The legendary strategy franchise is back, combining heart-pounding combat with new layers of strategy in a breathtaking Mediterranean setting. Company of Heroes 3™ is coming to PC in 2022, bringing the series’ intimate boots-on-the-ground storytelling to a brand-new theatre of war. In Company of Heroes 3, players can experience authentic new features such as the Dynamic Campaign Map and Full Tactical Pause to fight their way to victory. In a brand-new video, Relic Entertainment developers explain how Campaign gameplay in Company of Heroes 3 is taking a big leap forward, with a strong focus on replayability.
The new Dynamic Campaign Map offers ‘sandbox-style’ gameplay, allowing players to command the overall war effort and experience a unique level of strategic choice. Mission Designer David Milne explains in the video that Relic designed the missions in a way that it challenges players, but that a mission can always be completed – no matter which factions, companies, or units they’ve selected. The developers reveal in the video that players will experience epic historical battles set in famous locations, while also discovering the smaller untold stories of World War II.
For more information about Company of Heroes 3 head to www.companyofheroes.com, where you can still sign up for CoH-Development, Relic’s community platform where players get exclusive insights into how the game is being made, as well as a voice in its development. You can follow the game on YouTube, Twitter, Discord, Twitch and Facebook. For more information about SEGA Europe, log on to www.sega.co.uk and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and Twitter.
After giving the Achilles: Legends Untold community early access to the beta through the official Discord, Dark Point Games has decided to open the beta up to all players.
“We wanted to make sure our earliest fans got their hands on first and their feedback has been immensely valuable, for both shaping up the beta and the future of the game.” said Paweł Waszak, CEO and Lead Game Designer.
However, due to popular demand the team has decided to open up the beta for all fans as of today.
During the beta, players can relive the battle at the gates of Troy, facing legendary warriors like Hektor, Paris and a slew of mythological menaces. While, according to the Iliad, Achilles was at the peak of his unquenchable desire for fame, this battle is only the opening chapter of his untold legends.
The combat in Achilles: Legends Untold brings a unique isometric approach to traditional Souls-like gameplay. Learning enemy movements and timing your attacks will be key, while Dark Point Games also added devastating special abilities like the shield toss to overwhelm enemies with Achilles’ raw power. This way, Achilles: Legends Untold may be enjoyed by souls veterans and new players alike
Achilles: Legends Untold features the innovative GAIA system, which means the AI characters’ actions feel lifelike and work together in unpredictable ways. Experience immersive battles in which monsters adapt to your playstyle, try different strategies or create ambush scenarios, all driven by this contemporary, in-house-designed system.
Achilles: Legends Untold is aiming for an EA Release in Q2 of 2022 on PC.
Batten down the hatches and raise the mizzenmast because Innerverse games is right proud announce that Pirates of Gravitae will be launching into Early Access on Steam on March 31st.
Take your buccaneering to the great blue yonder and go on a voyage that spans the Neo Caribbean as you dogfight with seadogs in this action roguelike adventure. Build up your ship, train your crew, shoot down flying frigates & skybound sharks, dismantle enemy forts, and stop the nefarious Dynamic India Company from devastating the planet.
Pirates of Gravitae will be available on March 31st in Early Access on Steam for $9.99 USD with a 10% discount for launch.
About Pirates of Gravitae
Pirates of Gravitae is an action roguelike game with fast-paced aerial combat. The player commands a gravity-defying pirate ship and her eclectic crew, in a bid to stop a malignant, global trade empire, the Dynamic India Company, the ambitions of which threaten the existence of Earth itself.
Features
Run based campaign where every defeat gets you closer to final victory, with persistent ability unlocks and upgrades across runs
Combine up to three from 13 different weapons, defensive measures, and maneuvers (more coming) to find your optimal load-out
Equip your sailors with over 60 different randomized loot items, allowing different ‘builds’ for each run (more coming)
Train your crew for persistent stat upgrades across 8 different stats for your ship
Optimize your build to suit your play style: high or low altitude, day or night encounters, strong winds or clear skies. It all makes a difference.
Raid treasure galleons, bombard forts from above, dominate the skies
If you are a fan of horror and VR games, get ready for Deadness, a horror VR game, coming soon on Steam VR, Viveport, and Valve Index, February 22.
Deadness is a spine-chilling and eerie game where you are helplessly confined to a wheelchair in a gloomy old research facility.
Trying to hide from the undead will make your heart race and take your breath away because you cannot kill what is already dead.
Unlike other VR games, in Deadness, you can only move using your hands which control all the movements as you would in real life sitting on a wheelchair.
The game is not for the faint heart as it has a super-realistic VR environment and intuitive controls. You will experience real fear and anxiety unlike any other.
