Lords of the Fallen's final update, version 1.5, gives it what every good action RPG must have: a randomizer mode for the sickos who thrive in the chaos of unpredictable enemies and loot.

A list of new options to modify the normal structure of the game will now be available when you've completed it. You can randomize the loot dropped by enemies and the types of enemies that show up. Other options include pre-upgraded loot drops, weaker healing, more enemies, permadeath, and fewer (or zero) of the game's Dark Souls bonfire-like checkpoints, or "Vestiges".

In our Lords of the Fallen review, Harvey wasn't a fan of its brutal mid-to-late game enemy ambushes, which he said "occasionally feel downright cruel." In the roadmap of updates since its release last October, however, developer Hexworks has pruned the enemy count down and many players say the game is easier now.

The new modifiers might bring the game back to its original state, which I'm sure is great to hear for the kinds of people who regularly mod FromSoftware games to kick their ass. Speedrunner LilAggy randomized Elden Ring and immediately dropped into one of the final areas in the game at level 1. The Lords of the Fallen randomizers aren't that mean, but they're clearly made specifically for the people who love action RPGs a little too much.

Alongside the modifiers, version 1.5 further tweaks the game's difficulty, adds new armor and weapon sets, new quests, and a bunch of new spells. It also has "significant performance, optimization, and stability improvements," that executive producer Saul Gasco promises will nearly eradicate the technical issues the developer has been fixing since its launch. He said creating the game's overlapping "Axiom" and "Umbral" worlds with Unreal Engine 5 had the team "navigating completely uncharted territory from a technical standpoint," and that is why the game had such a rough launch for many players.

The timing of the final update couldn't be better for anyone who needs to fill a soulslike void before Shadow of the Erdtree's June release. With the enemy placement in a better spot, Harvey's praise for the rest of the game—"It might be one of the best non-FromSoftware souls games we've gotten so far"—has me seriously considering if it's time to pick up that freaky lamp once again and give it another shot.

Lords of the Fallen's version 1.5 update is available now. 

Before you've taken your first step in Appalachia, Fallout 76 asks you to make a big choice: Start as a fresh level 2 vault dweller, or boost immediately up to level 20 as a "battle ready" dweller. I was really hesitant to take the boost at first—I was worried skipping ahead was an option intended for long-time players making a second character, and that going down that road would mean skipping introductory quests. Turns out that's not the case at all. Choosing the level 20 option doesn't lock you out of any quests whatsoever, or even meaningfully change your challenge level, since enemies generally scale to your level no matter what.

What a battle ready loadout does get you is a big headstart on perk cards, Fallout 76's primary progression path. You can choose between five presets that immediately set you up with some pretty great beginner perks and gear:

• Commando: Automatic rifles
• Slugger: Two-handed melee
• Gunslinger: Pistols
• Shotgunner: Shotguns
• Specialist: V.A.T.S.

I chose the Gunslinger path, which came with a few fully upgraded perk cards that make non-automatic pistols more accurate and deadly. Along with a free revolver, a pouch of 500 bullets, and a complimentary supply of stimpaks, I felt like I'd been catapulted past the monotonous beginning hours of other Fallout games—time I typically spend looting every that's not glued down and settling for crappy guns—landing softly at the 10-15 hour mark where I start to feel the impact of my perks and upgraded arsenal.

I can see why the level 20 boost option has a "best choice" sticker slapped on it. It's a more energetic start to a shooter-MMO with lots of grinding, though the influx of perk cards and level-up pop ups immediately after you choose it is a momentary sensory nightmare. Just know that leveling in 76 isn't like the mainline game: you can move around your cards whenever you want, and even respec your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. points eventually (I'm not there yet). 

The preset loadouts come with different weapon specializations, but they all have a few useful perk cards in common: they all have Traveling Pharmacy and First Aid, for instance, which makes stimpaks weigh less and heal more.

It's also worth noting that level 20 in Fallout 76 is not the mid-game milestone it is in Fallouts 4, 3, and New Vegas. I pored over my cool perk cards and extended barrel revolver for all of two minutes before I was humbled by a level 408 passing player in decked-out power armor and legendary guns so beyond my meager station that all light appeared to bend around them like that super rich guy in Disco Elysium. Level 20 here might as well be taking short hop to level 5 in past games. Several game systems don't even unlock until level 50. Guess I should get to it, then.

