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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'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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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:
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[Update #2]: Darktide's Path of Redemption update has added a free Battle Pass, numerous cosmetics, Tox Bomber enemy and more.
[Update]: Darktide's April update is adding a new enemy, puzzles and fresh way to collect cosmetics.
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.
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[Update]: Helldivers 2 is getting a bunch of very explosive new weaponry on April 11th.
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.
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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.
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[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!
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[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.
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[Update]: MTG Arena's next set Outlaws of Thunder Junction is coming April 16th alongside 3 batches of bonus cards.
Once it arrives this March 5th, MTG Arena's Alchemy: Karlov Manor mini-expansion will bring with it 30 new cards to toy around with. Much like the previous sets, these will help beef up some of the currently underplayed deck concepts, add a couple of goofy cards to brew with, as well as introduce a brand new mechanic to explore - Incorporate.
"A card that incorporates adds an additional mandatory mana cost to another card, and that second card gains additional attributes/text. Incorporate perpetually adds an additional casting cost to that card, adding any new colors from that cost, and adds abilities/text to that card for the rest of the game."
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After toying around with Lara Croft and Final Fantasy VII crossovers, among others, PowerWash Simulator has now decided to give the grim darkness of the Warhammer 40k universe a good scrubbing. And so, dressed up as a lowly member of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the new DLC will task you with cleaning a variety of heavy machinery like the Land Raider, Dreadnaught or Imperial Knight.
What all of this nonsense looks like in action, as well as just how nasty the vehicles start off as, that you can check out through the trailer below. Have a gander: