Category: IGN

Nightmare Kart, which was known as Bloodborne Kart until its creator scrubbed the branding in 2024, officially has a release date.

Developer Lilith Walther, aka PSX Bunlith, announced on X/Twitter that the “legally distinct” kart racer will be releasing on May 31 on Steam and Itch.io. The announcement touts 20 racers, 16 maps, a full campaign mode with boss fights, and a versus battle mode. It also includes a short trailer that you can watch below.

🏁🩸INTRODUCING: NIGHTMARE KART🩸🏁

Releasing for FREE 5/31/2024 on Steam and Itchio!!

➡️ 20 Racers!
➡️ 16 Maps!
➡️ Legally distinct!
➡️ Full campaign mode w boss fights!
➡️ VS Battle mode!

💉 THIS NIGHTMARE WILL NEVER END 🐥#NightmareKart 🏍️ pic.twitter.com/XR5ury6kxl

— 🪄✨ PSX Bunlith 🐰🏳️‍⚧️ BLM ACAB 🇵🇸 (@b0tster) April 2, 2024

In addition to the release date, Bunlish shouted out Bloodbo… ahem, Nightmare Kart’s soundtrack, which was composed by Evelyn Lark. To celebrate the release date announcement, Lark posted a sample of the title screen theme as well as a link to a video featuring the full song.

Check out the full video here! https://t.co/Eqq3y7VaGJ

— Evelyn Lark (BBKart is on Bandcamp!!!) (@TheNobleDemon) April 2, 2024

Nightmare Kart was originally set to release in January as Bloodborne Kart before being delayed to account for the branding change. The delay has had some benefits, though, allowing Walther to bump the racer count from 12 to 20.

Despite the name change, Nightmare Kart is spiritually a follow-up to the popular Bloodborne PS1 Demake that launched in 2022. The demake, which reimagined the modern horror classic with 32-bit visuals, was well-received by the community and Walther announced the kart racing project soon after.

As for Bloodborne itself, a sequel or potential remake feels further away than ever, with series creator Hidetaka Miyazaki saying that FromSoftware simply doesn’t own the IP. So even if Nightmare Kart is ultimately legally distinct, it’s a nice treat for fans who have been waiting for close to a decade for a follow-up.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Despite its delisting and the impending shuttering of its servers, fans of Friday the 13th: The Game have reason to rejoice, thanks to a fan project.

Friday the 13th: Resurrected is a free-to-play modded build of Friday the 13th: The Game, and the team behind the project announced yesterday that it plans to reveal the release date for the mod on Monday, April 15. Along with providing dedicated multiplayer servers, Resurrected also promises to introduce a roster full of exclusive fan-made content, such as new characters and skins.

The time has come campers… Look out for Friday the 13th: Resurrected release date reveal coming April 15th, 2024.

We’ll see you SOON. pic.twitter.com/sDwNkRG32v

— Friday the 13th: The Game | Resurrected (@F13Resurrected) April 1, 2024

Last year, publisher Gun Interactive announced it was delisting the game on December 31, 2023, due to the publisher losing the Friday the 13th license. While the servers are still up and running, the same statement also revealed that the servers would shut down on December 31, 2024.

Naturally, this mod has limited access if you did not buy Friday the 13th: The Game before its delisting last December. Nevertheless, it’s a nice win for fans of horror games and those that enjoyed what Friday the 13th: The Game offered.

Friday the 13th: The Game was released in 2017, though its entire life cycle was plagued by legal disputes over the ownership of the iconic slasher horror franchise. The legal disputes got so bad that the developer had to halt the development of new content for the game in 2019 before ultimately canceling the post-launch content altogether in 2021. The new content that was supposed to be added to the game includes a werewolf mode inspired by gameplay found in Inner Sloth’s Among Us.

In our review of Friday the 13th: The Game, IGN wrote: “Lopsided gameplay and egregious bugs almost kill the mood of Jason’s murder spree in Friday the 13th: The Game.”

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Landfall’s surprise April Fools release Content Warning has been claimed by more than 6 million Steam users in only 24 hours.

The party game’s publisher announced the major milestone in an update post on its Steam page, saying that more than 6.2 million players have already added the Lethal Company-like to their profiles. The team was able to move so many copies because Content Warning was free to keep for those who were able to claim a copy within the 24-hour window. Regardless, with no prior announcements, Content Warning’s success is staggering.

For those who may have stayed away from the internet on April Fools Day, Content Warning sees you and up to three friends grab handheld video cameras and try to capture hilarious and spooky moments. It’s all in the name of content, creating the perfect environment for chaos. It’s a formula that seems to be working, too, as SteamDB says the game has already reached a peak of 204,439 players, with more than 138,000 playing at the time of this story’s publication.

