BattleTech, the upcoming video game based on the classic and beloved table top war gaming franchise, is almost here—and if you want proof of that fact, here’s a brand new trailer for the game, which you can see for yourself below. The strategy role playing game will let you take control of some of the biggest and meanest robots in what I hope is a faithful translation of the war game.

The Trailer is also accompanied by another piece of news, which should, again, go a long way towards convincing you that the game is almost here- the announcement of its release date. We now know that BattleTech will be launching on April 24 for PC and Mac, for a price of $40 ($50 if you want the Digital Deluxe Edition).

That is a pretty good deal, especially if the game ends up living up to its initial promise, don’t you think?

The next expansion for Cities: Skylines, Mass Transit, will be launching on May 18, Colossal Order has confirmed. The expansion, which adds even more nuance and depth to the game’s already extensive public transit simulation systems, adds new transit vehicles and options, new accompanying mass transit buildings to go along with them, mass transit hubs, new scenarios, new landmarks, and new road types.

There will also be a free update for the game released alongside the expansion, which adds traffic management and public transit budget options. Both are due to launch on May 18 simultaneously. For now, both are planned for the PC, Mac, and Linux versions of the game- as of right now, it is unclear f the Xbox One version of the game will be getting these, too.

There is also a new trailer for the expansion that released today, which you can check out for yourself below. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more updates.

The (really) long wait is almost at an end- Xbox One owners will soon be able to play Colossal Order and Paradox’s superlative city simulation, Cities: Skylines. It is less than a month away from now, actually! Colossal Order has confirmed that the game will be launching on Xbox One worldwide on April 21.

Cities: Skylines will be available digitally, but also at retail. It will cost $40, and will include the game’s much vaunted Nightlife expansion right out of the box. Interestingly enough, the other expansions for the game –  Natural Disasters, Relaxation Station, High-Tech Buildings, Stadiums: European Club Pack, Art Deco, Snowfall, Mass Transit, Match Day, and, the just released free Pearls From the East – have not been mentioned. It is unclear if they will be available on Xbox One to purchase separately, or at all, for now.

Currently, the game is available on PCs running Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. As of right now, there is no word on a PS4 or Nintendo Switch release, making Cities Skylines a de facto Xbox One console exclusive.

Colossal Order’s excellent city simulation Cities: Skylines will be receiving its next expansion, Natural Disasters, on November 29- and you can probably judge what this expansion does by the name. Natural Disaster adds emergent natural disasters to the game, including earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, forest fires, and more, depending on where your city is.

But unlike SimCity, where the disasters were included just to have a laugh, Cities Skylines will make them a part of its city simulation. Players will have to invest in infrastructure that can minimize the impact of these disasters, if and when they hit, and they will also want to invest in disaster response teams or early disaster warning systems.

Or they could just good off like in SimCity, and unleash nature’s fury upon their city. That works, too. You can check out the video about this expansion below. Cities Skylines is available on PC, and the expansion will be launching for $14.99.

When Cities: Skylines launched a year ago, I highly doubt anybody expected it to be as successful as it ultimately turned out to be. But successful it was- as Paradox stated to GamingBolt today, the game, which is now celebrating its first birthday, has now sold 2 million copies worldwide, has seen the launch of successful expansions, a thriving modding community, and has even been used as a simulation in real life city planning.

Paradox will be showcasing a documentary at SXSW which will showcase how Cities: Skylines has been used for actual city planning (you can check out the trailer for this documentary below). They are also holding a competition, where one lucky fan will get to win a trip to Finland to visit the studio and attend the anniversary party for the game as well.

You can check out details for this anniversary celebration in the video below. Cities: Skylines is available on PCs running Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

The excellent city simulator that launched last year, Cities: Skylines, will be getting a brand new expansion soon, its second one- it’s called Snowfall, and like the first expansion, which added night time to the day, Snowfall adds weather. And as with the first expansion, weather changes will be more than just palette swaps- they will affect the entire game and how it plays, with new city departments dedicated to dealing with weather, citizens needing new heating facilities, roads needing maintenance utilities for extreme weather conditions, and new weather themed landmarks.

Basically, Snowfall takes an already incredibly in depth and nuanced city building simulator, and makes it even more nuanced. I can’t complain about it, especially since the depth of Cities: Skylines, and the potential for emergent gameplay that it offers, is my favorite thing about the game.

You can check out the trailer for the new expansion for yourself below.

That’s not to say the games in this aren’t fun at all. Magicka 2 offers something for people who are just looking to sit down and play a game for a couple of hours. Magicka 2 even gives the option of laying waste to entire towns if that’s what floats your boat. In the end, it’s one of the things that certainly floated mine, mainly out of some level of frustration.

The game kicks off with a narrator sporting a rather obvious impression of someone from the Carpathian mountains. In other words, someone who wants to sound like the stereo typical Dracula. This is just one of the times where the game tries to bring the funny, but ends up falling a bit short. The narrator who is in fact a vampire named Vlad also appears in the game, someone my character was supposed to meet up with at various points, but it’s not remotely clear why.

