Gaming in city Rome. Reviews, Walkthroughs, News

A new strategy game by BoomBit Games has hit Android globally. It’s Dawn of Ages: Medieval Games which has no magic, but has plenty of fighting, building and crafting. A free-to-play game, its publisher is known for other hit titles like Bowling Club: Realistic 3D PvP, Zombie Survival Apocalypse, Boxing Ring and Idle Boutique (Role-Playing).

Following the news that Helldivers 2 on PC will soon require a PlayStation Network account to play, the community reacted by review bombing the Steam page. Whereas the game previously enjoyed a Very Positive aggregate user score, it has now dropped to Mixed for overall reviews and Mostly Negative for recent reviews. In the span of a few hours, over 57K negative reviews have been left for Helldivers 2 on Steam.

Last week a Catholic media ministry (not sure what that is but okay) called Catholic Answers created a generative AI priest chatbot called Father Justin. Fr. Justin used a large language model to answer questions about the Catholic church and Catholic orthodoxy, and if you have any familiarity with how people love to test AI chatbots - or you read the headline of this article - then you know where this is going. Fr. Justin, who was already kind of controversial anyway, offered the sacrament and claimed to be a real priest to Futurism, and gave the thumbs up to baptising a baby in Gatorade in an emergency.

Shōgun, the limited TV series based on the historical-fiction novel by James Clavell, quickly asserted itself as one of this year’s best new series, thanks to a captivating cast of characters and a stirring performance by lead Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Toranaga.

Today, Berlin-based developer Tarock Interactive announced Lost Legions as its debut title. This is another entry in the increasingly crowded open world survival crafting genre, but at least it has a decidedly different setting: the Roman Empire.

The announcement trailer for Lost Legions opens with a Roman Emperor bellowing “GIVE ME BACK MY LEGIONS” like a kid who’s just had his pudding taken away. I'd just had a big swig of coffee before watching, and was instantly swept off by visions of an apoplectic Roman bigwig rampaging through the forests of darkest Germania, gluing abducted legionnaires together into a sort of Octavian katamari... and then they revealed that it’s another open world survival game, with no less than two trailer beats dedicated to the act of hacking down a tree.

April rolls on and we have another batch of our Crowdfunding Campaigns of the Week. We have a bit of a light week this time, but there are still some quality campaigns worth checking out. hopefully, you can find something that fits your tastes.

With the first season of the TV show wrapped up, it's a good time to brush up on the story of . Considered by a sizable contingent of fans to be the best of the modern games, has garnered considerable praise for its approach to the factions, history, and gameplay of the series and for, in some opinions, striking a good balance between the classic, isometric games and their first-person shooter sequels.

Horror master Mike Flanagan has high praise for The First Omen, the sixth installment in the cult classic franchise.

Tekken 8's producer, Katsuhiro Harada, expressed his impressions about a Roblox recreation of Bandai Namco's fighting game and its inclusion of a stage based on Waffle House. The Tekken series is well-known for having a number of fighters that span across the entire globe, with a number of cultures and martial arts styles being represented. Tekken 8's stages are diverse backdrops from different parts of the world, including Rome, France, Peru, and the United States of America. One incredibly popular request is a stage based on a Waffle House.

Fallout: New Vegas has endured in the cultural zeitgeist in a way that few other games have. Even within the Fallout fandom, it’s earned a prized position as a true classic of the RPG genre. That love is still reflected today, in goofy memes and fan art and enduring debates over which endgame is the right one. Even though the game has aged terribly in some respects — characters look rough, and not just from living in the apocalypse — it still persists as one of the high points of the Fallout franchise. The new Fallout TV series is set to premiere on Amazon, so there’s seldom been a better time to revisit New Vegas or play it for the first time.

Bill Nighy has played a lot of different types of characters over the course of his career, from rock star and a vampire, to a humanoid squid and a radio producer. With The First Omen, he gets to add 'priest' to that list, and what a priest his character is...

Tekken 8's director, Katsuhiro Harada, has addressed the many fan requests regarding a stage based on Waffle House. The Tekken franchise has a roster that spans many countries and cultures from across the globe. Not only does Tekken 8 have a diverse multicultural cast, its stages are set in different parts of the world, such as Rome, France, Peru, and the United States of America. One particular backdrop that is a popular request for fans is a Tekken 8 stage based on Waffle House.

Greetings, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

The Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire ending is pretty action-packed, meaning you might leave the theater with more questions than answers about what goes down between the battling kaiju. 

Love crossword puzzles but don’t have all day to sit and solve a full-sized puzzle in your daily newspaper? That’s what The Mini is for!

Blizzard is finally making it easier to unlock new heroes in Overwatch 2. This is big news, as players regularly complain about how difficult it is to obtain new characters in the live-service shooter. Currently, people get new heroes by paying for and grinding through a battle pass, buying them outright or waiting until they become available as a reward for winning a certain number of games. That changes with the forthcoming season 10, as the company will make new and old heroes available for free to all players.

The bloodsport spectacle of The Finals collides with the fast pace of Mario Kart and the slick parkour skills of Mirror's Edge in Deathsprint 66, which just got its exclusive reveal in Edge Magazine.

Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition has revealed its next DLC. Victors and Vanquished will apparently be the remastered RTS’ first “campaign-focused” expansion, offering up more playable scenarios than any of its previous packs - many based on popular community creations. Oh, and it’s out next month.

We are living in a world where climate disinformation has become a part of daily life requiring us to check every fact, image or video we see online about the matter. This applies not just to climate, but almost every other facet of online life. Taking matters into its own hands, a startup named Endowment for Climate Intelligence (ECI) has launched an open source AI tool called ClimateGPT, which will help fight climate disinformation while providing users with strong facts and reports to verify any claims, theories or news. The AI model also focuses on dealing with challenges posed by climate change. Do the results outperform OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google Bard? Know more about ClimateGPT here.

MachineGames revealed the first look at its upcoming title, at Xbox's Developer Direct 2024 showcase. The Xbox Series S/X and PC exclusive title was announced back in January 2021, but the showcase finally gave players their first look at gameplay and provided some insight into the story, and when it takes place on the wider timeline.

A new trailer for the video game was finally revealed at the Xbox Developer Direct 2024 event, showing the famous archaeologist in action. The new game, titled, is developed by MachineGames and LucasFilm Games, and published by Bethesda Softworks. It tells an original story that has never been explored in the movie franchise starring actor Harrison Ford. Nevertheless, the title still follows Indy on a new adventure around the globe. Little was known about the game so far, but this new trailer sheds some light on what players can expect.

The teaser video was then followed up with a secondary tweet, which revealed that the currently unnamed Indiana Jones game is being developed by MachineGames - the team that has brought us the Wolfenstein series. 

Rewinding time to the earliest days of Rome, from a time before the republic was founded, Citadelum is a city builder with a little bit of a difference. Sure, you’re founding a settlement, looking to grow and expand, but you’ll be doing so while the pantheon of gods can walk among your populace.

Information is currently scarce on the upcoming video game, but a rumored title could help provide a clue as to what the game is about. The project is in development at MachineGames, the studio behind the modern games, so it's certainly in the hands of people who know how to handle the classic prerogative of killing Nazis. A 1930s setting makes it seem likely that this element will be included, but most other aspects have been subject to only loose speculation.

Before we read and wrote, we moved. Stories of people moving – migrating – have been told since time immemorial. The Mexica journey to central Mexico; Moses leading the Jewish people across the desert; the founding of Rome – as told by Virgil – by those that fled the fall of Troy. Unsurprisingly, then, video games also tell stories of migration. On August 8, 2013, game designer Lucas Pope, the man behind the studio 3909, released Papers, Please, a game about managing migration.

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, announced a slate of new video shows, including a partnership with former CNN anchor Don Lemon. Lemon will host a 30-minute show on X called “The Don Lemon Show,” airing three times a week “exclusively first” on the platform.

The horror movie world is littered with prequels. Occasionally, some are great (Orphan First Kill, Annabelle Creation), most are pretty terrible (we don’t have to list those here), and at least a few are surprisingly interesting (Leatherface, Alien: Covenant, Dominion: A Prequel to The Exorcist). Now The Omen is adding a new prequel of its own to the list, called The First Omen, and the initial teaser seems to start things off on the right track.

Though the end of Game of Thrones in 2019 dovetailed directly into news that HBO was in development on a slate of spinoff series spearheaded by source material author George R.R. Martin, 2024 only feels like the beginning of a GoT onslaught. House of the Dragon, the only show that’s gone before cameras (besides an entirely different pilot that was shot and scrapped), will return for season 2 this summer. A Knight of Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, adapting Martin’s Dunk and Egg story, has a greenlight with lofty goals of arriving before year’s end. A Jon Snow series might still be in the works? Easy to believe, but there are no officially announced plans.

2023 in Review: Another year, another endless news cycle driven by the world's top corporate executives, with moments ranging from cringe-worthy to downright bizarre. While some CEOs seemed to relish the spotlight, Elon Musk chief among them, others were inadvertently thrust into social media's harsh glare. Elon Musk, Sam Altman to Marc Benioff, here are some of the most high-profile management misadventures:

Warpath 9.0 is here! Yes, the classic real-time strategy game Warpath: Ace Shooter just dropped its latest update, Theater of Conquest: Rome. Available for free on Android, it’s a 26-day campaign with new Air Force units, officers and game modes. Keep reading to know more!

Elon Musk claimed Saturday that advertisers were returning to X (formerly Twitter) after an exodus, at a Rome meeting where he also warned Italy's low birth rate could put off investors. The billionaire was a star guest at the Atreju political festival organised by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy party.

Humble Bundle has announced the games available in its monthly Humble Choice subscription for December.

Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown leads the way in Total Film’s exclusive look at five new Netflix movies. The actor stars in the upcoming Damsel, which appears in the 2024 preview issue of Total Film, out on shelves this week. 

The Humble Choice lineup for December includes a pretty diverse selection of games for just $12.

We review Dice Manor, a dice rolling board game published by Arcane Wonders. In Dice Manor, players are competing to earn the most prestige points by building their manor over the course of the game.

You can even save big on a World of Warcraft-themed edition of the popular board game.

Arkane has dropped a new update for its undead shooter Redfall that adds a powerful new weapon, makes a number of changes to AI, missions, and gameplay, and introduces a handful of performance and stability tweaks. Unfortunately, it also reveals that the promised "Hero Pass," a $30 upgrade to the base game that promises two new heroes to play as, is still in development and won't be around until sometime in 2024.

TimeSplitters developer Free Radical Design is at threat of being closed by owner Embracer Group, just two years after it was re-established, sources have told VGC.

Paradox Interactive and developer The Chinese Room have revealed the Brujah, the first of four playable vampiric clans that will feature within Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. See them in action here:

Greetings, Adventurers!

The first wave of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s Booster Course Pass launched back in March last year, and Nintendo is now finally ready to wrap things up for the kart racer. The sixth and final wave of DLC for the game was confirmed to be launching this Holiday, and now, Nintendo has released a specific release date for it.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is getting one last DLC, which will introduce new maps and characters. 

By Jon Porter, a reporter with five years of experience covering consumer tech releases, EU tech policy, online platforms, and mechanical keyboards.

Google Maps is one of the most used apps for finding new places and navigating through different locations globally. Now, Google has introduced significant updates and features to the Google Maps app, which may enable users to have an improved user experience and enjoy new features that will simplify navigating routes. These new updates will allow users to experience AI features, explore their surroundings, and navigate the routes easily. Want to know what these features and updates are? Check what these Google Maps updates are all about.

Google Maps is about to get a lot more immersive with the rollout of an AI-enhanced feature that gives you bird's-eye view of your route complete with 3D imagery along the way.

The first Cities: Skylines 2 patch is now out on Steam, and while developer Colossal Order says it's not going to fix all the issues in the new city building sim, it's a start.

Sign these young players in Football Manager 2024 immediately.

We review The Princes of Florence, a tile laying and auction game published by WizKids Games. In The Princes of Florence, players are competing to earn the most victory points over the game's seven rounds.

