Month: February 2019

Treyarch has released another update for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. Only minor changes are being made to Blackout, but the update makes larger changes to Multiplayer and Zombies.

For Blackout, the update fixes an issue that allowed helicopters to fly outside of the circle on Ambush without malfunctioning. If you try to do so now, you’re going to crash. Ambush is the newest game type in Black Ops 4’s battle royale mode. It features a rapidly closing safe zone and limits players to sniper rifles, launchers, and melee weapons. Ambush will only be available for a limited-time.

Larger changes have come to Multiplayer and Zombies in the new update. In the former, the issues that allowed 9-Bang to be used more than once per round in Heist and caused stability problems in Search & Destroy have been fixed. Mercenary Nuketown has also been added as a Featured Playlist, with Hardcore Nuketown, Mercenary Capture Moshpit, and Endurance Chaos Moshpit being added to the Featured category rotation. For Zombies, the update fixes several different exploits and glitches that have been plaguing some of the weapons.

For the complete list of changes now live in Black Ops 4, check out the full patch notes on Reddit. We’ve also outlined the highlights below.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

Black Ops 4 February 5 Update Patch Notes

Multiplayer

• Featured Playlists
  • Mercenary Nuketown added as Featured Playlist.
  • Hardcore Nuketown, Mercenary Capture Moshpit, Endurance Chaos Moshpit, and Pro Series Moshpit added to Featured category.
• Game Modes
  • Heist
    • Resolved an issue that caused the 9-Bang to be used more than once per round in Heist.
• Stability
  • Fixed a CODcaster crash with maximum players in Search & Destroy.

Zombies

• Miscellaneous
  • Resolved an issue related to the Daemon 3XB where players could lose their weapons and points when taking a weapon from the Mystery Box.
  • Closed an exploit where players could use the Electric Burst and a charged melee attack to stop enemies from pathing to players.
  • Closed an exploit where players were able to keep the effects of the Ragnarok DG-5 if they were holding a Monkey Bomb or Claymore while the Special Weapon timed out.
  • Closed an exploit where players could recreate the shockwave of the Special Weapon by switching between Equipment and Special Weapon.

Blackout

• Miscellaneous
  • Helicopters now properly begin to malfunction when flying outside of the circle in Ambush.

General

• Black Market
  • Fixed an issue with Crash’s Warlock outfit that prevented players from receiving the corresponding Warpaint.

Sorry! Your browser is not one that we can support in chat any longer. Its either too old or your IT guy really did a job on it and its ‘too safe’ for us. We thought a lot about this and its just too darn hard to support your browser while we support newer browsers that play so much better with others on the internet. We really hope you can upgrade. If Mel the IT guy riding high on his little power trip sez no then we got nothin for ya man.

You can still watch the live stream so at least you have that going for you. Which is nice…

We strongly suggest
Chrome
We’re totally cool with
Safari (no private browsing)
We deal with
Firefox
Oh and there’s
Internet Explorer (10 and newer)

Ubisoft is preparing to launch the beta test for The Division 2 this weekend, and you can begin pre-loading now. The beta will begin on February 7 at 1 AM PT / 4 AM ET / 10 AM GMT. Pre-loading began 24 hours before that point.

This is a private beta, so you can get access one of two ways. The first is to simply pre-order the game. Digital pre-orders will be granted access automatically without a key. You can also use manual links to add it to your library on Xbox One or PS4. Retail pre-orders will come with a unique code to be redeemed through the official site, which will then grant you a key. Note that digital pre-orders through the Epic Games Store will have their keys delivered in an email from Epic.

The other method of entry is to sign up through the official site and hope to be randomly selected. If you are, you’ll receive an access key via email, and then redeem it through the same method as the pre-order.

The beta will include two main missions, five side missions, and other open-world activities. You can also dive into one of the three new Dark Zones. An Invaded mission, a piece of endgame content, will unlock on February 8 at 1 AM PT / 4 AM ET / 4 PM GMT. Players will be capped at level 30.

For more details on the upcoming beta, check out everything we know. Then for insight on the challenges awaiting you in the full game, read up the secret endgame faction. Microsoft recently announced two Xbox One bundles that will come packaged with The Division 2. The full game releases on March 15.

We’re on the long, dusty road to Wrestlemania, but we have to make a pit stop at the last PPV before it that matters, Elimination Chamber–because Fastlane may as well be an episode of Monday Night Raw. Like most PPVs nowadays, there will be plenty of title matches on the card, but unlike most major WWE events, the star of the show is none other than the titular Elimination Chamber match.