"Some of you may have noticed that certain Nintendo related workshop items have recently been taken down," Facepunch Studios said in a Steam update. "This is not a mistake, the takedowns came from Nintendo.

"Honestly, this is fair enough. This is Nintendo's content and what they allow and don't allow is up to them. They don't want you playing with that stuff in Garry's Mod—that's their decision, we have to respect that and take down as much as we can."

The "not a mistake" line may have been prompted in part by earlier DMCA claims against Nintendo-related mods that some Garry's Mod players claimed were fraudulent. It's not clear whether that was actually the case, but it seems to definitely not be the case now.

Nintendo is notoriously protective of its property, and it's not shy about getting heavy with people it thinks are getting out of line. Earlier this year, for instance, it sued the makers of the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, forcing a near-immediate halt to its development (and sticking the developers with a $2.4 million bill); more famously, it saddled programmer and hacker Gary Bowser with a $14.5 million financial albatross he'll be paying off for the rest of his life, on top of more than a year spent in a US federal prison, for the crime of making and selling "circumvention devices" for the Switch.

It's the sort of brutal behavior that has a deep, chilling impact, sometimes beyond the obvious targets. In January, for instance, Valve ordered a halt to Portal 64, a popular Portal demake for the Nintendo 64. Portal 64 maker James Labert said he was asked by Valve to take the project down because it "depends on Nintendo's proprietary libraries."

"I think Valve didn't want to be tied up in a project involving Nintendo IP," Lambert told PC Gamer at the time. "I don't blame them."

That thinking may also be driving the Garry's Mod housecleaning: The potential for headaches (and significant financial pain) is great enough that it's preferable to just eliminate any possibility of an unpleasant letter from Nintendo's legal department.

There's definitely a lot of Nintendo-related stuff available for Garry's Mod. A search for "Nintendo" in the Garry's Mod Steam Workshop brings up 44 pages of results, while "Mario" delivers a whopping 186 pages of results. Other Nintendo characters, including Bowser, Zelda, Princess Peach, Luigi, and Yoshi also bring up dozens of pages of results. It's a big pile to sort through, and Facepunch turned to the community for some help with the effort.

"This is an ongoing process, as we have 20 years of uploads to go through," it wrote. "If you want to help us by deleting your Nintendo related uploads and never uploading them again, that would help us a lot."

Whether it will get that help seems to be an open question. Despite the message, there's still some doubt among Garry's Mod players that the takedown request is real. Some are criticizing the development team for "falling for it," while others are demanding proof that Facepunch verified the takedown requests are legit. A few legal theories about fair use in Japan are being kicked around, and there are also calls for Facepunch to keep the Nintendo content in place as a matter of principle, and damn the consequences. Naturally, there's also a good deal of upset with Nintendo, and occasional predictions of Garry's Mod's imminent demise (not all of them polite) should it knuckle under to the forces of injustice.

None of which is likely to matter—there's nothing in the takedown announcement indicating that this is anything but a done deal. As Facepunch put it, "It's Nintendo. Need more be said?"

I've reached out to Facepunch for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

I've only played about an hour of Rotwood, which released on Steam in early access today, but for $11 (even less right now since it's on sale), I'd already recommend it to my friends. They've invested as much in lesser games just to have something new to play in co-op, and I've even been enjoying Rotwood as a solo game.

Rotwood's roguelite structure is typical of contemporary games: In the first biome, you hop between 2.5D forest glades, bashing away at the enemies in each before moving on to the next, which might contain more enemies, a shopkeeper, or a surprise. After clearing a room, you're sometimes rewarded with a new power. These are minor bonuses at first—move faster when you enter a room, shoot a projectile after every three melee attacks—but as in games like Slay the Spire and Risk of Rain, you get more and more OP as you stack on synergistic powers and upgrade them. By the time I reached the first boss, the first heavy attack I used in a room dealt 500 damage to every enemy. 

To complete an area and unlock the next one, you have to fully traverse it in one life, which includes defeating a miniboss and boss, and you only get one health potion to use along the way (unless you find a way to refill it). It's easy to keep the basic bug-vegetable forest enemies at bay by spamming light and heavy attacks, and they generously telegraph their attacks so you can dodge roll out of their way, but you eat a lot of damage when you're hit. It's not extraordinarily difficult, but it only takes a few lapses of attention before you're cooked, and there are unlockable difficulty levels.

When I started to discover combos, I probably made things harder for myself by going for imaginary style points. There's a great attack called "golf swing" where you dodge roll in one direction, and then immediately spin 180-degrees and swing your hammer (the starting weapon) like you're trying to send whatever was behind you moonward. Chaining 15-plus attacks to clear a room with a single string of button presses feels nice.

Except for the "press F8 to send feedback" message at the bottom of the screen, Rotwood doesn't feel especially early accessey—at no point did I encounter a big under construction sign or placeholder asset. I go back and forth on whether I like the muted colors and rounded cartoon forms of Klei's signature art style, but either way it's distinctive and readable, and I like that the customizable player characters are cute without being cutesy. 

Where it seems like Rotwood's unfinishedness will present itself most acutely is in its length, but it's hardly just a prototype. Rotwood's early access version includes four biomes, with mini-bosses and bosses, and four weapon classes. Klei estimates that mastering those presently available weapons and locations will take "10-25 hours."

More of everything will be added throughout Rotwood's one-to-two year early access period, says Klei, and the developer will also increase Rotwood's price as it makes those additions. Rotwood is currently $11/£9.29, and has been slightly discounted on Steam for the launch. 

I tend not to go in for early access games—why not let everyone else do the beta testing and just get the 1.0 version when it's ready?—but Rotwood is made to be replayed, so it's the sort of game I could see filling up on now, and then coming back to in a year or two when there's more stuff.

The new armadillos will spawn in the savannah and badlands biomes as we'd been told to expect. The 1.20.8 patch notes also reveal that they can be lured towards players with spider eyes—that seems like a niche snack choice—can be put on leashes, and will roll up into a protective ball when they sense danger like players sprinting nearby, undead enemies, or players riding by on mounts. Importantly, you also don't need to kill them to get their scaley "scute" skins. They'll drop those periodically on their own or you can brush them to get one.

It's no surprise that armadillos are bringing those new wolf variants with them too, since their scute (that's the bony outer hide) is used to craft into wolf armor. Your canine pals no longer need to dive into the mines beside you unprotected. Those new wolf variants (pale, woods, ashen, black, chestnut, rusty, spotted, striped, and snowy) will all spawn in different biomes but appear to be mostly cosmetic variations other than that. 

Mojang does note that different types of wolf tend to spawn in different size packs though, which is neat. All tamed wolves now have 20 hearts, which is double their prior health points, and feeding them will renew twice as many hearts as it used to. So they're definitely getting buffed for battle.

And as if that weren't enough, several other features that are planned for update 1.21 have been added as experimental features that you can toggle on when creating a new world. The new mace weapon, breeze rod item, and trial chambers are among the additions. Those beta features are also available in Minecraft Java edition snapshot 24w13a.

Armadillos have been added because they won the annual Minecraft player mob vote last year, which decides one of the new creatures coming to the game. But typically those player-voted mobs arrive in the next major game update, which should be 1.21 this year. Mojang has definitely released upcoming mobs as experimental features before, but this mid-update drop is unusual.

There was a bit of unrest last year around the mob vote, during which some players went full propaganda mode trying to end the traditional mob vote. They felt that the votes are divisive—which is true, they can be—and that it feels like you're being cheated out of the other two mob concepts by only getting to pick one. Is there any chance that the armadillos came early because Mojang is planning to add the other two mobs in 1.21? I wouldn't count on it. Mojang developers have pushed back on that question in the past.

In either case, another official Minecraft post today suggests that it's likely close to revealing the official name for update 1.21. So hang tight for that after you jump in to try recruiting some new scute-producing pals.

Moon Studios quickly responded to those complaints with an update promising improvements are on the way. "This is early access, so there is plenty you will see improve as we continuously look to optimize and improve the game with your feedback," the studio said.

