Author: Trafficblast

One of the next big Microsoft exclusives, the XCOM-style strategy game Gears Tactics, launches at the end of April. Ahead of that, pre-loading for the game is now available.

You can follow the links here to pre-load the game for Xbox Game Pass for PC, Windows 10, and Steam right now ahead of its April 28 release date. Also worth noting is that everyone who either pre-orders the game or subscribes to Xbox Game Pass for PC before May 4 will get the Thrashball Cole character pack. This includes the fan-favorite Gears character Augustus Cole–AKA Cole Train–dressed in his Thrashball gear to join your squad. Like the other characters in Gears Tactics, Thrashball Cole also has unique abilities.

An official canon entry in the Gears franchise, Gears Tactics takes place 12 years before the events of the original Gears of War game. You play as Gabe Diaz, the father of Gears 5 protagonist Kait Diaz, and the story is said to delve into some of the mysteries about the Diaz family tree.

For more on Gears Tactics, check out the launch trailer here that spotlights some of the new game mechanics and more. The franchise is sure to live on after this game, and narrative designer Bonnie Jean Mah recently discussed some of the possibilities.

Gears Tactics will release on Xbox One later this year–free for Xbox Game Pass subscribers–but an official release date has not been announced as of yet.

Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge is releasing soon, and the official Mortal Kombat Twitter account has released an exclusive clip to build up hype. The footage introduces Sonya Blade, showing off her past and her snot-beating abilities as she takes on a punk.

Sonya Blade was infamously voiced by Ronda Rousey in Mortal Kombat 11; in this movie, she’s played by Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter). Other actors appearing in the film include Joel McHale (Johnny Cage), Kevin Michael Richardson (Goro), Steve Blum (Sub-Zero), and Patrick Seitz (Scorpion, who will, presumably, get some revenge in the movie).

The animation style will likely be familiar to anyone who has seen a recent animated DC film, like Batman: The Killing Joke. The film is directed by Ethan Spaulding (Batman: Assault on Arkham, Mike Tyson Mysteries).

Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge releases digitally on April 14, and then on Blu-Ray on April 28. It’s not the only Mortal Kombat film fans have to look forward to, either: a live-action Mortal Kombat film is in post-production. Meanwhile, the developers of Mortal Kombat 11 recently live-tweeted a viewing of the cult-classic 1995 Mortal Kombat movie, which is now on Netflix in the US.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is bringing back one of the franchise’s most chaotic game modes. This week’s playlist update will bring back the Drop Zone mode, which first debuted in 2011’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

The team-based mode challenges players to hold objectives to win, with teams earning points by staying inside the designated…drop zone. The first team to reach the goal point total wins the match. The hook with Drop Zone is that killstreaks continually fall from the sky while you’re holding the zone, which leads to some particularly turbulent gameplay.

A blog post by Activision offers a number of tips, tricks, and strategies for succeeding in Drop Zone, which is played across a variety of maps such as Crash, Arklov Peak, and Granza Raid.

Drop Zone originated in Modern Warfare 3, and it was subsequently featured in other Infinity Ward-developed titles such as Call of Duty: Ghosts and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. The mode will come to Modern Warfare at some point during the week of April 13 across PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

It’s a big week for Call of Duty, as Warzone introduces a new way to play, while Infinity Ward will offer double XP for the weekend. Modern Warfare’s Season 3 is currently underway, and you can check out the new maps in a dedicated playlist right now.

It didn’t take long for Animal Crossing: New Horizon‘s extensive in-game economy to escape into the real world, with social networks filling up with requests for rare recipes, or invitations to islands where turnips are selling high. A new site called Nookazon takes this to the next level, offering Animal Crossing players a platform to buy and sell in-game items for bells and materials.

The site acts as a go-between where players can find each other for transactions, though most of these sales seem to be organized over Discord once the two players have connected. Nookazon also operates a Discord server to make setting up a sale even easier.

Not just limited to items and recipes, Nookazon also seems to be doing a roaring trade in villagers, catering to players who are very specific about who they want to live with.

Nookazon isn’t the first site looking to help players make economic connections outside their normal circles. There’s also a Turnip Exchange, where players looking to play the Stalk Market can find islands where turnips are selling high–for a price. To visit one island listed at the time of writing as having a turnip sell price of 615 bells, for example, the island’s owner asks for a 99,000 bell fee.

These online marketplaces are likely to cost you a lot more than just trading with a friend would, but for those who have their heart set on a particular item or villager to complete their aesthetic, it’s an option to look into.

Although New Horizons has cut down on ways players can grief others in game, as always it’s worth using caution when inviting strangers to your island!

Check out GameSpot’s review of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which concluded, “New Horizons has a slower pace even than other Animal Crossing games, and at times, that can feel unnecessarily restrictive. But there’s still plenty to do, and each of those activities feeds into the next brilliantly for a rewarding and relentlessly cheerful experience.”

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the battle royale game Warzone will offer double XP this weekend, developer Infinity Ward has announced.

