The newest Total War game was revealed today at EGX on stage in a dev session. With the help of an awesome trailer, they revealed that it was named Total War: Attila and was to be set in 395AD – a period of time when the Roman Empire was split in two and under attack from all sides by various armies.

Two different modes of the game were shown off, the Campaign mode where it was shown that maps of the empire area could be seen and interacted with. Graphics were said to be improved with different lighting levels and foliage types helping to invoke the sense of being in different areas of Europe and Africa as you moved across the map; markers to indicate where attacking armies were placed, as well as cities and a number of stats could be accessed from the UI, including the religious factions affecting different areas, sanitation levels etc. Family trees had also been re-added and you are able to assign important people to positions to allow their skills to ‘buff’ the places they are placed. Tech and skill trees will also be available to help players choose what way they choose to go to defend their territory.

The other gamemode shown was the Battle gamemode, in which one player is defending in a city and the other player is attacking it both multitasking by controlling many groups of soldiers at the same time. It was revealed that the condition of cities under siege will effect the morale of the defending armies; for example if a fire is allowed to spread unchecked the amount of destroyed buildings will have a small debuffing effect. Cities will also have pre-determined places you can choose to place barricades, either to block the way and station troops on top of to shoot down at the attackers or to funnel enemies where you want them. Untouched cities can also have civilian characters who will flee the city, hide in buildings or on occasion attack invaders themselves. Fatigue will also play a part in the battles, tiring soldiers in the thick of battle but allowing them to recover if they back off.

Both Roman Empires as well as many of their enemies are playable in the game, and Creative Assembly are planning a release sometime in 2015.

Great news everyone! We now have the power to undelete a character in the upcoming Pre-patch for World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor (better known as Patch 6.0.2). There will be limitations, so before you get too excited, look what the recent blog post by Blizzard has to say:

>Characters under level 10 and Death Knights at level 55 are not eligible to be undeleted.
>Characters between level 10 and level 29 will no longer recoverable after 90 days.
>Characters between level 30 and 49 will no longer recoverable after 120 days.
>All other characters level 50 and above are eligible to be undeleted at any time.
>Please keep in mind you will only be able to use the undelete option once every 30 days.

 

Undeleting a character restores all of its enchantments, gems, and items fully intact.

Blizzard also included their policy on what happens with a deleted characters name:

We’ll be holding deleted character names for a limited time, and the original creator can reclaim it for use on a new character during that time. If you create a new character with the same name as one of your deleted characters (let’s say Flugur), the new character must be renamed, transferred, or deleted to complete the restoration of the original Flugur.

The dev sessions at EGX kicked off today with a presentation by both Yager and Deep Silver and a video with some demo gameplay from a pre-alpha build of the game.

Dead Island 2 is set in ‘sunny California’ with different locations located in and around LA and San Francisco and will be a co-op multiplayer game for up to 8 people in which the goal seems to be to move around the area, scavenge as much as possible and then upgrade yourself and your weapons to make surviving the apocalypse as much fun as it’s possible to have while fighting for your life.

The game will have a number of different playable classes, including 2 not yet seen in video demos, and all will have their own unique styles of attacking and special moves. For example the Berserker can execute a special move that lets them kick a zombie. Either into other zombies, creating a domino effect or just sending them flying over the horizon. You can also launch zombies with a moddable weapon that combines a bowling ball and a baseball bat, so I think you can see why this game is about making survival fun. And somewhat ridiculous in a hilarious way.

One of the things that this game does differently from previous Dead Island games is that crafting is no longer tied to worktables – you can now craft on-the-fly. However you’ll either need teammates to watch your back or to find a safe and secluded little corner of the map to do it, the world does not stop just because you need to equip some parts to your weapon. however crafting does allow you to add extra effects to your weapon, such as the ability to set enemies alight and electrocute them. The zombies will even blacken as they take fire or shock damage. There are set to be more weapons, more blueprints in the game and while weapons will still need repairing, they won’t ever be so broken they can’t be saved. There’ll even be a in-built system to distribute level-appropriate loot so that even if you’re a different level to your friends, no battle together ever feels like it’s a waste of your time.

The environment is set to be dynamic with interactable elements such as canisters of gas that can be used as flammable explosives and the ability to set traps. and obviously a lot of noise means that zombies will inevitably be attracted towards it, and some of the in-game tasks revolve around keeping said attracted zombies away from the noise source.

Dead Island 2 is being planned for release sometime in Spring 2015 for PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One.

Saints Row fans are currently waiting on the release of a standalone expansion for Saints Row IV, Gat Out of Hell. It’ll see the ever-popular Johnny Gat and Kinzie taken to Hell and obviously in typical Saints Row fashion, it will be totally over the top and very very funny. One of the new weapons is a lounger with guns attached for example… yeah.

Just to show us a little of what can be expected, the people over at Deep Silver have put up what is hinted (by the #1 in the title) to be the first of a series of dev walkthroughs for Gat Out of Hell.

This time we’re getting a tour of  New Hades, the city featured in the game.

Steam pushed through an update a few days ago. You probably already knew this, the talk about ‘Steam Curators’ has been everywhere recently as people get used to having a list of recommended games to show their friends and people who check out their profiles. Of course, it’s not the only part of the update that’s been making a difference.

Steam Discovery is a bit like the predictive advertising we see pretty much everywhere online now. It gathers data based on what you’re looking at games-wise then lists a choice of games you might be interested in, based on what you looked at and what other Steam users have purchased in the past. This combined with the Curator part means that suddenly some games are getting a lot more visibility all of a sudden.

Indies in particular seem to be seeing some large spikes in sales, with numbers of people liking pages on the games climbing and sales also reaching some high points for well-made indies that have already been out for an amount of time. In a modern Steam where Greenlight and Early Access had contributed to making a place it was hard to get yourself noticed, this is very good news indeed.