The first phase of the promised Update Aquatic has arrived for Minecraft on Xbox One (not the legacy Xbox One Edition), Windows 10, Android, Apple TV, Gear VR, iOS, and Fire. As well as adding eight new achievements, Phase One will add lots of new underwater features. There's a full list of those features in addition to a handful of new screenshots showing the features in action.
The first wave of Update Aquatic features arriving today include:
Fish (salmon, cod, pufferfish, tropical fish)
Bucket of fish
Coral (coral, coral fans, coral blocks)
Kelp, Dried Kelp, Kelp Block
Dolphins (follow boats, get a boost swimming next to them)
Icebergs
Blue Ice
Nine Ocean Biomes (frozen, deep frozen, cold, deep cold, lukewarm, deep lukewarm, normal, deep normal, warm)
Underwater Ravines & caves
Sea grass
Sea pickle (w/ illumination! Up to 4 in a block – only light up underwater)
Shipwrecks
Treasure chests (in ruins, shipwrecks)
Ruins
Swimming
Treasure Map
Buried Treasure
Heart of the Sea in buried treasure chests (non-active)
Trident
Trident enchantment
Stripped Logs
Buttons, Trap Doors, Pressure Plates with variation
Carved Pumpkins
Floating Items
Boat Polish (smoother control)
8 new achievements
Water has a completely new look and increased visibility while underwater
Prismarine Stairs and Slabs
New swimming animation while sprinting in water
Minecraft: Education Edition Chemistry features can now be enabled under Cheats! For tips on getting started, check out the Chemistry Lab Journal
As you may have guessed, Update Aquatic will be arriving in multiple parts. The remaining features will be included in Phase Two, which will be “coming soon”. As soon as we get more details on Phase Two, we'll be sure to let you know, but for now, enjoy all of the new features that are available now with Phase One.
Minecraft's long-awaited Update Aquatic has finally surfaced, and is now available on Xbox One, Windows 10, Gear VR and Oculus, mixed reality devices, and mobile.
Update Aquatic, as its name suggests, is designed to add more life to Minecraft's oceans. It's a major update too – so big, in fact, that developer Mojang has elected to release it in two parts. The first is out now, while phase two is “coming soon”.
Once the new patch is installed, Minecraft players on supported platforms will be able to enjoy a wide selection of new fish and other water-dwelling creatures, including salmon, cod, pufferfish, tropical fish, and dolphins – the latter of which will follow boats across the ocean.
Elsewhere beneath the waves, you'll find the likes of coral reefs, kelp, underwater ravines and caves, sea grass, shipwrecks, treasure chests, ruins, and more. Additionally, there are nine distinct new ocean biomes: frozen, deep frozen, cold, deep cold, lukewarm, deep lukewarm, normal, deep normal, and warm. Icebergs and blue ice are now found in chillier climes.
A somewhat more exhaustive list of Update Aquatic's new additions, including improved boat control, is located over on Mojang's announcement post.
Minecraft's Update Aquatic will launch on Switch on June 21st, alongside the console's new-fangled Bedrock Edition, but will not be coming to either Switch or Xbox One's older, pre-Better Together versions. The update is also due on Minecraft's Java version “very soon” and will arrive on PS4,Wii U, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Vita, at a currently unspecified future date.
MInecraft is one of those games that’s in a constant state of flux, with the developers wasting no time in adding new content through regular(ish) patches. The big “Bedrock” update is due to launch on the Switch on 21st June, adding in cross-platform play and a whole slew of other features. However, alongside the Bedrock update, Switch will also be receiving the Update Aquatic, the details of which have just been revealed.
Update Aquatic will be rolled out in two phases, the first of which comes out with the Bedrock update. The included content is as follows:
Fish (salmon, cod, pufferfish, tropical fish)
Bucket of fish
Coral (coral, coral fans, coral blocks)
Kelp, Dried Kelp, Kelp Block
Dolphins (follow boats, get a boost swimming next to them)
Icebergs
Blue Ice
Nine Ocean Biomes (frozen, deep frozen, cold, deep cold, lukewarm, deep lukewarm, normal, deep normal, warm)
Underwater Ravines & caves
Sea grass
Sea pickle (w/ illumination! Up to 4 in a block – only light up underwater)
Shipwrecks
Treasure chests (in ruins, shipwrecks)
Ruins
Swimming
Treasure Map
Buried Treasure
Heart of the Sea in buried treasure chests (non-active)
Trident
Trident enchantment
Stripped Logs
Buttons, Trap Doors, Pressure Plates with variation
Carved Pumpkins
Floating Items
Boat Polish (smoother control)
8 new achievements
Water has a completely new look and increased visibility while underwater
Prismarine Stairs and Slabs
New swimming animation while sprinting in water
Minecraft: Education Edition Chemistry features can now be enabled under Cheats! For tips on getting started, check out the Chemistry Lab Journal
It looks like this’ll be quite a significant expansion on the base game, and of course, it’ll be free to all owners.
What do you think? Do you still play Minecraft often? Will you be giving Update Aquatic a go? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Batman: The Animated Series is returning as a series of board games from IDW Games, starting with Batman: The Animated Series – Gotham Under Siege.
Batman: The Animated Series – Gotham Under Siege is a 1-5 player game. Players play as either Batman or one of his allies as they defend Gotham City from classic Batman villains from the animated television series.
