Infinity Ward is rolling out a new update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare that will give PC players another way to decrease the game’s file size, which is important given how massive the game has become.
Production director Paul Haile said on Twitter that the October 13 update for Modern Warfare on PC will allow players to uninstall specific modes to free up space. Players on PC (and console, too) could already uninstall the campaign to free up space, and this goes one step further.
tomorrows update will have mode specific uninstall options for PC MW owners.
Modern Warfare’s PC file size is north of 200 GB, so it’s a welcome feature to be able to uninstall modes that you currently aren’t playing much, but it’s not an ideal situation regardless.
Modern Warfare’s file size is larger than previous Call of Duty games due in part to how the game has “seasons” of new content, which introduce new maps and more. Infinity Ward is trying to find a middle ground between giving players more content to enjoy and keeping the file size reasonable.
In other Call of Duty news, the next open beta for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is coming up this weekend, and it will feature cross-play between PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Just a year ago, Disney+ was a brand new beast in the streaming space, hitting the ground running with a fabulous first season of The Mandalorian. Now, streaming is becoming a focus for the company and prompting a major reorg in the process.
Disney is restructuring to focus on its direct-to-consumer strategies, and will centralize its various media businesses into a single organization responsible for content distribution, ad sales, and streaming.
“I would not characterize [the reorganization] as a response to Covid,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek said on CNBC’s Closing Bell program. “I would say Covid accelerated the rate at which we made this transition, but the transition was going to happen anyway.”
“We are tilting the scale pretty dramatically [towards streaming],” Chapek also said. He added that the company is looking at its investments, including suspending the yearly shareholder dividend (payout), to increase how much it spends on new content.
″[Consumers] are going to lead us,” Chapek said during the same interview. “Right now they are voting with their pocketbooks and they are voting very heavily towards Disney+. We want to make sure that we are going the way the consumers want us to go.”
Disney has over 100 million subscribers to its various streaming services, and 60-plus million of those are on the hook for Disney+, with others spread across Hulu and ESPN’s offerings.
Chapek also said that the shift could result in layoffs, but “not likely at the same scale” as the layoffs last month that saw 28,000 workers laid off in light of ongoing park shutdowns in California.
“Given the incredible success of Disney+ and our plans to accelerate our direct-to-consumer business, we are strategically positioning our Company to more effectively support our growth strategy and increase shareholder value,” Chapek said in an official statement. “Managing content creation distinct from distribution will allow us to be more effective and nimble in making the content consumers want most, delivered in the way they prefer to consume it.”
Disney shares jumped 5% following the announcement.
Star Citizen‘s single-player campaign, Squadron 42, is not going to launch in 2020. Cloud Imperium Games boss Chris Roberts said in a blog post that the game will be done “when it is done,” and that won’t be in 2020.
“I know everyone would like a definitive date on when Squadron 42 will be done but the best answer I can give you is that it will be done when it is done, and that will not be this year,” he said.
While there is no release date yet, Cloud Imperium has launched a new YouTube series called The Briefing Room that promises to provide updates on Squadron 42’s ongoing development. Additionally, the studio will share more details on how the development is progressing beginning in December with “much more in-depth visual dives into what we’ve done and features and content we can share without spoilers.”
“I want Squadron 42 to be finished and played by all of you, more than anyone,” Roberts said. “I can tell you that the team is in ‘close out’ mode and we are actively looking to burn down our remaining tasks and focus on polishing gameplay. It is going to be a game that is worth the wait, and one that the team and I, and you the community who supported its creation, will be proud of.”
Roberts has very high hopes for Squadron 42, saying he is aiming for it to be the “pinnacle of the single-player story space adventure.”
“Much like Star Citizen, Squadron 42 is how I always dreamed of being immersed in a riveting story where I was the star of my own huge space epic,” Roberts said. “Back when I was building the Wing Commander series, there were always technical limitations, so I had to pick and choose my battles. But with Squadron 42 I can finally immerse you as a player into your own adventure to rival any big budget movie you might see on the big screen, interacting and forming relationships with characters played by some of your favorite actors and navigating battles and set pieces that would make any Star Wars film proud.”
Squadron 42 features a long list of very famous actors, including Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, John Rhys-Davies, Gillian Anderson, Andy Serkis, Ben Mendelsohn, Liam Cunningham, and Mark Strong.
Roberts went on to say that the protracted nature of Squadron 42’s development is a direct result of the expanded scope and ambition of the project.
