If you enjoyed your time with Sunless Sea, you’ll be glad to know that its first expansion, Zubmariner, has finally been given a release date. That and it’s not all that far in the future either. It’s also gotten a new trailer:

So October the 11th will be when the expansion is released which will take you from your boat and the port towns of Fallen London and the Unterzee into the dark depths of its surface. It promises to be as much of a decision making and encounter filled game as the base game was, with terrifying looking ‘zee-beasts’, management of oxygen reserves, and the all surrounding darkness meaning you’re reliant on your sonar to pinpoint anything down there.

Narrative director Chris Gardiner says of the expansion: “Beneath the Unterzee it’s dark, hostile, littered with plunderable wrecks and haunted by the worst horrors of the Neath… The ports on the zee bed are a level weirder than those on the surface, and their inhabitants have been changed by the deeps.Some are hiding, some are hateful, some are mad. Some are all three, and have very big ambitions.”

Those who purchased the base game through Early Access will be getting the expansion for free. Otherwise it’ll be available for £7.99/$10.99 on GOG, The Humble Store and Steam come October 11th.

Titanfall 2’s open beta is due to make its appearance onto consoles soon, but Respawn have announced today that unfortunately PC players won’t be getting the same treatment.

In the statement Respawn said that they’ve still got some hardware compatibility issues, meaning that as of yet they’re not ready to have the game tested across various PC builds yet so PC players will be left out of the open beta.

CEO of Respawn Vince Zampella said “We’re still making a lot of tweaks and changes to the renderer, the game, and effects so we haven’t run the game through the hardware compatibility lab yet to detect and handle a large variety of hardware – video cards, CPUs etc… So, currently the PC game isn’t as easy to throw out for testing as the console is, because of the additional variables and configurations that we need to support.”

However there’s more to it then that, as Respawn have decided that if they released the beta to PCs players would datamine it for information about the single player part of the game. That information would then be spread about online everywhere and Respawn feels that would spoil it for everyone.

“We realise this is a big disappointment for our PC fans, but we feel this allows us to concentrate on the real purpose of the tech test and focus on the server stability and scalability. Rest assured we’re confident in our ability to deliver a great PC experience for launch. We appreciate your understanding, and we look forward to seeing everyone on The Frontier this October.”

Given recent problems with PC ports for other games, you have to hope that they do have a testing period with PC players at some point before release. Gamers are beginning to see bad PC ports as something to be expected, and it’s something that needs addressing if it’s ever to change.

Frontier, creators of popular space ship sim Elite Dangerous have been working on their theme park builder game Planet Coaster for a bit now, and they have announced that the game will be removed from their own store and moved onto Steam for pre-orders as soon as they update the game to the next Alpha stage.

Alpha 3 will be released on August 23rd onto Steam and the early access alpha pass which has been available for purchase through Frontier’s store will be removed a few days later on the 25th. It will instead be replaced with two pre-order options on Steam, meaning that if you want early access you will lose your chance very soon.

If you do want to pre-order though, the standard edition of the game will be available for £26.99/€33.99/$40.99, while the Thrillseeker Edition will contain the game, a golden hat and King Coaster mascot for your in-game avatar, a digital sketchbook and the game’s soundtrack for £29.99/€37.99/$44.99 which isn’t really that much more for a special edition of a game. It will also grant you access to the beta, which is really good.

If you do already have the early access pass, you’ll need a Steam account to continue to play and more information can be found at the FAQ.

It has recently been announced by Creative Assembly that one of their older well received strategy games is about to be ported over to iOS so the game can be played on your iPad.

Rome: Total War will come over the the iPad with most if not all features complete, trading in the PC controls of its PC version in for touchscreen control. The game will come with a full grand campaign and all eleven of the game’s factions will be included and playable. The press release put out says that “Rome: Total War for iPad comes without compromise,” and apparently will be able to handle thousands of on-screen units thanks to “upgraded graphics that take advantage of the iPad’s high-resolution Retina screen.”

Release dates have yet to be announced, but we do know that it will be playable on the first generation iPad Air and iPad mini 2 models, as well as every unit that was released after that. The expansions will also be released for the iPad too but separately in the future at some point.

The world can always use more strategy games, even if they’re re-releases with updated graphics. Nostalgia!

When Overwatch launched it’s competitive mode earlier this summer, Blizzard set it up to be a season based mode with rewards for each season. Now, they have revealed the rewards for the first season, as well as details on when that season will end. As posted on the official Overwatch forum,

“Season 1 will officially end on Wednesday, August 17 at 5:00 p.m. PT (August 18 at 12:00 a.m. UTC). For time zone assistance, and to see when Season 1 will end in your region, visit thetimezoneconverter.com.

Season 2 is currently scheduled to launch on September 6, but this could shift as we continue to work on system improvements. We will be sure to share the exact date and time as we get closer to its release.”

While we do know when the season will end, it seems that the start of Season 2 is still up in the air as Blizzard works to make the mode better. Many players (myself included) are anxious to see what they do to replace the “coin flip” sudden death system. Widely panned by players, Blizzard has confirmed it will be removed but have made no comment on what they will replace it with.

Season 1Rewards

The forum post also detailed rewards for Season 1.

“If you completed your placement matches during Season 1, you will eligible to receive a special spray and player icon. These will be unlocked automatically when you log into your account the first time after the season ends. If at any point during the season you managed to break into the Top 500 players on your platform (and in your region), you’ll receive an extra player icon and animated spray on top of the other seasonal rewards.”

It remains to be seen how many players will receive the animated spray and other Top 500 rewards, as you only needed to break into the Top 500 during the season. This means that the pool of players would have been fluid and constantly in flux. It is nice, however, to have some exclusive rewards if you performed in the top percentile of players. In addition to sprays and icons, players will also receive a number of Competitive Points (CP) based on their skill rating (SR) from the season. Skill rating can rise and fall depending on wins and losses, so Blizzard have based the number of CP to be award based on the maximum SR  achieved during the season. The breakdown is as follows:

• SR 0-30: 10 CPs
• SR 40-45: 20 CPs
• SR 46-49: 40 CPs
• SR 50-52: 60 CPs
• SR 53-55: 80 CPs
• SR 56-59: 120 CPs
• SR 60-64: 200 CPs
• SR 65+: 300 CPs

Competitive points are the  currency used to buy golden weapon skins, with each skin costing 300 CPs. Higher tier players will obviously be getting more CPs, with those rank 65 and up basically being able to buy a skin with their season rewards CPs. Lower ranked players can supplement their CP reward with the normal points earned from winning a match: 1 CP per win.  It seems Blizzard is serious about keeping golden weapon skins as exclusive as they can, with only top tier players or those willing to grind able to afford them. That being said, you still have a few days to rank up, so if you’r on the cusp of SR 60, those 80 extra CPs might well be worth the grind.