"One bonus in this game is that you can recruit your friends to help you along the way in your travels. I specifically tried to get into a few online games, and it goes without saying it's a ton of fun. "

In fact, early on, there’s literally no reason why Vlad is in the game, or why he’s interacting with my character. My character was one of the wizards that is seen quite often in this particular Paradox series. I had the same powers that have been featured in those other games. There was one aspect I was happy to see available that didn’t work for me when I was trying Wizard Wars. I was able to plug in an old Xbox 360 controller and use that instead of a keyboard and mouse. There’s a lot to be said the keyboard and mouse approach when talking about computer gaming most of the time, but I’ve found that in a game like this, a controller is the way to go.

There is just so much to control in this game that having to worry about clicking in the right spot or clicking and holding the button is just too much. If the movement of my character was a little more intuitive, then that may not be the case. Because there’s no intuition at all, I found that it was much easier to guide my little wizard around a rock than have him constantly bump into it.

The controller also makes spell casting a bit easier, once I was able to figure out the buttons that bring up different spells. Considering that the game is unforgiving when it comes to the speed of enemies, that’s a definite plus. The speed at which enemies come is something to take note of. Some of the more basic trolls and beasts look like they’re very easy to beat. It turns out that I needed to be able to figure out a spell and a defense quicker than I thought I would. That helps Magicka 2 stand out among the crowd when it comes to these games.

"The story mode just isn’t good enough to be all that enticing. That’s why the game never really gets off the ground as a sequel."

One bonus in this game is that you can recruit your friends to help you along the way in your travels. I specifically tried to get into a few online games, and it goes without saying it’s a ton of fun. There are slots to invite friends from my friend list and that seems like a very cool feature, when getting through the puzzles and ever growing baddies that I encountered along the way. I can invite my friends along for the admittedly less than flushed out story mode, or I can bring them along on something called the Challenge mode. This is basically Magicka 2’s version of an endless wave mode. You can go to any of the settings that you’ll see in the story mode and see just how long you can last.

Because this game struck me as one that very much wants to be a title people pick up and play every now and then, but don’t sit down and play for hours, this particular mode was a pretty good idea. Being able to shoot my death beam at as many enemies as could come at me, while also freezing them and every once in a while swallowing up an enemy in a plume of fire was a ton of fun. The issue is that this isn’t really supposed to be the kind of game where you spend all your time just blasting wave after wave of enemies.

The story mode just isn’t good enough to be all that enticing. That’s why the game never really gets off the ground as a sequel. Magicka 2 actually falls short of its immediate predecessor in Wizard Wars and that’s not something to brag about.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

Cities: Skylines continues to grow and grow and become the kind of cult classic full featured city sim game that SimCity used to be back in the day. It’s already fairly nuanced and complex, but further patches continue to officially add more new features into it, even as mods unofficially take the game in unexpected directions.

The newest patch for the game – patch 1.10, which is also the first large patch that it has gotten – will be adding tunnels to the game. This is in addition to 72 European style buildings that will also be added (these buildings can only be used on a European biome, however).

While players will undoubtedly be thrilled at the news, the developers also confirmed a bit of bad news- compatibility with some mods has been broken, till such time as they are updated by their developers.

“We have worked hard to cause as few conflicts as possible with popular mods, yet this is a substantial update and with the code and functionality changes some issues have been impossible to avoid,” Finnish game developer Colossal Order said in a post on publisher Paradox’s forum. “Going forward we aim to find a solution where we can work with our core modders pre-launch to give them ample time to adjust their creations before the public have access.”

That’s fair, and good on them for recognizing the importance of mods to their game’s success too.

Magicka 2 is almost, almost, almost here, and ahead of its launch, Paradox is showing us more of the gleeful mayhem and witty charm that made the original game such a hit among gamers. They couldn’t have done a better job of that than this new trailer, which shows off co-operative play of the title, and is, as Paradox reminds us, completely unscripted.

The result can honestly be a bit overwhelming and hard to follow, but as a fan of the first game, I found that it had elicited a fair few chuckles from me at a lot of points, and it made me want to get my hands on Magicka 2 already. That said, your own mileage may vary.

Magicka 2 is due out on PC (including Windows and Linux platforms) and PlayStation 4 later this month; for more coverage on the chaotic co-op shooter game, stay tuned to GamingBolt, and we will keep you updated.

Not all wizard duels are as serious, or as intense, as the one between Harry and Voldemort. Some of them can be downright goofy and silly. And that is the aspect of wizard duels that is highlighted in this launch trailer for Magicka: Wizard Wars, the free to play spin off of Paradox and Arrowhead’s irreverent and zany co-op action game that launches for PC today.

Magicka: Wizard Wars is not Magicka 2 (that full fledged sequel to the original game comes later this year, by all accounts). Instead, it is a multiplayer arena shooter that will offer three separate modes- 1v1 duels, 4v4 team battles, and Soul Harvest, which seems to include NPC players, tower defense, and cooperative play. But even though it’s not a ‘mainline’ Magicka,’ all the chaos that defines that game promises to make it into this one intact.

You can play it on PC right now. Stay tuned for more coverage.