“It’s been a real treat watching all of your videos and we are so happy that we’ve managed to create something that makes people have fun together,” Landfall said.

Content Warning’s free-for-a-day offer has now come to an end. However, those who missed out on the deal can still download a copy for only $7.99 on Steam.

Landfall’s move to gift their new project to so many for free makes a lot of sense. With more than 6 million players out there already making videos, it’s that much more likely we see viral Content Warning clips make their way to all corners of the internet.

As the developers prepare for future updates, there are a few early issues they’re looking into. This includes problems with the voices, connectivity issues, footage not extracting, and camera footage not being visible. Thankfully, Landfall says it has leads on many of these complaints and plans to deliver some fixes as soon as tomorrow morning.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

Just as the Helldivers 2 community was trying to make sense of mysterious cloaked ships and get to grips with a balance-changing update that adds new planetary hazards, players found more additions to the game developer Arrowhead failed to announce up front in the patch notes.

Spoilers for Helldivers 2 follow.

The Automatons, Helldivers 2’s alien robot faction, now have new aerial gunships at their disposal. These were signaled in flavor text from a recently completed Major Order, and are causing havoc on the battlefield by firing deadly red lasers from above. Thankfully, the aerial gunships can be destroyed, although you’ll need sufficiently powerful weaponry to do so. Heavy duty Stratagems such as the Expendable Anti-Tank and the recently released Quasar Cannon appear to be well-suited to dealing with the aerial gunships. The Spear looks handy, too.

Aerial gunships aren’t the only stealth drop added to the game. Players have also come up against imposing AT-AT-style quadruped tanks. Based on early reports, these beasts take a hell of a lot of punishment, so be prepared to drop the odd Orbital Laser or two when you take one on.

The bots have AT-ATs now !! pic.twitter.com/mBjwyBnKPr

— Helldivers 2 Media (@Helldiversmedia) April 2, 2024

These fun additions are all part of the ongoing Helldivers 2 live service, and tie into its wonderful meta narrative driven by Game Master Joel. Yesterday, April 1, Arrowhead delivered a new Major Order to Helldivers 2 players, giving them a 24-hour window to finally take back Malevelon Creek, the Automaton map dubbed ‘Space Vietnam’ by fans. The planet was liberated in only about five hours. Today, April 2, Arrowhead launched a new Major Order to fend off the Automaton counterattack. Now we know the bots are not messing about.

Meanwhile, it appears Arrowhead made another fun change to Helldivers 2 with today’s patch that it failed to disclose: post-game gore. As players have reported, and IGN has witnessed in-game, Helldivers are now bringing blood and guts back with them when they return from a mission, proudly displayed on armor.

If you’re looking for more on Helldivers 2, check out IGN’s feature on the Let Me Solo Her of Helldivers 2, a player who has answered over 100 SOS Beacons as part of a mission to help others.

Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise hits of 2024 since launching in February, topping the charts on Steam and reportedly selling around three million copies. According to at least one analyst, it’s still growing. Check out IGN’s Helldivers 2 review to find out why it’s going down so well.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Rockstar has announced plans to add Bully and LA Noire to GTA+ later in 2024.

The ‘Games Included With GTA+’ library recently saw the addition of Red Dead Redemption. Bully and LA Noire, both published by Rockstar Games, are next up, although Rockstar’s wording here suggests more games are coming.

“We recently added Red Dead Redemption — with access to Undead Nightmare — to the stellar Games Included With GTA+ library, and Members can look forward to more Rockstar classics becoming available later this year, including L.A. Noire and Bully,” Rockstar said.

Bully is Rockstar Vancouver’s much-loved open-world juvenile delinquent sim that first launched in 2006 on PlayStation 2. A sequel was once in development at Rockstar’s New England studio in the late 2000s, but obviously never came out. In November, the alleged leak of a database file for Grand Theft Auto 5 was found to include reference to the unreleased Bully 2, with some of its ideas making it into other Rockstar games like Red Dead Redemption 2.

LA Noire, meanwhile, is Team Bondi’s 2011 open-world game set in 1947 Los Angeles. As with Bully, fans have called for a sequel, although Team Bondi itself is no more.

In its announcement, Rockstar teased a new supercar for this summer’s “big” GTA Online update: “Plus, look out for the opportunity to secure a new bonus super car as part of your GTA+ Membership with this summer’s big GTA Online update,” the company said.

