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[Update]: Overwatch 2's Season 10 will introduce Venture, unlock all Heroes, and make Mythic skins more accessible.
After struggling with balancing the heroes and roles for quite a while now, Blizzard has decided to undertake some drastic measures in Season 9. As such, not only has Competitive Play been made more transparent and... well, competitive, but the actual core design principles behind the various heroes have also been tweaked.
First and foremost, hero health has been increased by around 15-25% in an effort to prevent fights from devolving into who can one-shot who first. Then, in order to prevent healers from becoming too dominant with the increased health pools, Damage heroes have swapped their reload speed passive for one that reduces enemy healing by 20% for 2 seconds upon hitting an enemy.
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[Update #2]: MTG Arena's next set Outlaws of Thunder Junction is coming April 16th alongside 3 batches of bonus cards.
[Update]: All of MTG Arena's upcoming Alchemy: Karlov Manor mini-set has now been revealed.
In order to help tide everyone over until Outlaws of Thunder Junction arrives this April, MTG Arena will soon be releasing the Alchemy: Murders at Karlov Manor expansion. Once it arrives on March 5th, the 30-card mini-set will help beef up some of the currently underplayed archetypes, introduce at least one new mechanic to toy around with, and more likely than not, add a some goofy new cards for Brawl players to smash each other over the head with.
Speaking of the new mechanics, the only one confirmed thus far is called Incorporate. Long story short, it's a way to grant cards additional stats and effects, while simultaneously increasing their mana cost. Sort of like stapling on a mandatory Kicker effect. Rather than babble on, allow me to share with you an example of Incorporate in action, as well as the full description of the mechanic straight from the MTG Arena team:
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[Update]: Following numerous complaints, Total War: Warhammer 3 is changing its DLC pricing and size.
To say that Creative Assembly messed up with Total War: Warhammer 3's Shadows of Change DLC would be quite the understatement. The price tag was significantly higher than any similar DLC, the amount and quality of content on offer was rather low, and to make matters even worse, the accompanying free update was completely anemic. As such, the DLC quickly found itself a 'mostly negative' rating on Steam, and rightly so.
Usually that would be the end of the story, but thankfully Creative Assembly has decided to eat their humble pie and make amends. In order to do so, they have now unleashed Patch 4.2 which, among other things, brings with it a whole bunch of new additions to the maligned DLC - all free of charge!
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[Update]: Dota 2's Patch 7.35d has reworked hero bans and brought in yet more balance changes.
The Dota 2 team is currently working on a massive update called Crownfall, which will more likely than not include the Ringmaster hero teased back in 2023. So in order to help tide everyone over until the update finally arrives, Valve has now unleashed the rather humble Patch 7.35c.
As you would expect, Patch 7.35c is mostly focused on nerfing the overly strong heroes that have been plaguing the game for the past few months. Nature's Prophet now does less damage, Meepo isn't nearly as tanky, Lion's mana drain has finally been toned down, Faceless Void is a little bit weaker across the board, while the smurf-favorite Arc Warden is now easier to take down in the early game.
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[Update #2]: Helldivers 2 will soon be getting the EXO-45 Patriot Exosuits teased all the way back at launch.
[Update]: My 70+ hour review of Helldivers 2 is now out, and I'm delighted to say that the game is phenomenal!
Despite being a huge fan of the original, I must admit I was somewhat worried about Helldivers 2 during the lead up to its release. For the longest time the only bits of gameplay we were allowed to see were short, highly edited snippets - usually a telltale sign that a game that just can't hold your attention on its own merits.
However, I'm pleased to say that my worries were completely unfounded! Playing Helldivers 2 for the past couple of days has been a blast, even with the server issues making co-op occasionally annoying. I especially have to commend the audio-visual design as using explosive weaponry in Helldivers 2 is absurdly satisfying, and doubly so when you get some of the bigger toys to play around with. The sound effects, the fireball and dust the explosion causes, the enemies ragdolling into the sunset - it's basically perfect!
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After a seemingly messy development and plenty of delays, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has now finally been unleashed. And you know what? Despite the endless red flags and blaring warning signs, it's thankfully not a disaster!
It's not particularly great either, don't get me wrong, but it's got a decent bit of charm to it. I especially have to commend the combat as it feels exciting and has a good flow regardless of what character or build I tried messing around with. Things do start to get repetitive after a while, which is a bit of a problem for a looter shooter, but since the core gameplay is fun that can eventually be fixed.
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[Update]: Horizon Forbidden West has now landed onto PC without any of the technical issues that plagued the original game!
It took quite a while, but Horizon Forbidden West - Complete Edition will finally be making its way to PC on March 21st. As you would expect from something called the 'Complete Edition', the PC version will come bundled with the Burning Shores DLC, digital artbook, soundtrack and comic, as well as a couple of cosmetics to unlock over the course of the campaign.
As for the PC port in specific, Horizon Forbidden West will feature an unlocked frame rate, ultrawide and support for triple monitor setups, support for various upscaling technologies, and naturally, a plethora of settings to mess around with in order to (hopefully) find just the right balance between fidelity and performance. What all of this looks like in action, that you can check out through the recently posted trailer below. Have a gander:
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[Update]: MTG Arena's Alchemy: Murders at Karlov Manor mini-set is launching on March 5th, and it brings with it a potential teaser for 4-player games!
Instead of having Draft Boosters and Set Boosters, Magic: The Gathering will soon be consolidating both into brand new Play Boosters. These Play Boosters will contain 14 cards, will be fully draftable, and will have a chance to contain some fancy cards from days gone by, including some with unique new artwork.
For MTG Arena in specific, these Play Boosters will be present in Limited formats, while the current 'normal' boosters will continue to be given out as rewards and will remain available for purchase through the in-game store. So if you don't play Limited or care about the older formats like Historic, Timeless or Explorer, chances are you might not even notice anything has changed.
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[Update]: Vermintide 2's A Parting of the Waves update is adding a brand new map and shield-bearing enemy.
Back in 2019, Fatshark announced that they're working on a PvP-focused Versus mode for Vermintide 2. Unfortunately, the new game mode ran into some sort of trouble during development as Fatshark quickly stopped talking about it, and eventually seemed to have given up on the idea entirely.
As such, you can imagine my surprise when I decided to fire up Vermintide 2 and was struck with the announcement that Versus is now back! More specifically, it's currently in alpha testing so it'll likely be a while before it's officially out, but the important thing is that it's now once again in active development!
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[Update]: Overwatch 2's Season 9 has arrived with massive changes to core principles like health and damage.
Once it arrives this February, Overwatch 2's Season 9 will bring with it some drastic changes in order to shake up the rather messy current metagame. The end goal, as you might imagine, is to shift the gameplay from 'heal spam vs damage spam' to more varied and interesting playstyles where all sorts of heroes can shine.
In order to achieve this, Season 9 will be adding a modified, tuned-down version of the Support self-healing passive to both Damage and Tank heroes. This should, in theory, reduce the pressure on Support players as everyone will be able to manage their own health while out of combat. More importantly, it will also give dive heroes a bit of a boost as they'll now be able to constantly harass the enemy without having to glue themselves to a health pack or rely on heroes like Ana to keep them alive.