Game Into Awful: Latest Updates and Analysis

2XKO game director speaks out about the next "much smaller" online play test, a new fuse, and more ahead of February update

2XKO game director Shaun "unconkable" Rivera has posted a lengthy statement online (first on Reddit, later on X) shutting down speculation and. Misinformation regarding the game and its upcoming online play test. This includes the fact that the next play test will be "much smaller" than the first Alpha Lab test.

The entire statement, which you can read here, kicks off by acknowledging the "crazy memes and hysteria" of the game's official subreddit. Before revealing the team were initially planning on running a larger-scale play test next month, with the February modification covering this event. However, it looks like plans have changed to a smaller play test instead, while the team builds up infrastructure for a larger influx of players later this year.

Rivera also addressed the Pulse Fuse. As there have been discussions among the community of it going away. This fuse, for those who can't remember, allowed for players to mash a single button and. Perform a decent combo (while retaining all their usual attacks). This, it seems, has been replaced with an auto-combo setting selectable during character select.

Instead, Rivera reveals more about a new fuse: Sidekick. This basically removes the ability for the two playable characters to switch at all, instead providing the point character with more health and. Providing the second player more of a "support" role. Think of it like Yummi in League of Legends, who is attached to another champion and assists them by throwing out abilities (in 2XKO, assists) that aid in their assault.

This information seems to have been suddenly posted in response to leaks that had appeared online earlier this month (we obviously can't link to 'em here). Which explains the sudden and largely unexpected post by Rivera here. He doesn't provide a date for the February revision, which remains the main topic of speculation in the minds of 2XKO fans.

Obviously. This post raises a bunch of questions. The first, and most pressing in my mind, is how much smaller the upcoming play test will be? The first alpha lab proved popular, with flocks of new and. Experienced fighting game players rushing for access.

It also begs the question of why a smaller test? If I may speculate, it could be to gather data on a specific user base. Perhaps to enhanced balance the game for a wider net of players. For example, they're adding the Sidekick fuse, right? So maybe they want a smaller test aimed at a control group of 50/50 experienced and totally new testers? It's something I'm personally keen to learn more about.

However the cookie crumbles, it's February 21 as of writing. Which means it shouldn't be too long until we know for certain what the deal is. Still, an interesting peek into what's going on, even if it was sudden.

What do you think of this new info? Does Sidekick sound like a cool new addition to you? Let us know below!

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As you might have heard, Helldivers 2's Galactic War is currently on hiatus. As Arrowhead works to fix a bug with planet libration rates that's been.

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Helldivers 2 continues its streak of turning missteps into in-game lore: After a major feature was paused for 24 hours, Super Earth says 'nothing out of the ordinary has happened'

Helldivers 2 has gone a little quiet since the end-of-year blowout that saw the game's third enemy faction, The Illuminate. Storm into the galactic war with their undemocratic mind control tricks and chicanery. The heroes kept a-diving and the fronts of the galactic war have kept a-shifting until yesterday: When all of a sudden the liberation started going through the roof.

Arrowhead launched an revision on February 27 that, appropriately enough. Hid a very nasty bug. Except this one seemed to serve the cause of managed democracy because, in the studio's words, it caused "an error that is affecting planet liberation rates, causing them to skyrocket." Arrowhead admitted that "we know this is fun" but. As the Helldivers tore through enemy planets with ease it was "breaking the Galactic War mechanic itself."

The studio quickly took the unprecedented decision to "pause" the Galactic War until a fix could be deployed. The game remained playable over the last day or so, but Helldivers were not able to liberate planets or advance the war in any way. But there was a silver lining regardless:

"This is our mistake and we own it," noted Arrowhead. "We are not going to revert any of the damage done by this error, however, so your major order victory is still secure."

The reaction to this really demonstrates what an amazing job Arrowhead has done in managing its community because, while you could of course find folk grumbling about the pause, most players leapt into jokey lore conspiracies about Illuminate mind control, special tactics to throw the enemy off. And of course endless jokes about bugs.

And even improved, Arrowhead has now fixed the problem and is playing along. Upon logging into Helldivers 2 today you'll see the following message:

"High Command would like to inform all personnel that nothing out of the ordinary has happened in the past 24 hours. The fight for Managed Democracy has continued in an inspiring—but entirely expected—manner.

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"Personnel who believe they have experienced or witnessed any sort of anomalous occurrences may be suffering from Illuminate mind influence, and should research themselves for psychological screening immediately."

All I can say is that I've probably never seen a dev misstep go down so well as this has: Arrowhead clearly got it wrong and had to disable a core feature of the game for around 24 hours, but this propagandistic brazening-through of the issue (following. Of course, actual information) has the Helldivers cock-a-hoop about how the game can handle such snafus.

"It's been mentioned in other threads, but this 'space 1984' thing they have going on makes it incredibly easy to canonize real world screwups," says _Strato_ on the subreddit. "Arrowhead made a really good choice. No matter what bullshit they pull and no matter what breaks, they can just do this stuff and it works in-universe. 'It was an Automaton software modification. There was no Automaton software modification. Get back to diving.'"

