Marvel’s Ironheart Series Has Found Its Writer – Report

It’s full steam ahead for the MCU and all of their projects. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney+’s Ironheart show has brought Chinaka Hodge (TNT’s Snowpiercer) on as head writer.

The show will focus on Riri Williams, played by Dominique Thorne, a brilliant teenage inventor who was introduced in the comics back in 2016’s Invincible Iron Man. Williams created her own version of the Iron Man armor in her dorm at MIT and eventually took over as Iron Man when Tony Stark was temporarily taken out of commission. Riri went on to coin the name Ironheart and star in her own solo comic book series.

Details about the Ironheart show are still scarce. It is unknown where in the MCU timeline Riri’s introduction will take place or if she’ll be related to Tony Stark’s legacy at all in this incarnation of events–especially since MCU has reconfigured Peter Parker into a sort of teenage Iron Man legacy character already. Still, given the wide open playing field that is Phase 4, anything could happen and Riri has plenty of space to work.

In addition to Ironheart, there will also be an Armor Wars show coming to Disney+ which will focus on Rhodey and his War Machine armor.

Next up on the MCU docket is Loki, another MCU TV show headed for Disney+ on June 11.

Best CoD: Warzone Season 3 Loadouts And Guns

It’s been almost a week since Season 3 started for Call of Duty: Warzone, and along with the “new” 1984 Verdansk map came a shift in the gun meta. Weapon tuning for Season 3 has mostly dethroned the FFAR 1 assault rifle that reigned supreme in Warzone for most of Season 2. You can still hold your own with Season 2’s star class, but there are actually better choices for the time being.

It’s been a while since the meta hasn’t felt restricted to just one or two overpowered weapons, so this is a great time to try out new weapon builds. Here are a few different options to test out for your Warzone loadouts.

Best CR-56 AMAX Loadout

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Most assault rifles couldn’t compete with the FFAR 1’s previously god-tier high fire rate and low recoil, but now Season 3 finally lets the CR-56 AMAX assault rifle shine. Actually, this has been a solid assault rifle since its introduction into Modern Warfare, and it’s been my personal favorite Warzone weapon, even when everyone else was on the FFAR 1 hype train. I’m happy to see this gun sitting at the top of the pack, as this is currently the best long- to mid-range option in Warzone right now. It does have more recoil than the FFAR 1 had last season, but equipping something like the Commando Foregrip attachment can help with that.

Recommended Attachments:

  • Muzzle: Monolithic suppressor
  • Barrel: XRK Zodiac
  • Underbarrel: Commando Foregrip
  • Ammunition: 45-round mag
  • Optic: Honestly, optics always come down to more of personal preference and playstyle. Personally, I never go higher than a 3x optic on any of my assault rifles, and I run the Viper Reflex Sight on my AMAX build, but just pick something that feels comfortable for your long-distance gunfights. Maybe you prefer a 4x hybrid optic or a thermal scope.

Best AK-47 Loadout

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Cold War’s AK-47 has been a poor choice for Warzone in the previous seasons, but Season 3 buffed this assault rifle enough to finally become viable. There was a noticeable buff to the recoil, but this still probably won’t be the gun for beaming enemies across the map. But despite not being the best option for long-range gunfights, it’s quickly becoming a popular choice for mid- to close-range gun fights due to its fast time-to-kill. An AK-47 submachine-gun-style build seems to be edging out the actual submachine guns in popularity, so this and the CR-56 AMAX will likely edge out the competition to become Warzone’s new meta.

Recommended Attachments:

  • Muzzle: GRU Suppressor
  • Barrel: 15.5″ Ultralight barrel
  • Stock: KGB Skeletal Stock
  • Ammunition: 45-round Mags
  • The last attachment can be preference. Spetsnaz Grip for better accuracy, optic for better visibility, or Serpent Wrap for better ADS speed. I’m pretty comfortable with the AK-47’s iron sights, so I’m currently using the Serpent Wrap rear grip on mine.

Best FARA 83 Loadout

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Like the AK-47, Cold War’s FARA 83 is another assault rifle that doesn’t really stack up as well with the CR-56 AMAX as a long-range option, but works great as a mid-range option. This could be built to pair well as a secondary to a sniper, marksman rifle, or the CR-56 AMAX.

Recommended Attachments:

  • Muzzle: GRU Suppressor
  • Barrel: 14.8″ Ultralight
  • Stock: KGB Skeletal Stock
  • Ammunition: Spetsnaz 50-round mag
  • Rear Grip: Serpent Wrap

Best Krig-6 Loadout

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The Krig-6 is another Cold War assault rifle that wasn’t a smart Warzone choice prior to the Season 3 update, but the recent buffs help this gun kill much faster now. This is not my personal favorite, but it really gets the job done with the right attachments, especially the ones that help beef up the bullet velocity. This can be another long-range option, if you’re looking to use something other than the CR-56 AMAX.

Recommended Attachments:

  • Muzzle: Agency Suppressor
  • Barrel: 19.7″ Ranger
  • Underbarrel: Field Agent Grip
  • Ammunition: STANAG 60-round mag
  • Optic: Optic of your choice

There’s really not a single standout as the meta for submachine guns. However, there are actually a few really solid options for a close-range secondary gun, if you’re not planning on using the FARA or AK-47’s submachine gun-like builds.

Best LC10 Loadout

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The MAC-10 has been a dominant submachine gun for the past two seasons, and while it’s still a solid choice even after its recent nerf, the LC10 might actually be set to replace it. Thanks to the recent buff to the bullet velocity, the LC10 is now a strong contender for the submachine class.

Recommended Attachments:

  • Muzzle: Agency Suppressor
  • Barrel: 13.9″ Task Force
  • Underbarrel: Field Agent Grip
  • Ammunition: 45-round mag
  • Stock: No Stock

Best Bullfrog Loadout

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The Bullfrog is a pretty accurate and powerful weapon in the submachine gun pool. This quickly became my favorite choice to pair as the secondary to my CR-56 AMAX. I personally don’t use optics on any of my submachine gun classes, but if you prefer to equip one, you could always trade out the recommended 65-round mag in favor of the optic of your choosing.

Recommended Attachments:

  • Muzzle: GRU Suppressor
  • Barrel: 7.4″ Task Force
  • Stock: KGB Skeletal Stock
  • Ammunition: 65-round mag
  • Rear Grip: Serpent Wrap

Best PPSh-41 Loadout

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The classic PPSh-41 returned to Call of Duty with Black Ops: Cold War’s Season 3 battle pass. This submachine gun is unlocked at tier 15 of the battle pass, so you’ll likely want to spend time leveling up the gun to get the best attachments. The PPSh-41 can really deal some damage, and it offers great mobility for those who love to run and gun across Verdansk.

Recommended Attachments:

  • Muzzle: GRU Suppressor
  • Barrel: 15.7″ Task Force
  • Stock: Raider stock
  • Underbarrel: Spetsnaz Grip
  • Ammunition: 55-round drum

Best MP5 Loadout

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Not everyone might agree on the MP5 being as relevant as the Bullfrog or MAC-10, but it’s still a really solid submachine in Warzone. You can use the Cold War or the Modern Warfare version of this submachine gun, as the stats are pretty comparable for both. The Modern Warfare version has slightly better mobility, but Cold War’s MP5 ends up having a slightly faster time-to-kill.

Recommended Attachments:

  • Muzzle: Agency Suppressor
  • Barrel: 9.5″ Task Force
  • Stock: Raider Stock
  • Underbarrel: Field Agent
  • Ammunition: STANAG 50-round Drum

Best Kar98k Loadout

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Modern Warfare’s Kar98k marksman rifle is still Warzone’s top-tier sniper choice in Season 3, so you might already have the right attachments for your playstyle.

Recommended Attachments:

  • Muzzle: Monolithic suppressor
  • Barrel: Singuard Custom 27.6″
  • Laser: Tac laser
  • Optic: Sniper Scope is commonly used, but pick whatever works best for you
  • Stock: STVOL Precision Comb for aiming stability or Sport Comb if you’re looking for faster ADS speed

We could be seeing a lot of the CR-56 AMAX and AK-47 in Call of Duty: Warzone moving forward. When Warzone gets a very definitive meta, it usually sticks around for a long time. Hopefully, the developers will be more proactive with weapon balancing updates in Season 3, something I definitely recommended to help keep Warzone fresh as the seasons progress.

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Xbox Is Crushing It Right Now: Hardware Revenue Jumps By 232%, Total Gaming Revenue Up 50%

Microsoft reported earnings on Tuesday, revealing that Xbox is doing exceptionally well right now from a business perspective following the launch of the Xbox Series X|S and the completion of its acquisition of ZeniMax.

Gaming revenue was $3.53 billion for the quarter ended March 31, which is up a whopping 50% year-over-year. Content and services revenue for Xbox jumped by 34%, thanks to game sales and revenue from Game Pass. Xbox hardware revenue, meanwhile, exploded, posting a 232% year-over-year gain thanks in part to the launch of the Xbox Series X|S.

Analyst Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners also mentioned that gaming revenue for the past 12 months reached about $15 billion, which is up from $10.3 billion for the 12 months before that. In short, Xbox is posting massively successful numbers right now.

In keeping with tradition, Microsoft did not release any hard sales numbers for Xbox consoles, nor did it provide a new number for Xbox Game Pass subscribers.

Microsoft overall–spanning all business divisions–posted revenue of $41.7 billion (up 19%) and a profit of $15.5 billion (up 44%). That profit is enough to pay for the ZeniMax acquisition twice, just as was the cast last quarter.

“Over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves aren’t slowing down. They’re accelerating, and it’s just the beginning,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said. “We are building the cloud for the next decade, expanding our addressable market and innovating across every layer of the tech stack to help our customers be resilient and transform.”

We won’t have to wait long to find out how Sony’s PlayStation business is doing, as the company will report earnings tomorrow, April 28.

Pokemon Go Fest 2021 Set For July 17-18

Niantic’s annual Pokemon Go Fest event will return from July 17-18. Like last year, Pokemon Go Fest 2021 will be a two-day global event that players around the world will be able to participate in.

Niantic hasn’t shared many other details about this year’s Pokemon Go Fest just yet, but the studio teases that it will be a big one since both Pokemon Go and the Pokemon series as a whole are celebrating notable anniversaries.

“What does this year’s event have in store? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see! 2021 marks both the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pokemon and the fifth anniversary of Pokemon Go, so trust us when we say you won’t want to miss Pokemon Go Fest 2021!” Niantic wrote on the official Pokemon Go blog.

Like The Pokemon Company’s 25th anniversary celebration, it appears this year’s Pokemon Go Fest will have some kind of musical theme. Music notes can be seen on the event’s logo, and Niantic teased to “stay tuned” for additional details. These hints could potentially point to the Gen 5 Mythical Pokemon, Meloetta, although nothing has been confirmed yet.

Last year’s Pokemon Go Fest was notable for being the first virtual take on the event. Prior to that, the event was traditionally held in-person at specific venues around the world, including Chicago’s Grant Park, but Niantic had to change gears and turn the event into a global virtual experience in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the meantime, Niantic has a number of Pokemon Go events lined up for May. The studio is introducing the Gen 6 Legendaries Xerneas and Yveltal to the game next month, while May’s Research Breakthrough encounter will be Galarian Ponyta. The next Community Day is also set for May 15, although the featured Pokemon has not been announced yet.

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Anthony Mackie Is Just As In The Dark About Captain America 4 As You Are

The MCU’s level of secrecy regarding new projects is legendary, even to their stars. Captain America 4 was recently confirmed to be in the works from Falcon and the Winter Soldier lead writer Malcolm Spellman scripting, but star Anthony Mackie doesn’t have any details yet. In fact, according to an interview with EW, he learned about the project just like everyone else.

“I literally found out yesterday in a grocery store,” Mackie said. “The checkout guy named Dwayne [was like] ‘Yo, man. Is this real?!’ I’m like, ‘I haven’t heard anything.’ That’s what I love about working for Marvel. They call you, they’re like, ‘Come to L.A. We wanna tell you what’s going on.’ So, I’m excited to see what happens, but I haven’t heard anything.”

The focus on Sam Wilson as the star of Captain America 4 comes from Sam’s official adoption of the Captain America mantle in the finale of Falcon and The Winter Soldier–or, ostensibly, in the final moments of Avengers: Endgame, depending on how you want to count things out. Naturally, it would be hard to have a Captain America movie without Captain America himself, but given the early stages of development being reported, it’s not surprising that Mackie hasn’t gotten the phone call.

Still, he was quick to joke: “What would be really bad is if the movie [Captain America 4] starts and I get blown out of the sky.”

As for actually taking the mantle and donning a new costume, Mackie says it hasn’t actually set in yet–and the moment even felt a little anticlimactic in the show. “I don’t know what I expected, but it’s definitely not what I thought it would be. I guess I foresaw something that was much more celebratory than just being ‘Anthony with a new Twitter account.'”

With any luck, that ‘new Twitter account’ feeling will go away once Captain America 4 starts production in earnest. Until then, Disney’s next major MCU release is the Loki TV show, which will hit Disney+ on June 11. Following Loki is the much delayed Black Widow, which will be hitting theaters and Disney+ (for an extra fee on top of the subscription) on July 9.

Xbox Enjoys Its Best Third Quarter Ever With an Assist From Bethesda

Microsoft’s gaming division just had its best Q3 ever, not only thanks to ongoing sales of Xbox Series S and X, but also in no small part due to them basically tacking an entire extra company onto their revenue for the quarter.

In its earnings today, Microsoft reported gaming revenue was up 50% year-over-year, jumping from $2.35 billion for the same period last year up to $3.53 billion this year. It’s not a record quarter overall, as Microsoft’s gaming revenues for October through December of last year spiked past $5 billion for the first time ever during that three-month period thanks to the new console launch. But it is a record for the January through March quarter, which is traditionally more of a quiet one for gaming companies following the busy holiday sales season of big new releases.

Obviously, the Xbox Series S and X still being novel new toys and improved supplies of both after the initial holiday rush was a major factor in the revenue spike. The shift from a quiet quarter in January to March 2020 to now brought the company’s hardware sales up a whopping 232% from this time last year to now. That’s admittedly unsurprising given that probably no one was buying Xbox Ones during the first three months of last year as they waited for the Xbox Series launch, but it’s still a rather impressive-sounding number.

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But hardware was far from the only culprit in Microsoft’s excellent gaming quarter. Xbox content and services revenue — aka software, Game Pass, and basically everything that isn’t hardware — rose $739 million or 34%, which Microsoft attributes to… well, everything in that category, both first and third-party software and Game Pass revenue.

Baked into that content and services revenue though is a new factor this quarter: Bethesda and ZeniMax. Microsoft officially completed its acquisition of ZeniMax in March, meaning the company’s revenue is now lumped into everything else Xbox gaming. It’s unfortunately impossible to tell what impact this actually had on Microsoft’s revenue numbers, as ZeniMax was not a publicly-traded company before and did not disclose its actual quarterly or annual revenues prior to the acquisition, but it’s very likely that the rise in content revenue was at least somewhat helped by the company suddenly adding a bunch of extra game sales to its balance sheet. The full impact may end up being more evident in future quarters when major new games launch out of ZeniMax’s portfolio.

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Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Boomerang X Makes You Feel Like You’re The Boomerang, And It’s Awesome

Only a few steps inland from the beach where your ship is wrecked at the start of Boomerang X, you realize some great calamity has befallen this strange place. As you make your way into the interior of the island, you find a ravaged village and the bodies of the giant mantis people who once lived there. Whatever happened here, they tried to fight it. They failed.

But then you find one of their artifacts: a strange boomerang, which looks more like a throwing star made out of bone (or more specifically, the Glaive throwing blade thing from the movie Krull). The mantis people, the Yoran, weren’t able to use this boomerang to save themselves, but you sure can. Just seconds after finding it, you’ll whip the blade through strange monster creatures made of goo as easily as if you had invented the weapon.

Things move fast in Boomerang X, as we discovered with a hands-on preview of the game that lasted about an hour. The game is actually a series of wave-based arena fights where several brands of these goo creatures appear, and you need to cut them down to size with the boomerang. You play Boomerang X from a first-person perspective, so these fights have a platforming and shooter feel, with the caveat that you only have this one weapon to defend yourself with. The handy thing about your boomerang is that it always returns to your hand (as you’d expect), but that delay in shots means that every throw is a tactical decision.

The arenas are quickly filled with different brands of monsters, like bugs that crawl on the ground and flies that buzz in the air. Some of them are marked with a yellow icon, and you know ahead of time that you need to kill a certain number of these marked enemies to complete the wave. There are always more monsters than the ones that you must kill, so if you’re strategic, you can just drop the important baddies–the rest vanish as the next wave starts.

The thing is, these fights quickly become overwhelming, and you learn very quickly that mastery of the boomerang goes hand-in-hand with mastery of movement. You can throw the boomerang through enemies at close range or hold the throw button for a second to get much more distance, and if the blade takes too long to bounce back to you, there’s a second button dedicated to recalling it. You can also bound through the air at huge distances. You don’t necessarily get much height, but you do get a ton of distance, so in the first few fights of Boomerang X, you’re constantly repositioning to avoid monsters streaming toward you in order to get better angles and slice down the creatures that need destroying.

Your need to stay mobile and keep slicing only gets more intense as you advance through Boomerang X’s arenas, but you quickly learn that the Yoran civilization had more going on than its destroyed huts and spear-filled armories let on. Soon, you start to add new properties to the boomerang–the coolest being the ability to return yourself to the boomerang, rather than the boomerang to you. That effectively means you can huck the boomerang into the air and then zap yourself to its location, sending you flying and giving you aerial combat capabilities.

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After that, Boomerang X becomes a fast-paced, ludicrously vertical experience, where you’re just whipping around arenas, taking down enemy after enemy with precision glaive throws. Right after getting the ability to use your boomerang to rocket through the air, you also gain the ability to focus and slow down time for short bursts while you’re charging the boomerang’s longer throw. With that, never touching the ground becomes an incredibly viable strategy because you can zero in exactly where you want to go or carefully target the tougher enemies’ red ruby-like weak points.

And the enemies do get quite a bit tougher and more unpredictable. While your first few batches of creatures are usually just slow-moving missiles who charge straight at you and die pretty simply, later creatures are less simple to take down. When you hit the arena called the Poisonous Well, after traveling through the Yoran’s statue-filled gardens and giant colosseum, you encounter what feels like the game’s first boss–a huge, poison-spewing frog that leaps into the air and comes down in an attempt to crush you. The frog monster has its weak points on both its back and belly, so you not only need to shoot up over it to hit your mark, but you also have to brave getting beneath its deadly attack.

Boomerang X does a great job of escalating the situation, though, because the frog is just the first wave. More and more enemies are added to the mix, requiring you to keep your head on a swivel as you try to deal with threats. Every fight in Boomerang X is about positioning and target prioritization. You need to pick the places you want to fly to with your boomerang to get yourself away from things like flying squids and poisonous frog puke, and you need to take out the toughest enemies fast before they overwhelm you. But while it’s a challenging prospect to constantly assess and reassess the battlefield while also flying through the air, Boomerang X makes it pretty intuitive; the time-slowing ability gives you just enough of an edge to let you carefully pick your next spot or make an important throw.

As you move on, you gain additional abilities that are dependent on your boomeranging skills. The Scattershot fires a short-range blast in the area in front of you, allowing you to take out lots of targets at once, but only if you manage to kill two enemies with a single boomerang throw first. The Needle fires off a sniper-like bolt in a straight line, but to access it, you need to drop three enemies at once with one of your special attacks like Scattershot. Both tools keep adding to the things that you need to keep in mind in Boomerang X–every move has to be deliberate if you want to stay alive, and even accessing your tools requires doing the math about what to kill, what to avoid, and where to reposition.

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The inventiveness of the enemies helps keep you on your toes and makes those decisions a little easier, though. While at first, it can feel like Boomerang X expects you to think about too much stuff all at once, between enemy locations, your abilities, and your own position on the battlefield, a rhythm develops pretty quickly. And that’s where Boomerang X really gets into the flow and becomes fun and intense.

One early arena, the forest-like Yoranwood, brings in a huge giraffe-like enemy that dominates the battlefield by creating a huge lightning storm around its head. This creature is like 50 feet tall, a giant that just strays around, making huge swathes of the arena extremely dangerous to occupy–if you’re beneath the storm cloud, you’re vulnerable to lightning strikes provided you aren’t moving quickly enough, and passing through it will also damage you. To get all the creature’s weak points, you need to hit its legs beneath the cloud, then travel up and hit the top of its head above it. So most of the fight becomes about staying high over the storm and taking out priority targets, like the demon-like monsters that can generate endless hordes of squids that target you like heat-seeking missiles. Developer DANG! does a great job of marrying your tools with the demands of the battlefield in a way that makes keeping enemy abilities and your own in mind feel natural–reacting to dangers, taking down threats, and traveling around the battlefield gives you lots of opportunities to smartly use everything at your disposal until it quickly becomes second nature.

That fast-paced but brainy take on combat and movement is what makes Boomerang X exciting in fight after fight, while its fascinating level design leaves you with clues about the strange and fascinating world you’re exploring. It seems like an easy game to get lost in, both as you’re uncovering the secrets of the Yoran, and as you enter a flow state of perfectly boomeranging through enemies and around arenas.

Boomerang X is slated to release this spring for PC and Nintendo Switch.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War April 27 Patch Notes Include Much-Needed Fixes For Multiplayer And Zombies

Following the release of Call of Duty’s Season 3, Treyarch released a new update today April 27 in order to iron out some of the bugs and crashes that have popped up. There are also various “stability fixes” to improve the quality of life for Black Ops Cold War.

MULTIPLAYER

Cold War’s new party game mode Sticks and Stones has received a fix for an issue that caused tomahawk kills to incorrectly award 100 points, which is way too many for one kill. Tomahawk kills should now be awarding the proper 50 points per kill. The update also addresses the issue with Finishing Moves not counting as melee kills.

A fix was also issued for Beck’s Season 3 battle pass operator mission. Previously, it was not progressing correctly in the large-scale Fireteam modes. Players should be able to properly advance in his operator mission now.

ZOMBIES

For Zombies, the incoming fixes address issues with the mode’s frustrating scoreboard bugs. This corrects issues with the scoreboard losing functionality or no displaying the proper information.

The patch notes confirm a fix for crashes that occurred in Zombies Outbreak mode, specifically a crash that occurred when migrating hosts during an objective.

And lastly, the Crossroads map has been removed from the PlayStation-exclusive Onslaught mode for maintenance.

You can see the full patch notes below, as listed by Treyarch.

GLOBAL

Stability

  • Added various stability fixes.

MULTIPLAYER

Modes

Sticks and Stones

  • Addressed an issue where Tomahawk kills awarded 100 points instead of the 50 points shown on screen.
  • Addressed an issue where Finishing Moves weren’t being counted as a melee kill.

Snipers Only Moshpit

  • Restricted Ballistic Knife from use in Snipers Only Moshpit. (April 26)

Operator Missions

ZOMBIES

Scoreboard

  • Addressed an issue where the scoreboard could lose functionality.
  • Addressed an issue where players were unable to inspect other players in the scoreboard.
  • Addressed an issue where the column that would display the amount of “Downs” for players was not shown.

Progression

  • Addressed a rare display issue that could cause Match Bonus XP to appear as a negative value.

Outbreak

Stability

  • Fixed a crash that could occur when migrating hosts during an Objective.

Onslaught (PlayStation)

  • Removed Crossroads from Onslaught map rotation for maintenance.

The Call of Duty blog also detailed what player’s can expect from Black Ops Cold War this week. This includes playlist updates and new cosmetic bundles coming to the shop.

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Hori’s D-Pad Switch Joy-Con Gets Rare Discount

The Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Cons offer a lot of flexibility in how the system can be played, letting you use them while the switch is docked, in handheld mode, or even propped up on a flat surface. They can also function as a pair of controllers in local multiplayer. But since the Switch launched, there’s been one Joy-Con feature that has been a sore point for players, and no, we’re not talking about drift. The Switch’s Joy-Con controller lack a traditional D-pad and instead offer four directional buttons on the left-hand Joy-Con where the D-pad would be.

For those who prefer the feel of a traditional D-pad, which feels like a must for playing some of the classic SNES games on Switch like Super Mario World and Super Metroid, Hori offers a line of D-pad Switch controllers that simply replace the left Joy-Con on your system. Though they’re available in a variety of designs, there’s a rare deal on one particular version right now at Amazon–you can snag the Black & Gold Pikachu design that’s black with yellow lightning bolts for $20 right now, down from $25.

Unfortunately, the Zelda and Super Mario designs are still full price, and the Mario and alternate Pikachu designs are wildly overpriced and in low stock. It’s been a while since we’ve even seen the Hori D-pad controller in stock, however, so if you’ve been frustrated with the D-pad buttons on your Switch Joy-Cons, snagging the Black & Gold Pikachu option at this price is worth it. Keep in mind this is just one left controller–there’s no matching right one that comes with it.

The Hori D-Pad Switch controller ranks on our list of the best Switch controllers we’ve tried, and it’d also make a great Mother’s Day gift idea if the mom in your life has a Switch and plays often.

History Of Mass Effect (Updated For 2021)

Few video game franchises are as revered as BioWare’s Mass Effect. When the first game launched in 2007 for the Xbox 360, players were taken aback by this bold new sci-fi universe, which was filled to the brim with choice and consequence, intriguing characters, intergalactic politics, and of course, romance. Over the years, it’s certainly had its ups and downs, from the iconic Suicide Mission in Mass Effect 2 to the divisive ending of Mass Effect 3.

With the impending launch of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition—a remaster of the original trilogy—we thought it was time to revisit our look back at the franchise, made before the release of Andromeda, and modernize it too. We’ve updated the video to include the fallout from Andromeda, the existence of the Legendary Edition, and the announcement of a brand new Mass Effect, which BioWare is currently working on.

For more Mass Effect, including an in-depth look at the creation of the Suicide Mission from BioWare’s Mac Walters, make sure to like this video and subscribe to GameSpot at youtube.com/gamespot. Mass Effect Legendary Edition launches on May 14 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.