Even before it came out, some players expressed concerns about No Rest for the Wicked going into early access in the first place—mainly wondering about how "early" the game would be—and post-launch there have been suggestions the game wasn't ready even for an early access release. For the most part, though, players seem to be digging it, as seen in the game's climb from a "mixed" to "mostly positive" rating over the course of a week.

Regardless of all that and whatever anyone else might think about it, Moon Studios CEO and creative director Thomas Mahler has no regrets, calling the early access release "one of the best decisions we could've made."

"I see some people are still irked about why games like Wicked, Hades 2, Larian's new game, etc. launch into early access even if the studio 'should have the funds to finish the game and release it then'," Mahler wrote on Twitter. "But that's looking at a complex problem through a way too simple lens.

"I think as games become more and more complex and sophisticated, we'll see some form of early access happening more and more often. Speaking from our own experience, there is just no way we could have ever shipped [No Rest for the] Wicked 1.0 without being able to see all the data we're seeing now and getting all the feedback from users. And I mean actual users, not a Focus Testing Group. Even if we'd have 2-3 times the staff, it would have been quite simply impossible, the product is just way too complex of a beast to reasonably expect that. 9 women can't make a baby in a month and all that."

Mahler went even further, saying other games that came out before early access existed would've been better if they'd been able to take advantage of it: "Imagine [if] Dark Souls 1 would've been in Early Access—Instead of From rushing to ship a boxed product in a somewhat unfinished state, they probably would've been able to look at the second half of that game and still fully form and polish the less polished areas like Lost Izalith, etc."

Generally speaking, I tend not to play early access games—I'd rather wait for the full, finished product—and I wonder if studios sometimes hurt their future fortunes by releasing a game before it's fully ready: Nightingale is one example of an anticipated and promising game that's currently saddled with a "mixed" rating on Steam because it's still in development. 

But the advantages are also clear. As Mahler said, early access provides a pool of testers that just isn't available any other way, and the success of games like Baldur's Gate 3, which spent nearly three years in early access, is proof that it can work. Conversely, the failure-to-fame arc of Cyberpunk 2077 has led to suggestions that it should've been an early access game (and, in some ways, it was).

The bottom line is that there's clearly a place for early access in the contemporary gaming market, and it's not going away, a point Mahler emphasized. "Even if you dislike the idea of Early Access: It's one way to allow developers to truly perfect a product over time, so please try to understand that there's value in that," he wrote. "I'm confident that we will see games being created through Early Access programs that would've never been made without EA."

Mahler also encouraged Sony and Nintendo to "embrace early access" in a follow-up tweet. "The industry is just changing at a rapid pace and holding on to things that were the norm 5-10 years ago is too restrictive," he wrote.

"Ultimately people just want to play great games. It shouldn't matter how the game was developed, just that it was and if players can't play some great experience on your platform, you're doing your audience a disservice."

For now, work on No Rest for the Wicked is continuing at a good pace. Four hotfixes, focusing primarily on addressing performance and balance issues, have already been released since the game's April 18 launch.

Dark Roast Cafè may be cosy, but it's also satanic. In this short itch.io demo, you open shop with a loan from an unforgiving demon. Then, you have seven days to hire staff, decorate your cafe, and earn enough money to pay off your debt. It's not massively complex, but to be fair, it was the developer's first solo game, which was made for the Ludum Dare 55 game jam in just 72 hours. 

This comfy game is pretty straightforward, but that doesn't mean you can just sail through managing your restaurant. The first time I started it up, I didn't quite understand the importance of hiring the right people (or, in this case, demons) for certain jobs. You'll need a greeter, a cashier, a cleaner, and, importantly, a barista. There's an option to summon three demons at a time, of which you can pick one to join your team; if you don't like anyone, then you can just wait for it to refresh after a minute. 

My first group of employees included a greeter with a "Fake ID, but an honest smile", a cashier who collected body parts, a cleaner who liked to steal condiments, and a barista who won't talk about their past. An odd group of demons to say the least. Unfortunately, these guys didn't really work out, they were too slow to keep up with the lunch rush, and I'm pretty sure the damage done by all the stolen condiments cost me a fair bit of money. This meant that I didn't pay my dues by the deadline, and I can only assume I got eaten by the demon I owed money to. 