WAR! It’s something that has made many video games popular over the years, and these games for 2024 might help enforce that in your mind.

Age of Empires II Definitive Edition just gets bigger and better with each coming announcement from Forgotten Empires. The game already has various DLC to choose from, ranging from the Dynasties of India to the Return of Rome, but continues to impress with more. We’re now getting yet another expansion dubbed The Mountain Royals, which will bring us from the vast waters of Lake Van to the snowy peaks of the Caucasus Mountains.

Animoca Brands is launching the Formula E: High Voltage Web3 electric car racing game on October 19.

Total War Pharaoh Steam reviews mean the new Creative Assembly strategy sim is officially rated as ‘mixed,’ while recent player count numbers fail to match other, older games in the series, including Total War Warhammer 3, and Total War Rome 2, which was released in September 2013. Despite its recent launch, fewer than 5,000 people have played Total War Pharaoh during the past 24 hours, as users criticize the game for its interface and for being “bland.”

In the dynamic world of strategy gaming, it’s not uncommon for older titles to reclaim the limelight when the newer ones fail to impress. Such is the case with Rome II and Pharaoh, two Total War titles that have sparked quite a discussion on the gaming community, as evident in this Reddit thread. Let’s delve into the reasons behind this interesting shift, highlighting insights from fellow Redditors.

For over 20 years, the Total War franchise has been a leader in the world of turn-based strategy, real-time tactics, and resource management video games. Total War has taken fans around the world and throughout time with games like Shogun: Total War, Rome: Total War, and A Total War SAGA: TROY, and to other universes in games like Total War: WARHAMMER and its two sequels. Now, Creative Assembly Sofia is taking fans to ancient Egypt with Total War:PHARAOH and we’re here to break down the biggest reasons why it’s a trip RTS fans won’t want to miss.

It’s pretty wild to consider the ground the Total War franchise has managed to cover since its inception. With the introduction of the fantasy-focused Warhammer trilogy, and the theatrical Three Kingdoms, developer Creative Assembly has brought its massive strategy franchise to whole new audiences. However, with the exception of the remastered Total War: Rome, this has left many long-time fans of the franchise yearning for a return to Creative Assembly’s historical roots. While Total War: Pharaoh is more grounded than its supernatural cousins, and deploys a slower overall pace, its attempts to bridge accuracy and accessibility leave its Bronze Age campaign and combat feeling a bit dusty when compared to its larger-than-life counterparts.

Unpack your sniper rifle and garrote, folks, as we have some exciting news for you. Feral Interactive, the team behind the excellent mobile ports of XCOM 2, Rome: Total War, and Grid Autosport is at it again. This time, it’s the murderous classic, Hitman: Blood Money.

We review Tetrarchia, a small footprint war game published by Draco Ideas. In this cooperative board game, the players are trying to defend rome from the barbairn invasions.

Apple pledged on Friday to update software on iPhone 12s in France to settle a dispute over radiation levels, but concerns in other European countries signalled it may have to take similar action elsewhere.

It’s been twenty years since Valve launched Steam. Devised as a way to push updates for games online, Steam blossomed into the juggernaut PC gaming storefront it is today, including hardware like the Valve Index and the Steam Deck. Now, Valve is celebrating its 20th birthday with a sale, commemorating the storefront’s legacy, and the biggest games on the platform throughout the years.

Todd Howard reveals the first real bit of information concerning the upcoming Indiana Jones game that players have heard for months. 

Bethesda Game Studios and creative director Todd Howard have just launched Starfield, but fans are already looking forward to the Toddster’s next big project. In this case, it won’t be another RPG – Howard is executive producing an Indiana Jones game being crafted by Wolfenstein developer MachineGames. We haven’t heard much about the game since it was first announced back in early 2021, but in a new interview with Esquire, Howard provided a few fresh hints about the title. Per Howard, the new Indy game will bring the franchise to life in a unique way, with a particular focus on exploration.

Rome 2077 Space Odyssey Action is now available to play on Android! Delve into a brand-new top-down adventure, battling against other spacecraft and enemies as you travel across the galaxy.