NACON and the development studio Brave Lamb are pleased to release a new trailer for War Hospital, a survival and strategy game in which players oversee a field hospital during the Great War. The video features Major Henry Wells, who is facing the moral dilemmas that come with his role. War Hospital will release on PC and consoles in Q4 2022.
With this new cinematic trailer, players confront the harsh reality of war, where every choice is a fateful decision. In their role of attending to the sick and injured, players must choose the best way to treat soldiers’ war wounds by managing the means at their disposal. Most of these decisions have immediate consequences for the injured, and the terrible events that are part of daily life in the trenches are not always predictable. As well as treating patients, players will need to make difficult decisions that impact staff morale, resource availability, and sometimes even the course of history.
Thanks to the support that the British Imperial War Museums gave to the developers, the game faithfully reproduces the environment of the front and trenches, and features the authentic medical equipment available at the time.
War Hospital, a survival and real-time strategy game with unique RPG mechanics, deals with a theme that has rarely been approached until now. It is planned for release in Q4 2022.
SQUARE ENIX® today announced the launch of the Life is Strange™ Remastered Collection, enhanced versions of the first two games in the award-winning series. Featuring updated character models, improved motion capture and more, players will be able to experience legendary leads, Max and Chloe, like never before on Google Stadia, Xbox One, PlayStation®4, and PC Steam.
Jon Brooke, Co-Head of Studio at Square Enix External Studios states: “Firstly I wanted to recognise DONTNOD for creating the incredible original Life is Strange game and now offer thanks to Deck Nine Games for improving the emotional on-screen performance of these beloved characters. The result of both teams hard work is that the Life is Strange Remastered Collection can be the beginning of an exciting and emotional journey for many new players for years to come.”
At the centre of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm are the magnetic and relatable friends, Max and Chloe. Players will harness Max’s supernatural rewind ability and Chloe’s quick-witted attitude to unravel and affect the events surrounding two astounding mysteries in the Oregon town of Arcadia Bay.
The Life is Strange Remastered Collection features:
Updated character models and environment visuals
Improved motion captured lip sync and facial animation
All-new engine and lighting upgrades
Updates to some puzzle gameplay
Life is Strange: Before the Storm Remastered includes previously released deluxe content (bonus outfits and the ‘Farewell’ bonus episode)
All licensed tracks & original scores from the original games
The Life is Strange Remastered Collection is available on Google Stadia, PlayStation 4®, Xbox One, GeForce Now, PC Steam on February 1, 2022. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions will also be compatible with the next-gen PlayStation 5, and XBOX SERIES X|S. The Nintendo Switch version will be available at a later date.
Purchasers of the Life is Strange: True Colors Ultimate Edition will also receive the Life is Strange Remastered Collection.
Video game publisher All in! Games and development studio The Farm 51, are pleased to announce that the highly anticipated next-gen console version of Chernobylite will be released on April 21. Additionally, the date marks the release of the PC Enhanced Edition, the Blue Flames DLC, and a physical edition of Chernobylite for PS5 published by Perp Games. The game won Indie DB’s ‘Indie of the Year’ Player’s Choice Award, was featured in Steam’s ‘Best of 2021’ list, and has no intention of slowing down in 2022. Based on Chernobylite’s content roadmap, players can expect continuous game enhancements and more content updates throughout the year.
“If last year is any indication, Chernobylite has taken a worthy place among the best indie games of 2021. The next-gen release is the natural next step that fans of the game have been eagerly awaiting,” said Piotr Żygadło, CEO at All in! Games. “We’re proud to say that it will be the biggest visual revamp of the game so far, and that due to the simultaneous release of the PC Enhanced Edition, players across all platforms will undoubtedly benefit.”
The upgrade to the next-gen version of Chernobylite and the PC Enhanced Edition will be available for owners of the game through a free update. Both updates will introduce ray tracing and will greatly improve the game’s already hyper-realistic visuals. The next-gen versions specifically will also add two new graphic profiles: 4K (Dynamic) 30 FPS and 1080p (Ultra Details) 60 FPS and the PS5 update will additionally add features for DualSense Controllers such as advanced vibrations and adaptive triggers as well as compatibility with PlayStation’s Activity Card feature.
To make the day even more eventful, Blue Flames, the first of four scheduled content drops for 2022, will be released for all platforms. Blue Flames will offer a free content update, ‘Memories of You’; a new weapon, the Silent Assassin crossbow (pictured below); and a paid content pack. With ‘Memories of You’, players will learn more about Tatyana and Igor’s fateful backstory through new events and collectibles.
