Heist shooter Payday 2 will crack open on Nintendo Switch early next year - on 23rd February in the UK.
North America will get the game just a few days later on 27th February, meanwhile.
Payday 2 will be getting a digital and physical launch - prices for which are still to be confirmed. There's no word yet on exactly what content will be included.
Old Diablo-alike Titan Quest is getting a console re-release on PS4, Xbox One and Switch! This was a game first released in 2006.
The PS4 and Xbox One versions of Titan Quest will arrive on 20th March 2018, priced at a budget 27/€30/$30, with the Switch version to follow "when it is done".
Included will be the full Titan Quest game plus Immortal Throne expansion, but not the game's new Ragnarok expansion, released last month. There will be online co-op for up to six people, and "remastered graphics" to bring the game up to date.
Describing a game as a mash-up of two other well-known titles is lazy, but you know what? It's fun and sometimes useful, as in the case of SpellForce. 'Baldur's Gate meets Age of Mythology' is the sell, and third time out for this particular series I'm committed to updating the labels of the imaginary Venn diagram for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the game's role-playing strategy formula. And while it's tempting to stick with Baldur's Gate and Age of Mythology, especially as they remain in loyal service thanks to their respective enhanced/extended editions, after a number of unremarkable expandalones and dutiful anthologies, SpellForce 3 feels like the first in the series eager to break free of binary influences.
There are obvious aesthetic overtones from Divinity: Original Sin, narrative nods towards the racial and class animosities that bridge The Witcher series, and map-wide elements of strategy that can be traced back to Dawn of War and Company of Heroes - all of which suggest that while the team at Grimlore Games might not have a huge body of work to its own, they've certainly been getting their influences in order.
There's been some debate among SpellForcerers, new and old, as to where exactly SpellForce 3 exists on the ol' RPG-RTS teeterboard, for while the original had a well defined 50/50 split, developer Grimlore has reportedly been keen to shift the balance more towards story and hero advancement, while many newcomers have been attracted by favourable comparisons with WarCraft 3 (which itself was derivative of the original SpellForce).
The Last Jedi update has arrived in Star Wars Battlefront 2. This first major dollop of DLC is free and brings new heroes (Finn and Phasma), new maps (Crait and D'Qar), new hero ships (Tallie Lintra and an upgrade for Poe) and new story chapters.
Importantly, these new story chapters will not spoil The Last Jedi film. Here are the spoiler guidelines tweeted by Battlefront 2 writer Mitch Dyer.
The 9.79GB update also includes significant balance changes for all Star Wars Battlefront 2 heroes, particularly Lando, Emperor Palpatine and Chewbacca, who've been buffed. There are no outright nerfs although Boba Fett has been neutered slightly and Yoda's Presence, and Rey's Mind Control, have been sorted out so they don't interfere with other people's abilities.
It's been six months since E3 2017, when Bethesda announced its intention to add a Creation Club to Skyrim and Fallout 4, their massively-successful mega-RPGs known for their breadth of content and emphasis on player freedom. This club would task third-party developers with producing new pieces for the publisher's two marquee games, which players could then buy from an online storefront with real money. While some decried the service as yet another attempt to introduce paid mods to the single-player gaming ecosystem, Bethesda insisted the market for free fan-made content would remain unaffected. "We won't allow any existing mods to be retrofitted into Creation Club," reads the FAQ. "It must all be original content."
Following this, in late August Bethesda revealed the initial line-up for Creation Club, which included the Hellfire Power Armour and the Chinese Stealth Suit, both priced at $5 and inspired by similar items introduced in the various expansions for Fallout 3. There was just one little problem - if you searched the Nexus, the massively-populated home of free mods for Bethesda's games, among others, you'd find both the Hellfire Power Armour and the Chinese Stealth Suit already on offer for the low, low price of nothing.
A mild furore erupted. Press pounced on the revelation, which fed the already-boiling fan frenzy over what were considered outrageous prices for sub-par content. Paying $5 for a piece of armour was bad enough, but when the free alternative is superior, the bad deal starts to seem like an out-and-out ripoff. For Road to Liberty, the mod team behind the two projects, it was a confusing development, and one they worked with Bethesda to try to avoid.
Dean Hall's ambitious "hardcore" spaceship construction and management sim Stationeers is out now on Steam Early Access.
Stationeers was first announced back in March and draws inspiration from cult classic spaceship management game Space Station 13. It's being created by Hall's RocketWerkz studio (which just announced open-world "neo-noir" game Living Dark), and has been in development for over a year now. If you're interested in its journey so far, Hall and co. have been charting Stationeers progress through many, many hours of informative dev streams.
Despite its cartoon-y looks, Stationeers is focussed on delivering a sophisticated simulation experience, requiring the management and maintenance of complex atmospheric, electrical, manufacturing, medical, agriculture, and gravitational systems. "This is not a casual game," says RocketWerkz, "Stationeers is designed for hardcore players who want a game that is systems oriented. Full utilization and optimization of these complex systems will only come from great knowledge and practice."
Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom has officially received its second delay, and will now release on PC and PS4 on March 23rd 2018, according to publisher Bandai Namco.
Developer Level-5's highly anticipated follow-up to the wonderful DS (and later PS3) J-RPG was initially due to release on November 10th this year. However, its first delay came this summer, pushing the game's launch back to January 19th 2018.
At the time, Ni no Kuni's director (and Level-5 president) Akihiro Hino simply stated that the delay was a result of the studio deciding "that more development time is required in order to deliver the full Ni no Kuni 2 experience to our fans".
A note from the editor: Jelly Deals is a deals site launched by our parent company, Gamer Network, with a mission to find the best bargains out there. Look out for the Jelly Deals roundup of reduced-price games and kit every Saturday on Eurogamer.
GOG has decided that mid-December was a pretty good time to launch a Winter sale. Funny that.
This range of discounts is live right now and set to end on 26th December. There will also be a new and different set of offers each day, kicking things off with what might be my favourite freebie of the year - a copy of Grim Fandango Remastered on PC. To get your free copy of the game, you'll only need a GOG account - other than that, just click 'Get for Free' and you're done. That free game is available for the next couple of days.
UPDATE 14TH DECEMBER: A second teaser for Living Dark has been released, focusing on a character called Algo Azul who can telekinetically move objects. Is this a hint at the types of abilities we'll be able to use in the game?
ORIGINAL STORY 13TH DECEMBER: RocketWerkz has unveiled a new open-world, procedural, "neo-noir" game called Living Dark. There's no mention of it being multiplayer and, judging by a developer's post on Facebook, the team is 15 people big, so temper expectations accordingly - this will be no Grand Theft Auto.
RocketWerkz, incidentally, is the New Zealand studio set up by former DayZ frontman Dean Hall, though it's former Bethesda artist Rashad Redic directing Living Dark.
A second expansion pack for Ark: Survival Evolved has launched on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It's called Aberration and it is, as the title suggests, unusual.
Aberration is the name of a malfunctioning Ark with an underground biome. There's radioactive sunlight, earthquakes, ziplines, wingsuits, climbing gear and weird creatures. There are spooky humanoids called Nameless, and Reapers who impregnate enemies to spawn offspring. Apparently if you let the Reaper Queen impregnate you, you spawn a Reaper you can tame and control.
It won't be the only new beast you can tame. You can climb and fly on the back of a camouflaged Rock Drake chamaeleon thing; you can stamp around with a giant Cave Crustacean, which is probably an overgrown crab; and you can light the way with a Lantern Pet.