The Division 2's launch on Xbox One, PS4, and PC is only a few weeks away and, in preparation, Ubisoft has detailed the game's first year of free post-launch content updates.

In a masterstroke of imagination, Ubisoft is calling The Division 2's first year of content updates Year 1 - and this will bring a combination of new features, new episodes, and new specialisations, all free to all players.

Soon after launch, The Division 2 will introduce a new Black Tusk Faction Stronghold known as Tidal Basin, alongside Operation Dark Hours, the series' first 8-player raid.

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Who loves loot? Silly question - we all love loot, but Anthem has recently come under fire for not giving players enough of it. That could be about to change, however, as a number of tweaks could see the game become slightly less stingy over its goodies.

Following a bizarre day when Anthem's loot temporarily became very generous (a mistake quickly reversed via patch), BioWare pledged to take another look at the loot mechanics and potentially make some changes.

In a post on Reddit, lead producer Ben Irving has now explained how some of these adjustments will work following the next patch (arriving sometime today or tomorrow).

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The developer of Plague Inc. will add anti-vaxxers to the game after an online petition went viral.

Plague Inc. is a 2012 real-time strategy simulation game that sees the player create and evolve a pathogen as they try to destroy the world with a deadly plague.

An online petition to add anti-vaxxers as a buff to Plague Inc. caught developer Ndemic Creations' eye, and the developer tweeted to say if the petition got 10,000 signatures, it would add a specific anti-vaxxer scenario to the game.

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Do you remember the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, the one where a bunch of kids went on a D&D fairground ride which magically transported them into a D&D fantasy world? (Didn't happen at my local fair, I tell you.) They became characters in the game: a boy barbarian, the hunky teenage ranger, the nerdy wizard... It looked like fun. But those kids, they never found a way out. Every episode for three seasons they searched to no avail, and then the series abruptly ended, incomplete. They were trapped. It's like someone locked the Narnia cupboard. The kids were never seen again. What happened to them?

(The final episode of the Dungeons & Dragons TV show was written, incidentally, but never filmed. You can read it online. I shan't spoil it!)

'What happened to them?' It bounced around Kieron Gillen's head one night at dinner. I'm sure you've heard of him. He used to write about video games - on Eurogamer even! Then he co-founded Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and then he became an acclaimed writer in the comic world, working for Marvel before co-creating his excellent The Wicked + The Divine series. It was the fate of the D&D kids Gillen was wondering about when suddenly an idea hit him and he apparently burst into tears. And lo, his new comic series, Die, was born.

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Here's an odd one: Alien: Isolation's cutscenes are now an official digital series.

20th Century fox has taken the cutscnes from Creative Assembly's superb 2014 stealth horror game, added to them and packaged them into a seven episode digital series that kicks off today on IGN.

Spliced together are cinematics taken from the game, first-person scenes from the game that were re-shot and edited for the series, and new scenes.

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Happy Fortnite day (again)! Season 8 is here, and with it the patch notes detailing what players can expect from the upcoming season of Fortnite.

If you've been following the teasers released over the past week, you'll have guessed season 8 is all about pirates - and the new trailer reveals the narrative is following some sort of three-way battle between the Ice King, the Prisoner and a pirate crew (backed up by a couple of Fishsticks). Here's the official cinematic trailer to get you hyped:

So, what is season 8 bringing in terms of gameplay changes?

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will get a Barebones playlist with no specialists, Treyarch has announced.

Confirmation comes from the first in a planned series of developer update videos from Treyarch.

Specialists are the name given to the various soldiers you can pick from when playing multiplayer. Each has its own unique equipment and ability, which run on a cooldown. Battery, for example, has a cluster grenade as her unique equipment, and a grenade launcher for her ability. Firebreak's equipment, meanwhile, is the Reactor Core, while his ability is a flamethrower.

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Chunk. It's a hard quality to nail down, though it's something imperative to the best action games. It's also something you've either got or you haven't - and Devil Engine, the new horizontal 2D shmup that's just come to the Switch, has it in spades.

How to define that, exactly? There's chunk in the explosions, mostly, quick-sprouting cauliflowers that fizz and boom with grace. Shooting things feels just great in Devil Engine, a small but significant thing when playing a game like this, of course. Being shot feels pretty grand too - the best explosion in Devil Engine is saved for when your own ship is downed, which is quite the generous touch considering how often that will happen.

There's chunk in the artwork too, boldly realised and brilliantly brought to life; this is a 2D shmup that finds a medium between the more stately compose of older classics such as Gradius and R-Type and the more modern bustle of bullet hell games such as DoDonPachi, so it seems apt that its art-style feels like a powered-up version of those vintage 80s vistas, its starfields and spaceships brought to life with a muscular fidelity. As a devotee of the classics, I wouldn't go as far as to say Devil Engine looks better than them - just that it feels like they share that vision, and have been ushered to life with the help of a little more grunt. It's as if someone just discovered an unreleased Saturn shooter, developed by some of the finest minds at Irem and Konami in the 90s, and just ported it to Switch.

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Developer Digital Extremes has launched Nightwave, Warframe's new series of pirate-radio-themed, Battle-Pass-style limited-time events - available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC.

Nightwave, which replaces Warframe's previous Alerts system, takes the form of different story-driven Series, each playing out over the course of several weeks. Series are tied together by broadcasts from pirate radio station Nightwave, presented by Nora Night ("the eyes and ears of the Origin System"), and the first of these, The Wolf of Saturn, is out now.

By completing daily and weekly challenges - referred to as Acts - throughout a series, players can increase their standing with Nora and raise up the Reward Tiers. Each series will feature 30 tiers, and each tier unlocks limited-time rewards, including power items, exclusive cosmetics, or currency called Wolf Cred. It is, in other words, similar to the Battle Pass systems popularised by the likes of Fortnite and Rocket League, albeit free.

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Capcom has announced that the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy will be coming to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC on April 9th.

Phoenix Wright, for those unfamiliar, started life on the GBA in 2001, and found fame in the west after it was ported to DS in 2005. The main series follows the (literal) trials and tribulations of the titular defence attorney, and offers a compelling mix of visual-novel-style storytelling and twisty-turny case-solving - split between crime-scene investigation and deductive courtroom cross-examination.

To date, six core Phoenix Wright games have been released, as well as spin-offs focussing on other characters - and there's even been a crossover with Professor Layton too.

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