Thanks to a massive new intel drop, we now know a lot more about Black Ops 6 Zombies than we expected at this point in the year. The co-op mode looks to be an overhaul to many of the underlying systems, but it’s also keeping a few classic features intact.
]]>Treyarch has officially unveiled Black Ops 6 Zombies, the highly-anticipated return to the round-based, zombie-slaying action Call of Duty has been missing for several years. This is more than just a new episode of Zombies, however, it’s a fresh start in a number of ways.
]]>We’re just days away from the release of XDefiant, Ubisoft’s free-to-play shooter that’s been in development for what felt like ten years. The game recently, finally, for real this time, locked in a release date of May 21.
]]>2024 will forever be known as the year of record games industry layoffs and studio closures, but I’d argue it will be just as remembered as the year Xbox lost the plot. Every other month, Microsoft’s gaming division has what ranges from avoidable PR scandal to full-on doom-and-gloom meltdown.
]]>The road EA is taking with the next Battlefield has been slowly coming into view in the months since the company began to right the Battlefield 2042 ship. That may not necessarily be evident, if all you’ve been really following is 2042’s constantly evolving state. Behind the scenes, however, EA and series creator DICE have been putting together the building blocks for what is very likely not going to be just a standard sequel in the storied military shooter series.
]]>After what felt like months and months of limited testing, the long-awaited launch of Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile finally arrives this week all across the world. The battle royale game is the closest thing we have to the big-boy Warzone in the palm of our hands, but it offers surprisingly more than that.
]]>After about a year in limited testing, Activision has finally announced a public release date for Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile. The mobile off-shoot arrives March 21 worldwide, on iOS and Android.
]]>You know last year’s Call of Duty didn’t do numbers when you start hearing rumours about this year’s entry so early in the year. Modern Warfare 3 was poorly received by critics and many casual players, and it broke Call of Duty’s best-selling streak in North America.
]]>If there's a single characteristic you could assign to the current era of Call of Duty, which does not change from game to game, it would be its matchmaking system. This has often been a black box; a topic Activision was never willing to address publically with the wider community, or at more private media events.
]]>You know this year's Call of Duty hasn't gone over well with anyone when leaks about next year's game start popping up so early. According to a new report, Call of Duty 2024 - which has long been assumed to be developed by Treyarch - will indeed be a Black Ops game.
]]>Activision is trying to paint the best picture possible about the launch of Modern Warfare 3. Even setting aside the fact that it is Call of Duty's worst-rated game, every other metric seems to suggest that this one is not a hit.
]]>Modern Warfare 3's first-ever double everything event is upon us. Starting later today, the game will kick off a double XP, double weapon XP, and double battle pass XP event across all platforms.
]]>Modern Warfare 3 launched with a lot of baggage carried over from Modern Warfare 2, and the old version of Warzone. Because the vast majority of skins, weapons, operators and more carry forward from those games to this year's Call of Duty, problems became clear on day one.
]]>The launch of Modern Warfare 3 is firmly behind us now, so Activision and Sledgehammer Games have shifted the focus to hyping up some of what to expect when the first season drops. We still don't have a firm date for it, but we do have new information about some of the new content.
]]>Infinity Ward, one of the three main Call of Duty development studios, has opened up a new branch. While each era of Call of Duty tends to have its star team, Infinity Ward certainly is leading the current era of the series, having reclaimed its top spot with 2019's Modern Warfare reboot.
]]>Sledgehammer Games, which recently rolled out the first major patch for Modern Warfare 3, has also pushed out a playlist update for the weekend. Playlist updates bring new playlists to the game, and typically rotate every week or so.
]]>Even before Modern Warfare 3 came out and everyone spent enough time with it to see just how utterly mediocre it is, it was easy to see that the so-called Open Combat Missions were going to be the weakest part of what already looked like a hollow campaign.
]]>Modern Warfare 3 has received its first major patch since the game's release on November 10. Patch 1.33 came out Wednesday on all platforms, and it's one that's been highly anticipated. The problem, unfortunately, is that so much of what players were looking forward to didn't actually make it.
]]>Modern Warfare 3 launched with a feature no previous Call of Duty had. That, of course, was the ability for skins, weapons, operators and so on to carry forward from MW2. We can spend all day arguing the merits of that decision, but the point is that MW3 started its life with a lot of baggage from Warzone, and last year's game.
]]>It's pretty clear that the launch of Modern Warfare 3 has had more negatives associated with it than positives. As poorly received as the game has been so far, Call of Duty games always sell very well. Some, clearly, more than others.
]]>At this point, no one could say they're really surprised about just how utterly poorly received Modern Warfare 3 has been. As the dust continues to settle and more reviews get released (ours coming soon, though here's the campaign for now), it's becoming clear that this is one of the worst-scoring games of 2023.
]]>If you’ve spent any time playing Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer, you’ll no doubt have been introduced to Armory Unlocks, a new progression system that hides a wealth of functional items that you’d normally expect to earn through normal character level progression.
]]>Modern Warfare 3 has arrived, and with it, a new update to Ricochet Anti-Cheat, Activision's ever-evolving watcher. The team behind it has revealed some of the new tools being deployed on the backend, and a few delicious new additions to the ever-growing list of tricks the game can use to torment cheaters.
]]>In what's bound to be the least surprising news of the year, the just-released Modern Warfare 3 had less than half the development time most Call of Duty games get. That's according to a new report, which reveals that Sledgehammer Games was only given under 18 months to develop it.
]]>Modern Warfare 3 is this year’s Call of Duty, whether we like it or not. Call of Duty fans are Call of Duty fans, so they’re going to play this year’s game regardless. They generally have their own opinions about every tiny detail, and they’re unlikely to be reading this.
]]>Modern Warfare 3 is technically not out for a few more hours (depending on your platform and where you happen to be in the world) but, as is the case every year, the servers are already live. This means there are ways to access multiplayer - or potentially more - right now.
]]>Call of Duty multiplayer and Warzone have had their ups and downs when it comes to cheating, and it's looking like Modern Warfare 3 will not escape that cycle. After players reported running into cheaters in the recent beta, many are now concerned multiplayer's imminent launch will be riddled with cheaters.
]]>The Modern Warfare 3 campaign introduces an interesting style of mission that you have not quite seen before in any other Call of Duty. They’re called Open Combat Missions, and they give you freedom to approach the different situations in a way that suits you.
]]>I find late title cards fascinating. When/how creators choose to drop the name of their game/film says a lot about how they perceive their work, and what they want to immediately call attention to. In that way, the title card for Modern Warfare 3’s campaign is quite effective. It tells you all you need to know about the experience you’re about to have with it.
]]>Boy oh boy does Microsoft want you to know that Modern Warfare 3 is available to pre-order, and that you can play its campaign right now if you do so. The platform holder's way of advertising that fact, however, is very questionable.
]]>Though we are one week away from the official launch of Modern Warfare 3, anyone who buys a digital edition of the game from now until then can play the full campaign immediately. This is the second year in-a-row that Call of Duty has done this.
]]>Sony will sell a PlayStation 5 Slim disc edition bundle with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, per an advertisement that has appeared online.
]]>We are just days away now from the big launch of Modern Warfare 3, and developer Sledgehammer Games is starting to reveal more and more of what you can expect at launch, including a surprise.
]]>The full launch of Modern Warfare 3 is just a few short days away. If you're excited to play this year's Call of Duty, you've likely already finished the poorly-received campaign.
]]>It must be Call of Duty season, folks! Nothing gets Call of Duty fans' blood pumping like their yearly impassioned pleas to rid the series of SBMM. Modern Warfare 3 is mere days away at this point, which means it's time for the people who buy Call of Duty every year to complain about their favourite topic.
