Would you like a bit of ska vibe in your co-op extraction action-RPG? If so then Surfpunk might be your vibe. You’ll cruise through a flooded, anime-styled paradise world hunting for loot in ancient ruins with your friends before you need to escape. Surfpunk is being developed for PC by Double Stallion.
You and up to three friends play as Raiders who roam a flooded world in search of Evress, a coveted energy source vital to the surviving Fallen World. Battle the Sumi as they try to stop you from extracting back to your Beastship with all of your loot intact. There’s also an in-game crafting system good for creating tools that can help your run, like ladders for getting to hard-to-reach places. Watch the first trailer above and check out the first screenshots in the gallery below.
Procedurally generated islands ensure that each time you get on your surfboard, it’s a different experience. If you’re interested, you can wishlist Surfpunk on Steam.
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.
Xbox fans are well used to Microsoft locking cool custom Xbox controllers and consoles behind social media competitions, making them available only as near impossible to get prizes instead of selling them to the general public. But it seems Microsoft’s latest effort — an Xbox controller shaped like Deadpool’s ass — is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Microsoft revealed its new Xbox Wireless Controller modeled after “Deadpool’s much-discussed, perfectly rounded tush” to coincide with the upcoming Marvel movie Deadpool & Wolverine. It calls this new Xbox pad the “Cheeky Controller” and said it “channels Deadpool’s buns of steel in its firm (yet surprisingly comfortable) grip.”
Frustrating many, Microsoft has made this Deadpool ass Xbox controller available only to one competition winner, as it’s done repeatedly with previous eye-catching accessories. Fans aged 18+ worldwide can enter for a chance to win it by following Xbox on X/Twitter and retweeting the official Xbox sweepstakes tweet.
The tweet in question currently has 225,000 retweets, and the competition doesn’t end until 8pm Pacific / 11pm Eastern on Sunday, August 11, 2024.
A custom Xbox Series X Console inspired by Marvel’s Deadpool and Wolverine. Approximate Retail Value (ARV) $440.00 USD.
Two (2) custom Xbox Wireless Controllers inspired by Marvel’s Deadpool and Wolverine. Approximate Retail Value (ARV) $319.98 USD.
A custom Xbox Series X Console Stand inspired by Marvel’s Deadpool and. Approximate Retail Value (ARV) $100.00 USD.
The total Approximate Retail Value (ARV) of all prizes: $859.98 USD.
So, to be clear, only one person can win, and they’ll get two of these controllers. Ominously, Microsoft adds: “the odds of winning are based on the number of eligible entries received.”
“I would honestly buy this in a heartbeat,” RandoDude124 added. “I hardly even use my Series X but I’d have bought it for the novelty,” said Rektw. “Lightly use it for some PC games or something.” StuffedThings commented: “I don’t even own an Xbox but I would buy the s**t out of this.”
It’s a similar sentiment across social media, where fans are complaining that they can’t throw money at the screen and have Deadpool’s ass in the form of an Xbox pad end up on their doorstep.
The PAUSE “Cheeky” Deadpool XBOX Series X/S controller and special edition console…XBOX needs to sell these even if it’s 1000 of em…Just my take cause these are 🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/KJ6EgzDK66
Given Microsoft’s clear fondness for making cool Xbox accessories exclusive to sweepstakes, and the no-doubt enormous amount of social media engagement this Deadpool controller competition will end up driving to Xbox, it seems unlikely the company will change course any time soon.
As a result, this Deadpool ass Xbox controller will probably end up selling for an eye-watering figure on eBay.
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.
Disgruntled players of the near 17-year-old hero shooter, which remains one of the most-played games on Steam, caused Team Fortress 2’s Steam user review rating to plummet to ‘mostly negative,’ with pretty much all the comments about bots.
Valve released a banwave that appeared to stamp out Team Fortress 2’s bot problem, and published a no-nonsense FAQ outlining its tough stance on the matter. Recent Steam reviews recovered to ‘mixed’, and players praised Valve for taking action.
Now, Valve has released Team Fortress 2’s summer update, and while it includes expected content such as community-made maps, cosmetics, and effects, there’s also an vague line in the patch notes that’s left fans hopeful that the troublesome bots are gone for good: “Security and stability improvements.”
While Valve failed to detail exactly what these improvements involved, the hope is the developer has built upon the good work done last month to keep Team Fortress 2’s bots at bay.