This match, which we only see once a year, puts six–or 12 if it’s a tag team match–WWE superstars into an enclosed cell, but to make things more interesting, four of the six competitors are placed in pods at the start of the match. Then, another competitor enters the match every five minutes. This is an elimination match, so it only ends when–well–all but one WWE superstar is left standing.

This year’s event comes to PPV and the WWE Network on Sunday, February 17. And the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas will host it, beginning at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET / 12 AM GMT (February 18). Like all PPVs, there will be a Kickoff Show beginning one hour prior. Luckily, this event won’t be as long as the Royal Rumble, which came in at around seven hours.

If you plan on watching the event, there are two ways to go about it. You can order it through your cable or satellite provider, which is expensive, or watch it through the WWE Network for $10 a month. If you don’t have the WWE Network, you can sign up for one month for free–as long as you are a new user.

As of this writing, there are four matches on the card–two of which are Elimination Chamber matches. It doesn’t seem like Raw’s Universal Championship will be defended here, but Smackdown’s WWE Championship will in an Elimination Chamber match. This event will also crown the first-ever Women’s Tag Team Champions as well. There should be at least three more matches added to this card, with at least one taking place on the Kickoff Show. Here’s what WWE has lined up for its fans so far.

Elimination Match Card:

• Buddy Murphy (c) vs. Akira Tozawa (Cruiserweight Championship)
• The Miz & Shane McMahon (c) vs. The Usos (Smackdown Tag Team Championship)
• Sasha Banks & Bayley vs. Sonya Deville & Mandy Rose vs. Naomi & Carmella vs. Nia Jax & Tamina vs. Liv Morgan & Sarah Logan vs. The Iiconics (Elimination Chamber for the Women’s Tag Team Championship)
• “The New” Daniel Bryan (c) vs. AJ Styles vs. Jeff Hardy vs. Mustafa Ali vs. Randy Orton vs. Samoa Joe (Elimination Chamber for the WWE Championship)

Make sure to come back to GameSpot on Sunday, February 17 for live coverage and a review of the show.

Following the launch of Apex Legends, developer Respawn Entertainment confirmed it is working on a new Titanfall experience. Little is known about what this project is, but the studio has said it isn’t a third entry in the mainline series. While many have speculated that it could relate to the VR game Respawn is known to be developing, studio CEO Vince Zampella has said this isn’t the case.

On Twitter, Zampella replied to a user that suggested that the other Titanfall project Respawn is working on is for VR, and outright shot down the idea.

Apex Legends is a free-to-play battle royale game set in the Titanfall universe. However, it is missing many of the hallmarks of a Titanfall game, most notably the mechs and the parkour-inspired movement mechanics. Naturally, fans of the first two Titanfall games were left somewhat disappointed when Respawn said Titanfall 3 isn’t happening. However, Zampella gave them some hope.

“We are also working on more Titanfall for later in the year (yes, I said the T word),” he said. “We love being able to experiment in this crazy universe!” EA later released its earnings report and, as part of the statements it made alongside it, committed to “[growing] Apex Legends and related Titanfall experiences.”

Respawn is also working on Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, which is expected to release this fall. The game was briefly mentioned in EA’s financial reports, alongside other upcoming titles from the publisher. Surprisingly, EA also confirmed it was working on new Plants vs. Zombies and Need for Speed titles.

Apex Legends has had a successful launch, and reached 1 million unique players in under eight hours. A day after its initial launch, EA confirmed the game had gathered 2.5 million unique players and seen 600,000 concurrent players.

Microsoft held an Xbox Insider livestream on Tuesday, and it was unusually chock full of news about the coming months and beyond. Packed into the presentation were announcements regarding the Halo series, Game Pass, Sea of Thieves, new console bundles, and more. Read on for a full recap of the news.

Halo Outpost Discovery

We’re still not sure just when to expect Halo Infinite, but fans can live out their Halo fantasies this year regardless. 343 and Microsoft will be hosting a traveling event with in-universe activities, panels, and more. It will visit five cities this year, open for one weekend in each. You can explore a Halo Ring, visit a Warthog, play VR simulations and laser tag, attend panels with creators, and get cosplay tips. Plus, of course, you can just play yourself some Halo. Check whether it’s coming to your neck of the woods.