All this comes with GTA 6 looming over the horizon. Rockstar has said it will come out at some point in 2025. It has yet to say what will happen to the existing GTA Online when it does.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

While I can’t honestly call myself a diehard MechWarrior fan – I’ve never played the pen-and-paper roleplaying game, for instance – I have enjoyed many of the video games over the years, from MechWarrior 3 to both MechAssault games on Xbox. I skipped the original version of MechWarrior 5 because, while it was by most accounts a good game, its content was all procedurally generated. It wasn’t narrative-driven. And I love a good story-first MechWarrior campaign.

MechWarrior 5: Clans, then, appears to be exactly what I’ve been asking for: a narrative-led MechWarrior campaign that also happens to offer five-player co-op. It picks up immediately where 2019’s MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries – itself the first single-player MechWarrior game of any kind since 2002 – left off. I got a first-look demo of Clans and really liked what I saw.

Clans casts you as Smoke Jaguar clan in, as usual, the 31st century amid ongoing clan-based Mech warfare. You’ve got five teammates to work with: Jayden, Liam, Mia, Nasir, and Ezra. You’ll hear the most from Jayden, the star’s leader (a star is a group of five Mechs in the BattleTech universe, if you weren’t familiar). When playing in single-player you can either take direct control of any of them at any given time, or you can issue orders from either a quickly accessed radial menu or a battlefield map that you can pull up anytime – all of it in real-time without any pausing of the combat. For what it’s worth, they seem reasonably good at executing those orders if you leave the friendly AI to do the work.

Naturally, all of the usual MechWarrior features are here: jump jets, tons of Mech variety (my demo driver was piloting a Shadow Cat, though I’ve always favored the slower but harder-hitting Assault class Atlas myself), and plenty of weapon loadouts, from guns to missiles to lasers to gauss cannons. As ever, you can try to scattershot enemy Mechs with as much damage as possible with no regard to where those shots land, or you can pinpoint specific areas of each Mech, such as trying to blow off its arms or causing it to topple over by blasting off one of its legs.

Speaking of controls, mouse and keyboard input and output looked smooth, from what I could see, and developer Piranha Games promises slick gamepad controls as well, which should please folks who plan to play Clans on Xbox or PS5. On that note, Piranha aims to ship both the PC and console versions of Clans simultaneously. Furthermore, you can opt for a first-person camera or see your Mech from a third-person perspective.

While the underlying action seems solid – as you’d expect after Piranha’s already taken a bite at the MechWarrior 5 apple – it’s the 31st-century sci-fi struggle I am most eager to see from the story. I enjoyed seeing orders come in from Sarah Weaver through a picture-in-picture window as you stomped around the battlefield, and I’m eager to see where this MechWarrior’s story takes us. Gameplay, meanwhile, seems faster than what I remember from the joystick-preferred older MechWarrior offerings on PC, but certainly not as speedy as the Xbox’s classic MechAssault games.

It’s great to see single-player take center stage once again in a MechWarrior game, though the fact that you can bring along up to four friends in five-player co-op is a nice bonus for Clans. It’s due out later this year. I, for one, can’t wait to get back to the future.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

The latest surprise Steam hit is Content Warning, a Lethal Company-style game that’s enjoying enormous success on Valve’s platform off the back of a ‘free to keep’ promotion that ends soon.

Content Warning launched April 1 with 100% off for the first 24 hours, after which the game will cost $7.99. This promotion, plus the fact the game looks like a hoot, saw a concurrent players peak of 90,000 and rising.

“Every year for April 1st aka Landfall Day we do something special,” said publisher Landfall Publishing. “This year we’re releasing Content Warning for free for anyone who downloads it between now 9am PT and 9am PT tomorrow April 2nd.

“We do this as a special treat to our community so that as many people as possible will have the chance to play the game.”

The promo clearly worked, with Content Warning in the top 10 most-played games on Steam, over 7,500 reviews already, and an ‘overwhelmingly positive’ user review rating. But what is Content Warning? The co-op horror indie game tasks you with filming your friends doing scary things to become “SpookTube famous!”, according to the official blurb. It works similarly to Lethal Company, which was a surprise hit on Steam when it launched last year — and is still going strong. You team up with friends to visit a scary world, get spooky footage, and (hopefully) make it back alive. Assume you do so, you upload your footage to SpookTube then watch the money roll in. If only it were that simple in real life!

Like Lethal Company, Content Warning is tailor made for streaming, so it’s no surprise to see it doing decently on Twitch. The question of course is how will the game fare when it costs money to buy? Until then, you’ve got four hours to grab it for free.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Helldivers 2’s latest patch makes some significant changes to the game balance and adds more planetary hazards for players to contend with.

