Paradise Killer Devs Are Making A Game About The Yakuza
Today’s ID@Xbox Showcase has revealed Promise Mascot Agency, where players are tasked with playing as a Yakuza legend who was exiled to a job managing different mascots. Elements of driving, cooking, playing card games, and taking baths with your mascots are all important, apparently, to the health of the business.
Mascots include a large piece of crying tofu, a cat dressed for business, and a large pinky toe.
Promise Mascot Agency comes from game developer Ikumi Nakamura known for her work in Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, Bayonetta, and Okami, as well as the studio behind 2020 indie darling, Paradise Killer.
Promise Mascot Agency comes to Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S in 2025.
Destiny 2’s Divinity Gun Is Getting Nerfed In The Final Shape
Bungie is doing a huge pass on weapons in Destiny 2 when its next expansion, The Final Shape, releases on June 4. The balance tweaks include a blanket buff to just about all weapons in PvE activities, as well as an adjustment to Divinity–a gun that’s essential in lots of high-level play situations–that will probably make it a little more annoying to use.
The developer dropped an expansive set of details about how weapons are set to change on its website. The big change players are likely to feel immediately is a buff to all weapons against enemies in different activities. That’s the result of Bungie removing weapon “spec” mods that give you bonuses to certain kinds of enemies, like minor rank-and-file baddies or bosses. Instead of letting you spec for damage against a specific type of foe, Bungie is boosting the base damage of all your guns against all types of foes.
Here’s Bungie’s rundown of how things are changing:
Increased base PvE damage versus all combatants
- Pulse Rifles: 20%
- Exceptions: Graviton Lance and Revision Zero’s Heavy Burst mode. (These both have an intrinsic PvE damage buff built in.)
- Pellet Shotguns: 10%
- Exceptions: Legend of Acrius, Tractor Cannon, Conditional Finality, and The Fourth Horseman. (These are all already performing as intended.)
- Slug Shotguns: 9%
- Fusion Rifles: 7%
- Exceptions: One Thousand Voices. (This one was just buffed.)
- Sniper Rifles: 7%
- Exceptions: Izanagi’s Burden’s Honed Edge shots and Cloudstrike’s storm. (These are both performing well.)
- Glaive projectiles: 7%
- Linear Fusion Rifles: 5%
Increased damage versus Minors (red bars)–this stacks with the base PvE damage increase
- Sidearms, Trace Rifles, Scout Rifles, and Bows: 20%
- Auto Rifles and Pulse Rifles: 15%
- For Pulse Rifles, this is in addition to the above buff, and Graviton Lance and Revision Zero’s Heavy Burst mode are included.
- I.e. Pulse Rifles will do 1.2 * 1.15 = 38% more damage to red bars.
- Submachine Guns: 10%
- Hand Cannons: 5%
- For Pulse Rifles, this is in addition to the above buff, and Graviton Lance and Revision Zero’s Heavy Burst mode are included.
Increased damage versus Majors (orange bars)
- Trace Rifles: 20%
Increased damage globally, including PvP
- Machine Guns: 7%
- Swords: 7%
Bungie is also making more granular adjustments to various Exotic weapons, depending on how they perform in their designed roles and how players are using them. That mostly means that underperforming guns are getting a boost–but a few, like Divinity, are getting adjustments in the other direction.
Divinity is a trace rifle that helps teams out by creating a big critical hit spot on enemies, making it pretty crucial in some high-level activities. The trouble is, Divinity lets you get around the intended mechanics of a lot of fights, and it’s so useful that it’s basically required in certain battles, especially against enemies that move around a lot and are tough to hit. What’s more, players have gotten pretty good at using Divinity as effectively as possible by “feathering” their trigger pulls to make ammo last as long as possible.
Bungie isn’t changing how Divinity or feathering the trigger work on principle, but it is adjusting the effectiveness of the gun so that it takes longer to create the critical hit spot on an enemy. Divinity will be less efficient and the beam won’t last as long, even if you’re feathering the trigger, which means it’ll be a little less reliable in tough content.
A few other Exotics and their perks are getting adjusted, mostly to make them more useful in PvE. Dead Man’s Tale, Truth, Queensbreaker, The Colony, and Touch of Malice are all getting adjustments and tweaks that’ll make them function better against various enemies. Osteo Striga, on the other hand, will be quite a bit less deadly–the poison-spreading submachine gun will now get a four-second cooldown on its poison effect, so you won’t be able to blanket a room in infectious death just by killing a few weak enemies.
That will hopefully have the effect of making more of your guns useful across a greater number of activities. You can check out the full list of adjustments on Bungie’s website.
Diablo 4 Season 4’s Loot Overhaul Is Going Over Very Well With Fans
Diablo 4 Season 4’s massive Loot Reborn update may have been just what the doctor ordered, as fans are praising it as the “best season start so far” for Blizzard’s ARPG.
It’s been a bumpy road up until this point. Despite fairly positive reviews upon release, player sentiment on Diablo 4 took a downturn by the time the game’s first season came out, with players criticizing how its gear progression worked and its lack of endgame content. While new seasons did introduce changes alongside various new systems and mechanics, they still left players underwhelmed. When Diablo 4 launched on Steam in October 2023, it quickly found itself with a “Mixed” average user review rating.
Now Playing: Diablo 4 | Loot Reborn | Gameplay Trailer
That doesn’t appear to be the case with Season 4, which dramatically reworked the game’s loot to make it more powerful, upgradable, and easier to acquire and customize than ever before. The result is praise on places like Reddit and “Mostly Positive” recent reviews on Steam, which was not the case for previous season launches.
“They did it, they fixed the game,” user Frockyyy wrote in their positive Steam review posted after the Season 4 update.
Many on Reddit seem to agree, with users praising the new season for its improvements to Helltides, which are now playable at lower World Tiers and much more lucrative, and how its various itemization updates have removed much of the inventory “hassle” that previously took up too much of Diablo 4 players’ time. One user said it’s the “best season start so far” and is “Diablo 4 as it should have originally been released.” Another stated the game in Season 4 is “hardly recognizable” compared to launch, and that they are “having a lot more fun.”
Part of the positive reception may be the fact that Season 4 was the first Diablo 4 season to be extensively playtested by the community on the game’s on a public test realm, something that is used in other Blizzard games like World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 but wasn’t used for Diablo 4 in previous seasons. That feedback then made its way into Season 4 from the start as opposed to weeks later like in previous seasons. Despite the positive effect the PTR seems to have had, Blizzard stated in a recent interview with GameSpot that it doesn’t have concrete plans to do PTR testing for every future season.
That being said, players do have a few complaints. The first is that some think the game is too easy at lower levels post-Season 4 update. Others are pointing out that new Tempering recipes, used to add affixes to gear, can be easily missed once they drop on the ground and should be more visible. Another complaint is that the Salvage button now salvages all items, including Legendaries and Uniques, which wasn’t the case before. That means more than a few players have likely been burned and lost some powerful items before learning about the change.
Despite the complaints, it does seem that Diablo 4’s latest season is a major step forward. As Reddit user Netsuko puts it, “S4 feels like it is exactly the direction this game needs to be taken,” and that it makes them “hopeful for the expansion.”
It’s not the first time an entry in the Diablo franchise has seen a dramatic overhaul. Diablo 3’s launch was a disaster, plagued by technical issues and complaints about its real-money auction house. It would take years for player sentiment to turn around following major updates and the release of Diablo 3’s first and only expansion, Reaper of Souls.
Diablo 4 recently released on Game Pass. It’s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, is slated to release in late 2024.