“I could have stuck to the original, much simpler game that was proposed in 2012, but with the increase in scope for Star Citizen I felt I needed to build a single-player game to rival Star Citizen’s multiplayer ambition,” he said. “With the amount of love and effort that has been poured into Squadron 42, we aren’t going to release it until it’s fully polished, plays great, and packs an emotional wallop.”
This is noted difference compared to Star Citizen, which has been released in chunks that come out about every three months.
The entire Star Citizen project has raised more than $300 million in funding. There are currently five studios and more than 640 people working on the project around the world.
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If you have Xbox Game Pass for PC, then there’s a good chance there’s some crossover between your Steam library and what’s available at no additional charge through the subscription service. But now, a new browser extension has been created to help prevent this by showing you when a Steam game is available through Game Pass.
Ali Güler has created a browser extension, Game Pass Info For Steam, that adds a notification to game pages when you’re checking the Steam store through your browser. The extension, which is available for both Chrome and Firefox, adds a green bar if a game is available through Game Pass for PC, telling you when it was added to the service.
“Have you ever had the situation where you bought a game, only to later find out that it’s already on Xbox Game Pass,” Güler asks on the page. “It happened to me. Luckily it was only 10 bucks.”
The browser extension in action.
The extension has been updated since launch to show games that have left Game Pass, and making it easier to report errors, too.
If you find yourself using and appreciating the extension, you can send Güler a donation through either PayPal or Buy Me A Coffee.
Xbox Game Pass is an essential part of Microsoft’s Xbox strategy going forward, with all first-party games appearing day one on the service. Xbox has also said that game streaming through Game Pass is planned for consoles and PC in the future.
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In this video, Persia talks about an early unboxing video of the Xbox Series X that surfaced this morning. The video shows off the exterior and interior of the box, the console, the controller, and the accessories. Another image found on Reddit showcased a retail-looking room with stacks of Xbox Series X boxes ready to be shipped. The Series X and S launch on November 10th.
Persia also goes over the new details from Insomniac’s Instagram that tell us more about Spier-Man: Miles Morales. A Daily Bugle article talks about the city watching Miles train along the rooftops with Peter Parker. This tells us that Miles will have familiarity with his abilities before the game starts and Peter Parker could have a significant role in the game as Miles’ mentor. We also got our first look at Miles’ trademark hoodie costume, the same outfit he wore in Into the Spiderverse.
Lastly, Persia talks about a Dreamcast mini that could possibly be in the works. In a Famitsu interview translated by Siliconera, Sega creative producer Yosuke Okunari talked about the company’s mini consoles and said, “For the next Mini, we are considering everything that has been imagined by everyone. If I have to say some names, it could be an SG-1000 Mini or a Dreamcast Mini.” The original Dreamcast was home to Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, and many more.
We’re on the brink of a new console generation, as Microsoft is ushering in the Xbox Series X and S consoles in November. In addition to a new form factor and more powerful processors, the consoles come with a new boot-up sound.
With that in mind, we’re looking back at the Xbox boot-up sounds from over the years, beginning with the original Xbox in 2001. Check out the video here to listen to boot-up sounds and animations for all of the Xbox consoles to date. It’s a fun stroll down memory lane, and something to enjoy as we wait for the launch of the new consoles.
The Xbox Series X/S systems release on November 10, so it won’t be much longer until everyone can get their hands on them. Keep checking back with GameSpot for lots more on the consoles in the days and weeks ahead!
Burger King has released a new teaser that suggests that it’s partnering with Sony for some kind of promotion, and people believe it may be connected to the PlayStation 5.
The advertisement shows the Burger King himself opening a takeout bag, with a blue light shining in his eyes. A short sound can also be heard. The ad ends with the mascot walking away to reveal the date October 15, which is presumably when all will be revealed. “Do Whopper sandwiches normally do this?” the message asks.
The ad does not mention PlayStation or PS5 at all, but the official PlayStation account quote-tweeted the video with the look and listen emojis. Given that tease, people are speculating that what we’re hearing is the PS5 start-up sound, but that’s only conjecture at this point.
This is not the first time we’ve heard the distinct tone featured in the Burger King ad. Back in June, the same sound played during Sony’s deep-dive video on the PS5. You can hear it for yourself in the video below.
Smite is getting new skins, and they’re based on four of our favorite turtles. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are coming to the game in November as part of a new battle pass.
Each turtle is a skin of an existing god, so the turtles themselves aren’t being inducted into the godly pantheon, per se. Here’s which god each character is being skinned onto.
Leonardo (Osiris)
Donatello (Sun Wukong)
Raphael (Loki)
Michelangelo (Mercury)
The trailer, below, shows off both skins for each turtle, and is a real hit of nostalgia with its upbeat rendition of the old cartoon theme.