The second time I tried to assemble my master crew, I was sure to pick positive assets for the team with lightning-fast reactions, good customer service skills, and at least some cognitive functions, and luckily it paid off. My team worked wonders and reached the quota within five days, so I had a bit of extra cash to get the stylish blood-red tables and deck out my cafe a bit more. 

Once you pay off the demon, you can just carry on going, changing staff and redecorating your cafe. But instead of trying to make bucket loads of cash, I wanted to leave it running just for the music. It's chill, calming, and a great Lofi beat to listen to when getting work done. The bonus is that by leaving it running in the background I've also made a hell of a lot of money. So far I'm at 157,128 demon coins and counting. 

So, if you're looking to broaden your horizons and want to play a not-so-cuddly cosy cafe game, then I'd definitely recommend giving Dark Roast Cafè a try—it's not extensive, but it's still a load of fun and a great way to relax and pass time. 

The most fun I’ve had with a soulslike since Elden Ring. The less self-serious take on the genre I wanted Lies of P to be. FromSoftware should just go ahead and cancel Shadow of the Erdtre… OK, now we’re moving from possible hyperbole to outright lies. But I honestly stand by the first two. Another Crab’s Treasure is a joke game that takes being a great soulslike seriously. It's a charming, creative platformer with terrific combat and a good eye for both pretty scenery and silly sight gags. But it also contains the line "This is a coddamn shipshow!" so I’ll respect any demands to take 80 points off its score.

You’re a hermit crab called Krill who’s had his shell stolen by a literal loan shark (ho ho). So begins an oceanwide quest to get it back which involves hitting a lot of hostile sea life with a fork. Apparently there’s no stamina underwater so all you have to worry about is getting as many hits in as you can then leaping out of the way before being hit back. Actually, that’s a pretty big worry considering how vulnerable poor Krill is without his shell.

Luckily, there are replacement shells everywhere. They’re able to block a few attacks before shattering, forcing you to quickly scurry to find another. This might sound tedious but it’s actually one of the game’s best ideas. Shell’s have unique powers; a sushi roll gives appalling defence, but you can chow down on it mid-battle to restore health. A rubber duck can be thrown to act as a decoy while you scamper away. The soda can make me laugh when I see Krill waddling about in it. All handy skills for different situations, and because they break so easily, you’re encouraged to try them all. You can buy shell insurance for your favourites too, letting you spawn with one at every bonfire. (They’re not called bonfires, but come now, we’re all friends here.) 

Combat does a fine impression of Dark Souls’ sword fighting, with every enemy having a health bar to cut down and another Sekiro-like bar that, once filled up, gives you a chance to stun your foe and get some free hits in. It begins to truly sing once you unlock the grappling hook, letting you yank enemies towards you for a good forkin’. Delightfully, to successfully hook bigger prey you’ll have to nail a fun little fishing mini-game which mixes surprisingly perfectly with soulslike swordplay. Master it and boss battles become brilliant tug-of-wars with a lovely sense of flow. 

Customisation is fairly limited. There’s only four stats to level up. But that also makes this a more approachable take on a genre that could use more of those. Fail a boss fight and you’re respawned right outside the arena with all your currency ready to be picked back up, enemies occasionally drop health, and there’s even a somewhat helpful map tucked away in the pause screen. And if you’re really struggling, there are plenty of smart difficulty options to tweak. In fact, with its cute characters, bright aesthetic, and approachable difficulty, I wondered if I was potentially playing the first soulslike for younger gamers. Until one of the crabs started talking…

Das Crabital

Now, you don’t write for PC Gamer unless you have at least a little fondness for puns. I spent hours of the only life I’ll ever have thinking up awful ones for the headings of this review (Dark Soles, Seakiro, Blubblubblubborne, Elden Herring… I’d best start rehearsing my Games Media Awards speech). So I consider the astonishing number of puns in Another Crab’s Treasure a feature, not a bug. There are also constant satirical jabs at my beloved capitalism, which are about as subtle as being punched by Bernie Sanders. Still, I liked the crab who learns incredibly slowly that a workforce is being exploited (he comes to this conclusion long after many of them have perished).

I’m far less enthralled with the script’s tiresome habit of ‘hiding’ swearing with puns. We’re talking constant substitutions of "crab" for "crap" and truly crab lines like "coddamn shipshow". Yes, I know I’ve repeated that one, but so does the game. A later boss just started outright saying "aw shit". Not every cutesy game has to be a Pixar movie, of course, but this adult dreck still feels tonally off with the rest of the game. With a few adjustments this could have been a great entry point to the genre, the perfect choice for bad parents to turn their offspring into the tiresome Elden Ring stans/socialists of tomorrow. There’s enough good characters and genuinely funny lines in it that I still spoke to every NPC, but this really could have used an editor, or someone pushing Tim Schafer overboard for a script pass.

In fact, the game’s levels are highly reminiscent of Psychonauts, except with good platforming. The script misses more than it hits but the visual jokes are constantly delightful. The treasure map that drives most of the plot is a children’s maze on the back of a cereal box. Lobsters charge at you like knights on horseback except they’re using toilet brushes as jousting poles. One of the difficulty options is "give Krill a gun" which just turns his shell into a one-hit-kill handgun.  

They’ve done a fantastic job of making each area of the ocean look distinct too. An eerily beautiful deep dark area is full of terrifying anglerfish that haven’t been this traumatising since Finding Nemo. An ancient undersea city is genuinely striking, but whenever the haunting piano goes into overdrive and it comes close to turning into yet another pretentious fantasy soulslike, a crucial moment will have Krill flushing himself down a toilet or using bleach bottle bubbles as platforms. The push-and-pull between an epic oceanic odyssey and a game where crabs wear dresses made from those little silicon gel packets you get in new shoes is a delight to splash about in. I’ve forgotten or repressed most of the worst dialogue at this point, but I still think back on my battle with a hungry crab armed with a knife and fork, who gobbles you up if you don’t dodge their finisher, with a smile.

Soar subject

Dark Souls, one of the best games of all time, thought holding down the run button and then clicking the analogue stick was an acceptable way to let the player jump. Luckily Another Crab’s Treasure is a far more competent platformer. You get a dedicated jump button (wow!) and Krill has a very limited ability to swim that lets you float a little further. Mario doesn't need to be worried for his job but it’s still a fun 3D jump-‘em-up where you dread the combat bits for the right reasons, and the platforming helps it stand out from the increasingly crowded soulslike pack. Considering how much these games are about exploring, it's surprising that someone hasn’t thought to combine the platformer and the soulslike already, because they slot together great here. It’s a little janky— I wouldn’t say no to a patch that stops me occasionally getting stuck in the scenery—but I mostly loved leaping around its hostile waters for secrets.

Doesn’t hurt either that Krill is a lovely lead crab. He cries ‘no no no no no!’ when you let yourself get hit by an unblockable attack and cheers whenever you level up, instantly making a crab the most relatable soulslike protagonist of all time. He’s optimistic, sympathetic, and even has a nice little character arc. He’s yet another pleasant surprise in a game full of them. Shipshow? Actually, this is often krilliant! God I hate myself.

While I say "the community", I think it's important to highlight that I'm talking about its most vocal, galactic-war focused elements here. I'd bet a safe wager that the majority of Helldivers 2 players are content to just gun down bugs. So content, in fact, that a major order to stamp out 2 billion of them passed in the blink of an eye. 

Before I get into the how and why, though, there are two bits of important context to consider. Firstly, most major orders over the past month or so have been automaton-focused. Here's where the last nine have sent us:

1. Operation Swift Disassembly Phase 1 and 2 (Automatons).
2. Liberate Malevelon Creek (Automatons, obviously).
3. Operation Swift Disassembly Phase 3 and 4 (Automatons).
4. Operation Rearing (Terminids).
5. Operation Courageous Defense (Automatons).
6. Operation Menkent Line (Automatons).
7. Operation Cassiopeia (Automatons).
8. Operation Harvest (Terminids).
9. Operation Enduring Bulwark (Automatons and Terminids*).

That asterisk is there since it's best to focus on Automatons for this latest major order. At the time of writing, there's only one defence campaign in Terminid space, and, uh, a lot more in the Automaton's invasion—which has been spreading like wildfire across the galactic map.

