Month: June 2020

Call of Duty: Warzone added a new melee weapon in Season 4–the Kali Stick, a pair of sticks that can be used as melee weapons to quickly beat down an opponent. Generally, a new melee weapon is not as exciting in a game like this as a new powerful gun. As it turns out, though, the Kali Stick is incredibly deadly in the right hands.

YouTuber Vikkstar123 has released a video of him and the other members of his three-person squad racking up a win in the Call of Duty battle royale game only using Kali Sticks to hurt their enemies.

While secondary grenades like flashbangs are used, and the squad also use vehicles to move around the map and riot shields to protect themselves, their kills are all scored with these sticks.

The first attempt in the video below doesn’t end in victory, but the squad comes very close, placing 2nd. The second match captured, which begins at 9:30, ends the same way.

Skip to 16:55 in the video below if you just want to see them take the victory.

In other news from the latest season of Warzone, the Grau might see a nerf soon, as it has proved very powerful. The game also added a new mode called Rumble.

Ultracore is releasing on June 23, marking the end of a journey that has been stalled since 1994. The game, previously known as Hardcore, was cancelled by Psygnosis in 1994. It was due to release for the Amiga, Sega Genesis, and Sega CD, but the near-finished game was cancelled by its publisher due to the impending launch of the PlayStation, and the assumption that a game that wasn’t 32-bit would not sell.

Hardcore was to be one of the earliest releases of Digital Illusions, now known as DICE, the developer of the Battlefield franchise. Now, 26 years later, the game is finally debuting this week for two modern systems.

Ultracore is releasing on PS4 and Switch, with a PlayStation Vita version planned to release at a later date. The game, which is a run-and-gun platformer with five stages, will cost $23, and is being published by ININ Games, which recently released the Darius Arcade and Console Collections. It’s being released with an updated soundtrack, featuring 20 tunes from various synthwave and electronic artists.

In a statement included in the press release, DICE co-founder Fredrik Lilijegren expressed his excitement at the game’s impending release. “I know the care, love, sweat and hard work that went into creating Hardcore in the first place by all involved parties,” he said. “Thus, I think it is fantastic that this product finally gets to see the light of day and for people to be able to play it.”

In Japan, the game already received a release last year for the Mega Sg, an aftermarket console compatible with various old Sega console games.

GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

Crossfire, which is one of the world’s biggest FPS games on PC, is coming to the Xbox platform as a timed-exclusive for Microsoft’s console–and it appears there will be a beta ahead of launch.

WindowsCentral noticed that a listing for a CrossfireX beta has appeared on the Microsoft Store. The product page states that the beta will begin on June 25. The file size is 5.88 GB. You can see a variety of screenshots in the gallery below; click each image to see it in full size.

CrossfireX is a free-to-play online multiplayer game that supports up 16 players. The game will offer a “variety of classic and innovative” modes, but it’s not immediately clear which ones are in the beta.

The product page states that CrossfireX runs at 4K, and it is enhanced for Xbox One X.

CrossfireX was announced during E3 2019 as a “first to console” release on Xbox, which suggests it may release on other console platforms later on. Crossfire for PC, which is distributed by Tencent, is one of the most popular games on the planet with some 650 million users globally. For comparison, Fortnite had 350 million players worldwide by the latest count.

The Crossfire series was created by South Korean studio Smilegate, which is also working on multiple new projects in the franchise. Alan Wake and Control developer Remedy is making the single-player campaign for Crossfire 2.

A movie based on Crossfire has been in the works since 2015.

If there’s one place to hold a memorial for the esteemed Sir Ian Holm, it’s in Middle-earth itself–albeit the online version. Lord Of The Rings Online players across multiple servers celebrated the life of an actor most known within the fandom as playing Bilbo Baggins in the LOTR films, but who also lent his voice to Frodo in the 1981 BBC radio play of the same story.

After the news that Holm had passed away on June 19 at the age of 88, around 300 players on the Evernight server marched to Rivendell to visit the Bilbo Baggins NPC in the Last Homely House in Rivendell, while the song Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold played as an homage to his first ever adventure.