Game Pass in February

The smallest month is bringing some big games to Xbox One Game Pass, the all-you-can-eat subscription service. The February line-up includes Shadow of the Tomb Raider, The Walking Dead Season 1, and Batman: Return to Arkham, to name a few. The real headliner is Crackdown 3, which is finally really coming out after years of delays. As a Microsoft first-party game, it’s included as part of Game Pass, so if you’re a subscriber you already as good as own it. Check out the full calendar for when each game will drop on the service.

The Division 2 and Anthem Bundles

Two more big games are dropping soon, and Microsoft is partnering with each one’s publisher to offer hardware bundles. Both Anthem and The Division 2 are getting paired with Xbox Ones. The Anthem bundle includes the game’s Legion of Dawn edition with bonuses, an Xbox One S 1 TB, and one-month trials of EA Access, Game Pass, and Xbox Live Gold. The Division 2 is getting two separate sets of bundles, one with a black Xbox One X and one with a white Xbox One S. Check out price and release date details to plan your purchases.

Sea of Thieves Brings Your Mateys Aboard

If your adventures on the high seas are feeling a little lonely, Rare and Microsoft are making it a little easier to fill your crew. Owners of Sea of Thieves or Game Pass subscribers can gift a copy of the game to up to three people, which will let them play for free until February 13. After that, they can purchase it for a 35% discount. Keep in mind that they’ll need to a Gold membership to play the online game.

New Red Controller is Sporty

If you need a brand-new controller to play all these games on, the livestream covered that too. It debuted the new Sport Red Special Edition, which aside from the nifty paint job features rubber grips along the back. Because sports. It will cost $70 and release on March 5. A matching Pro Charging Stand will also be available in North America. Read more details on the nifty piece of kit.

Microsoft Game Studios Becomes Xbox Game Studios

In a bit of branding news that you may notice when you start up a first-party game in the future, Microsoft Game Studios is no more. It’s been renamed Xbox Game Studios, which corporate VP Matt Booty says is a reflection of how the Xbox brand itself has expanded. This comes just after a series of acquisitions, so the newly rebranded Xbox Game Studios is now composed of 13 teams. Booty said the teams are working on “incredible exclusives, original IP, and all-new chapters from your favorite franchises.”

Disney continues to remake its classic fairy tale movies, and 2019 will see three live-action updates of animated favorites. Aladdin and The Lion King are due for release later this year, but ahead of that we have a new version of Dumbo. A new trailer has now been released.

This latest promo sets up the classic story, in which a struggling circus welcomes a new baby elephant to its ranks. Of course, Dumbo’s giant ears make him unpopular with the circus bosses, until a discovery that he can fly changes everything. It’s directed by Tim Burton, so looks as magical and inventive as you’d expect from the director of Alice in Wonderland and Edward Scissorhands. Check it out above.

Dumbo stars Colin Farrell as the former circus star who is now unable to perform because of a wartime injury, plus Michael Keaton as villainous entrepreneur Vandemere, Danny DeVito as circus owner Max Medici, and Eva Green as trapeze artist Colette Marchant. It releases on March 29, 2019.

In terms of other Disney adaptations, Aladdin arrives in May, while The Lion King is released in July. Further down the line, a new version of Mulan is set for a 2020 release. There are also movies based on Cruella De Ville (101 Dalmations) and Tinker Bell (Peter Pan) reportedly in development.

Apex Legends from Respawn surprise-launched this week, and already one of the top-requested features is cross-play between its various platforms. During the Q&A portion of a recent earnings call, CEO Andrew Wilson suggested that while their data has found the feature isn’t widely used by players, it still plans to utilize it–especially for franchises with big player bases like FIFA.

“We think cross-play and cross-progress is going to be a very important part of our future, and you should anticipate that we’ll be doing more in that space,” Wilson said. “What our information would suggest to us is that there isn’t a tremendous amount of play across devices, but that overall liquidity in any gaming community is a good and positive thing, even if it’s only a few people or a small portion of the community that utilizes that.

“We absolutely are looking into that in the context of Apex, and we’ll be looking at that across our portfolio over time. We think about franchises with tremendously large communities like FIFA, and we think that they would absolutely benefit from cross-play and cross-progress, as more and more people come into these big communities.”