So overall, that's 7 out of 9 major orders (or 9 out of 11 if you count phases as their own major orders) that've required us to turn clankers into scrap metal. I'm personally fine with that, since I happen to like doming Hulks with my Anti-Materiel rifle, but I also haven't done any Terminid missions in close to a month. Whenever I've played, it's been Automatons on the menu. So why the larger ennui?

Tow the Menkent Line

Helldivers 2 uses a forgivable amount of sleight-of-hand: Arrowhead Games is still engaging in the lengthy process of hiring new staff to match its success, which is a lot harder than you might think. After all, who trains the new hires if everyone's already busy matching pace? Money can lead a dev to water, but it can't teach them how to drink from your custom-made infrastructure of lakes.

In essence, major orders have a degree of showmanship to them. We needed to liberate Tien Kwan for mechs, but we were probably getting them anyway. We had a massive push to obliterate the Automatons, but somehow, they returned. The Menkent Line, however, feels like the first time this magic trick has spilled over into actual discontent with the man behind the curtain. As Reddit user Renorec lays out in the comments to this excellent image: "Real talk, we fought hard to establish a defensive line and for what?" 

Why was the Menkent Line so horribly ineffective? from r/Helldivers

The aptly-named Dushnila_complainer also notes this in the following thread on the game's subreddit. As they point out, the story conceit behind Operation Menkent was to "allow SEAF Engineers to begin construction of orbital defences on those planets, deterring the advance of the Automaton Fleet and allowing counteroffensive preparations to begin", as per the in-game dispatch.

Dushnila_complainer rightly says, however, that "both planets were attacked once again without taking into account that there is the orbital defence system. There are no buffs for the defence campaign, nothing. The planets are just attacked like there is no orbital defence or anything else."

Was the Menkent Line Major Order pointless, or did I miss something? from r/Helldivers

The issue isn't that the planets were attacked, or even lost. It's that there weren't any real rewards for doing so beyond a batch of medals. Which seems strange, since Arrowhead has been able to deploy unique benefits to certain planets before. 

Even a token of free orbital laser stratagems or something would've gone a long way. As one commenter notes: "I was hoping these Orbital Defences would have given us some kind of edge on the ground …  nope, they're forgotten and we're getting our shit pushed in mercilessly."

Fabrication fatigue

Automatons are just kinda painful to fight, especially when they're the main big bad. I like downing devastators as much as the next patriot, but it's mostly because I'm acclimated at this point, like a hot bath. I'm still far less stressed when I'm chewing through waves of bugs, all cosy in my big mech.

On the other hand, it's not as if the Terminids have gone anywhere. You can go and fight them. They're even technically a part of this latest major order—but I'm certainly not alone in feeling like, well, if I'm playing Helldivers 2, I want to be contributing to the war effort. It's one of the game's main features, after all. You're doing your part!

As Reddit user MyOwnTutor observes in a separate thread discussing the issue, "the bot front is scattered to the winds." Another player writes in a reply: "The majority of the community really came together for the final push to wipe them out, then two days later they came back even stronger, making it feel like our efforts didn't matter at all." 

I'm also far from the only one who has picked up on the recent weighting towards Automaton-focused major orders, and missed the recent bug vacation entirely. As one poor sod notes: "I was either asleep or at work for the entire kill bugs order." You hate to see it. 

Late last month, I wrote about how games like Helldivers 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 suffer from this kind of gradual decline in goodwill because we love them to death, playing them obsessively until they're ruined for us. I still think that's very much a factor here. You're only in this situation if you've been contributing to every major order going on a full month, now. All signs point to burnout, and there's only one antidote for that: taking a break.

But I do think there's an interesting, two-pronged design issue happening here: In order to tell these large, sweeping narratives, you have to focus on one enemy at a time—which can produce fatigue. To keep players invested in those stories, you also need to make them feel like their choices mattered—and the Menkent Line fell just short of doing that. It's a lot of pressure for Arrowhead Games.

Ultimately, I'm just curious to see how the studio is going to keep the ball rolling. While none of this is a sign that the game is secretly dying or whatever, it is a sign that a playerbase can't run marathons all the time. Something's gotta give.