]]>The first session of the Modern Warfare 3 beta continues to be live (until tomorrow, October 10), but most players interested probably already jumped in over the weekend.
]]>You can earn rewards in Modern Warfare 3 upon release by watching others play the Call of Duty: Beta on Twitch. The more you watch, the more items you can earn in-game for Modern Warfare 3.
]]>Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile has been delayed to 2024, Activision announced at Call of Duty Next.
]]>As part of Call of Duty: Next, Raven Software took the stage to reveal what's next for Call of Duty: Warzone. The latest iteration of the free-to-play battle royale mode arrives alongside Modern Warfare 3.
]]>Despite the recently released, underwhelming multiplayer trailer, Modern Warfare 3 remains one of the year's biggest games. Though its multiplayer mode is largely simialr to last year's Modern Warfare 2, developer Sledgehammer Games is making major changes that should please long-time players.
]]>Ahead of the big multiplayer reveal event later this week, Activision and Sledgehammer Games dropped our first look at Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer in the form of a new trailer. As we've come to expect from these early trailers, this one is heavily stylised, and really only serves to quickly show off some of the new features/maps/weapons and general feel of the mode.
]]>The big Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer reveal is quickly approaching. To whet your appetite a bit, developer Sledgehammer Games unveiled one of the big new features early. The Aftermarket Parts system is an overhaul to Conversion Kits, which is part of the weapon-building Gunsmith.
]]>It's that time of year again, folks: Call of Duty beta time! This is the year of Modern Warfare 3, and we're going to be getting another chance at some hands-on time soon. There are a few interesting changes to mechanics this year, and the MW3 beta will provide the perfect opportunity to sample them ahead of launch.
]]>It's honestly a little endearing how hard Call of Duty's various studios continue to try and make its lore and characters matter. After the big reveal that Modern Warfare 3 would be bringing back classic villain Makarov - despite him not being anywhere in the story of the reboots, all bets were off.
]]>If you follow the discourse around Call of Duty from a certain segment of the player base, you'll no doubt have heard the cries about disbanding lobbies, which has over the years taken on a sort of mythical status that YouTubers and the most dedicated players always claim would make the experience better for everyone if it got removed.
]]>The more of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 gets revealed, the harder it is to believe this game started out as anything but an expansion that Activision decided to blow up into a full game.
]]>Modern Warfare 3 is officially a real game that Call of Duty fans can look forward to. Following an underwhelming reveal that didn't actually tell us anything that hadn't already leaked, all eyes have been on the Opening Night Live to deliver something that will get us more excited.
]]>Against all odds, Modern Warfare 3 is bringing back Zombies mode, in a first for the series. But when Activision teased that it would be "the largest Zombies offering to date" everyone in the starving Zombies community suddenly was interested in the game.
]]>Modern Warfare 3 really is trying to garner as much of a positive vibe from the Call of Duty community - particularly those on YouTube, and Twitch - as it can. Sledgehammer Games, the lead developer on this one, has sort of positioned itself as the studio that "corrects" the wrongs made by the developer of the preceding Call of Duty.
]]>What was once referred simply as 'Call of Duty 2023' has been officially revealed to be Modern Warfare 3. Thanks to an in-game Warzone event, the reveal trailer has been unleashed, and with it, solid information about what players can expect.
]]>The Modern Warfare 3 reveal event just concluded in Warzone. Whether or not you decided to take part, the result is that the game's official reveal trailer has been unlocked for everyone. With it, we got another look at gameplay, and a better understanding of the stakes this time around.
]]>If you’ve been following games coverage and discourse for long enough, you’ll be quite aware of a particular cycle that we can’t seem to escape. It all begins whenever a game introduces a fresh mechanic or a revolutionary system, then, everyone calls for all future games in the same genre – or even those adjacent to it – to start either utilising it wholecloth, or fudge some version of it.
