Dusk creator is working on a Condemned and Manhunt inspired horror game - Butcher's Creek
- By Ash
- in Indie Games
After messing around with everything from fast-paced shooty action to squirrel stapling, Dusk creator David Szymanski has now decided to once dive into a new genre. In this case, with Butcher's Creek he'll be attempting to tackle a Manhunt and Condemned: Criminal Origins inspired first-person horror/action game.
“A troubled loner with a hunger for cinematic gore finds himself on the other side of the camera when rumors of authentic snuff videotapes lead him to an abandoned cabin near Butcher's Creek, Pennsylvania,” reads the brief description. “What starts as illicit urban exploration quickly becomes a fight for survival when he's captured by a gang of sadistic killers. Now his only option is to pick up a box cutter, a hammer, a pickaxe, or whatever else is at hand, and unleash a little video violence of his own.”
Helldivers 2's September 17th update is coming with an armor rework, more effective heavy weapons and plenty of buffs
- By Ash
- in News
[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.
World of Warcraft: The War Within Review - A fun yet unambitious underground adventure
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Following in the footsteps of the Dragonflight expansion, World of Warcraft: The War Within has attempted to uplift a variety of side-activities in order to prevent the endgame from being exclusively focused on hardcore content like raids and Mythic+ dungeons. In some ways this has been a success as there is a lot of different things to do for max-leveled characters, though unfortunately some of the solo-focused additions like the Delve mini-dungeons have failed to impress and don't feel like they'll be a true alternative to the usual endgame gear grind.
If you're curious about what exactly makes these Delves so messy, as well as how the rest of The War Within fares, allow me to share with you my thoughts after playing it all rather religiously throughout the past week. Without further ado, let us begin!
Following an avalanche of complaints, the Helldivers 2 team is now rebalancing the entire game
- By Ash
- in News
[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.
World of Warcraft's The War Within expansion has now arrived alongside some severe server problems
- By Ash
- in News
[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:
In preparation for The International 2024, Dota 2 has now launched Patch 7.37c
- By Ash
- in News
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.
The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is an unironically fun little visual novel and well worth playing
- By Ash
- in News
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: