Dead Island 2 SoLA Expansion Is Due on April 17; Steam Launch Slated a Few Days Later

It's been nearly eight years since I wrote about Fallout Cascadia, a total conversion mod for Bethesda's Fallout 4 game. I nearly forgot about it, which is understandable since the last showcase video the modding team pushed on YouTube was dated July 2021.

Today, Hangar 13 shared a lot of new details on the main modes fans will find in Top Spin 2K25. Everything starts in the Top Spin Academy, where they'll be able to master core gameplay mechanics guided by the voice of John McEnroe. The tennis icon will lead players through Basic Lessons on fundamentals such as positioning, timing and shot selection, followed by Advanced Lessons focused on power serves, lob shots and more, and ending with Playstyle Lessons that show off the strengths and weaknesses of various playstyles players can chose to apply when building their custom MyPLAYER.

Earlier today, Ubisoft revealed it is not waiting for the recently announced Forward event (slated to air on June 10 live from Los Angeles) to show off Star Wars Outlaws again. The game in development at Massive Entertainment is getting a new world premiere story trailer next week, on Tuesday, April 9 at 9 AM Pacific Time/6 PM Central European Time.

Cambridge-based developer PlayFusion (previously known for the Trading Card Game Lightseekers) is launching the PC beta for Ascendant, a squad-based tactical first-person shooter game, and we've got 2K keys to give away thanks to a special URL provided by the developer.

Exactly one year after its successful 2023 launch, Dead Island 2 is finally looking to make its arrival on Steam later this month, on April 22. This news comes just weeks after Dead Island 2 revealed key details of its second story DLC, titled SoLA, a southern LA music festival romp set for April 17.

Vladimir Putin has signed off on a plan to create Russia's own consoles and Steam-like platform. This is one of nine instructions that are supposed to promote the socio-economic development of the region of Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave located between Lithuania and Poland. The region is a Special Economic Zone where manufacturers can enjoy tax breaks; moreover, a silicon production facility was recently established there.

A regular rogue's gallery of independent game developers - including the creators of Dead Cells, Slay The Spire, Darkest Dungeon, Spiritfarer, Terraria and V Rising - have clubbed together to run their own videogame showcase: the Triple-I Initiative. Initially screening on 10th April, it'll be a 45-minute, unhosted, back-to-back series of trailers, reveals and surprise game or demo releases, designed (as per the press release) "to highlight fan-favorite games and hype up established indie classics as well as new IPs". It could become a yearly thing, but that'll obviously depend on how well the first showcase goes down.

NVIDIA revealed today that the sci-fi first-person shooter/tower defense/base building hybrid game Outpost: Infinity Siege will support DLSS 3 (Frame Generation + Super Resolution) and Reflex at launch.

Today, CD Projekt RED announced that a free Cyberpunk 2077 trial will be available for a limited time later this week on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X consoles.

Yesterday, Square Enix announced the final release date for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, the latest expansion coming to its popular MMORPG. Dawntrail will go live on July 2 on all platforms. Funnily enough, Game Director Naoki Yoshida said it could have launched sooner, but they wanted to give players (and themselves) a bit more space to play Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, which launches on June 21.

Dead Island 2 is getting a DLC after the game was promised two different DLC’s to be releasing this year. Sola Festival is the latest DLC which will be releasing in just a couple weeks. After a post was made on Reddit, it revealed what seems to be a tweet from the Dead Island Twitter page, but after checking the page, the tweet can’t be found. So it seems this information was accidentally leaked out before release.

Norwegian developer Red Thread Games (Dreamfall Chapters, Draugen) and publisher Quantic Dream have unveiled the release date of Dustborn during the Future Games Show - Spring Edition.