]]>We're just a couple of hours away from the official unveiling of Modern Warfare 3 and the leaks aren't stopping. The most recent one comes from the in-game files, as they tend to do when the game is about to be revealed in Warzone.
]]>Of all the leaks that lead up to the reveal of Modern Warfare 3, none of them suggested that this year's game would be the one to bring Zombies back into the series. Zombies mode has always been one of the key pillars of Call of Duty, of course, but the mode has either ben absent or so poorly implemented that you'd think Zombies was no longer a concern.
]]>Considering how practically everything about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 leaked ahead of time, fans have been a bit too trusting of so called insiders, even when they point out what could be mistakes or omissions, rather than actual leaks.
]]>As promised, Call of Duty will allow players - for the first time ever - to bring forward content they own from one game into the next. In this case, anything you've unlocked or bought in Modern Warfare 2 will be available in Modern Warfare 3.
]]>In case you've somehow missed it, Modern Warfare 3 is the new Call of Duty for 2023. It's been leaked more than one way, and later officially announced with a November 10 release date.
]]>Call of Duty continues to work out new ways to make the lives of cheaters miserable. The team behind the series' Ricochet Anti-Cheat has been experimenting with reducing cheaters' weapon damage significantly, making them feel delirious by creating enemies only they can see, turning real enemies invisible, and taking away their weapons.
]]>You have to feel for social media managers who now have to deal with game leaks. Before, big companies used to simply pretend they didn't happen, and only used their social media to propagate the official messages. These days, however, they're a little more willing to appear "hip"/"with it" and engage in the discourse.
]]>The next Battlefield looks to be a fresh start for the series, judging by some of the comments made by EA executives as part of the publisher's Q1 FY2024 earnings. The game has big question marks hanging over it, not just because fans don't know if it's going to be a sequel, remake or something completely different.
]]>Activision has not said a single official word about this year's Call of Duty. The publisher previously confirmed its existence, of course, and revealed that it's going to be a full-on premium release, and not an expansion to Modern Warfare 2 as earlier reports indicated.
]]>It looks like Call of Duty 2023 will be released on November 10, according to a rather interesting leak.
]]>The FTC vs Microsoft trial intended to block the latter's planned acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard, has produced another nugget of privileged information. Today's find comes from a document provided by Sony that reveals just how important Call of Duty is to the PlayStation business, among many other secrets.
]]>The United States' Federal Trade Commission (FTC)'s trial with Microsoft continues to be a source of all sorts of juicy corporate tidbits, the sort that never gets discussed in public. The trial, which is currently underway, was initiated after the FTC successfully managed to win a temporary restraining order that brought the company's preposed merger with Activision Blizzard to a halt.
]]>Call of Duty made an appearance at the Summer Game Fest showcase, but not to debut the officially confirmed "premium" Call of Duty release for 2023, which is rumoured to be in development at Sledgehammer Games as a direct sequel to last year's game.
]]>I don't know which is worse, that we have to use the old Diablo 3 Auction House argument as a way of painting the Diablo 4 business model in a better light, or that our only options are various degrees of terrible.
]]>Activision may have had a good quarter overall, but it looks like the numbers for its monthly active users are slipping. The company published its Q1 2023 financial results this week, boasting about a 35% rise in revenue compared to the same period last year.
]]>Despite reports to the contrary, Activision is moving ahead with the usual plan to release a premium, "full" Call of Duty game this year. Although the publisher revealed practically zero information about the game, it did confirm that it's happening.
]]>You can play multiplayer in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 free for a limited time starting today through April 26.
]]>Documents submitted to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) by Sony indicate the firm is worried Microsoft could intentionally release a subpar version of Call of Duty on PlayStation should the Activision Blizzard acquisition be approved.
]]>Activision will not skip out on shipping a premium Call of Duty game in 2023 as originally thought.
]]>As a new season for Call of Duty: Warzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2 arrives, I find myself re-living the same feelings I had with the 2019 game and its battle royale spin-off.
]]>Season 2 kicks off next week in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0.
]]>Activision and Infinity Ward have delayed the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.
]]>Xbox Game Pass should take a lot of credit for thrusting games back into the conversation. For both Marvel's Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, a late arrival on Game Pass managed to (partially) salvage their reputations, and reversed player sentiment on them, too. You could even argue that Halo Infinite is in the middle of its own redemption arc right now; a year after launch, and 343 Industries' troubled shooter is starting to see some wayward player numbers return.
]]>It's been a messy old week for Sony and Microsoft. After the UK Government published Xbox and PlayStation's full arguments over the Activision Blizzard acquisition case to a public domain, media types and players alike have been trawling the pages, sniffing out bytes of snark issued by both companies in an effort to make themselves look smaller than they actually are.
]]>Call of Duty has a lot of problems. Even in the last seven days, documents have been published that show the close link the series has with the US armed forces, suggesting the game is a big, military-industrial psyop designed to rescue the image of the US war machine and drive recruitment to its ranks. As if that’s not bad enough, the single-player portions of the games often whitewash US war crimes and paint other nation states as the aggressors in order to make the yoke of American imperial oppression look… well, less oppressive.
]]>The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has been investigting Microsoft's propsed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, has published a major update to the case. The government body has been hearing from both Microsoft and Sony on whether or not this would diminish the competition in the games industry.
]]>What do you call armor-piercing ammo that doesn't pierce armor? That's the question hot on the lips of the Call of Duty community right now as it comes to terms with a very strange update from the latest patch in Warzone 2.
]]>Modern Warfare 2 is huge. Massive. The launch of Warzone 2 has attracted over 25 milion people, so there are a lot of eyes on the game's early updates. Luckily for Activision, Infinity Ward, and Raven, the first massive update has done some particularly impressive things.
]]>Activision has announced that the launch of Warzone 2 last week has been very successful. The free-to-play game, built on Modern Warfare 2's new engine, gameplay systems, and general mechanics, has attracted over 25 million players in just five days.
]]>Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 – and by extension, Modern Warfare 2 – has an excellent battle pass. One of the best I have seen over the last few years, ever since Fortnite popularised the monetisation method and we’ve seen the reward-based progression incentives proliferate across the industry. Unlike other battle passes that we’ve seen, there’s a huge amount of player control over what you unlock and when, meaning we all start getting different items at different times, and can prioritise certain items over others.
]]>With the arrival of Season One, the launch of Warzone and DMZ, Modern Warfare 2 got some new content in the form of the Shoot House map, new weapons, operators and a new battle pass.
]]>Everyone is trying to poke holes in Microsoft's commitment to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation once it takes control of Activision Blizzard, and Phil Spencer is a little tired of that.
]]>There was little doubt that Modern Warfare 2 wasn't going to be October's best-selling game. Call of Duty has done so consistently for the past 15 years, even with the relatively underperforming Vanguard last year.
]]>Modern Warfare 2 is a complex game with many moving parts, systems, mechanics and progression schemes. Players’ opinions vary on all of those, but one thing that unites everyone is their distaste for the game's user interface.
]]>The original Warzone will not be sunset, after all. Activision has confirmed that, with the impending launch of Warzone 2.0, the existing game will not be replaced. However, it will be going offline for a time to make room for Warzone 2.0.
]]>Thanks to new information, we now have plenty of fresh details about the upcoming Warzone 2.0 to chew through while we wait for the free-to-play game to drop next week.
]]>Everyone expected Modern Warfare 2 to be a return to form for Call of Duty, both in player sentiment as well as launch revenue. Having already broken franchise records on Steam, and set a new standard for opening weekend sales, the game has achieved yet another milestone.
]]>Over the weekend, we learned that Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward, and publisher Activision, were made aware of some issues players had with the Vault Edition of the game. Because players that purchased the $100 version of the game were given the same unlock in-game as players with other versions of the title, Activision promised to give anyone with the premium version of the game a set of bonuses.