At times the game will force a side-on platforming section on me, complete with bottomless pits and an endless supply of incoming objects to avoid. In other moments I'll have to play along with some scripted chase sequence, or hit buttons at the right as if QTE-ruined cutscenes never went out of fashion. There are even multiple stealth sections to grit my teeth through. They don't turn up often, but they do turn up more often than they should in an action RPG of any age: never.

Which is a pity, because when I'm not gaming like it's 1999 there's a definite charm to Sand Land's imaginative selection of vehicles, which encompasses bulbous tanks and gigantic battleships. They're all covered in cartoonishly scuffed metal and exaggerated welding seams, and include wonderfully fine animated details. Bashed-up trucks might have a balancing pair of back legs that only set down when the vehicle comes to a stop. Tanks rear up slightly whenever they gain a sudden burst of speed, and lighter vehicles bounce around as they navigate uneven terrain. I can almost feel how hefty these machines are just by looking at them.

Anything I can drive can be built and then generously customised in a garage using materials found while I'm off adventuring, creating new weapons, new engines, or even attaching specialist extra functions and helpful drones. Once that's sorted, these machines as a whole as well as their individual parts can then be upgraded further, or have new parts swapped in as required. It's no Armored Core, but it does help make everything I build feel like it's truly mine.

So it's a shame this core part of the game is about as much fun as taking a car to a real mechanic. Each new vehicle is made up of multiple parts, all of which require an increasingly long list of materials to create, many of which must be scavenged from enemies or combined using raw ingredients at a workshop. On its own it'd be annoying, but at times the plot grinds to a halt until I build one very specific machine and then it becomes almost irritating enough to make me want to uninstall the damned game.

Item descriptions like "can be obtained from a variety of vehicles" are frustratingly unhelpful when I need just one more of some generic knickknack to build a bike that'll help me reach the next area by speeding across a desert's worth of quicksand. I had little choice but to wander around and hope I stumbled upon the right parts before I ran out of patience.

At least it doesn't take any time at all to hop around the map, thanks to a generous fast travel system. Any major town or health-restoring water station I've already visited automatically becomes a free teleportation point, so the chances are when someone says "Hey, maybe we should go to…" it'll only take a few clicks.

Unfortunately, wherever I end up the vehicles find another new way to disappoint. I may be able to bring up to five of them with me at any time, but they all serve very narrow roles. The environmental obstacles and puzzles I encounter always have just one bot-based solution to them—use this one to pull this heavy box, use this specific type to hover over this otherwise impassable terrain—and sometimes a particular bot is only needed for a few seconds before I'm better off either switching back to my trusty tank or Beelzebub's pointy-shoe'd feet.

Plenty of enemies will try to pick a fight as I poke around, and I'm free to either have my purple little ball of demonic royalty punch them into submission or hop into something more substantial and take them out that way. These battles are so seamlessly integrated into Sand Land's world that there's nothing to stop me from picking monsters off from a distance, or even just boosting my way straight past them. That freedom is a good thing, as the game's combat is not complex enough to warrant more serious attention.

Battles on any of the game's three freely changeable difficulty settings rarely required me to do anything more demanding than make sure I was hitting the enemy more often than they hit me, and using one of the widely available repair kits from time to time if I needed to. Pinpoint-accurate shots at weak points just aren't relevant here, nor is anything as obvious as shooting a tank's treads to stop it moving. Larger bosses are often accompanied by hordes of weaklings or defensive turrets—both of which have a nasty habit of infinitely respawning. These could have been an interesting tactical consideration, something to prioritise, clear out, or even fear. Instead they're generally better off ignored, robbing these climatic clashes of even that layer of tactical potential.

At least Sand Land's likeable rag-tag cast of generic stereotypes—Fiery Youth, Grizzled Veteran, Girl With Obvious Secrets, Bad Guys Who Become Good Guys After A Chat—and the eco-conscious story they're tied up in do their best to liven things up. Yes, hoarding natural resources for profit and war are bad, and Sand Land should say it. The messages get a little lost when the only response I have to anything is to blow it up with a tank, but it does try.

The winsome characters aren't enough to save something that plays like the dictionary definition of a licensed anime game though. Sand Land definitely looks the part, but the game underneath is never anything more than a scattered collection of unsatisfying bits and pieces. This particular take on Toriyama's sandy setting is destined to last in people's minds about as long as an ice cube in the desert.