Weekly Recap #423 Sept 11th – Heroes of the Storm Craft Wars, Ninjala X Sonic, GW2 Fractal & More!

JamesBl0nde recaps the MMO gaming news for the week of September 11, 2020! Timestamps and transcript follow.

Heroes of the Storm brings a cool new event to the nexus, Season 5 in vigor is, need I say, pretty wild, Sonic the Hedgehog and friends dash their way into Ninjala and not one but two new free to play games go live and ready to play this week.

Whats up guys! JamesBl0nde here with the weekly recap for gaming news and announcements for the week of September 11th 2020 and once again we’ve go plenty of news this week.

Spellbreak Launch Gameplay Trailer: 0:19
Starting it off we have the launch of not one but two online free to play games. First up is Spellbreak developed by Proletariat, a battle royale with a fantasy twist: every player character is a spell caster in this one. The game features six core battlemage classes: Frostborn, Pyromancer, Conduit, Stoneshaper, Tempest, or Toxicologist. The game lets you blend elements and utilize magical items hidden around the map to devastate your enemies – or survive a bad fight. It kinda reminds me of Magicka Wizard Wars except in third person and…. Yeah maybe not. The game also features cross play and cross progression, which is great considering it’s on Epic, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch.

Diabotical Launch Trailer: 1:10
The second free to play game launching this past week is Diabotical… no that’s actually the name of the game, Diabotical, its an arena first person shooter where the characters are round robots known as Eggbots. Currently the game features a few fan favorite modes: one versus one duels, fragcounting Aim Arena, capture-the-flag style MacGuffin, and team deathmatch style Wipeout. The game also features its own custom map editor, HUD editor, ranked play and esport support, cosmetics, and Twitch drops. This one you can only find on Epic Games Store right now.

Destiny 2 Hunter Revenant: 1:42

Moving on, Bungie has wrapped up the gameplay reveals for the Stasis subclasses in Destiny 2: Beyond Light with a showcase of the Hunter Revenant. Their melee skill utilizes shuriken, which can bounce off multiple enemies doing damage and slowing them. The Revenant’s super, Silence & Squall, creates a pair of kama which first freezes enemies, then detonates with the second strike, causing a Stasis storm that will track down your foes. Pretty epic, but you’ll still have to wait until November 10th in order to play the new expansion.

Guild Wars 2 New Fractal: Sunqua Peak: 2:12
In other news, Guild Wars 2 has announced a new update landing on September 15th – the introduction of a new Fractal. It’s been over a year since GW2 has added one of these challenge instances, but you can look forward to Sunqua Peak, a beautiful mountain caught in a terrible storm. Prepare for some elemental fights that will add a new challenge to the game while you’re waiting for more news about the End of Dragons expansion.

Star Trek Online: House Divided on Console: 2:36

Star Trek Online’s console players can finally catch up with their PC neighbors as the House Divided update is going live just three months after PC. The House Divided update brings the Year of Klingon, sending players to the year 2411, wonder if they have covid… there. introducing Robert o’Reily to the stories cast and welcoming back J.G. Hertzler in the role of Martok. Klingons also get a new tutorial experience and revamps of several character and ship models. All this is not new, news for pc players of course.

SMITE Releases Odyssey: Reckoning: 3:12

If you’re looking for a reason to play SMITE as we head into fall, here it is: the Odyssey: Reckoning update is now live! This months-long event will last until early 2021, and will feature dozens of unlockable skins, a new Odyssey map, quests, and lore. The top reward is the Ultimate T5 skin – Eclipse Summoner Hel, who switches between light and dark and is joined by the mythical guardians of Sun and Moon. There’s also a new Necromancer Battle Pass, featuring dark fantasy skins that include Razor’s Edge Isis and Sinister Sentinel Athena.

