For Call of Duty fans familiar with the Special Ops mode from Modern Warfare’s past, Activision has confirmed that the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will receive a brand-new, reimagined Special Ops mode of its own.
Confirmed to launch on October 25–the same day the Modern Warfare reboot lands on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One–Special Ops features cooperative missions for up to four players that pick up where Modern Warfare’s story ends. In this mode, you’re tasked with “sever[ing] a global terror organization’s access to weapons, funds, intelligence, and hardware,” according to an Activision blog post. Activision also shared a reveal trailer, which you can watch above.
This iteration of Special Ops has been expanded into “a collection of interconnected Operations against a new and encroaching threat” that will see you advance Modern Warfare’s overarching story by executing multi-phased objectives. Special Ops will include two confirmed modes of play: Missions and Operations.
Missions can be played in single- or multiplayer and are “more curated experiences” that will test your skills with specific weapons, killstreaks, and other tools. Completing missions will net you either a one-, two-, or three-star rating, which will yield varying rewards. There is also an “Infinity Ward time” posted for you to compete against.
Operations serve as the meat of Special Ops, where the “largest and most involved multi-stage experiences” take place. With four multi-stage Operations shipping at launch, each one concludes with the removal or destruction of a key aspect of the Al-Qatala army. Activision says the enemy will react to your decision in real-time.
New Missions and Operations will debut simultaneously across all platforms and will release “throughout the post-launch seasons.” You can check out some Special Ops screens below.
There is plenty of cross-progression between online multiplayer and Special Ops, with your Operative and killstreaks carrying over between both modes. This includes your customized primary and secondary weapons, as well as any other unlockable items and equipment you may have attached the last time you played.
There is also Special Ops Survival, which is exclusive to PS4 until October 2020 and puts you and up to three other players against waves of “increasingly difficult and determined combatants in a variety of experiences.” This mode is unrelated to Special Ops Missions and Operations and serves as an additional, wave-based experience for PS4 players.
The final negotiations are underway, in the midst of a bidding war, for the musical reimagining of the classic tale, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Reynolds and Ferrell will star in the project that will be written and directed by John Morris and Sean Anders. The writer team previous penned Instant Family, the Daddy’s Home films, and Hot Tub Time Machine.
As of this writing, the final deal has not been made, but Apple has aggressively been building its original content library to pad its streaming service Apple TV+, which launches on November 1. This past September, there were reports that multiple studios were bidding on the project.
A Christmas Carol follows the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeon and nasty older man who has a change of heart about life and Christmas after he’s visited by ghosts from his past, present, and future. The story has had multiple adaptations including The Muppet Christmas Carol, and animated feature starring Jim Carrey, and most notable, Scrooged, which starred Bill Murray.
After a long, long wait, Rick and Morty Season 4 is almost here! Well, half of it, at least–Adult Swim announced recently that the new season’s first five episodes will begin airing on Sunday, November 10. The second half will air sometime next year. As the trailer says, it’s “half the season you deserve, all the season we could handle.”
So while it seems production troubles may still plague everyone’s favorite animated show about a sociopathic dimension-hopping genius and his neurotic grandson going on sci-fi adventures together, at least new episodes are finally almost here. And this year at San Diego Comic-Con, the show’s creators promised shorter waits in between future seasons.
Check out the video above for our in-depth breakdown of the Rick and Morty Season 4 trailer, and stay tuned to GameSpot for all the Rick and Morty coverage you need.
Restoring the place which harbors your fondest childhood memories is a cute and almost noble goal. In Concrete Genie you get to take something drab and dead and bring it back to life with colour, love, and warmth. It’s a very simple and short experience that focuses mainly on light puzzling, 3D platforming, and a little stealth, but its charm and general sense of playfulness really make it a worthwhile adventure.
In Concrete Genie you play as Ash, a boy who dreams of bringing his former home, a fishing port called Denksa, back to life. The town has been corrupted by an oil spill and negative emotions, and is now a desolate maze-like neighbourhood by the water. Ash’s love of art and memories of better days draw him to the run-down area, despite his parents’ warnings. Unfortunately for Ash, his bullies also enjoy running amok in the ghost town; they tear up his art book and push him into a cable car bound for Denska lighthouse (known for housing a ghost), starting him on a new journey.
Small drawings of the genies Ash drew as a child are scattered around the city and, when combined with the power of the lighthouse ghost, bring his paintings to life. These friendly genies bid him to use his artistic talents to paint the town using a new magic brush, which restores the electric lights in the area. He sets to work, using his vibrant artworks to push back the darkness infecting the town. The premise doesn’t make a tonne of sense, but its message and execution are sweet and full of heart, much like the rest of the game.
Ash is determined to restore Denska to its former glory and each area of the town, including the lighthouse, has hanging fairy lights over some parts of buildings. Painting these areas will clear the dark vines that block your path to the next section. Mechanically, painting is more like placing large dynamic stickers rather than using your own brush strokes. You choose whether you want to paint something like a rainbow or a flower, use either motion controls or the right stick to choose its location, then drag across the screen to determine the general size and shape of the object.
Concrete Genie fills in the rest, adding fine details that can vary depending on the sticker. Flowers may create extra grass, and trees can grow additional branches, but it all works to make whatever you’re creating far more impressive. The artwork is made of light and genuinely quite beautiful–if a little overbearingly bright at times. Much like projected light art or bright neon signs, they work well in moderation but can get overly busy. You do have to go quite overboard to create something that’s actually ugly, which makes the act of painting the town really satisfying–you get to watch a boring dull environment become something quite pretty with very minimal effort.
