Category: Games

From February 9-15, Minecraft players will have access to special curated content and free items to help celebrate the Year of the Ox, even though it can’t be in-person.

Traditionally, Lunar New Year celebrations involve in-person gatherings, whether those celebrations involve trips to flower markets, festive parades, dances, or big feasts with family and friends. As noted in Minecraft’s blog post about the event: “All over the world, people come together to clear out the previous year by cleaning their homes, getting rid of clutter, and replacing or repairing broken items.”

But since that isn’t possible for many this year, Minecraft has added special curated Lunar New Year content and free skins so players can throw their own digital festivities if gathering in-person isn’t safe. “Since that type of gathering still isn’t possible we hope that you can find other ways to mark the occasion. If you want to welcome the Year of the Ox in Minecraft, you can find free skins in the Marketplace and Character Creator that will help make your celebration a little more festive!”

The Lunar New Year of the Ox skin pack features multiple “cultural elements,” including Hanfu (a type of traditional Chinese clothing), Tang suit (a type of traditional Chinese jacket), dragon lion dance characters, and ox in different festive costumes. You can snag it for free in the Minecraft marketplace.

The last time the Year of the Ox rolled around was in 2009, the same year Minecraft originally debuted. Back then there were no cows in the game (they weren’t introduced until 2010), but things have come a long way since then. Players can create all kinds buildings and decorations in the game’s servers now, so whatever kind of digital celebration you’re looking to hold Minecraft should be able to accommodate it.

Each new season of Destiny 2 has been accompanied by the introduction of a new Exotic weapon, and in the case of the just-launched Season of the Chosen, that’s the bow Ticuu’s Divination. It’s a fantastic new addition to the game, and something you should check out even if previous bows haven’t been your thing. But the key to having a good time with Ticuu’s Divination and making the most of it requires you to understand how it works and how to best use it.

Upon drawing Ticuu’s Divination, you’ll notice that it highlights multiple enemies near the center of your screen with red diamonds. That’s the first component of the weapon’s intrinsic trait, Sacred Flame, which launches tracking projectiles at multiple targets when hipfiring. Any marked enemies will then explode when they die or if they’re hit by a second Sacred Flame explosion.

The Causality Arrows trait adds a further wrinkle to this, causing Sacred Flames to detonate immediately when you fire an arrow while aiming down sights. Landing a precision hit with the bow fully charged increases the power of the blast. So in the early going, it seems as if the best way is to ensure you’re mixing in both hipfire shots and ADS shots, marking targets to turn them into walking bombs and then detonating with precision ADS. Against weaker enemies that aren’t in groups, marking seems unnecessary as a single precision ADS shot should do the job, but you won’t be treated to a colorful explosion if you don’t mark them first.

Novelty of the auto-tracking shots aside, Ticuu’s Divination is a lot of fun to wield. With few exceptions, a bow is not the sort of thing I typically want to pull out when seeing a pack of enemies, but so far I’m loving the ability to use Ticuu’s to blow them up en masse. It’s almost like a version of Sunshot that fires more slowly but gives you the opportunity to put your mind grapes to use. Getting into an efficient flow where I’m rotating between marking enemies and detonating has been the real highlight in my first couple hours with the Season of the Chosen update.

Fortunately, free and premium players alike can get their hands on the bow. If you’ve purchased access to Season of the Chosen (either individually or as part of the year-long season pass), you can immediately retrieve it and a set of armor as a Rank 1 reward in the season pass track. (Making it to level 100 will net you a weapon ornament to change its look). Free players can also get the bow by leveling up the season pass to Rank 35. Hitting that point will take longer than it will for those with premium season pass access, due to the XP bonuses those players receive, but at least this fun weapon is within reach for everyone.

For more, check out out the Season of the Chosen patch notes, known issues, and new gear and Exotics.

The Pokemon Go Tour: Kanto event is set for next Saturday, February 20. Ahead of the big celebration, developer Niantic has now shared some more details on what players can expect, including the full event schedule and what rewards await if you can complete all of the event’s Special Research and new Masterwork Research tasks.

Event Schedule

As previously revealed, the Pokemon Go Tour: Kanto event runs for 12 hours, from 9 AM to 9 PM local time. Each hour, however, Niantic will rotate through different virtual locations based on areas of the Kanto region, which will determine which Pokemon appear in the wild.

There will be five different themed locations in total, with the final two hours of the event featuring Pokemon from all of the previous hourly blocks. The full schedule is as follows:

• 9 AM – 10 AM: Pallet Town
• 10 AM – 11 AM: Pewter City
• 11 AM – 12 PM: Cerulean City
• 12 PM – 1 PM: Fuchsia City
• 1 PM – 2 PM: Pokemon League
• 2 PM – 3 PM: Pallet Town
• 3 PM – 4 PM: Pewter City
• 4 PM – 5 PM: Cerulean City
• 5 PM – 6 PM: Fuchsia City
• 6 PM – 7 PM: Pokemon League
• 7 PM – 9 PM: Pokemon from all previous hours

In addition to featuring different Pokemon, each hour will also have music inspired by the original Pokemon Red and Green versions. Niantic says this music was curated by Pokemon producer and original composer, Junichi Masuda.

Special Research And Masterwork Research

The centerpiece of the Pokemon Go Tour: Kanto event will be a new Special Research story that Niantic says will shed more light on the original 150 Pokemon. If you manage to clear the entire Special Research line, you’ll earn a chance to catch Shiny Ditto, as well as unlock a new kind of challenge called Masterwork Research.

Masterwork Research seems to be even more involved than Special Research; Niantic says it will take “determination and skill to complete.” To clear the first page of the Masterwork Research, you’ll need to earn a platinum Kanto medal, and subsequent tasks will require you to reach level 40, catch 30 Pokemon of each type, spin 151 different PokeStops, and other activities. If you do manage to complete the Masterwork Research, however, your ultimate reward will be a chance to catch a Shiny Mew.

Collection Challenges

On top of the Special Research story, Niantic will hold 10 Collection Challenges during the Pokemon Go Tour: Kanto event. Among them will be Red and Green Collection Challenges, but how you complete these will differ slightly depending on which version of the event you choose. For example, players who choose the Red version will be able to catch Red Collection Challenge Pokemon by using Incense, but they’ll need to trade with a player who chose the Green version of the event to complete the Green Collection Challenge.

The other Collection Challenges will be based on the aforementioned virtual locations that will be available during the event. Niantic says all of the Collection Challenges will be available until 7:59 PM local time on February 28, giving you up to a week after the event ends to complete them. You can read more details on the official Pokemon Go blog.

In the meantime, Pokemon Go’s Lunar New Year event is now underway until February 14, and the game’s Valentine’s Day event will follow from February 14-18. The Legendary Eon Pokemon Latios and Latias are also back in five-star Raids for a limited time.

The latest patch for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has arrived, ushering in some important changes for the just-launched League Play event, while the Zombies mode gets more stability improvements, bug fixes, and more.

League Play kicked off this week and the new patch includes a series of fixes, one of which solves the issue that could cause classes to show up empty in some scenarios. The update also delivers some restrictions, one of which is that you cannot use any type of suppressor attachment, while a number of barrel attachments are also cut.

League Play is the new competitive-minded option for players looking to have a more serious and intense experience.

As for the Zombies changes, players can expect stability improvements as well as changes to the camo challenges. Orda eliminations now count for three eliminations, while the special enemy class now counts for the weapon camo challenges, too. As for the bug fixes, one of the issues that this patch addresses is how players could magically escape the village when using the Aether Shroud Tier III.

Elsewhere, the Tombstone Soda perk has been fixed so players no longer die when fast-traveling as a shadow, while a fix has also been deployed for a bug that could cause the player’s resources to fail to populate as they should.

The new Wonder Weapon also gets a small fix to address some of its visual effects, while the Dark Aether Artifact Intel should now be awarded normally in the main quest.

The February 9 patch for Black Ops Cold War does not contain any fixes or changes for the standard multiplayer mode, it seems. You can see the full notes below, as posted by Treyarch on the developer’s website.

In other Call of Duty news, Activision has issued another wave of bans for cheaters in the battle royale game Warzone, bringing the total number of bans to date beyond 300,000.

Black Ops Cold War February 9 Patch Notes

LEAGUE PLAY

Create-a-Class

• Players logging into League Play for the first time should now see preset CDL classes instead of empty custom classes in Create-a-Class.
• Players should now be able to save their custom classes properly in League Play.