There has been some surprising news this week for fans of Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: the Leader Pass DLC has been released on all console platforms, including the PS4.

If you’ve been playing Bethesda's massive new space RPG or watching gameplay online and have been wondering who composed its songs – which have been garnering all sorts of praise – this Starfield soundtrack page is the place to be.

Astronomy enthusiasts are in for a treat Wednesday night: a rare "super blue Moon" that won't be seen again for more than a decade.

Total War Pharaoh is a call back for the longstanding Creative Assembly strategy game series. Coming from CA’s Sofia branch, which worked on multiple Rome 2 DLCs and Troy, Pharaoh wants to remind you of the more historical entries over its Warhammer counterparts, taking you to the collapse of the Bronze Age in Ancient Egypt to do just that. With this societal collapse looming in Total War Pharaoh, the overall goal of your time with the game has changed, as we’ve learned all about at Gamescom 2023 ahead of the Total War Pharaoh release date.

episode 1 ends with “For our friend Ray,” an homage to the late actor Ray Stevenson who portrayed Baylan Skoll in the Disney Plus series. But what does “For our friend Ray” mean? And do we know how Ray Stevenson died? Here’s what you need to know.

It's rare for a game to have showy tech which is more than skin-deep and actually enables new types of play. Sure, the dynamic mud of driving sim Spintires was impressive to look at, and it also gave us a game where driving two metres through a puddle could become a serious puzzle. So I'm certainly interested in today's announcement of Expeditions: A MudRunner Game, this time sending us off-roading to conduct science. Well, if the mud doesn't blind me, the science surely will.

The Pope's Exorcist, one the year's most divisive horror releases, is the new number one movie on Netflix in the US.

Bungie officially unveiled PvE extraction shooter Marathon earlier this year, though it’s safe to say that it’s going to be a while before the game is ready to be shown again, much less ready to be released. Even so, work on the shooter continues behind-the-scenes, and Bungie is also making use of talent outside of the studio to help the project come to life.

Linus Tech Tips founder Linus Sebastian has admitted to «sloppiness» in the hardware review channel's handling of controversy that erupted over its recent review of a high-end watercooling system, but says what really bothers him about the situation is «how quickly the pitchforks were raised.»

The optimal time to have abandoned the idea of a cage match between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg would have been the very moment it was first suggested. The second best time is right now.

With a scene-stealing performance from Jason Momoa and car chases to rival even the most bizarre Fast & Furious moments, Fast X was a huge hit when it raced onto our screens earlier this year. Now as the movie prepares to make its at-home debut, we caught up with director Louis Leterrier about how he and Vin Diesel worked together to create the tenthquel.

The third and final DLC for Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope arrives this month, and for developer Ubisoft Milan it involves the return of an old friend.

The big statistic from yesterday's story about Italy's games industry was it now has 2,400 employees, which is up 50% over 2021.

The Kickstarter campaign for Call of Duty: The Board Gamehas launched. If funded, the game is expected in Q4 2024. Developer and manufacturer Arcane Wonders is running its campaign through Aug. 22, and it hopes to secure a minimum of $75,000 to proceed with the project. Arcane Wonders previously launched games like Air, Land & Sea, Sheriff of Nottingham and Mage Wars: Arena. The developer has also had previous success with Kickstarter, raising just shy of $1 million for its Foundations of Rome Expansion, Roads of Fortune.

Falcom has released new information and screenshots for Ys X: Nordics introducing characters Momina Evelies, Romes Carpent, Joel Asrad, Ashley, and Ulval, Rune Stones, fishing, and ship upgrades.

If you own an AMD chip built with the Zen 2 architecture, be on the lookout for an important patch in the coming months. A security researcher discovered a flaw in AMD’s CPUs that can be exploited to steal passwords and encryption keys from a PC. 

A security vulnerability has been uncovered in AMD processors built with the Zen 2 architecture. Spotted by a Google researcher, the so-called 'Zenbleed' vulnerability opens the door to a potential attacker and threatens the possibility of exposing sensitive information. Don't worry, there is a fix, but us gamers will have to wait around a little longer than our server-side pals to get hold of it.