The studio will turn on double XP beginning April 17 at 10 AM PT, and it will stay activated until April 20 at the same time. The double XP applies to standard multiplayer, the Spec Ops co-op mode, and Warzone. It’s also worth noting that this is standard progression XP, not weapon XP.

This double XP event comes at the start of Modern Warfare’s Season 3, which introduces a new Battle Pass and more maps. The double XP bonus will help you rise through the Battle Pass tiers faster, while you can check out the new maps in the Season 3 Moshpit playlist. It includes Hovec Sawmill, Aniyah Incursion, and Talsik Backlot, featuring a few different objective-based and standard deathmatch modes.

In other news, Infinity Ward is releasing a new Warzone variant featuring only shotguns and snipers. The mode arrives as Infinity Ward cracks down further on Warzone cheaters, with even more systems coming in the future to thwart offending players.

Set in a future world filled with as many vices as technology can satisfy, age rating was always going to be a big step in Cyberpunk 2077‘s release. While we don’t know yet what ratings it has received, CD Projekt Red head Adam Badowski has shared that Cyberpunk 2077 has now been rated in most countries.

The tweet comes as a follow up from an update made on March 11, when Badowski said that Cyberpunk 2077 had been submitted for classification, as the team worked to refine and polish.

Cyberpunk 2077 is still a while out from its new release date of September 17, after being pushed from the original date of April 16. Classification is an important step in releasing a game, however–games can’t be released on Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft’s digital stores without a rating, while physical releases also require games to have a rating. Steam doesn’t require games to be rated, however.

Notably, Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t appear to be rated with the Australian Classification Board yet, which has always been particularly strict on games, and especially those with drug-related content. Japan has also closed its rating agency for at least a full month due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though it could have already rated Cyberpunk 2077 prior to the closure.

With five months still to go until its September release date, there’s still plenty of time. Cyberpunk 2077 will be released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Stadia, and PC–and potentially the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Call of Duty: Warzone, the free-to-play battle royale game, continues to expand with new ways to play. Developer Infinity Ward has announced a new Warzone variant that limits the weaponry to only snipers and shotguns. The new mode is called “Scopes and Scatter Guns Trios.”

As the name suggests, the new mode is limited to the Trios mode for up to three players in a squad. The new mode challenges players to either run and gun and try to get up close with the shotgun, or hold back and try to take the high ground and take down enemies from afar. With the gas circle closing in, players will need to change their strategies on the fly.

The Scopes and Scatter Guns Trios mode is coming to Warzone this week, but it’s not available yet. Infinity Ward did not announce exactly when the variant will be available to play.

Warzone recently crossed 50 million players, but some of those people are jerks. Infinity Ward has confirmed it’s banned 70,000 players worldwide for cheating. Additionally, Infinity Ward is looking into measures to crack down on cheating with in-game reporting and more.

Late in 2018 Blizzard Entertainment all but signed the death warrant of Heroes of the Storm, its MOBA that brings together beloved characters from the Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft and Overwatch universes. In a blog post, the company announced that it was shifting development resources away from Heroes of the Storm to other projects and cancelling the game’s official esports programs – Heroes Global Championship and Heroes of the Dorm – altogether. The post promised that Blizzard would continue to support the game, but warned that “the cadence will change”. It didn’t take much for players to read between the lines: Heroes was on life support.

The immediate reaction was dire. Professional players scrambled to find new titles to play, while dwindling view counts and a gutted player based forced popular streamers to try and build followings in other games. Casual players either left, cut back their playtime, or went to the Nexus, had a pint and waited for it all to blow over. A sense of melancholy spread throughout the community as it collectively mourned the game, and what could have been.

But it seems that the eulogising was premature. Despite the initially bleak outlook, Heroes has risen like Fenix from the ashes of a slaughtered Zergling swarm to have a full-blown resurgence. With scaled-back resources, no competitive scene to adapt to and perhaps less expectation and pressure from the higher-ups at Blizzard, the smaller dev team has been able to prioritise the one thing that’s in their control – making the game as fun as possible.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Despite%20the%20initially%20bleak%20outlook%2C%20Heroes%20has%20risen%20like%20Fenix%20from%20the%20ashes%20of%20a%20slaughtered%20Zergling%20swarm%20to%20have%20a%20full-blown%20resurgence.”]

Game Designer Adam Jackson outlined the new philosophy in a Reddit AMA at the tail end of last year. “My main objective now is primarily to maintain the best balance possible while making the game the most fun for the most amount of people. There has been a focus on having more viable builds, more fun talents, more viable heroes and more cool hero interactions… my focus has been on making cool stuff.” Boy has he succeeded.

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Sure, the content release has slowed – heroes now come every few months rather than every few weeks – but this has been made up for with regular balance updates, reworks, gameplay changes and seasonal events. And when new characters are added, they’re innovative, unique and a blast to play. Take Deathwing, for example. The latest hero is a massive dragon and raid boss with two ability kits, immunity to all crowd control effects, global mobility and abilities that make you feel like you’re participating in a Warcraft cutscene. Playing with or against him is mayhem in the best sense of the word.