The Osiris/Leonardo skin will be unlocked immediately, while the others can be unlocked by playing the game after purchasing the Battle Pass. These characters have new models, rigging, and animation, so they’re more than simple reskins.
A Mouser ward skin and a global “Cowabunga” emote will also be added. Better yet, Hi-Rez Studios promises that Splunter and Shredder will also be unlockable during an event after the release of the Battle Pass, so you’ll be able to expand out the game’s TMNT roster further.
This is not the first Nickelodeon collaboration with Smite. Earlier this year, the game got an Avatar: The Last Airbender battle pass, which added Aang, Zuko, and Korra skins.
For all the ups and downs I’ve had with various Star Wars media products over the past few decades, the formative space combat simulations of X-Wing and TIE Fighter on MS-DOS (or at least, my memory of them) have always been a fixed highlight. It’s hard to go astray when you’re focused on the minutiae of inherently cool sci-fi fantasy planes, as opposed to whatever’s going on with Jedi lineages or space politics now.
There have been a few arcade-style Star Wars space combat games that filled the 20-year period since the last flight simulator, and some of them were even good. But Star Wars: Squadrons is now making a welcome return to some of the simulator intricacies, while still retaining a large degree of the approachable spectacle of the arcade-style flight games. And the balance Squadrons has settled on works very well in creating an experience that makes you feel as if you’re really an active participant in a Star War.
The basic mechanics will be familiar if you’ve ever played any kind of flight game. You pitch your fighter up and down, you bank it left and right. You fly forward, not backward, and you can twirl until you feel sick. You maneuver your crosshairs onto an enemy and then fire lasers or missiles at them. You’re locked to a first-person cockpit view of the action, but all of Squadron’s missions are in space, which means maintaining altitude isn’t something you have to worry about, and instead, you get the wonderful freedom of being able to fly along any axis–rolling your ship and flying upside down is a hoot. It feels like you could feasibly finish the Squadrons campaign relying mostly on those principles if you wanted to, especially on lower difficulty levels, and that’s great. But Squadrons digs a little deeper with the ability to reroute power on your ship, a system that brings a nice layer of complexity in the advantages that it can open up for you and the considerations that come with that.
Each starfighter in Squadrons has the ability to rebalance the feed of power to prioritize different ship components: the engines, the laser weapons, and, on certain ships, the shield system. Doing so gives you access to specific benefits related to that system at the cost of reducing the efficiency of the others. Diverting all power to the engines makes your ship more maneuverable, gives you a faster top speed, and charges a speed boost; prioritizing lasers will let you overcharge them and fire them for longer; focusing shields will allow them to recharge faster, and overcharge them to absorb more damage than normal. Furthermore, ships with shields can also choose whether to divert shield coverage to the front of the ship, the back of the ship, or balance them all over. It’s not exactly on par with the Star Wars simulators from the ’90s (power diversion isn’t as granular, and you can’t adjust your firing patterns or anything like that), but the notable systems are there, and there’s still plenty to think about when you’re in the thick of things.
You can leave the systems equally balanced and still be fine, but it’s exciting to make these snap decisions in the middle of a mission and act more like the ace pilot you’re supposed to be. Sure, you could simply let your X-Wing cruise over the Star Destroyer and shoot at its targeting module until your lasers run out, eating a bit of damage in the process, and then repeat. But you could definitely get things done way more efficiently if you shift power to your shields as you approach in order to overcharge them, flip everything to lasers as you begin to fire to get a dozen more shots in before you overheat, and then push everything to the engines as you crank the throttle to get clear, quickly shifting all your shields to the rear to absorb all the turret fire coming your way. Constantly having your mind occupied with these mechanics on top of your mission objectives can give even the most straightforward sorties an involved and exciting edge to them, especially knowing that you could be putting yourself at greater risk if you’re in a bad configuration for the situation. The commands are simple to execute (mapped to the D-pad on a controller by default, though you can reconfigure all controls), meaning the challenge comes from internalizing the best options for the situations you find yourself in and remembering to change things up when the time comes, in the heat of the moment.
Of course, the feedback you get in playing with these systems does a lot to make the experience really satisfying, and the tried and true Star Wars production design is executed well in Squadrons. The familiar sounds of droids and proton torpedoes are weirdly comforting, and hearing the crunch of titanium as you fly past a TIE you just obliterated is very exciting. The unique cockpits of each ship have a great look too, with easy-to-read gauges that don’t betray the excellent retro-futuristic boxiness of the ships themselves. I personally appreciated the extra touch of ’70s chic with some fantastic hairstyles on some of the pilots, though a few of the “cooler” campaign characters obviously didn’t get the memo.