That doesn’t sound as if the feature is high on the company’s priority list, but it’s not ruling it out either. Respawn has hinted that cross-platform play could come to Apex Legends in the future, but it has already ruled out cross-platform progression due to how the basic framework was built.

The EA earnings call also confirmed that in addition to Apex Legends, Respawn has another Titanfall project in the works. We know that it’s a “premium game [coming] this year that is a new twist on the Titanfall universe,” according to Wilson, and Respawn head Vince Zampella has since confirmed that it isn’t a VR game. The earnings call also confirmed a new Need for Speed and Plants vs Zombies are both on the horizon.

Take-Two Interactive has reported strong financial results for the third quarter of 2019, led by the huge success of Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2. In a statement, the company confirmed that, to date, Red Dead Redemption 2 has “sold-in more than 23 million units worldwide.” It’s worth noting that “sold-in” means shipped to retailers and not necessarily to consumers. However, typically, sold-in stock is a good indication of how much is sold through to people.

Take-Two’s revenue grew to $1.2 billion, which is up from $480 million during the same period in the previous financial year. “The largest contributors to net revenue in fiscal third quarter 2019 were Red Dead Redemption 2, NBA 2K19 and NBA 2K18, Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V, WWE 2K19 and WWE SuperCard, Dragon City and Monster Legends, and Sid Meier’s Civilization VI,” Take-Two said.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was also noted as being one of the largest contributors to digitally-delivered revenue in the quarter, alongside Grand Theft Auto Online, Grand Theft Auto V, and NBA 2K18, among others.

“Our outperformance was driven primarily by the record-breaking launch of Red Dead Redemption 2 along with strong results from NBA 2K19,” added Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick. “In addition, consumers engaged significantly with our offerings, and recurrent consumer spending grew 31% to a new record. We generated strong cash flow and ended the period with $1.6 billion in cash and short-term investments, after deploying $109 million to repurchase 1 million shares of our stock.”

Red Dead Redemption 2 has now outsold its predecessor, Red Dead Redemption, by a comfortable margin. As of February 2017 the first Red Dead Redemption has sold 15 million units in total. Its sequel has managed to shoot past this number in a fraction of the time. In an investor call, Zelnick highlighted that Red Dead Redemption 2 has “sold more in its first eight days than its predecessor sold in eight years.”

Red Dead Redemption 2 has received critical acclaim, earning a 9/10 from GameSpot. Kallie Plagge described it as “an excellent prequel, but it’s also an emotional, thought-provoking story in its own right, and it’s a world that is hard to leave when it’s done.” You can read our full Red Dead Redemption 2 review for more of Kallie’s thoughts on it.

One of the franchises that Disney will get when its deal to buy the bulk of 20th Century Fox’s assets is complete is the Deadpool series. Unlike a lot of Disney’s programming, Deadpool is not family friendly–that’s part of the appeal and what makes the series so refreshing and unique. But will the House of Mouse’s acquisition of Deadpool change that? It sounds like no.

Disney chief Bob Iger said on an earnings call that he understands there is significant interest in the R-rated Deadpool movies, and he pledged that Disney will “continue in that business,” and potentially even expand to do more.

“We do believe there is room for the Fox properties to exist without significant Disney influence over the nature of the content, meaning that we see that there is certainly popularity amongst Marvel fans for the R-rated Deadpool films, as a for instance,” he said. “We’re going to continue in that business, and there might be room for more of that.”

Iger added that it is not concerned about “standards and practices” considerations when it looks at the assets it’s acquiring from Fox. In addition to Deadpool, Disney is getting The Simpsons and Family Guy, which are known to be edgier and less family friendly. The important matter will be ensuring that more adult-focused programming is branded that way, Iger explained.

“There’s nothing that we’ve really seen in the Fox either library or in the activities that Fox is engaging in today from a standards perspective that would be of concern to us as long as we’re very carefully branding them and making sure that we’re not in any way confusing the consumer with product that would be sort of either Disney product or the more traditional Marvel product,” Iger said.

While Deadpool 2 hit theatres as an R-rated film, a toned down PG-13 cut featuring Fred Savage was released around the holidays in an attempt to reach a wider audience.

No new Deadpool films have been announced, but given the enormous success of the franchise so far, you can expect more to come at some point down the road. Deadpool 2 made a massive $785 million at the box office against a budget of $110 million.

In other Disney news, Iger also commented on how Disney struggled to publish video games internally, so that’s why Disney has partnered with companies like EA for licensing deals.