Restrictions Added

• Attachments
  • Suppressors (All)
  • Task Force Barrel
  • Spetsnaz RPK Barrel
  • CMV MIL-Spec Barrel
  • Tiger Team Barrel
  • Mounted Flashlight
  • Target Designator
  • Tiger Team Spotlight
• Scorestreaks
  • Armor
  • War Machine
• Field Upgrades
• Lethals
• Perks

UI

• Updated the percentages listed on the Skill Divisions Overview screen.
• Addressed a dismissible UI error that could appear when exiting a League Play match in the After Action Report.

ZOMBIES

Stability

• Fixed crashes related to Essence Traps, Main Quest, and Tombstone Soda.

Challenges

• Special enemy class now counts toward the Elite eliminations weapon camo challenge.
• Orda eliminations now count for 3 Elite eliminations toward weapon camo challenges.

Gameplay

• Closed an exploit where a player could teleport out of the Village using Aether Shroud Tier III.
• Addressed a rare issue where an Orda Assault Round could end prematurely.

Perks

• Tombstone Soda
  • Addressed an issue where the player’s resources would not update upon collecting their stash.
  • Addressed an issue where the player could not pick up items after dying in shadow form under certain circumstances.
  • Addressed an issue where the player could die and not reach their body while fast-traveling in shadow form.

Wonder Weapon

• Addressed an issue with the RAI K-84 where offset visual effects could be seen after using the teleporter.

Intel

• Addressed an issue where the Dark Aether Artifact Intel was not being awarded properly during the Main Quest.

The developers of Call of Duty: Warzone continue to take aim at cheaters in the battle royale game. After banning 60,000 accounts just last week, developer Raven Software has now confirmed yet another ban wave–and the studio is prepared to drop the banhammer again.

“Stepping up anti-cheat efforts on all fronts,” the developer said. “More to come. Let’s keep Warzone clean!”

With many millions of players, the developers of Warzone face a very difficult and ongoing task of weeding out bad actors from the battle royale game. With a game of that size and scale, some portion of the audience will be jerks who try to ruin the experience for others, and this has been and continues to be the case.

Just recently, Treyarch banned 60,000 accounts from Warzone for cheating, which increased the total number of bans since launch to more than 300,000.

Activision is keeping busy trying to weed out jerks from Warzone and the company will continue to do so by implementing the following measures in the future:

• Enhancements to internal anti-cheat software
• Additional detection technology
• Adding new resources dedicated to monitoring and enforcement
• Regular communication updates on progress; more two-way dialogue
• Zero tolerance for cheat providers
• Consistent and timely bans

These anti-cheat announcements came after several high-profile streamers announced they would quit Warzone due to all the cheaters.

Many can agree that Bloodborne is one of the best games of the previous console generation–perhaps even the best–but playing it at sub-30 frames per second can be a major adjustment if you’re used to dodging your way through Sekiro at 60fps. Now, the well-known hacker Lance McDonald has released his 60 FPS patch for Bloodborne on his Patreon, but you’ll need a jailbroken PS4 to try it out.

We’ve known about McDonald’s 60fps patch for a while now, since he first showed it last year, but this is the first time that it’s been publicly available. McDonald teamed up with Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry to do a technical breakdown of the 60fps patch, and the results are fascinating. McDonald’s YouTube channel is a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes materials for From Software’s games, including Bloodborne and the Souls series. The patch also gives you the option of lowering the rendering resolution of the game to 720p to get a more consistent frame rate.

McDonald’s hacking has revealed secrets in other games as well. For example, he showed that God of War’s antagonist is flipping the player off in one scene, and that P.T.’s Lisa was following behind you all along. If you were hoping to use a PS4 emulator to try out this patch, we’ve got bad news: There aren’t any legitimate PS4 emulators that can run games as of yet, but there are some fake ones out there that look legit, so watch out for that. For the rest of us, we can only hope that From Software brings a way to play Bloodborne at 60fps on the PS5 that doesn’t require hardware modification. Some first-party PS4 games have gotten PS5 updates that improve performance, but nothing like that has been announced for Bloodborne as of yet.