Across 14 missions lasting around eight hours in total, the campaign of Squadrons jumps back and forth between the journeys of two pilots, each flying on one of the two sides of the intergalactic war between the freshly rebranded New Republic and the Galactic Empire. It all starts with a defection, which leads to a secret military project and light musings on loyalty, personal morality, and what constitutes a victory while serving during wartime–a plot that succeeds in justifying the escalation of exciting space combat encounters, if nothing else.
The missions themselves are straightforward in nature, all offering a smattering of dogfighting as well as at least one other objective, such as taking down a larger enemy ship, defending one of your own, or hitting stationary targets like reactor cores and shield generators. There is some wiggle room for variance in approaches or strategies, but nothing major. Optional objectives crop up at times and can serve as ways to make an upcoming task easier if you’re good enough to complete them. Later missions allow you to alter your loadout, and some even let you choose the ship you take into battle, but for the most part, a lot of these variables are predetermined in such a way that gives you ample opportunity to get familiar with the game’s meaningful variety of vehicles and loadout options.
What makes these missions special are not the raw objectives, though: It’s the spectacle of some of the maps they take place on. Squadrons takes you to some exciting regions of the Star Wars galaxy, which are easy to appreciate right away. Colorful nebulas filled with lightning storms, Star Destroyer graveyards, and a shattered moon are just some of the memorable stages for the campaign encounters.
You don’t need to be a Star Wars fan to understand the game’s events. There are a couple of brief but notable cameos from the Star Wars canon, but more time is spent getting to know original characters, the members of Vanguard and Titan squadrons–the Republic and Imperial teams, respectively. They fill the missions with practical radio chatter, but you get a better opportunity to dive into their characters through optional conversations that you can access before and after missions.
Vanguard Squadron is made up of a ragtag group of humans and humanoid aliens with personalities as varying as their colour palette–the confident one! The timid one. The scoundrel. Titan Squadron, on the other hand, is an all-human squad. And while each character shares a hint of backstory that explores how any sane person in this universe could come to join the fascist Empire, all of that is betrayed by character designs that strongly suggest that these people are all absolutely, definitely evil–menacing scars, elitist personalities, an ex-cop who loves “delivering justice,” and one guy who cannot take off his terrifying, half-melted full-face pilot’s helmet. Needless to say, despite the welcome opportunities for character interaction, the limited amount of face-to-face time you get to actually spend with your squads means your look into their lore and personalities rarely goes too deep, and it’s hard to form any real connection with them.
Compounding this is the fact that your two protagonists are both silent. Despite character customization being the first thing you’re asked to do–part of which is choosing their voice and personality–your character is never seen and rarely heard from during the campaign. You can be an absolute hero who carries the squad when you’re in combat, but when you’re simply hanging out in the… hangar, you feel more like a fly on the wall than a member of the squad, which is awkward.
Conversations with your fellow squad members are more like lengthy monologues that you listen to politely, and toward the tail end of the campaign, you feel like a meaningless pawn being pushed around to fight a feud you have no feelings on. Your character is unable to express even a fraction of the hesitation or emotion seen in the supporting cast, which undersells big story beats and what little the game is trying to accomplish in its thematic explorations, especially with the Empire. But, by and large, the majority of the campaign is still filled with good scenarios that push you to pilot your funky space planes as best you can.
Of course, the other major component (if not the main component) of Squadrons is its 5v5 online multiplayer. There is a team deathmatch mode dubbed ‘dogfighting,’ as well as the Fleet Battles mode, an objective-based tug-of-war scenario between the two main Star Wars factions. In Fleet Battles, the Republic and Imperial teams each enter the battlefield with a battlecruiser and two frigates, with the goal being to push through the opposing team’s frigates and eventually destroy their battlecruiser. You do this by building attack momentum, destroying both player-driven and AI starfighters on the other side to gain points, which will then herald the arrival of an AI-driven corvette, that will automatically push into enemy territory and help you attack the capital ships head-on.
If you’ve ever played a MOBA, or one of the many multiplayer games that have taken inspiration from them, then you’ll have a good grasp of the Fleet Battle dynamic. It rewards well-rounded team compositions, especially when each pilot adheres to the strengths of their ships–whether it be fighter, bomber, interceptor, or support. Success typically comes from coordinating with your team to attack in tandem with your AI ships to make the most out of each push. At its best, these focused attacks on giant flagships with a tightly-knit squadron of players capture the feeling of Star Wars’ climactic starship battles.
