Horizon Forbidden West official artwork and logo for the PC version

When Horizon Zero Dawn first landed onto PC, it did so alongside quite a few problems. The performance was spotty, crashes were frequent, bugs were everywhere, and most annoyingly of all, mouse sensitivity seemed to change completely at random.

It took quite a while for Horizon Zero Dawn to get properly polished up, so I must admit I was slightly weary about the fate of its sequel. Thankfully, my fears ended up being completely unfounded as the freshly released Horizon Forbidden West looks and runs great straight out of the digital box!

Helldivers 2 official artwork without logo

If you've tried to play Helldivers 2 over this past weekend, chances are you've noticed that things have become a bit... unstable. Besides the random performance dips, ever since the last update the game has been prone to randomly crashing, and apparently one of the reasons for this was players using lightning based weaponry.

So in order to sort this nonsense out, the Helldivers 2 team has now launched the small Patch 1.000.104. The patch notes are about as blunt as it gets: Arc Tower, Arc Shotgun and Tesla Tower stratagems should no longer cause the game to stutter, freeze and potentially even crash.

Dota 2: Patch 7.35d artwork for the brand new hero ban system

While most people were expecting the Crownfall update to arrive alongside the Ringmaster hero teased last year, the Dota 2 team has instead released a small but still rather meaningful update. It brings with it a brand new hero ban system, a couple of additions to Dota+, as well as some much-needed balance changes to help keep things interesting.

First and foremost, you can no longer select a hero to potentially get banned at the start of a match. Instead, you're now able to 'lock in' four heroes you never want to see, of which each one has a 25% chance to get banned (even if you leave a spot empty). So it's still not a guaranteed ban, but the new system is a bit more resilient against cheaters targeting specific players, as well as automatic so you won't accidentally pick Tinker just because you missed the banning window by a second... not that I've done that before!

Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree official artwork

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!

Vermintide 2 screenshot of Sienna in Winds of Magic

If you're in the mood for filling out your backlog with even more games you don't have time to play, you'll be delighted to hear that Steam's Spring Sale 2024 has now arrived! Much like its predecessors, it brings with it a boatload of discounts across a wide variety of games and genres.

For those of you that have no clue where to even start, allow me to share with you a couple of games that have managed to catch my eye - all of which are currently on a sizable discount. Without further ado, here's the brief list in no particular order:

Darktide official artwork for the Vanguard armor bundle

Quite a few months have gone by since Darktide's last content update, but I'm happy to say that the mysterious Fatshark has now finally emerged from its burrow and signaled the end of winter. In other words, we have finally received a small blog post explaining what exactly the studio is currently working on!

First and foremost, the Darktide team is planning to do a comprehensive revamp of the penance (achievement) system. While the actual details are still few and far between, the goal is to not only add a whole bunch of new cosmetics to play Fashiontide with, but to make them a lot more interesting to collect as well.

Helldivers 2 official artwork and logo

A little over a month has gone by since launch, and already the Helldivers 2 team has released a bunch of new weapons to toy around with. They have all arrived as a part of the new Cutting Edge 'Battle Pass', though don't worry about this being paid DLC as the Super Credits required to purchase all of them can be found in-game easily enough.

As for the actual weapons, the new arsenal includes a fast-firing laser rifle, a plasma shotgun, a laser pistol and my personal favorite, a lightning shotgun! Naturally, there's also a couple of new armor sets to collect, a fancy stun grenade, new cosmetics, as well as new emotes to goof around with.

Dragon's Dogma 2 official logo artwork

It took an incredibly long amount of time for us to finally get here, but I'm happy to say that Dragon's Dogma 2 is nearly upon us! You can expect to see it launch onto PC and consoles on March 22nd, 2024 - nearly twelve years after the original!

Much like its predecessor, Dragon's Dogma 2 will have you make a party with up to three AI companions and set you loose to explore a gigantic world. Along the way you'll likely encounter all sorts of danger you'll need to fight in classic action-RPG combat, though with a bit of an important twist. Instead of simply hitting giant enemies in the toes and hoping that's good enough, Dragon's Dogma 2 will once again have you crawl all over them in order to annoy them, briefly incapacitate them or even bring them down so you dish out some serious damage.

Helldivers 2 promotional artwork without logo

[Update]: Helldivers 2's Cutting Edge update has added a variety of new energy weapons, including a lightning shotgun!

As I've detailed throughout my review, Helldivers 2 has a very serious balance problem. A good chunk of the weapons and stratagems are simply too weak to deal with enemies on the higher difficulties, which then directly leads to many players running basically the same generic loadouts as those are the ones that can reliably get the job done. Needless to say, it's not an ideal situation.

So in order to sort this out, as well as fix a couple of bugs, the Helldivers 2 team has now launched their very first balance update. Unfortunately, it's very a messy one!

Helldivers 2 artwork for the EXO-45 Patriot Exosuits (mech)

[Update]: Helldivers 2's first balance update has now landed, and it's unfortunately a very messy one. Thankfully, at least the mechs are great!

If you were eagerly waiting for the mechs to arrive ever since they were teased in that one pre-launch trailer, I'm happy to say I bring good news! According to a brief Tweet, the EXO-45 Patriot Exosuits will soon be heading to a battlefield near you!

I'd love to tell you more, but I'm afraid the details are currently nonexistent. That said, Arrowhead have previously revealed that they will be releasing a major update on the second Thursday of each month, so there's a pretty good chance the EXO-45 will be launching on March 14th. This is obviously just speculation, however, so don't get too attached to that day just yet.