Valve’s last developed game to release was competitive first-person shooter Counter-Strike 2, which effectively replaced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Before that, in 2020, Valve released Half-Life: Alyx exclusively for virtual reality headsets. Valve has also released a Dota-themed digital card game called Artifact and a Dota auto chess game called Dota Underlords, although both failed to find as big of an audience as the company’s previous titles.
All the while, the wait for Half-Life 3 continues. Back in 2020, a making-of for Half-Life: Alyx revealed a swathe of games developed and shelved by Valve between the release of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Valve’s latest VR game. That list included details on a version of Half-Life 3 that was in development for around a year, and an open-world Left 4 Dead 3.
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.
Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm has suffered a significant round of layoffs and has signaled the closure of one of its high-profile mobile games.
As spotted by users on ResetEra, NetherRealm developers took to LinkedIn to announce they had been laid off as part of what looks like the gutting of the company’s mobile team.
The X/Twitter page for Mortal Kombat: Onslaught announced plans to shut the game down in October 2024, just a year after launch. “It has been an honor creating this game for our Kommunity, and we appreciate the enthusiasm from our fans,” the statement read. “In the coming weeks we will share specific timing of the close of the game.”
We are sorry to inform you that Mortal Kombat: Onslaught will close its operations in October. It has been an honor creating this game for our Kommunity, and we appreciate the enthusiasm from our fans. In the coming weeks we will share specific timing of the close of the game.
— Mortal Kombat: Onslaught (@mkonslaught) July 18, 2024
At the time of this article’s publication, there is no shutdown announcement on either the Mortal Kombat Mobile or Injustice 2 Mobile X/Twitter pages. Both games received updates in recent days; indeed these layoffs occured just a day after Mortal Kombat Mobile received a significant update that added guest character Spawn to the game. Spawn is meant to be the first of three new characters coming to Mortal Kombat Mobile as part of its summer update, with Onslaught Jax and MK1 Kenshi next.
Spawn marks his entry in #mkmobile! The first in line of our three new kombatants coming in the Summer Update! 🔥 Keep your eyes peeled – Onslaught Jax and MK1 Kenshi are next. Jump in and explore the new Tower, Equipment, and more!
— Mortal Kombat Mobile (@MKMobileGame) July 17, 2024
NetherRealm and Mortal Kombat franchise owner Warner Bros. Games billed Mortal Kombat: Onslaught as a mobile-exclusive collection role-playing game set in the Mortal Kombat universe. The free-to-download app features party-based combat that plays out automatically, with the player tapping to trigger special abilities and combos. There’s a fleshed out Story Mode that revolves around Shinnok’s bid for destruction. Mortal Kombat veterans Liu Kang, Kung Lao, and Sub-Zero go up against familiar villains such as Shang Tsung, Kano, and Shao Kahn in their Mortal Kombat 11 visual style.
The layoffs hit NetherRealm as it prepares to reveal plans for Mortal Kombat 1’s second year of updates and DLC characters during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con. NetherRealm development chief Ed Boon is yet to tweet about the layoffs or the game closure.
The cuts to NetherRealm come amid one of the toughest periods for the video game industry in recent memory. Thousands have lost their jobs over the last two years as publishers and developers struggle in an increasingly difficult market. Microsoft announced 1,900 jobs would be lost from its gaming business this year, Sony has announced 900 layoffs, and many other AAA publishers have suffered cuts of their own.
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.
After multiple successful playtests and becoming the Most Played Game at February’s Steam Next Fest, extraction RPG Dungeonborne is out now for Early Access on PC, available to all players looking for a punishing but rewarding RPG.
Dungeonborne is a first-person dungeon crawler in which players band together with up to two friends or play solo to seek treasure and glory among the ruins of a gritty, gothic setting that is overrun by monsters and other adventurers. Blending extraction gameplay with iconic fantasy class design, Dungeonborne offers strategic gameplay full of powerful loot and high stakes combat as you rush to extract before a blade finds your back.
Eight Playable Classes, Eight Distinct Ways to Play
Dungeonborne draws on traditional RPG classes, giving you a chance to embrace your role as a Fighter, Priest, Rogue, Druid, or Pyromancer while also offering more unique choices like Swordmaster, Cryomancer, or Death Knight.
Thanks to the first-person point of view, combat feels visceral and every spell or weapon swing has weight behind it. Each of Dungeonborne’s classes brings something unique to the table, too — while Death Knights are masters of manipulation, capable of pulling enemies toward them and draining their life force, Druids can attack from any range and shapeshift into animal form to rip and tear.
Caster classes dispense destruction from afar. You can wield fire as the Pyromancer and scorch and burn all who oppose you, or encase your foes in ice and slow their advance as the Cryomancer. For players looking to take on more of a support role, the Priest will fit like a glove – heal your teammates and support them from afar, bolstering their defence and keeping them alive.
Protect your allies from the frontline as a Fighter, capable of holding the line against your foes while your allied Rogue sneaks behind enemy lines to unleash devastating critical strikes. Defend as a Swordmaster and keep your enemies’ attention on you as you conjure powerful psionic blades capable of sowing quick death among the unsuspecting.
With over 10 unique weapon pairings, every duel in Dungeonborne becomes a dance of death that brings a fluid, back-and-forth action combat experience. Parries, blocks, and ripostes dictate the flow of battle, and it’s split-second, in-the-moment decision making that determines the winner.
Strategize, Prepare, and Execute — You’ll Have to Fight Tooth and Nail to Claim What Is Yours
While simply jumping in and swinging your weapon around might work at first, you will quickly realise that spamming light attacks and pressing the loot button won’t be enough. Dungeonborne rewards and encourages tactical planning and strategy — terrain, trap locations, enemy positions, and time are all factors that you need to take into account if you wish to triumph over the opposing team that’s looking to claim your treasure as their own. Utilise terrain verticality to set up an ambush or lure enemies into the traps you find for easy kills.
As you slay your opponents and plunder their riches, you will find equipment with over 80 item affixes that synergize with your playstyle or completely change the way you play. If you don’t need an item or simply have a better one, you can put it up for sale at the in-game auction house, then hunt for dozens of legendary and unique items designed to help you sculpt the ultimate build. In Dungeonborne, the thrill of finding rare loot is accessible to all, not just the most dedicated players.
You Can Play Dungeonborne Right Now, and Devs are Listening to Your Feedback
Throughout Dungeonborne’s journey, Mithril Interactive has been working to address player feedback and tweak gameplay so that it feels rewarding, satisfying and fair. Based on community feedback, the team has implemented a range of balancing and quality-of-life updates, and introduced new server regions. Mithril is also planning to introduce new active and passive skills for each individual class to expand gameplay options.
Dungeonborne is now available to download for free in Early Access on Steam. A ‘Mithril Edition’ DLC upgrade is available for players who want to support the game and development team for 9.99USD/7.99GBP (subject to regional pricing) that will grant players two cosmetic items to carry on their adventures as well as Bandages, Healing Potions and Throwable Flasks. If you’re keen on joining the community and finding like-minded players to group up with, you can check out the game’s official Discord channel, and follow their X (Twitter) page for new updates as the team continues developing the game during Early Access.
The thing that immediately stands out when roaming derelict buildings and creepy aqueducts in AI Limit is just how stylish and crisp everything looks, and as it turns out, that killer presentation goes quite a long way. Sure, it’s yet another soulslike with the same old bonfire checkpointing system, punishing combat encounters, and super gross bosses that really need to take a chill pill, but I’ve gotta admit, the anime-inspired, sleek and cartoonish art style really won me over, and I could see this becoming my next sweaty fascination – y’know, maybe as a nice chaser in between Shadow of the Erdtree sessions.
Like countless genre peers, AI Limit makes no apologies about its inspiration; this is a soulslike through and through. You’ll gather materials from fallen enemies to spend on stat upgrades, find weapons and equipment in every monster-filled corridor to customize your fighting style and abilities, and, of course, die a whole heck of a lot when some tanky boss with serious anger management issues uses your face as a doormat. Classic soulslike stuff!
And at least in the hour-long demo I played, AI Limit seems content to follow that blueprint to a tee, offering pretty much no novel tweaks on the formula or reasons to play this one over the piles of games like it. With one notable exception, that is: the endlessly impressive and hard to look away from art style.
That might not sound like enough of a differentiator to keep one’s interest, and yet I found it to be the primary reason I was so eager to claw my way through each deadly zone to see what awesome-looking thing awaited me in the next area. In the same way the Persona series follows the traditional JRPG playbook very closely but sets itself apart by oozing style and unrivaled swagger, AI Limit really did stand out to me in many of those same ways. Whether it was the sleek and interesting UI or combat animations that made me feel like I was the main character in an action-packed anime as I cut down the enemy with ease, I found myself nodding my head in appreciation even when every other aspect was fairly by the numbers.
I’m definitely intrigued by its fantastic presentation enough to add it to my list of soulslikes I’m excited to play.
I will say though, it’s a bit surprising that, despite all the style AI Limit has going for it, the protagonist, at least in the demo, is woefully inexpressive. With no dialogue and a deadpan look on her face at all times, there’s not much beyond some neat looking outfits and sweet combat animations for me to go on. She doesn’t even make any kind of noise when she takes damage or dies, which just feels odd. I mean, I get that this lady’s supposed to be a robot, but why even give her a human appearance if you aren’t going to give her any humanity? Here’s hoping these details merely didn’t make it into this early build of the game.
The demo confined me to an early area that seemed pretty clearly intended as an introductory tutorial zone, but even so I managed to find some new weapons to try out and outfits to try on, and fooled around with one of AI Limit’s precious few unique mechanics, the Sync Rate meter, which is charged up by attacking things and loses power when you take hits or use special abilities that consume it, like firing an electric railgun I found lying around. Most importantly, the Sync Rate meter also determines how much damage your weapons do, rewarding you for keeping the meter full, and punishing you for depleting it, which made for a pretty interesting tradeoff.
AI Limit might not be immediately groundbreaking at first blush, but I’m definitely intrigued by its fantastic presentation enough to add it to my list of soulslikes I’m excited to play. With a release date planned for later this year, it seems I won’t have to wait too much longer.
With College Football 25 set for wide release on Friday, EA has released its promised Team Builder feature that will allow players to create their own custom teams.
EA detailed the new feature in a lengthy post, including how it incorporates alternates, stadiums, and more. The Team Builder tools are accessible via browser, with custom teams available to be downloaded in-game. If you’re not feeling particularly creative, you can also download creations made by your friends or other creators.
Custom teams are compatible with College Football 25’s Dynasty Mode, meaning you can create your own school and build them into a collegiate superpower like Michigan or Georgia. Up to 16 custom teams can be imported per dynasty, where they will replace an existing team of the commissioner’s choice.
Team Builder was a heavily-requested feature by fans, who remembered it fondly from previous iterations of the NCAA franchise. EA responded by going as far as to hire one of its original architects, senior engineer Chris Markuck, who returned to help lead development on College Football 25’s version of Team Builder.
According to Circana’s Player Engagement Tracker, on July 17th, EA Sports College Football ranked #3 in US daily active users on Xbox Series (behind only Call of Duty HQ and Fortnite) and 4th on PS5 (COD, Fortnite & GTAV).
Elsewhere, College Football 25 is off to a very strong start, ranking at #3 for US daily active users on Xbox and #4 on PS5. EA servers were slammed by as many as 700,000 fans, with more to come once it leaves early access. Fan feedback has been mostly positive, though our current review-in-progress is currently a bit more mixed on the experience.
“Right now, EA College Football 25 feels like a college quarterback who left school for the NFL too soon, got drafted way higher than he should have because a team was desperate, started under intense scrutiny from a fanbase and an owner who are tired of losing all the time, and then flamed out of the league because he just wasn’t ready for prime time,” we wrote.
This Prime Day deal is still available. Amazon is currently offering Amazon Prime members the 2TB SK Hynix P41 Platinum PCIe 4.0 NVME solid state drive (SSD) for only $127.99 shipped. That’s one of the best prices we’ve seen for a 2TB PS5-compatible SSD from a reputable brand. It also happens to be one of the fastest PCI-E 4.0 SSDs on the market right now. This is an outstanding candidate for your PS5 or gaming PC rig.
SK Hynix P41 Platinum 2TB M.2 SSD for $127.99
SK Hynix might not be a brand that the consumer recognizes as much as Samsung or Western Digital, but make no mistake that they are a major player in the flash memory market. SK Hynix is a South Korean DRAM manufacturer and is the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker and the world’s third-largest semiconductor company. They supply components for brands you’ve heard of, like Corsair and G.Skill.
The Platinum P41 is SK Hynix’s highest end SSD. It boasts sustained read speeds of 7,000MB/s and sustained write speeds of 6,500MB/s. It also boasts random read speeds of 1.4 million IOPS and random write speeds of 1.3 million IOPS. In terms of reliability and stability, the SSDs have been tested and validated through 1,000 hours of stress testing with MTBF reaching 1.5 million hours or up to 1,200TB written. SK Hynix backs it all up with a 5 year warranty. Unlike most other SSDs, both the chips and the controller are manufactured in-house. The P41 Platinum uses an Aries controller with 176-layer TLC NAND flash chips.
Of course, in terms of real world performance, the vast majority of users won’t be able to tell apart the speeds between the highest end PCI-E 4.0 SSDs. Some of these SSDs include the SK Hynix P41 Platinum, the Samsung 990 Pro, and the WD Black SN850X. Therefore, it all comes down to the price. At its current price point, the P41 Platinum isn’t just one of the fastest drives on the market, it’s also cheaper than any competitor that can come close to its performance.
A great PS5 SSD, but you’ll need to get a heatsink
The SK Hynix P41 Platinum does not come equipped with a heatsink. That’s because this SSD is catered to PC gamers looking to add storage to their desktop computer. Many motherboards come equipped with built-in SSD coolers and will only accept bare SSDs. It’s generally harder to remove a heatsink than to apply a new one. If you plan to use this for your PS5, rest assured that’ it is 100% compatible (in fact, it’s overkill). Although some people have gotten away with an SSD with no heatsink, we recommend you install one for peace of mind. You can easily get a PS5 heatsink for under $10.
The best Prime Day power bank deal is still available. Amazon is offering Amazon Prime members the powerful and high capacity Anker Prime 27,650mAh USB Power Bank for only $119.99, a hefty 33% price drop from its original $180 MSRP. This is the successor to the Anker 737 that we deemed the best Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally charger. Note only does it carry a significant battery capacity, it also boasts an absolutely massive 250W of USB power delivery to charge even the most power hungry MacBooks, iPhones, and handheld gaming consoles (simultaneously, in most cases).
Anker Prime 27,650mAh Power Bank for $119.99
with 250W of USB Type-C Power Delivery
The Anker Prime is a hefy power bank, measuring 6.4″x2″x2.2″ and weighing in at 1.5 pounds. This is a heavier duty power bank designed to charge more power hungry devices like laptops, (multiple) portable gaming systems, and (multiple) phones. It has two USB Type-C ports and one USB Type-A port. Each USB Type C port supports up to 140W of Power Delivery, which is the max charging rate of a new 2024 MacBook Pro 16″ laptop. If you want to use both USB Type-C ports simultaneously, one will charge at 140W and the other at 100W. The USB Type-A port also boasts up to 65W of charging, although that drops to 18W if you’re using both USB Type-C ports at the same time.
The 27,650mAh battery capacity is more than you’ll ever need on your itinerary. It can charge a Nintendo Switch OLED about 6 times, iPhone 15 Pro Max about 6 times, Steam Deck about 5 times, and an ASUS ROG Ally about 10 times. What also makes the Anker Prime unique compared to most other power banks is the LCD digital readout. It displays a lot of useful real-time information like remaining battery capacity, power input, and power output from each port.
Regarding bringing the Anker Prime on airplanes, this power bank outputs 99.54Wh, which meets the TSA requirements for carry-on baggage. Power banks need to be under 100Wh, which means this is the absolutely highest capacity you can bring on board without needing special clearance.
The Anker Prime is an excellent Steam Deck / ASUS ROG Ally charger
Both the ROG Ally and Steam Deck suffer from a short battery life when gaming on the go. For instance, when playing most games at 60 FPS, you’re likely looking at four hours of battery life for the Steam Deck and maybe half that on the ASUS ROG Ally, which is equipped with a measly 2600mAh battery. During our Steam Deck review, we even found games like God of War or Spider-Man could potentially tap out in under 2 hours. At the end of the day, you’ll never get the full potential out of your Steam Deck or ROG Ally if you’re not equipped with a decent portable charger.
The Anker Prime is an outstanding charger for the Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally portable gaming handhelds. The Steam Deck supports up to 38W, the ASUS ROG Ally up to 65W, and the Nintendo Switch up to 18W of power delivery, That means technically you could charge all three gaming consoles at the same time across all three ports. If you’re traveling with a family with multiple Nintendo Switches or Steam Decks, this option will be a lot more convenient than bringing multiple power banks.
It doesn’t take all that much to get me to dive back into Blizzard’s stellar ARPG, Diablo 4, which has had a fantastic run of seasonal content and updates in the year since it made its devilish debut. But after an extensive hands-on with its upcoming character class, the Spiritborn, I might be kissing my free time goodbye altogether. This jack of all trades impressively mixes up the Diablo ecosystem with its most customizable and varied class yet, opens up a whole new unexplored aspect of Diablo lore, and most importantly, lets you summon a giant spectral gorilla to Hulk-smash demons into pink giblets. By the end of my time exploring Vessel of Hatred’s spooky jungles and dark dungeons, I was ready to forsake my roguish ways and declare myself a Spiritborn main, and that’s no small feat.
A quick housekeeping note: my time playing Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred was focused almost exclusively on the Spiritborn character class. After choosing my preferred Spiritborn warrior, I was dropped right into the action in the new region of Nahantu to craft my build and dismember everything in sight. Though all of the following things are in there, I didn’t see any story, meet any NPCs (aside from vendors), or get to check out the new hireable mercenaries feature. That said, my access to the Spiritborn class and all it offers was pretty exhaustive, so I’ll be focusing on that. Let’s dive in!
The Spiritborn are an entirely new class to the Diablo series, complete with their own lore that’s tied up in the ancient civilization of Nahantu – as seen in the Act 3 jungles of Diablo II – and the ethereal spirits with which they commune. Unlike the other Diablo IV classes, where you dive quite deep into a specific fantasy like tanking with the Barbarian or doing mad DPS with the Rogue, the Spiritborn is much more customizable and varied, thanks to the four guardian spirits you can choose to build into. Those four spirits are: the eagle, which focuses on mobility, evasion, and lightning damage; the gorilla, which is all about survivability and physical damage; the jaguar, which is the king of DPS, attack speed, and fire damage; and my personal favorite, the centipede, which uses poison, debuffs, and lifesteal to control the battlefield and feed off your foes’ misfortune.
Each of those spirit guardians is represented by a massive ghostly avatar that imbues you with power and occasionally takes to the battlefield itself to lay waste to your enemies, like how the centipede bursts onto the scene to start spitting giant globs of venom at everything in sight, or the eagle, which swoops in to zap your foes into dust. The skills and abilities that correspond with each of these spirits appear on the Spiritborn skill tree as color-coded nodes, so you can easily identify which you might want to focus on depending on your chosen spectral BFF.
These four distinct styles, and the divergent builds you can create from them as a result, make the Spiritborn feel like four new classes in one. For example, a slow-moving, extremely resilient gorilla build will feel very different from a jaguar build where you’re teleporting around the map. But although you’ll need to choose one of them to be your primary patron, one of the most defining characteristics of the character class is the ability to hybridize your build with some of the powers offered by other guardian animals. So, for example, if your jaguar build is feeling a bit squishy, you can reach across the aisle to your gorilla spirit and add a few of his tanky abilities to your repertoire, making yourself significantly more durable.
The four distinct styles, and the divergent builds you can create from them as a result, make the Spiritborn feel like four new classes in one.
That’s a whole new ball game from the much more specific fantasies the other character classes offer, and at first I was worried that would make it feel like a jack of all trades and master of none. But the longer I played, the less I was concerned about the class feeling underpowered, as I went deep into a centipede-eagle (centipeagle?) build that had me filling the battlefield with life-sapping poison, then dashing out of reach when things got too hot. “You would think that it would have some kind of identity crisis, but if you play the build it doesn’t – it works,” Diablo IV Game Director Brent Gibson told me. “And I think the team has done a great job at picking the right things inside of each of the lanes that make it so unique and distinct without trying to turn it into giant cream corn.” From what I’ve played so far, I tend to agree.
After trying out half a dozen different builds, I’m very much sold on this extremely unorthodox class, and I really got a kick out of how different each of the spirits felt and how flexible the class was in allowing me to take on different roles depending on my current need or flight of fancy. It remains to be seen if any of these builds will be able to compete with the five existing and much more focused classes, but so far I’m really encouraged by what I saw, and have a feeling I’ll be running as a Spiritborn exclusively when I tackle Vessel of Hatred later this year.