Unfortunately, like MOBAs, your success in and the overall pacing of Fleet Battles can vary wildly thanks to the whims of online matchmaking. Unless you’re in a party of friends and have some kind of coordination with them, Fleet Battles can be a slog. In a party of random players, you’ll often find yourself in situations where no one on the team is making enough of a concerted effort to push when it is most opportune to do so or defend when the dynamics of a match shift against your squadron. At worst, it can be a drag, drawn out to the maximum time limit of 30 minutes, where the natural ebb and flow of AI ship spawns will bring the match so exceedingly close it might as well be a coin toss to decide the winner. Your efforts to rally your teammates by pinging ships to attack or defend can so often ring hollow, leaving you to make solo kamikaze runs into capital ships in an effort to try and nudge the needle in your favor, just a little bit. It can be frustrating–you’d think the general attitude among players would be towards teamwork and playing to objectives, especially given that Fleet Battles is the game’s only ranked multiplayer mode.
But even in the most uncoordinated Fleet Battles, Squadrons has the capacity to create some excellent moments, like hiding your ship among some debris amidst the chaos, secretly bombarding a capital ship at long range in your Y-Wing, and getting giddy at the idea that the other team is going to catch you out very soon. And then, of course, there are the dogfights, which are so easy to get sidetracked by on account of the sheer excitement of the chase. The flight options at your disposal as well as loadout varieties offer many ways to manipulate the duel one way or the other in the midst of the action, and the rush you get from close fights can be incredible. And that’s not to mention that the whole feat is an audiovisual extravaganza of screaming engines, shaky cockpits, and dizzying twists and turns.
The thrills of those duels happen a lot more in the dedicated team deathmatch mode, naturally, where the playfields are smaller and there isn’t any room for confusion as to the objectives of the match. But even though the mode is a team-based one, so many times I’ve hopped into random matches and found myself establishing a focused rivalry with just one pilot on the other team, getting into exclusive cat-and-mouse chases throughout the duration of the match. There’s definitely a prevalent part of the current multiplayer community who love a tense dogfight, and have an interest in sizing up against pilots of their skill level rather than trouncing on a rookie. When you find yourself in one of these duels, Squadrons feels like the definitive starfighting experience.
Much like the campaign, it’s the maps that play an integral part in heightening these fights. Though there are only six in total, they are all excellent playgrounds that make starfighter chases more exciting, with plenty of obstacles to zip through and around at high speeds. I’ve had my most memorable duels in the dense asteroid field of Galitan, where you can throw all your power into your engines, weave back and forth through a cluster of space rocks and then suddenly loop-the-loop around one and get right behind your pursuer. The same can be said of Esseles, where you can get rid of a tail by taking a risk and flying down into the tight corridors of the space station, keeping your enemy guessing as to which hallway you’ll go down next, and maybe dropping a seeker mine in a particularly squeezy doorway as a surprise. The only real dud map in my eyes is Yavin, which is purely empty space and has no obstacles whatsoever. Yavin matches are always just bloodbaths of laser barrages from all angles and at great distances, where your survival is entirely dependent on praying that no one will spot you as soon as you spawn next time.
Squadrons also features a progression system that rewards two different currencies to spend on unlocking different ship components and cosmetic items, and the game is notably free from microtransactions. Simply leveling up your profile will allow you to unlock a useful variety of different loadout options for either Republic or Imperial ships, each of which will give your ship a distinct edge in one facet of its operation at the cost of suffering in other areas. The currency for cosmetics is also doled out in daily challenges, and it’s a slow drip-feed. Fortunately, the quantity of truly interesting cosmetic options is also quite low, at least for my taste, meaning the time I needed to spend in order to afford the things I wanted felt reasonable.
The real reason that you’re driven to keep playing Squadrons is for the pure joy of dogfighting, whether that be in the game’s team deathmatch mode, campaign setpieces, or perhaps in VR on PS4 and PC, where the sensory deprivation and head-tracking give you an extra layer of physical response to your flight maneuvers, which can be exciting for as long as you can stomach it. The campaign’s narrative leaves you wanting, and the flagship Fleet Battles can be incredibly uneven. But the feeling of Squadrons’ core flight combat is gratifying enough to sustain you through it all. The involved nature of juggling all tasks required to operate your cool starfighter at peak efficiency while soaking in the more mechanical sights and sounds of Star Wars is a stimulating experience that Squadrons just gets right.