When pressed to think of Italian horror your mind likely immediately lands on giallo, the forebearer to the slasher flick. You may jump straight to the wave of zombie cash-ins of the 70s and 80s. What you probably don’t picture is Hammer-esque gothic dramas. Arrow Films is out to change that with their release of Giorgio Ferroni’s 1960 classic, Mill of the Stone Women, Italy’s first color horror film! Read on to find out if this release is rock solid or merely dust in the wind.
Feature
As Mill of the Stone Women opens, writer Hans finds himself in picturesque Holland to work on a story about the… well, the titular Mill of the Stone Women. It’s literally right there, just downriver from where Hans makes landfall and name checked within sixty seconds. Hans sets off for the mill where sculptor Professor Wahl lives and works, creating a carousel of sculptures that wouldn’t be out of place in a carnival dark ride.
Allowed to board in the Mill’s attic, Hans promptly falls in love with the professor’s daughter, Elfie. Hans and Elfie’s love is not meant to be, however, as Hans’ girlfriend, art student Liselotte, arrives at the mill. Further complicating the Hans-Elfie-Liselotte triangle is Elfie’s fatal blood disease, missing locals, and the paranoid machinations of Professor Wahl. Where does the story go from there? Some truly bonkers places that I won’t spoil in this review. Suffice to say, if you’re planning a trip to Holland go ahead and uncheck the “Creepy Art Instillation Windmill” box in your AirBnB filters.
Mill of the Stone Women is an effective horror film from a time when the genre was just beginning to blossom in Italy. Setting itself apart from its contemporaries in 1960s Italian neorealist cinema, the film is beautiful to look at with its use of location shooting in the quiet marshlands of Holland and stunning set design of the mill itself. While the special effects definitely show their age, the clockwork parade of sculptures has a unique charm befitting what is essentially a mid-century European roadside attraction. While the film can feel a bit slow paced at times, it wraps up right at the hour and a half mark making for a short, sweet slice of Italian horror history.
Picture and Audio
Mill of the Stone Women is presented in its original 1:66 aspect ratio from a brand new 2k scan of the original 35mm negative by Arrow Video. The restoration is clean with few remaining imperfections outside of some visible dirt and scratches in the opening titles. The color grading looks good with a consistently cool tone that matches the foggy Holland marshland the film takes place in without interfering with skin tones. The audio mixes were restored from their original mono tracks and hold up as well as any Italian films of the time could be expected to as it was commonplace for sound and dialogue to be recorded entirely in post. That being the case, it’s not abnormal that sound can slip out of sync.
Extras and Packaging
Leading the extras is an audio commentary by horror and fantasy historian Tim Lucas. Lucas offers an insightful academic track that touches upon everything from production anecdotes to putting the film in context against its contemporaries in Italian cinema and predecessors in gothic horror. Lucas begins the track by speaking to his personal history with the film going back to his own childhood and its clear that he has a deep love and intimate understanding of the film that makes the commentary a must listen.
Next up is Mill of the Stone Women and the Gothic Body, a visual essay by Arrow stalwart Kat Ellinger. In her essay, Ellinger spends twenty minutes speaking to the trope of wax figures in horror, its history throughout horror of the early 20th century, and its origin in Victorian cabinets of curiosity.
On the archival front, Turned to Stone and A Little Chat with Dr Mabuse are lengthy features that center on interviews with actress Liana Orfei (Annelore, one of the missing townsfolk) and actor Wolfgang Preiss (Dr Bohlem, Wahl’s assistant) respectively. Backing these up are trailers, image galleries, and alternate opening title sequences. The real stand out feature of this release are the multiple cuts of the film. From the director’s cut of RoboCop to the censored television version of Mallrats and the fan edit of Phantom of the Mall, Arrow has proven themselves to have a talent for digging up these alternate cuts and they’ve outdone themselves on Mill of the Stone Women. Up first on disc one you’ll find two versions of the film- The original Italian version and the dubbed English export version, both running at 96 minutes with the only difference being localized titles and different audio. Move on to disc two, exclusively in this first limited edition run of the film, and you’ll find two more cuts- the French version and re-cut American version. While the French edit comes in a bit shorter than the original release, the American cut has the most striking changes. A voiceover narration, newly shot inserts, rearranged scenes and added visual effects, the film is punched up a bit to satisfy contemporary American audiences.
Mill of the Stone Women is packaged in Arrow’s standard hard slip case used for all of their limited edition releases. Inside the case you’ll find a reversible slip cover featuring original and
all new cover art, a fold out poster and a sixty page booklet featuring essays covering the making of the film and the differences between the different cuts of the film, excerpts from contemporary reviews of the film, production stills and information on the restoration.
Overall
Arrow Video has long been the premiere label for boutique horror releases. After a long run of giallo films, it’s refreshing to see them turn their attention to a different corner of Italian gore with Mill of the Stone Women. While not as packed with supplements as other releases, a celebratory commentary track and the inclusion of four different cuts of the film help Mill of the Stone Women earn its spot on the shelf of any horror collector.