Brilliantly, loads of other Helldivers have replied to this with the classic Todd Howard line: "It just works."

A brief selection of other responses. "Thank Liberty I'm free of thought", says JackRabbit323. "Double plus good" says the well-read boilingfrogsinpants. "Nothing ever happens," says alexfadedphotographs. "Can we make it an official part of the lore that nothing happened on February 27th 2025," asks BozoTheTaxAttorney, who needs a visit from the democracy officer: Because we all know nothing did happen on that date.

Helldivers is now just over a year old, and. In my opinion has had one of the best first years of any live service game yet. Part of that is the game's quality and regular cadence of updates, sure, but by far the larger appeal for me has been the galactic war and how players have been involved in shaping it: Arrowhead knows its community, listens to them. And plays to them. Players talk to each other using the game's language, joke about reporting each other for infringements of democracy, and. Semi-inhabit the fiction outside of the game. You couldn't have a enhanced example than what happened on February 27. 2025: Precisely nothing.

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upgrade UK: Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has introduced that the game's Galactic War has now been unpaused.

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'It runs awful. It looks awful': Monster Hunter Wilds performance issues put a dampener on its record-breaking concurrents as it settles into an early Mixed rating on Steam

I'm now over 100 hours into Monster Hunter Wilds, yet between a respectable rig and a CPU upgrade a few hours into playing. I gotta say: The game runs kinda bum. That seems to be the most commonly shared sentiment among the game's negative Steam reviews right now too, with the first few hours of launch seeing it dip below 50% positive into a 'Mixed' rating.

Complaints about crashes, poor optimisation, stutters. And framerate dips are rife across its handful of negative reviews right now. "This game is absolutely amazing—but has the worst optimisation I've ever seen," the top negative review reads. "I understand that new games are becoming more demanding and people are expected to upgrade, but this is absurd. I'm aware this isn't the first instance of new games having poor performance on launch, because the same thing happened with World, but it feels inexcusable at this point."

One reviewer claimed they were sporting a "beefy rig with a 3080 Super and. Decent CPU" yet was unable to run the game "at an acceptable frame rate." Another wrote: "Absolutely atrocious performance for how the game looks. Runs even worse than the beta," adding that they'd gone from 60 - 70 FPS on high settings down to 50 FPS on medium "with noticeable dips."

"The game does not look nearly good enough to warrant this performance," it continued. "Everything is covered in a grimy texture with assets that look like you straight took them out of a PS3 game. If I can run KCD2 and Cyberpunk on maxed out settings comfortably; then there is no reason this game should be running like this. Embarrassing."

The performance-to-graphics ratio is a pervading criticism, with yet another negative review writing: "This game has record shattering performance issues. It runs awful. It looks awful. It crashes for no reason. It freezes for no reason. It somehow won't even launch on Windows telling me an RTX 4070 is unsupported. The open beta at least managed to boot."

Here are some things reviewers mentioned ran more effective than Monster Hunter Wilds:

Dozens of reviews mention not even being able to play because of crashes, along with a handful referring to the game being too easy or complaints around Capcom's ancient use of paid DLC in order for people to have access to the full character creator once your hunter is already made.

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Of course. Not every review is (justifiably) lamenting the performance issues. "The gameplay is the best in any MH game so far. The story is solid, the characters are cool and funny and the design team [did] such a good job," one Steam reviewer wrote. "Almost every armor set looks like endgame gear!" Another reviewer called Wilds an "easy recommend," saying it was an "awesome step forward for the MH franchise. Lots of rough edges smoothed out, great onboarding for new players, and some really awesome weapon updates." Other callouts to the gameplay are buried between all of the inevitable memes and false-positive reviews, though even some of those then go on to mention that the game is in vital need of optimising.

It is a real shame just how many issues people are having on the hardware side of things. And I'm right there with 'em. I'm easily dipping into 20-30 FPS when I'm in base camps now, and I hopped into a few SOS Flares that were littered with more frame drops than I'd encountered during the review period.

Thankfully, PC Gamer is stacked with a wonderful. All-knowing hardware team. Nick Evanson has been hard at work over these last few weeks, stress-testing Monster Hunter Wilds to scope out its performance. He's put together the best PC settings for your rig: Whether you're still rocking that budget build from a decade ago or you've not long ago splurged on some new parts. These tweaks should help get you a few extra frames without compromising too heavily on looks. What little looks there seem to be, anyway.

Nick helpfully points out that Wilds "is far less of a CPU hog than Dragon's Dogma 2 is," but ultimately doesn't change the fact that they both unfortunately run just as poorly as each other.

In addition to all that, I've found diving into a singleplayer lobby has alleviated a lot of the stress on my rig. Which is a shame that I have to do it but may well be a worthy alternative for the time being. Plus, you can still fire off SOS Flares and jump into them, as Wilds will plonk you in a temporary multiplayer server before shooting you back off on your own.

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