Patch 01.000.200, out now across PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam, makes balance changes to missions, Stratagems, weapons, enemies, and the Helldivers themselves, as well as general fixes and stability improvements.

On the gameplay side, developer Arrowhead has added two new planetary hazards: blizzards and sandstorms. On the balance side, Arrowhead has tweaked the Retrieve Essential Personnel mission type, moving enemy spawn points farther away from the objective “to give players a fairer chance of defending the location”, and making it so there are fewer civilians required to complete the mission on higher difficulties. The Destroy Command Bunkers mission type now has more objective locations because “the mission was too easy before compared to other missions.”

Crucially, Arrowhead has also halved the negative effect of operation modifiers that increase Stratagem cooldowns or call in times.

Perhaps of most interest to players is the sweeping balance pass made to weapons, with the likes of the Anti-Materiel Rifle, Breaker Incendiary, and Dominator buffed. The Slugger, meanwhile, is nerfed. The recently added Heavy Machine Gun sees its highest fire rate mode reduced from 1200 rpm to a more “moderate” 950. On Stratagems, the Patriot Exosuit’s rockets will now penetrate armor only on direct hit.

As for enemies, the Charger, Bile Spewer, and Nursing Spewer are nerfed, as are the Shriekers. The Bile Titan can no longer be stunned, however. The Helldivers themselves are buffed, with heavy and medium armor offering better protection.

And finally, the patch adds various fixes for crashes and other bugs. Arrowhead has improved the system that prevents hellpod steering close to large or important objects. “This system is intended to prevent softlocks where players can drop on important interaction points, or drop into unintended places,” Arrowhead explained. “We will continue to monitor the state of the system after the update to see if additional tweaks are necessary.”

There’s a lot going on in the world of Helldivers 2. Hours after liberating Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2 players reported seeing enormous cloaked ships over Automaton worlds. Amid the push and pull of planets, new Stratagems were recently made available to players, with the promise of more to come. If you’re looking for more on Helldivers 2, check out IGN’s feature on the Let Me Solo Her of Helldivers 2, a player who has answered over 100 SOS Beacons as part of a mission to help others.

Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise hits of 2024 since launching in February, topping the charts on Steam and reportedly selling around three million copies. According to at least one analyst, it’s still growing. Check out IGN’s Helldivers 2 review to find out why it’s going down so well.

Helldivers 2 update 01.000.200 patch notes:

Gameplay

Planetary Hazard additions

• Blizzards
• Sandstorms

Balancing

Missions

Retrieve Essential Personnel

• Moved the enemy spawn points further away from the objective to give players a fairer chance of defending the location.
• There are fewer civilians required to complete the mission on higher difficulties.

Destroy Command Bunkers

• Now has more objective locations, the mission was too easy before compared to other missions.
• It can now appear in operations from difficulty 5.
• Halved the negative effect of operation modifiers that increase stratagem cooldowns or call in times.

Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons

• Arc Thrower: fixed charging inconsistencies; it will now always take 1s to charge a shot.
• Arc Thrower: reduced distance from 50m to 35m.
• Arc Thrower: increased stagger force.
• Guard Dog: now restores full ammo from supply boxes.
• Anti-Materiel Rifle: damage increased by 30%.
• Breaker Incendiary: damage per bullet increased from 15 per bullet to 20 per bullet.
• Fire damage per tick increased by 50% (from all sources).
• Liberator Penetrator: now has a full auto mode.
• Dominator: increased damage from 200 to 300.
• Dominator: increased stagger.
• Diligence Counter Sniper: increased armor penetration from light to medium.
• Slugger: reduced stagger.
• Slugger: reduced damage from 280 to 250.
• Slugger: reduced demolition force.
• Slugger: fixed armor penetration tag in the menu.
• Slugger, Liberator Concussive, Senator: fixed incorrect armor penetration tags in the menu.
• Recoilless Rifle: increased the number of rockets you restore from supply boxes from 2 to 3.
• Spear: increased the number of missiles you restore from supply boxes from 1 to 2.
• Heavy Machine Gun: the highest fire rate mode reduced from 1200 rpm to a more moderate 950.

Stratagems

• Patriot Exosuit: rockets will now penetrate armor only on direct hit.

Enemies

Balancing adjustments have been made to:

• Chargers normal melee attack now does less damage against Exosuits.
• Bile Spewer and Nursing Spewer do less damage with their puke.
• The Bile Titan can no longer be stunned.
• Shriekers no longer create bug breaches.
• Shriekers hitting you while they are dead now does significantly less damage.

