2016 was a fine year for gaming at launch, but over the course of the past 12 months various updates and bug fixes have made it even better. Here are some of the year’s finest patch notes. Can you tell which games they are from?
Following an E3 tease earlier this year, Minecraft’s “Boss Update” for the Pocket version and Windows 10 has finally arrived. The most exciting aspect of this update has to be the add-on system, which allows players to edit various values in the game to create their own modified Minecraft experience.
After much hinting, foreshadowing, and teasing, the newest Minecraft snapshot is out, showing us at long last what the much vaunted ‘exploration update’ has in store.
Cobra Club, the game all about taking pictures of dongs, just got the best (and most NSFW) update of 2016 so far.
One of the best things about the first Garden Warfare game was the constant stream of new free content, and Garden Warfare 2 is sticking with that plan. Tomorrow’s “Graveyard Variety Pack” adds a new map, solo missions, gameplay options and one excellent trailer.
If you’re thinking of giving someone an Xbox, PlayStation, Wii U, 3DS, Vita, or iPad this Christmas, there’s something you can do to sweeten the deal even more for the recipient: download every update for the console first.
Well I’ll be. Mario Maker has fully embraced skinny Mario’s creepy aura, judging from the easter eggs hidden in the game’s first update.
One of the most exciting developments Riot announced yesterday for its massive pre-season overhaul of League of Legends is a new and retooled champion select system. The thing went live last night on League’s public beta and I got a chance to try it out. So far so good! Seriously, so good.
In Pokémon, capturing and battling monsters was only a part of the experience. Serious training often meant breeding creatures that could create more formidable beasts. Soon, you’ll be able to do something very similar in Ark: Survival Evolved...but with dinosaurs.
Would you look at that. Steve is flying!
PS4 players now have the power to form groups for all their favorite games. Almost immediately, people used this power to make all sorts of ridiculous, hilarious, WTF, and sometimes horrible communities. Here are some of the best (and worst) that I’ve found.
League of Legends patches are normally relatively minor incremental things at this point—tweaking an item or two, rebalancing a handful of characters, maybe dropping a few new skins in. Not this week. Riot’s 5.16 patch notes make it sound like a patch on steroids.
Yesterday, Splatoon got its big August update. With it came oft-requested features, like private matches and the ability to squad up. It also included a new weapon that is as amazing as it is completely, and utterly, ridiculous.
Usually when Riot tweaks stuff in League of Legends, they do so strictly because of balance considerations. Maybe a character is too weak in one area, or too strong in another. Today the developer took a surprising approach, saying that it’s reworking four middling champs because they aren’t interesting.
Nintendo put out its version 1.1.0 update for the 3DS and Wii U Super Smash Bros. games today. Along with adding new stages, costumes for Mii players, and nifty-sounding features like tournament modes and YouTube replays, the patch came with a ton of balance tweaks. Specifically, a ton of buffs.
Batman: Arkham Knight players on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One get their first taste of post-release downloadable content this week with Batgirl: A Matter of Family. Those still playing the PC version will not, and for good reason.
The Batman: Arkham Knight PC patches begin, starting with a 67 MB patch available now that fixes a bug disabling rain effects and ambient occlusion. Check out Rocksteady’s to-do list of upcoming fixes, including getting rid of that nasty 30 FPS cap.
Dota 2 is getting a complete makeover. Introducing: Dota 2 Reborn.
Well here’s a nice little piece of content. In its latest update for The Sims 4 today, EA added a whole new world to the game. No, not the Aladdin kind. But that would be pretty awesome too.
Well-liked city-building game Cities: Skylines is getting a meaty update today. The good news about the update is that it adds tunnels and more than 50 European-style buildings to the game. The (potentially) bad news is that it end up breaking some mods in the process—at least for now.