Heroes of the Storm Craft Wars: 3:34
And it’s Starcraft versus Warcraft in Heroes of the Storm’s newest event, Craft Wars! Put down your knitting needles and glue sticks, this is all about mashing up themes, skins, and even abilities. The newest Nexus Anomaly event features the Gladiator’s Medallion, an item that lets you drop most crowd control effects and gain an unstoppable buff – good thing it’s on a five minute timer. The patch that brings you this event also brings a new ARAM mode, a rework to D.Va and Gazlowe, and more.

Vigor Season 5 Reveal: 4:14

Next up in the news, mentioned in last week’s recap, we get the details for season 5 in Vigor. The season is titled Renegades and it’s a bit bigger than past seasons and as the name implies its all about the wild west desparados, rebels, or priests preaching about the end of times. Put it this way, there’s some pretty sweet new customizations with the latest battle pass, just sayin. The Sawmil map also follows the wild west theme, and perfect for the good ole’ fashion shootouts there’s a small arena area that’s sure to draw some attention. With this update the developers added a new way to play in a premade group of five and show teamwork to the opposing outlanders, making Elimination more enjoyable with a group of friends. Of course there’s a lot more in the season 5 release so if its your thing, pickup all the details from the official news post linked in the description below.

Ninjala – Dev Update (Sonic Collab & New Game Mode): 4:59

This next bit of news features a really cool collab with one of my all time favorite characters and I’m talking about Sonic the Hedgehog in the next update coming to Ninjala. So starting September 23rd players will be able to grab some awesome sonic themed items such as Sonic, tails, and knuckles avatar outfits, sonic and Dr. Eggman decorations and so much more. Of course all of these can be purchased with in game currency which is both purchasable and through regular playing of the game. Besides the collab, coming in early October, the new game mode “featured battle” will be added to the game with Beast Attack as the game’s first limited time event. Beast Attack is an extreme ninja version of tag where eight players enter an arena and some are randomly chosen to become a beast. The beasts must then hunt down and defeat the other players, thus turning them into beasts… you can probably figure out the rest. Of course going forward players can expect new events like this to appear periodically in featured battle going forward. The Sonic collab event however lasts until October 21st.

Ylands Creators Club: 5:56

In other news update 1.4 for Ylands is here and brings with it the Creators Club, a very important milestone for the game. This update finally allows the creators the support they deserve. Creators joining the club get the opportunity to monetize any aspects of their creations once applying for a Creators Commission, not to mention numerous other benefits such as better exchange rates, cool in game swag and more. With this the update also brings a revamp to the workshop so you can find the games you want to play quicker and easier than before, completely rebuilt how gun handling works in the game and plenty of other bug fixes and improvements overall. Quite a hefty update, and its nice that its geared towards player created content.

Heavy Metal Machines Colosseum: 6:38
Also in the news this week, Heavy Metal Machines brings in the Colosseum: Battle for Prestige! The colosseum is where the Metal City Gladiators battle for prestige and supremacy in an online tournament that takes place within the game every Sunday. Here all matches are worth double the fame, plus if you place in the tournament you’ll snag enough fame (basically the in game currency) to unlock whatever you might be missing. Pretty cool little tournament idea every week.

Twin Saga Patch 29: 7:04

And finally for our last bit of news, Twin Saga drops patch 29 this past week which introduces a new Bunny Sweetheart Berry mount, new Senshi quest and daily Senshi Saga Missions, new Mystic Jungle dungeon, New awakened class level cap increase and more. The new Mystic Jungle dungeon, available for lv93+ characters is actually pirate themed and as such full of treasure of course. The level cap of the Awakened Class was increased from Lv40 to Lv60 and Advanced Awakened Class Talents can be unlocked at Lv42 and new skills can be acquired upon reaching lv50. Nice little update for late game players.

But with that said, that’s about it for all the major news and announcements for this week. Be sure to stay safe, and keep your families healthy! Like always you can find more information on the news topics, linked in the description below, feel free to discuss the news or even more news in the comments below and don’t forget to like, subscribe, wash your hands a bunch, hit that little bell icon to get notifications and of course share this video! But until next time guys that’s going to be it for me… I’m JamesBl0nde… see ya out there gamers!