The roleplay server Laurelin had players gather at Bilbo’s home, Bag End, where a dwarven minstrel played music for the crowd of mourners.

Reddit user RoadrageWorker said that the Belegaer server also gathered at Bag End, where “to Lobelia’s dislike, [they] had a big firework. There was music and mourning, and we all wished Ian godspeed on this last of journeys.”

Yet more events are planned, such as a march on the French server Sirannon to the Celondim docks, where Bilbo takes the White Ship to the Undying Lands at the end of the Lord of the Rings saga.

The game’s developers are marking Holm’s passing too, by bringing back the Bilbo’s Birthday event through to June 23.

A new video by Digital Foundry has analyzed exactly what kind of graphical upgrades we can expect from Bluepoint Games’ remake of Demon’s Souls for PS5, by painstakingly comparing the clips with their PS3 equivalents.

While it doesn’t take a genius to see the graphical improvements in the remake that was first revealed by Sony in its PS5 reveal showcase, the video also shows where the increased console power has been used to change and update detailing.

Previously sparse corridors have been turned into rotting halls overgrown with ivy and weeds, where much of the original game’s sparse architecture has been upgraded into a grander, more imposing gothic style.

Demon’s Souls purists may mourn the move away from the original’s gloomy, sepia tones towards a brighter aesthetic that makes use of a wider, more realistic range of colours–but overall the remake looks to be a beautiful re-imagining of the source materials.

In some cases, the increased graphical capacity has been used to improve digital storytelling–for example in the leadup to the Vanguard boss fight in the tutorial level, the castle the player heads towards is one in peril, with lingering pockets of flame and piles of rubble hinting at recent conflict.

The Vanguard too has been changed, with the newer, more detailed model sporting broken metal cuffs on its arms where once it may have been confined in chains.

Bluepoint more than proved its remake chops with the Shadow Of The Colossus remaster in 2018, and the Demon’s Souls remake is looking to surpass that legacy thanks to the increased potential of the PS5’s hardware.

Neither the Demon’s Souls remake nor the PS5 currently have a release date, however the latter is expected to drop by the end of this year.

EA’s Chief Studios boss Laura Miele has shared some new insight on the company’s first next-generation games, one of which is EA Sports’ Madden NFL 21. Miele said the game will not only look better and load faster thanks to the power of the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but it will also contain some under-the-hood improvements to make the game more authentic to the NFL experience.

She told GI.biz that Madden NFL 21 will make use of “next-gen stats” that will seemingly include updated player stats in real time. Here’s how she described the feature: “In Madden we will be using the NFL’s next gen stats so every athlete in the game will play how they do in real life, with the data being updated in real-time.”

Player ratings are a huge part of the Madden series–it’s always a big deal each year when the ratings are revealed and players react to them. Changes are made regularly in previous games, based on real-world performance, but it sounds like Madden NFL 21 will take things even further by updating them in “real time.”

It’s not exactly clear how this will work, or if this feature will be available on the PS4 and Xbox One editions of the game, but keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.

This new feature is based on the assumption that the upcoming NFL season will indeed go forward. Play is currently scheduled to begin normally in August with the pre-season before the season in proper begins in September.

Miele also shared that Madden NFL 21 will feature new crowd mechanics so people look and act more believably. “Fans in the stadium will be unique people responding to the action on the field,” she said.

The NFL has yet to announce if fans will be allowed into stadiums for games this year, if they do go forward.

Additionally, Miele revealed that Madden NFL 21 will use “deferred rendering” to make light act and react more realistically. There will also be “dynamic weather systems” that can affect how athletes look and perform on the field. “Games are going to feel different, better, and more visceral,” Miele said.

Also in the interview, Miele said the Madden NFL 21 commentators recorded their lines from home “with no quality drop.” A major part of the the Madden games in recent years has been how the commentary is updated regularly based on what happens in the real NFL. It remains to be seen if this feature will come forward to Madden NFL 21, and whether or not the real NFL season goes forward is probably tied into that decision.

Madden NFL 21 launches on August 25 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, before coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X later in the year. The PC edition will be sold on Steam for the first time in franchise history.