- By Ash
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With Patch 7.38 the Dota 2 team redesigned the map yet again, reworked how neutral items are distributed and, as is tradition, rebalanced just about every single aspect of the game. Unsurprisingly, this sweeping set of changes has resulted in a variety of different bugs, as well as a couple of monumentally overpowered heroes.
So in order to sort out this newfound mess Valve has now unleashed the much humbler though just as important Patch 7.38b. The highlights include nerfs to Glimmer Cape and Orchid Malevolence/Bloodthorn, a widespread rebalance of neutral items, as well as nerfs to some of the overperforming heroes like Abbadon, Dragon Knight, Lifestealer and Nature's Prophet.
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Before Dota 2 and League of Legends became the juggernauts they are today, Heroes of Newerth was the MOBA to play thanks to its highly polished gameplay, creative hero designs, and some really punchy spell effects. Unfortunately due to a variety of missteps, the biggest of which was going buy-to-play despite its competition being free-to-play, Heroes of Newerth slowly but surely found itself getting overshadowed.
It still continued on for many years, but it sadly never managed to find the same success it had in the early days. And so, after twelve years of frantic battles and magical dumpsters, Heroes of Newerth finally closed down its doors in 2022. However, in a little bit of a twist, it seems that this might not be the end of its story!
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All good things must come to an end, but sometimes you do get lucky and get a little bit of an extension! So if the holidays have interfered with your ability to finish Dota 2's rather massive Crownfall 'battle pass', you'll be pleased to hear that Valve has extended the event for a couple of extra weeks.
The whole thing will close, for real this time around, on February 6th. What this means is that you have a few additional weeks to collect all of the various rewards found throughout the four maps, as well as potentially find some extra goodies in the Candyworks Caravan as extra weeks means extra re-rolls... as long as you haven't wasted all of your candy like I have!
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If you're like me and you've found yourself wandering away from Darktide for a little while now, you might want to consider coming back as the recently released Grim Protocols update is awesome! The highlights include a whole new game mode with 40 levels of difficulty, a snazzy new map, as well as three new weapon families to help you slice up hordes upon hordes of enemies.
First things first, Havoc is an end-game mode that will have you face off against the worst scenarios that Darktide's AI director can conjure. Expect to see unfavorable modifiers, increased enemy numbers, heightened enemy aggression, more challenging horde compositions, multiple bosses at the same time, and the list goes on and on.
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To say that people have spent a long time waiting for Squadron 42, Star Citizen's singleplayer, spaceflight sim spin-off, would be quite an understatement. I say this because Squadron 42 was first announced 12 years ago, all the way back in October of 2012, which is just wild to even think about!
And now, after over a decade of on-and-off development, it looks like Squadron 42 will finally be launching for real. The exact release date hasn't been set just yet, but the recently posted gameplay reveal promises a 2026 launch. Given how things go with any Star Citizen announcement I'm fully expecting at least a couple of delays, but even so it's good to see the team commit to actually releasing a full game instead of just creating, dismantling and then recreating it forever in an ultimately futile pursuit of perfect.
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In the original Subnautica the most frequent request, going all the way back to the first Early Access version, was for an optional co-op mode. Because if you're going to be exploring an alien ocean filled with all sorts of horrible monsters that are just waiting for the perfect opportunity to scare the life out of you, why not add another few into the mix!
And so, now that Subnautica 2 has been officially announced, Unknown Worlds have revealed that they will finally be adding a fully fledged co-op mode. Best of all it'll support up to four players, so if you ever get attacked by some of the new leviathans you'll have a pretty good chance to escape... provided you're able to swim faster than your friends anyway!
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During a recent press conference, Sony has announced that the immensely popular shooter Helldivers 2 will be getting a movie adaptation. The project will, unsurprisingly, be headed by Sony Pictures, though no actual details or plot elements have been revealed just yet.
Similarly, there is currently no release date set for the movie - not even an estimate. I'm guessing the project is still in its infancy, as per the complete lack of details or cast, so the whole thing will likely take a couple of years to fully materialize, and that's provided nothing goes wrong behind the scenes.
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Following a brief round of voting during the most recent winter sale, Valve has now announced all of the 2024 Steam Awards winners. As you would expect given the previous couple of years, the whole thing is a bit of a mess. Not only have popular games won categories they had no rights being nominated for in the first place, but there's also a game that launched over a decade ago that managed to snag an award!
Rather than babble on, allow me to share with you the brief list of categories and their winners. Have a gander:
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[Update]: MTG Arena will be getting the entirety of competitive Pioneer on December 10th, 2024!
In what is quite possibly going to be remembered as one of Magic: The Gathering's biggest and boldest steps, whether that be for good or bad, Wizards of the Coast have announced that all future cross-over sets will be legal in every single format. And yes, this does mean that 'Universes Beyond' sets like Final Fantasy or the various Marvel ones will be fully legal in Standard in both paper and on MTG Arena.
The reason for the change, besides the fact that this is going to print an obscene amount of money, is to help onboard new players into 60-card formats, which is a genuine issue. As it stands right now new players are all funneled into MTG Arena or into the four-player Commander format, thus leaving paper formats like Standard or Pioneer without the new blood they need to function.
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After many years of on-and-off development, MTG Arena's much-anticipated Pioneer Masters set has now arrived. As you might imagine by the name, the Pioneer Masters set bring with it an avalanche of competitive Pioneer staples, as well as some fun bits of jank for every Arena format besides Standard and Alchemy.
The goal behind the set is to make Explorer as close to competitive Pioneer as possible, so that it could eventually ditch its temporary name and become 'true' Pioneer. When exactly this will happen, nobody outside of Wizards of the Coast currently knows, but I can't imagine it'll take long considering that the vast, vast majority of relevant Pioneer cards are now available on Arena.
