“The fruits of victory are tumbling into our mouths too quickly” – Japanese Emperor Hirohito, 1942

6 months after Pearl Harbour, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere has reached its peak of expansion. Australia and New Zealand are under direct threat, weakening more and more the American ability to intervene in the Pacific.

Only decisive actions to take the initiative could allow the Allies to re-establish a naval and air superiority over the Imperial Army.

And that tiny island named Guadalcanal seems like the best place to start…

The Artistocrats – developers of the Order of Battle series – aren’t resting on their laurels not even after the success of Order of Battle: Morning Sun, the second expansion of the innovative turn based wargame Order of Battle: Pacific!

Today we are announcing a new chapter in the series, adding a new challenging set of scenarios and a new faction: the US Marines Corps!

From the product page:

“As the fighting progresses across small, isolated jungle islands, the Japanese adapt their strategy from ruthless assaults to deep, well-prepared defensive systems – determined to hold on and fight to the last man.”

This expansion has opened its gates to Beta testers and we are inviting all the players to enlist and to concur in defining this great milestone!

You can apply for the Beta from here!

Get more information about the game from its official product page!

Order of Battle: US Marines will be available also on Steam!

Wargaming today announced the new battle type “Team Battles” for World of Warships will set sail in Update 0.5.3. This new battle type, which unlocks at account level 12, lets captains create an elite squadron of players, work with them to sharpen their skills, and then set out to decimate their opponents and rule the waves.

Taking the prestige of World of Warship’s naval combat to a new level, Team Battles are the domain of certain tier vessels, consisting of 7-vs-7 skirmishes. Players can have up to 10 people in their team (with three in reserve). They can also be recruited for up to three teams simultaneously, so there is always a new Team Battles waiting on the horizon. Team Battles will only be available during “prime time,” a necessary restriction to ensure a competitive number of players are all in the queue.

“The fans have been asking for more forms of team interaction since we started developing World of Warships,” said Danny Volkov, World of Warships Development Director, Wargaming. “With Team Battles, we’ve listened to their feedback and created an arena where they can meet teammates, forge their perfect squad and take on intense battles with top players in their region.”

On a team’s journey to become the dominating force of the seas, they will advance through a number of leagues, battling towards a common objective, to improve their ranking. Through Team Battles, captains get their fill of high-level skirmishes and truly take their skills to the next level.

To learn more about Team Battles, please watch the video.

Source: GamesRadar

You might question the need for news on the annual Call of Duty game – it’s confirmation that 2016 is definitely a year – but the circumstances that surround it do make the new shooter notable. Activision Blizzard has bellowed from atop Mt. Money to confirm that franchise creator Infinity Ward will deliver the “innovative” game, which should come three years after it completed Call of Duty: Ghosts – if we’re sticking to the usual holiday release window.

Ghosts was the last game released before Activision spread development of Call of Duty games across three different studios, and claimed that each would have about three years to put together something befitting the series (especially after the tepid reception to Ghosts). The first ‘three year’ game, then, was Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare from Sledgehammer Studios in 2014, followed the next year by Treyarch’s Black Ops 3. Activision says Black Ops 3 is the best-selling video game on current consoles, period, so that went well.

When it launches later in 2016, Infinity Ward’s new Call of Duty: No Subtitle Announced Yet will complete Activision’s first three-step run through the new development cycle – before it all repeats again. With over $15 billion earned from the series (including DLC) and 250 million copies sold so far, this cycle isn’t likely to break, even while other huge franchises are taking some time off.

This content requires the base game Total War: Attila on Steam in order to play

Source: Gamer’s Hell

Coming to Steam on February 25th, the Slavic Nations Pack is a free expansion for Total War: Attila that brings three new playable factions. The Anteans, Sclavenians and Venedians may be used in Single or Multiplayer Campaign modes and Custom and Multiplayer battles.

A hardy and mobile people, The Slavs range far and wide across the blasted Steppe to recolonise and bring new life to abandoned earth. When conflict occurs, they release withering hails of poison arrows on their foes. Whether through diplomacy or conflict, they offer the perfect counter to the Hunnic threat, and introduce a number of unique ways to play Total War: Attila in both Campaign and Battle.

Watch the Slavic Nations Pack Announcement Trailer here.

For more game information, please visit the Total War website.

Part of a free platform update available later this month

Bohemia Interactive today deployed a new Arma 3 developer diary video, featuring the upcoming new Arma 3 Scenario Editor: Eden 3D Editor. In the video, Senior Designer Karel Mořický, Programmer Filip Sadovský, and Creative Director Jay Crowe provide a more in-depth look at the Eden Editor’s key features and development process.

While content creation has always been at the heart of the Arma series, the brand new Eden Editor represents a massive leap forward. Users will now be able to design their scenario from within the 3D game environment, which makes building your own scenarios – using Arma 3′s vast library of weapons, characters, vehicles, buildings, and other objects – much more effective and fun. Plus, people can publish their creations to the Arma 3 Steam Workshop, or subscribe to 17,000+ scenarios made by other players.