]]>It's no secret that Call of Duty is one of the best-selling franchises of all time. The series, at the last official count, has sold well over 425 million units – meaning it's only really outpaced by the likes of Mario, Tetris and Pokemon in the great halls of all-time video game sales.
]]>If you’ve been playing PC games for long enough, you’ll no doubt be familiar with how rare it is to see a half-decent benchmark test in a PC game. Often times, people come up with their own stress runs and report everything manually.
Plenty of PC games do include benchmarks, though seemingly just to check a box and get it out of the way – but not Modern Warfare 2.
Modern Warfare 2’s servers are now online everywhere, including on PC, and one of the few surprises PC players saw (other than the lack of a cross-play toggle) was a benchmark.
For one, it’s surprising because Infinity Ward did not communicate its existence ahead of launch, but also because Call of Duty is one of the better-optimised PC games these days, and its popularity means there’s plenty of tests out there for different system configurations.
The benchmark can be found in the Multiplayer row, which is a bit of an unusual placement for it. Scroll past all the other tiles and you’ll find it at the end of the row.
Once launched, the benchmark will run for a little over a minute, playing different effects-heavy scenarios. As it’s running, you’ll be able to track average FPS, CPU render time, as well as GPU render time and temperature.
All of that is fairly standard, but the results screen is where things get interesting.
As you can see, not only do you get a tally of the average framerate, it’s broken down by 1% and 5% lows. The summary dives even deeper, recapping all three results again while showing GPU and CPU framerate separately.
This is a fantastic way to see which of the two components is affecting your framerate the most. In my case, the game is GPU-bound, meaning I would need to upgrade my GPU to reach higher framerates.
Playing on lower resolutions will change that dynamic, and get you into CPU-bounded situations more often.
The right-side panel displays a few other useful bits of information about your system, including RAM and VRAM usage, as well as the actual render resolution for your chosen upscaling method.
Though it’s not as exhaustive as, say, the Gears 5 benchmark, it’s still pretty useful. Give it a try and share your results.
If Modern Warfare 2 is running well for you, it’s probably best to learn the fastest way to rank up and level up weapons.
]]>Modern Warfare 2 is very hot right now. All that excitement extends to the PC platform, where yearly Call of Duty releases tended to perform poorly or, in some cases, not register at all.
]]>Modern Warfare 2, as with most of the recent Call of Duty games, supports full multiplayer cross-play and cross-progression on all platforms. This allows players to party up together, and matchmake against each other.
]]>Modern Warfare 2 has officially launched worldwide across all platforms. To celebrate the launch, PlayStation revealed a set of bonuses exclusive to PS4 and PS5. Of course, we already knew about the Oni Operator pre-order bonus, but that's not the end of it.
]]>The one game series Modern Warfare 2 seems to be very fond of, might actually be The Last of Us. Even if you ignore the Uncharted-inspired convoy mission, and all the scavenging and stealth you get up to in the campaign, you’ll likely come to this realisation eventually once you see the first locked safe.
]]>Modern Warfare 2 launches worldwide tomorrow, or technically in a few hours in some parts of the world. The physical version of the game is available for sale at retailers, and some have already started shipping it out to customers.
]]>Back when Modern Warfare 2 was shown only to select few in the media, one particular feature of the Gunsmith was glossed over during the presentation. It showed the player adjusting the characteristics of weapon attachments, and some of those in attendance even mentioned it in their previews.
]]>We're mere hours away from the big moment Call of Duty fans have been excitedly anticipating since the Modern Warfare 2 beta wrapped up last month. To celebrate the impending launch, Infinity Ward has outlined all the high-level changes made based on beta feedback.
]]>Infinity Ward has warned excited Modern Warfare 2 players eager to jump into multiplayer as early as possible, that changing their console's region to access the game before it actually goes live where they physically are, will cause "connectivity issues."
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