Helldiver
Balancing adjustments have been made to:

• Heavy and medium armor protects better and you now take about 10% less damage than before while wearing heavy and about 5% less when wearing medium armor. Fortified commando and light armor is unchanged.

Fixes

• Fixed issue where save settings for PS5 would be reset when the game is rebooted, causing things such as loadout and hint settings to reset.
• Enemies now properly target Exosuits. Previously, many enemies effectively ignored Exosuits if a helldiver on foot was available for them to target.
• Fixed Exosuits being able to fire their weapons while opening the minimap.
• The Helldiver and the Exosuit both had a bug that made them sometimes take explosion damage multiple times making things like automaton rockets be too deadly, this is now fixed.
• Automaton enemy constellations that preferred to spawn more of certain Devastators types did not work and are now functioning as they should. This means that sometimes when playing against the Automatons you will face more Devastators instead of other enemy types.

We have improved the system that prevents hellpod steering close to large or important objects.

• We have solved issues where the effective area around objects was a lot larger than intended.
• We have reduced the number of objects that prevent hellpod steering.
• Note: This system is intended to prevent softlocks where players can drop on important interaction points, or drop into unintended places. We will continue to monitor the state of the system after the update to see if additional tweaks are necessary.
• Fixed cases where the ground under some assets could be bombed causing them to float.

Ballistic Shield changes

• Collision mesh has been slightly increased in size for more forgiveness
• Changed shield poses so that less of the helldiver is exposed
• Addressed bug where parts of the helldiver would become vulnerable while using the shield in first person

Known Issues

These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.

• Game might crash when picking up a snowball or throwing back a grenade

Various issues involving friend invites and cross-play

• Cross-platform friend invites might not show up in the Friend Requests tab.
• Players cannot unfriend other players befriended via friend code.
• Players cannot unblock players that were not in their Friends list beforehand.
• Players cannot befriend players with Steam names shorter than 3 characters
• Explosive weapon stats include only direct hit damage but not explosive damage.
• Explosions do not break your limbs (except for when you fly into a rock).
• Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
• Drowning in deep water with a Vitality Booster equipped puts Helldiver in a broken state.
• Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
• Some player customizations (like title or body type) may reset after restarting the game.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Mere hours after liberating Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2 players have a new threat to contend with: mysterious cloaked ships.

Players took to social media and forums to post screenshots showing what appear to be enormous ships in orbit around Automaton planets. Redditor infinity__cube appears to be the first Helldiver to have reported a sighting, but more images have emerged since. The evidence is irrefutable: the cloaked ships are there, but they appear to be lying in wait.

Yesterday, April 1, developer Arrowhead delivered a new Major Order to Helldivers 2 players, giving them a 24-hour window to finally take back Malevelon Creek, the Automaton map dubbed ‘Space Vietnam’ by fans. The planet was liberated in only about five hours.

Now, with a new Major Order in place to fend off the Automaton counterattack, the mysterious ships have popped up in the sky across Automaton planets.

Cloaked massive ships over Automaton worlds ?!! pic.twitter.com/k3yNlqfGRT

— Helldivers 2 Media (@Helldiversmedia) April 1, 2024

But what could they be? There are a number of theories, including a rather boring explanation that they are a visual bug associated with the existing Super-Destroyer ships. More exciting is the suggestion they are Illuminate ships. The Illuminate are a third alien faction most Helldivers 2 players believe are on their way to the game.

Perhaps they are evidence that the Automatons’ true might is looming over the horizon, ready to pounce now that the terrifying alien robots have been sufficiently angered. If that’s the case, perhaps these ships mark the arrival of new Automaton aerial gunships, which were signaled in flavor text from a recently completed Major Order. Players are already speculating that these aerial gunships, if genuine, will cause Helldivers even more problems by intermittently firing at the battlefield. That won’t be annoying at all.

pic.twitter.com/WopTFTQEdI

— Tukenfarben (@tukenfarben) April 2, 2024

This is all part of Helldivers 2’s fascinating Galactic War, a meta narrative steered by Game Master Joel. Amid the push and pull of planets, new Stratagems are made available to players, with the promise of more to come. If you’re looking for more on Helldivers 2, check out IGN’s feature on the Let Me Solo Her of Helldivers 2, a player who has answered over 100 SOS Beacons as part of a mission to help others.

Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise hits of 2024 since launching in February, topping the charts on Steam and reportedly selling around three million copies. According to at least one analyst, it’s still growing. Check out IGN’s Helldivers 2 review to find out why it’s going down so well.

Image credit: Firestorm_361 / reddit

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.