Independent games development studio 3DIVISION has today released Content Update #9 – Crime and Justice – for the Early Access version of Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, the real-time soviet-themed city builder tycoon game set in an imaginary communist country in Eastern Europe.
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is the ultimate real-time soviet-themed city builder tycoon game. Construct your own republic and transform a poor country into a rich industrial superpower!
Content Update #9 introduces a new Crime and Justice system along with three new buildings – Police Station, Regional Court and Prison. Players can decide if they wish to play this new system, disable it or lower the difficulty level, similar to the fires and seasons features. Crime and Justice will have an impact on the overall happiness and health of your citizens and will be affected by the overall government loyalty and unemployment.
Every citizen will have a hidden Criminality preference which will be randomly generated and if crimes are not solved, it will cause a growth in crime rates across the Republic. Low government loyalty and high unemployment will also have an impact on the overall crime rate. Crime will be categorised in three groups; Mild, Medium and Serious and if a crime is committed, all the people in that area will be affected depending on the seriousness. Citizens’ happiness will slowly decrease and their health may also diminish if the crime causes harm to them or other people.
When a crime is committed the police will attend the crime scene. The sooner the police vehicle arrives, the better the chance to successfully investigate the crime. Once the police process the evidence the investigation will continue and only when fully investigated and the perpetrators arrested will it proceed to the Regional Court where the trial begins. If the trial is successful, the criminal will be sent to prison.
The prison will need the highest possible security level in place so if there are not enough workers, the security level will go down. The more loyal the prison workers, the more secure the prison will be. Resources such as food and clothes will need to be delivered into the prison, and as it will not have a factory connection due to security risks, these items will need to be delivered by trucks. Inmates can be used as a workforce with prison buses transporting them to factories or other industrial facilities directly. Players must choose which in industries to bring prisoners to ensure the long term security of the production line.
The Crime and Justice update will add a new layer of complexity to the overall game experience, should players wish to take on the challenge. It also provides more reasons to keep the unemployment rate low and the citizen loyalty high.
Aside from the new Crime and Justice mechanics, the new update also adds the long awaited railway distribution office. Unlike classic rail schedules and lines, all the player needs to do is connect the source and destination buildings and the railway distribution office automatically decides when and where to deploy the trains and how many cars they should have for the job at hand.
Content Update #9 features:
Three new buildings available – Police Station, Regional Court and Prison.
Criminality added to citizen behaviour adding a new layer of complexity and challenges for players to manage.
Criminality feature difficulty levels can be managed or even switched off by the player.
Additional duty vehicles such as police cars are now available.
Long-awaited railway distribution office has been added.
Many other gameplay and mechanics improvements.
Workers & Republic: Soviet Republic game features:
Manage all aspects of your own republic with a planned economy, including mining resources, manufacturing goods, construction, investments, and citizens too.
Create your own industrial complexes with loading and unloading stations, storage, warehouses, and factories.
Build the infrastructure and manage its traffic, including roads, railways, sidewalks, conveyors, wiring, and pipelines. Wisely place and connect factories, houses and warehouses, and make the most efficient connections.
Plan and build the living areas with everything your citizens may need to live their happy life, such as playgrounds, cinemas, taverns, and shops.
Send your citizens to the mine to get coal, iron and other natural resources; or send them to the fields to pick up the crops; or take them to factories to produce manufactured goods.
Sell and purchase resources and goods from western countries or other soviet countries to get dollars or rubles and buy the products or resources you need … or invest in new infrastructure or buildings.
Enjoy authentic soviet buildings and vehicles, as well as realistic landscapes of the 60’s to the 90’s.
Play the way you want! You can focus on getting natural resources or products and trade them for money; or you can build a self-sufficient republic; or you can just use the easy sandbox mode with unlimited money/resources and just enjoy building something live.
Prices of resources on the global market are changing over time as you play –one day you can sell or purchase steel for $100 per ton, but in a few months the cost can rise to $200 or decrease to $50. The price of everything is connected to the cost of work and resources.
2K today unveiled an exciting, early look at WWE® 2K22 gameplay with the action-packed WWE 2K22: Booyaka Gameplay Trailer featuring a slew of WWE Superstars and Legends laying the smack down on their opponents. The trailer showcases stunning visuals made possible by the redesigned gameplay engine, crisp new animations, new game modes including MyGM, and much more.
Stay tuned for more details to be released later this week. WWE 2K22 will be available March 11, 2022*. For more information on WWE 2K22, visit the game’s official website, become a fan on Facebook, follow the game on Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #WWE2K22 or subscribe on YouTube.
Visual Concepts is a 2K studio. 2K is a wholly owned publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO).
