Games should "earn the right to monetise", says Helldivers 2 director

Live-service games can feel like a blight on the video game industry sometimes, but if proves anything, it's that the situation is a little more complicated than that. As a third-person, bigger budget sequel to an acclaimed top-down shooterpacks a lot of interesting action and strategic gameplay into an online co-op experience. It's also had a bit of a problematic launch, with overburdened servers, optimization issues, and way too many error codes making it difficult to actually play the game — but it's still managed to quickly attract a community of ardent fans.

On the heels of 670 layoffs at EA, merely the latest publisher to add to a dizzying list of thousands of game developers put out of work in the past year – hell, in the past two months alone – FPS legend and veritable Doom man John Romero reckons this is an unprecedented dip for the games industry. 

Remedy Entertainment has acquired the full rights to the Control franchise as a whole from 505 Games, including both the already-released 2019 game, and any future projects. Those games include Control 2, co-op game Condor and anything else related to Control that Remedy cooks up.

Remedy Entertainment has acquired the full rights to the Control franchise as a whole from 505 Games, including both the already-released 2019 game, and any future projects. Those games include Control 2, co-op game Condor and anything else related to Control that Remedy cooks up.

In amongst the expected Star Troopers chatter, a less obvious comparison for Helldivers 2 has quietly been making the rounds: 2015's Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Unexpected overlap in stealth, movement, and gunplay has brought Kojima's open-world action espionage masterwork back into the spotlight, and director Josh Sawyer of RPG powerhouse Obsidian reckons it's all just more evidence that more games shouldn't feel bad about copying stuff that works well and feels good. 

In the early hours of this morning, a ransomware group claimed to have hacked into Epic Games, taking personal data, such as names, payment details, and passwords. However, the Fortnite and Unreal studio has since responded to concerns that anyone has gained access to files, saying it’s investigating but hasn’t found any evidence so far.

Helldivers 2’s great war to spread democracy across the galaxy is being undermined by an unlikely source: farmers.

Rainbow Six Siege's creative director Alexander Karpazis doesn't believe the elderly shooter needs a change of game engine or for that matter, a sequel. He feels that Siege can "last forever", adding that "I'm not going to name names, but you see games go through sequels and just completely drop the ball."

Age of Mythology: Retold has been confirmed for a day-one release on Microsoft's consoles, whose owners will be able to play it via Xbox Game Pass or purchase it digitally. This development marks a notable improvement in how Microsoft's first-party RTS games approach consoles, which have previously been more of an afterthought for them, with that strategy standing in stark contrast to most other types of Xbox Game Pass releases.

Fans of collectible card games (CCG) can look forward to Cards of Eternity, a newly announced CCG based on The Wheel of Time fantasy franchise. The developer is Aether Games, which made the eponymous trading card game (TCG) Aether, which features blockchain and NFTs support and is therefore only available via the Epic Games Store (Steam does not allow blockchain or NFTs).

For the best part of this generation, Sony’s been pressured by a vocal part of the gaming community to borrow Xbox Game Pass’ unproven business model with PS Plus. The platform holder eventually decided to take a half-step, merging PS Now with its existing subscription but resisting the urge to add day one first-party software to the service. It’s described this strategy as unsustainable.

Armor sets in Helldivers 2 will affect more than just some stats and numbers behind the scenes. Just like your primary weapon, the type of armor you pick will dictate your playstyle and needs to be heavily considered before each mission. Each one comes with a different rating in three stats, plus there’s a passive that makes it stand out, but all fall into either light, medium, or heavy roles. While the number of options isn’t terribly overwhelming, comparing and contrasting all those stats and abilities on top of things like Boosters and Stratagems can become tedious. If you just want to get out there and blast some bugs, here are the best armor types to pick in Helldivers 2.