The game is designed by Richard Launius, whose game design credits include Elder Sign and Planet of the Apes and who is known for creating thematic tabletop games, and co-designed by Michael Guigliano. Batman: The Animated Series – Gotham Under Siege’s gameplay includes the use of dice allocation and threat management as players defend Gotham against henchmen and boss villains.
This game’s production design includes all new artwork, character miniatures, 3D city buildings, and other board game elements. You can see the Box Top art by Matt Ferguson above. The figures are sculpted by Brian Dugas.
Future releases in IDW’s Batman: The Animated Series board game series will continue to celebrate the series and its universe with more heroes and villains, and new and familiar settings.
Batman: The Animated Series – Gotham Under Siege will be available in August 2018, with a preview at Origins Game Fair 2018.
Batman: The Animated Series seems to be experiencing a resurgence in tabletop gameplay. For the first time ever, the DC Animated Universe will be represented in HeroClix when Wizkids releases the DC Comics HeroClix: Batman: The Animated Series set also in August. The HeroClix release includes a full five-figure booster set, a Fast Forces set, a Dice and Tokens set, and a release day organized play kit. The set will include characters from Batman: The Animated Series and other DC-inspired animated series, including Justice League Unlimited, Batman Beyond, and the Super-Friends. The set will include several characters who have never been made in HeroClix before, such as Zeta, Leslie Thompkins, Maxie Zeus, Kyodai Ken, the Clock King, the Phantasm, Riddler’s Robot Minotaur, and Apache Chief.
Batman: The Animated Series is also set to come to Blu-ray for the first time ever sometime in 2018. The theatrical film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm was released on Blu-ray last year.
We all know that The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is easily one of the most beautiful games out there. Even three years after its initial release, it remains a visual triumph — and it leaves high hopes for what the development team is going to do next with Cyberpunk 2077.
But what if The Witcher III didn’t look so good? What if, for some god forsaken reason, someone decided to run it on the lowest graphics settings possible? Well, then you’d get a look at the ugly side of Geralt of Rivia that you didn’t expect to see.
Gamespot recently posted a new Potato Mode video that shows the hosts playing along to the hit CD Projekt Red releas, but with the worst graphics you could possibly imagine. Look at the initial screenshot of Geralt and you have a pretty good idea of how bad it’s going to get. We’re talking pop-ups all over the place in the environment; glitches galore; and so, so, so much more. It’s like a gloriously hilarious nightmare — or something along the lines of playing The Witcher IIIon the original PlayStation. Or Sega Saturn, maybe.
Hosts Joey Yee and “Witcher expert” Jake Decker are featured in the latest episode of the show, which is devoted to making good games look really, really bad. And boy, did they succeed here.
The clip starts out nicely enough on the high graphics settings; but about two minutes in, you’ll see Joey and Jake make an adjustment and suddenly turn the game into a polygonal mess. And then it gets running and suddenly you’ve got Geralt appearing in purple and dealing with some of the ugliest trees ever planted. The character interaction are also something else as you stare into the dead, dead eyes of the people that you’re conversing with. Also, that hair.
The team plays around with the visual options over the course of the video, but that doesn’t mean things get any better. In fact, they kind of get worse; this is especially true as you run through villages and realize how brown everything is. And then there’s getting to the love scene. No, we aren’t kidding.
Anyway, check out the video above, then rub your eyes and get back into the normal version of the game. It’ll be like a world of difference.
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is available now for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
Minecraft players who have been enjoying the first phase of Update Aquatic have found an innovative way to use the Pufferfish to their advantage.
One of the many new features added through Update Aquatic was the spiny Pufferfish that expands to defend itself when players draw to near to it. It can be a pain for players to navigate around – unless you have one of those fancy new Tridents to sort out the new mob – but these new Pufferfish addition can also be used by players to fend off more hostile enemies.
A Redditor by the name of SonicwaveMC shared the news within the Minecraft subreddit that Pufferfish could injure not only players, but also other mobs like Creepers and Skeletons. The user submitted a video that shows the Pufferfish defense system in action by dropping a gaggle of enemy mobs into a Pufferfish deathtrap as many of the fish expand to fend off the foes while making short work of each enemy.
You’ll notice that some of the Pufferfish do perish in the process, but this doesn’t appear to be a result of the fish hurting each other. A potion thrown by a Witch at the last second hits the water and clears out some of the Pufferfish, so the damage to the rest of the Pufferfish school isn’t done by the fish themselves.
The fact that they can damage mobs while not damaging each other opens the door to new defensive possibilities. One of the first things joked about in the Redditor’s thread was that this could be used to create a discount moat that protects players’ structures with Pufferfish instead of something more menacing like sharks or piranhas, but there’s still some truth to the joke. These new animals could absolutely be used to fill a body of water that surrounds something you don’t want enemies getting near since they’ll actively defend themselves against anything that gets near them. They’ll still damage players as well though, so you’ll have to make sure your entrance and exit strategy is Pufferfish-free.
It also makes sense to use the Pufferfish in a defensive manner like this since you really can’t do much with them otherwise. You can use them to create a water-breathing potion, but they’ll poison players once consumed and can’t be used to tame Ocelots. Players will have the most luck using these in Creative mode where you can place them where you please, but if you can reroute a large school of Pufferfish to the proper destination in Survival, it’ll be quite the defense against mobs.