The Eden 3D Editor will be made available to all Arma 3 players as part of a free platform update scheduled for release later in February 2016. If you would like to learn more about the Eden 3D Editor, also be sure to take a look at our latest blog post, which lists 10 of the Eden Editor’s standout features and improvements.

For more information about Arma 3, please visit the games official website.

It’s a been a while since the last official update for War in the East was released and the time since then has been spent with a series of public betas, but the time is right to prepare a truly significant one for today!

Our beloved eastern front wargame has received some decisive new features, fixes and improvements, almost all of them focused on raising the level of realism in this masterpiece even higher while also improving usability!

There are in fact hundreds of improvements, changes and new features since the last official 1.08.04 version, addressing areas ranging from national morale and unit withdrawal to victory conditions and many, many more. And for those interested in continuing public beta testing, a new one is also on the way!

We strongly suggest that you read through the full change list at this link.

You can download the Version 1.08.07 update from here.

Get more information about the game from its official product page.

Gary Grigsby’s War in the East is also on Steam!

So, it’s all come down to this. You’ve assembled a crew, pulled off the perfect heist, and made a whirlwind escape from the police. Now, there are enemies lurking in the frozen shadows, dark figureshiding behind crumbling mausoleums, and confrontations brewing in back alleys and federal prisons. Battlefield Hardline: Betrayal is coming this March 2016, and brings new maps, weapons, vehicles,and more.

Here’s what’s in store for owners of Battlefield Hardline: Betrayal…

• Four intricate maps: Alcatraz, Cemetery, Chinatown, and Thin Ice
• 7 new weapons
• 2 new vehicles
• Customise primary weapons and uniforms with the Gun Bench Super Feature, and test them at the Gun Range
• New Assignments and Legendary weapon camos

In addition, all users will receive a base game update that includes 11 new weapons and new server presets. After the update, every Gold Battlepack you open may also contain a weapon license voucher – a Distinguished class item that unlocks an entire weapon license. Check the forums when the update is released for our official patch notes to learn all about the stability and usability improvements that will be included in this upcoming release.

Battlefield Hardline: Betrayal is bursting with new experiences, whether you’re customising your weapons and uniforms with the Gun Bench or getting into gunfights in Alcatraz. Get ready – it’s coming for Battlefield Hardline Premium members in March 2016. Visit the Battlefield Hardline blog here.

Written By: Nathan Kirsch @ Legit Reviews

It’s hard to believe that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 is still a viable cutting edge graphics card today as it first debuted along with the GeForce GTX 980 in September 2014! Over the past 1.5 years the GeForce GTX 970 has become a very popular card for 1080P gaming as it features a competitive price point and you can more times than not get 60 FPS on average with the image quality cranked up in game titles. The add-in board (AIB) partners have continued to release new GeForce GTX 970 video cards over the years and just before 2015 ended our friends over at EVGA announced that the EVGA HYBRID line was being expanded to include GeForce GTX 970. This is great news for those that are concerned about GPU temperatures as you can now buy purchase a GTX 970 that features a maintenance free closed loop ‘all in one’ water cooling solution that significantly lowers the GPU operating temperature.

Read The Review Here

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• ASUS Announces the RP-AC68U Gaming Router
• GIGABYTE Announces F2A88X-D3HP FM2+ Motherboard
• Cooler Master Announces Hyper 212X and TX3i CPU Coolers
• EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti VR Edition Now Available
• BIOSTAR Announces H110MD PRO Motherboard
• Plextor Introduces M6S Plus SSDs with Toshiba’s 15nm MLC NAND
• MSI Vortex Gaming Tower (new photos)

A Free, Cross-Platform, 3D Game Engine Integrated with Amazon Web Services and Twitch

Amazon Web Services Inc., an Amazon.com company, today announced Amazon Lumberyard, a free, cross-platform, 3D game engine for developers to create the highest-quality games, connect their games to the vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud, and engage fans on Twitch. Amazon Lumberyard helps developers build beautiful worlds, make realistic characters, and create stunning real-time effects. With Amazon Lumberyard’s visual scripting tool, even non-technical game developers can add cloud-connected features to a game in minutes (such as a community news feed, daily gifts, or server-side combat resolution) through a drag-and-drop graphical user interface.

AWS is also announcing Amazon GameLift, a new service for deploying, operating, and scaling session-based multiplayer games. With Amazon GameLift, Amazon Lumberyard developers can quickly scale high-performance game servers up and down to meet player demand, without any additional engineering effort or upfront costs.

Amazon Lumberyard is free, and available today in beta for developers building PC and console games, with mobile and virtual reality (VR) platforms coming soon. Amazon GameLift has a small per-player fee, plus for both Amazon GameLift and Amazon Lumberyard, developers pay standard AWS fees for AWS services used. To learn more about Amazon Lumberyard, click here. To learn more about Amazon GameLift, click here.