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[Update #2]: Helldivers 2's next Warbond is coming October 31st with a heavy SMG, plasma pistol and unflinching armor.
[Update]: Helldivers 2's October 15th update is bringing programmable ammo and even more buffs!
After a couple of months of doom and gloom, Helldivers 2's recent update has finally brought the game back to a good place thanks to a series of buffs and reworks. As such you can now run just about every weapon and stratagem without feeling like you're letting your team down.
The main reason for this is a comprehensive rework of enemy armor. Instead of making big and powerful enemies like Bile Titans or Chargers immune to everything but the heaviest of weaponry, you can now actually deal with them with even primary weapons - provided you're hitting their weak spots! This is nowhere near as efficient as simply slamming them in the face with a rocket, but the fact that you can do this is enough to make it so you're no longer stuck using the same few weapons over and over again.
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It took what feels like an eternity to get here, but Dead Cells' bittersweet final Update 35: The End is Near has now been unleashed. There's three new enemy variants to smash your head against, three new Curse-based weapons to accidentally end your run with, as well as an equally cursed biome effect to conquer for extra rewards.
Perhaps most importantly of all, there's a ton of new cosmetics to collect! More specifically - shiny new heads! By completing all sorts of challenges, many of which involve beating bosses in as stylish of a manner as possible, you'll be able to pretend that your character is not called The Beheaded and adorn yourself with a variety of garish headwear.
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[Update]: Helldivers 2's next Warbond is coming October 31st with a heavy SMG, plasma pistol and unflinching armor.
In order to rebuild community trust, as well as bring the game back from the brink of doom, Helldivers 2 developers have recently announced a 60-day plan. While the exact details are still few and far between, the first part of this effort will be launching on September 17th alongside a whole bunch of buffs.
First and foremost, enemy armor will be getting reworked, as will the armor penetration stat for players. The idea is to make the heavy enemies more vulnerable to a wider variety of weapons so players aren't just incentivized to use the same stratagems over and over again. The goal isn't to make heavy enemies pathetic so they'll likely get some buffs in return, but either way 'big bois' like Chargers, Bile Titans and Gunships will be a lot more straightforward to deal which is definitely a good thing given how often they can appear in some missions.
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[Update]: Helldivers 2's September 17th update is coming with an armor rework, more effective heavy weapons and plenty of buffs!
If you haven't been paying attention, Helldivers 2 has had a bit of a fall from grace over the past few months. Despite starting off with an extremely enthusiastic playerbase, the endless bugs, crashes, nerfs and underpowered Warbond weapons have eroded all of the good will and created a rather adversarial relationship between the players and developers, so much so that Helldivers 2 now sits at a Mostly Negative rating on Steam!
In an effort to mend this divide, as well as bring Helldivers 2 back to its glory days, Arrowhead Game Studios have now announced that they are reevaluating their design choices, as well as working on rebalancing the entire game. The goal, as you might imagine, is to increase the amount of viable weapons and stratagems, while simultaneously reducing the amount of annoyance certain enemies can produce.
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[Update]: My review for The War Within is now complete, so if you're curious about what exactly the Delves have to offer, as well as how the rest of the expansion fares when compared to Dragonflight, I welcome you to give it a look.
Following in the footsteps of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, the freshly released The War Within expansion is Blizzard's latest effort at trying to cater to a more casual, solo focused crowd. There's still Mythic+ dungeons and raids as usual, but now you can also look forward to lower difficulty dungeons you can tackle alongside an NPC party, as well as challenging mini-dungeons called Delves that seem to be tailor-made for the crowd that wants to experience WoW's endgame content, just without the time commitment.
What some of this looks like in action, as well as what the actual story is about, that you can check out through the launch trailer below. Have a gander:
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The International 2024 tournament is nearly upon us, and while it's no longer as big of a deal as it used to be, it's still in everyone's best interest to have the games be as close and exciting as possible. So in order to achieve that, Valve has now unleashed Patch 7.37c.
As you would expect from a pre-tournament patch, the changes aren't exactly massive. However, that doesn't mean they aren't impactful as Valve has targeted the recently resurgent healing meta across multiple vectors. As such, items like Pipe of Insight, Mekansm and Holy Locket have been slightly toned down, as has the freshly buffed Omniknight.
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As their big April Fools' gag last year Sega released The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog - a visual novel based around trying to deduce who managed to kill the fastest creature on Earth and how. Since the whole thing felt like a one-off joke that would get old within five minutes, I must admit I didn't pay it much attention when it first launched. That was a mistake!
After having it recommended to me time and time again, I finally sat down and played through The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog this week, and you know what? It's actually good! And not only is it well made, but it manages to work as both an investigative visual novel and as a fanservicy homage to Sonic games of old. Here's a little peek at what it's like:
Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is launching on June 21st with a rather large price tag
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It has taken an entire year for us to get here, but I'm happy to say that FromSoftware has now finally announced that Elden Ring's first (and hopefully not last) expansion Shadow of the Erdtree will be launching on June 21st. As you would expect, the expansion will bring with it a sizable new world to explore, a whole host of bosses and deformed monstrosities to fight against, a new storyline that is likely to bring up more questions than it answers, and naturally, a wide variety of new weapons, spells and equipment to mess around with.
The one bit of bad news is that the price tag is going to be a fair bit larger than any previous Souls DLC. To be more specific, even the basic version of Shadow of the Erdtree will set you back 40€, which is almost as much as the base game itself. Whether this is a simple price hike or if the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion will contain an absurdly large amount of content, that still remains to be seen. Personally, I really hope it's the latter as I certainly wouldn't mind losing another 100 hours or so to Elden Ring!
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While Darktide is still struggling with regular content patches, the Vermintide 2 team continues to impress. Despite being hard at work on the long-awaited addition of PvP multiplayer, they've somehow managed to find the time to release the "A Parting of the Waves" update!
The recent update brings with it a conclusion of the recent Karak Azgaraz storyline, as well as a huge and elaborate new map to explore. It's also worth mentioning that despite the map being directly connected to the Vermintide 1 remasters, it's an entirely new creation, and quite a solid one at that!
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[Update]: Darktide's Grim Protocols update has added an ultra-challenging new game mode - Havoc!
While originally scheduled to launch in late April, Darktide studio Fatshark has now decided to surprise everyone by suddenly releasing the Path of Redemption update! The new content patch brings with it a free Battle Pass filled with all sorts of new cosmetics, the Dreg Tox Bomber as a brand new enemy, as well as a variety of new puzzles and challenges to seek out in missions.
First things first, the Battle Pass, which I'm happy to say is a pretty good one! There is no paid version, the objectives are all relatively simple, and given how fast I've managed to push through the tiers just off previous achievements alone, I have a feeling it's going to be an easy one to complete. [Update]: I may have spoken too soon on that one. While the early levels go by quick, maxing it out is going to take quite a while!
