It is official. The long-awaited next installment of the award-winning, insanely popular turn-based strategy 4X franchise, Civilization, will be released on October 21, 2016. The official trailer was uploaded on to YouTube, and Steam already has it listed available for pre-order. Continue reading
Yesterday there was a surprise announcement that “Quantum Break”, a highly anticipated Xbox One exclusive would actually also be launching on the PC at the same time in April. On top of that, those who pre-order the Xbox One version get the PC version as well, which is something we will see happen more often as Microsoft wants to bring more cross-platform features to Xbox One and Windows 10.
According to Microsoft’s head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, cross-buy between PC and Xbox One will be a platform feature: “We’ll make it a platform feature. We think it’s good for gamers. More players, more games, better ecosystem”.
It’s difficult to please both new and old fans alike when rebooting a beloved franchise, but in 2012, Firaxis pulled off a game-development miracle when it successfully revived the legendary but long-mistreated X-COM franchise with XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The modernized version recaptured the key elements that made the 1994 original memorable: an against-the-odds struggle against a technologically superior foe; the emotional sting that comes from the permanent loss of personalized soldiers heroically killed in battle; and a deep tactical system with an element of randomness that forces you to prepare contingencies in case your plans don’t survive contact with the enemy.
Enemy Unknown was a success that demanded a follow-up, and it’s getting one in XCOM 2, due out this November. But that posed a difficult question: Where do you go from the end of Enemy Unknown (and its expansion, Enemy Within), where, spoiler alert, XCOM has unlocked the secrets of the aliens’ advanced technologies and used them to destroy the invaders’ mothership, ending the threat? Continue reading