My first fight against him reminded me why Heroes of the Storm is special. Playing as Jim Raynor, I was chasing down a weak Li-Ming. I had her dead to rights… until Deathwing thundered from the sky. He’d flipped the odds. As I tried to flee, the enormous dragon rose into the air, flapped his wings and flew overhead, scorching the earth and landing ahead of me. My path cut off, I had no choice but to go out in a blaze of glory. I was dead and the objective was lost, but I was having too much fun to care. Oh okay, I was a bit salty.

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My 700 hours of playing Heroes of the Storm are full of epic moments like this. Nothing has changed in that respect since the scaled-back development. Whether it’s ‘Sanctifying’ an area to steal a boss with the Archangel Tyrael, sliding in for a game-saving ‘Mosh Pit’ with Tauren turned rockstar E.T.C. or controlling the two-player hero, Cho’gall, with a friend, every match is full of varied and exciting experiences. Add to that action-packed team fights, Blizzard’s trademark graphical polish, a bunch of beloved characters and seasonal gameplay updates and what you get certainly isn’t a dead game. It’s something that you just don’t get elsewhere – which is partly why, alongside devoted developers and a passionate community, Heroes continues to thrive.

Just over a year on, gameplay improvements and an emphasis on fun have breathed new life into the game. Streamers have returned in droves, initiatives like Heroes Lounge hint at a resurgent competitive scene, and while Blizzard doesn’t release active population statistics, I never have trouble finding a game in Australia. The current player base is an eclectic mix of long-time players, returning veterans and new folks learning the ropes. Storm League gives experienced players the chance to get their competitive juices flowing, while anyone can jump into Quick Match and enjoy reworked old heroes and fun new ones, each of whom is viable in their own distinct ways.[poilib element=”quoteBox” parameters=”excerpt=Just%20over%20a%20year%20on%2C%20gameplay%20improvements%20and%20an%20emphasis%20on%20fun%20have%20breathed%20new%20life%20into%20the%20game.”]

With many of us currently on lockdown at home courtesy of Coronavirus, there’s no time like the present to jump back into Heroes of the Storm or try it out for the first time. For players familiar with MOBAs it offers an alternative to runes, stores, last-hitting and laning phases. It’s not DotA 2 or LoL and isn’t trying to be. It’s a hero brawler focused on team fights, shared XP and the conviction that teamwork beats out ‘solo carries’. Matches are brief (around 20 minutes), the objective-based maps are diverse and offer great variety, and as a general rule, the online community is kind and inviting. It also runs on just about anything (including my brother’s ageing MacBook Pro), and is free-to-play, so there’s really no risk in trying it out.

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Social media and the internet make it easy to be reactionary to news of any sort, particularly the negative kind. Heroes of the Storm’s ability to *ahem* weather the storm is a reminder that things aren’t always as bad as they seem. While the initial news was awful for esports professionals and fans, the effect on the core game was minimal. The community’s feeling of abandonment was far more damaging, yet it’s through their ongoing support that Heroes of the Storm continues to survive.

Video game history tells us that games don’t die until players abandon them. From Kingdom of Loathing and Brood Wars to Super Smash Bros. Melee and Blizzard’s own Diablo II, communities find creative ways to keep their favourite games alive. In the surprisingly wise words of Captain Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean, “No cause is lost if there is but one fool left to fight for it.” Games are only lost when the servers shut down and the last players log off. I’m not sure when that’ll be for Heroes of the Storm, but this fool will be fighting until the end.

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Jack Delaney is a writer based in Sydney, Australia who wishes he lived inside a hard-boiled detective novel. You can find him here.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare is now live with Season 3, bringing with it new play modes for both Modern Warfare and Warzone, and a handful of new item bundles including both new weapons and cosmetic items. Here’s what’s new.

The Twin Dragons bundle is available for 1300CP, including two golden Legendary weapons: the Kingly Splendor assault rifle and The Alchemist’s Dream handgun. These are bundled with two dragon-themed Epic customization items, one emblem and one sticker.

Also available this week is the 2000CP Cleanup Crew bundle for Otter, a nuclear-themed pack boasting the Irradiated skin for Otter, two Epic blueprints and a handful of extra goodies.

New game modes will be added to both Modern Warfare and its battle royale spinoff Warzone. Drop Zone is a new team objective mode for Modern Warfare where players earn points by staying inside a designated drop zone, while Warzone is adding Scopes and Scatter Guns Trios, a three-person-team mode allowing only snipers and shotguns.

You’ll also be able to earn double XP starting on April 17. Get the details on the weekend event here. Check out the rest of the updates in the Call of Duty blog.

Call Of Duty: Warzone is a free-to-play battle royale spinoff, and can be downloaded on PS4, Xbox One and PC whether you own Modern Warfare already or not.