Some great remakes and a sweet-looking Aussie indie lead the charge into August.
By Tim Colwill on August 5, 2014 at 10:38 am
Looking for something to play in August? We're nearly at the end of The Great Release Drought, as we move closer to the magical Quarter Four and its bevy of shiny, shiny new releases.
There's a few bits and bobs to get you through August and into September when you can finally see the sun again, so sit tight, strap in, and perform whatever other chair-based aphorism you choose as we look at August's release schedule.
7 August – Crawl
We're kicking off August with Australian-made title: Crawl comes to us from Melbourne studio Powerhoof, and it's a multiplayer dungeon crawler where one of you runs the dungeon while your friends possess monsters and set traps for you, all in real time. It's got controller, keyboard and mouse support, and is hitting Early Access on August 7. Watch the trailer!
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16 August – Risen 3: Titan Lords
Gothic developers Piranha Bytes are reportedly "going back to their roots" with Risen 3, abandoning the (poorly-received) pirate theme of Risen 2. As you can see in the gameplay trailer below, it might be just the RPG fix you're looking for before Inquisition hits later in the year. There's a cinematic trailer too, because those are always good fun.
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19 August – Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition
Coming to consoles of all gens, the Ultimate Evil Edition of Diablo 3 brings all of the changes from Reaper of Souls to the console edition of the game. There's also a bunch more stuff including player mail, the Nemesis System, Apprentice Systems, and it of course includes the entire base game as well. I had a bash at Diablo 3 on Xbox 360 last year and was pleasantly surprised at just how well it worked.
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21 August – Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare (PS3, PS4)
Although it's already launched on PC and Xboxes, the Sony console edition of PvZ:GW is arriving at the end of this month. You pretty much already know what it is, but here's a video in case you don't!
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22 August – Shadowgate
The original Shadowgate came out on Mac when I was literally two years old (and NES a little later) so the idea that the original development team are still around and have even successfully Kickstarted a remake is kind of mystifying. Regardless, they've made good on their pledges and are launching the game on PC late this month. Take a look at this thing:
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30 August – Metro 2033 Redux and Metro: Last Light Redux
Steam Store links: Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light
4A Games are launching Redux versions of both of their Metro titles at the end of the month. The original 2033 is the biggest winner here, rebuilt from scratch in the new engine that powers the utterly gorgeous Last Light, and 4A have also taken the time to add in a bunch of oft-requested tweaks and fixes, including to the AI.
Last Light is mostly a polish re-release (" new melee animations and the fan-requested 'Check Watch' and 'Check Inventory' features", according to the developers), but perhaps still worth looking into (especially since it contains all the DLC).
Anything else on the horizon you think we should know about? Let us know in the comments!
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