 2nd with the exact time to be announced later on. The expansion comes on the heels of the release of the Extended Edition of the game which came with a number of updates including day and night cycles, improved water and global lighting.
The same team is also working on another project: Age of Empires 2 HD: The African Kingdoms.
An expansion for Company of Heroes 2 released a few days ago, and it has a distinctly British flavour to it. At least, that’s the most obvious thing you can gather from its launch trailer.
Now on Steam, The British Forces adds a whole bunch of new units to the game; troops, vehicles, commanders; as well as some more multiplayer maps. It also boasts some improvements to the motion capture animations and the characters introduced are supposedly full of character, with voice actors from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and New Zealand(?) brought in to enable a range of accents. Special interest has also been given to regional differences, classes and rivalries among the regions apparently which is good to hear.
Check out the trailer below to see if the expansion takes your fancy.
Age of Wonders 3 already had a pretty good level editor in the game for players to use to make their games a little bit more customised to their liking. Now the developers have announced that they’re going to add mod tools to the game in the future
Triumph announced the plans in a recent blog post. The tools will be implemented within the next patch for the game and will be compatible with Steam Workshop as well as various other mod making avenues. You’ll be able to effect certain parts of the game like the game balance and you can add new specialisations and units; however you won’t be allowed to tweak the core gameplay, models or textures with the tools provided.
Mods will have a switch in the launcher to turn them on and off, and will be useable across the single-player and multiplayer parts of the game; so no mods that give you an unfair advantage. More rules and features will be made clear in a future announcement.
Civilization: Beyond Earth is due to have its first expansion release within a few months, and to that end Firaxis made the game free on Steam for the weekend. They’ve also implemented a demo that lets you try the game by playing up to 100 turns of a game. There’s also a sale on, with a special The collection bundle being available that includes the game, the DLC of premade planets and a pre-order of the expansion, Rising Tide.
Rising Tide isn’t due out until October 9th though, so there’s plenty of time to get familiar with the new features including new faction INTEGR who are German-based along with promises of more content to be revealed soon.
If you want to pre-order Rising Tides separately it’s currently selling for 10% off at £22.49, but I’d advice waiting. Civ games have a habit of not really hitting their stride until there’s been a few expansions and Beyond Earth was in my eyes okay but not brilliant. Here’s hoping Rising Tides makes it feel more like the game it’s meant to be.