To light up the hanging lights, any painting will do. This means that sometimes, for simplicity’s sake, I used the same art over and over again, covering the walls with butterflies or stars out of laziness. Occasionally, you may need to paint something specific, but even then it can get a little repetitive. All of the paintable objects come from your sketchbook the aforementioned bullies tore apart, and these pages are scattered all over Denska.
Sometimes you might not have the page you need yet, but setting out to find them gives you a genuine reason to explore the environment and fortunately, it’s really fun to do so. Ash is just a kid and doesn’t have superpowers, so he can’t jump particularly high or survive large falls, but he does have a spirited spring in his step. Clambering up the sides of buildings is quick and efficient while still feeling grounded and not at all floaty. Even if you do fall to your death, you’re immediately returned to where you fell from, and daredevil actions like sliding down power lines make getting around enjoyable without fear of punishment. There’s a really nice fluidity to his movements, which emboldens you to explore every nook and cranny to hunt down your strewn pages.
Along the way, you’ll also find spots to create new genies, which will in turn help you solve puzzles and access new areas. These genies have set colours which allow them to solve different elemental puzzles–red genies can burn down a tarp, for example, whereas blue ones can blow on specific objects, and yellow ones generate electricity to power various doors and switches. The downside to the puzzles is calling one genie to solve a problem calls all who are available to come, so often there’s not much active work on your part to solve them–Instead, the genies come along and, aside from a few exceptions, they’ll just solve it on their own. As genies are still technically paintings that exist on the walls they were painted on, they can only travel on connected walls and are locked in their own areas. This means you may need to have found the painting spot for the type of genie you need first, but this still isn’t very difficult.
You also have a fair amount of control over how your genies will look, depending on how many genie design pages you’ve collected. The choices you make can impact their personalities, which can make interacting with them incredibly endearing–it’s also very easy to make some hot mess genies, but they don’t seem to mind their appearance. The interactions between Ash and the genies are very sweet–you can hang out with them, play games together, and paint things for them. Keeping your genies happy also makes them more likely to help you solve puzzles and provides you with Super Paint, which is required to paint over some surfaces, so the whole interaction with the genies feeds back into the positivity of the game.
Concrete Genie takes a surprising turn in the final act, when combat suddenly makes an appearance. As a part of the narrative, it makes sense and is an enjoyable twist, but because it’s such a short-lived mechanic it feels under-developed. Like the elements of the genies, you are granted three different elemental attacks that need to be used to take down different shields. The half-hour dedicated to combat, mostly involving boss fights, doesn’t give much opportunity for you to experiment with it. I’m still not sure if all the attacks did damage or whether some just caused status effects because there wasn’t enough time or enemies to organically work it out.
When you’re granted combat, you also gain new movement abilities, which include paint skating. This means you no longer have to run so much and can instead essentially skate on magical painted shoes. It makes getting around even more fluid than it was before, and unlike your ability to shoot elements, you get to keep this one even after the main story is completed. Because it’s introduced fairly late into the game, it makes jumping back in after the story to clean up collectibles really enjoyable. The game itself only takes about six hours to complete on an initial playthrough, and once it’s “over” you really do want to play more. But even with the 10 or so hours I spent finding all the secrets and collectibles, it still feels like some concepts could still have been explored to a greater degree.
Most of what Concrete Genie has to offer is fun and beautiful in a sort of childlike way. The game is not particularly difficult, and overcoming a puzzle or combat scenario isn’t always satisfying. But it’s ultimately still an endearing experience throughout. There’s plenty of enjoyment to be found just from the act of exploring, and little hidden secrets along the way help make it worthwhile; I just wish Concrete Genie had more adventure waiting for me.
Mindlessly playing games on your mobile phone. Mindlessly punching in at the giant megacorporation you work at. Mindlessly commuting in the drab, overcrowded population center you reside in. Yes, things in Mosaic seem bleak…and they are. But it turns out bleak boredom isn’t all that’s going on here. Something worse is underfoot, as will soon become evident.
In preparation for playing John Wick Hex I rented John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum. That was… probably a mistake. Going directly from its artful action choreography to the distractingly janky animations of this simultaneous turn-based tactics game made it harder to enjoy what it does well. Adapting John Wick to this slow and deliberate genre of game instead of the predictable shooter was an admirably bold move, but some of the risks taken did not pay off.
The flat, graphic novel look is a smart and stylish choice for a game like this (aside from the odd hot-pink blood sprays). Each of the seven chapters has a distinct setting, from back alleys to nightclubs and banks to snowy exteriors, which keeps them looking fresh even though they play largely the same.
Sony continues to gradually reveal new tidbits about its next-generation console, now officially called the PlayStation 5. In an interview with Wired, the company opened up about the system’s release window and new features, which include improvements to game installation and user interface.
According to system architect Mark Cerny, PS5 will boast a “revamped” UI that will make it much easier to, say, see what multiplayer matches you can jump into or what single-player missions are available without having to load a game. As Cerny explains:
“Even though it will be fairly fast to boot games, we don’t want the player to have to boot the game, see what’s up, boot the game, see what’s up. Multiplayer game servers will provide the console with the set of joinable activities in real time. Single-player games will provide information like what missions you could do and what rewards you might receive for completing them—and all of those choices will be visible in the UI. As a player you just jump right into whatever you like.”
As Sony had previously confirmed, the PS5 will also be ditching a standard hard drive in favor of a solid-state drive (much like Microsoft’s next-gen Project Scarlett), which will dramatically reduce load times. That isn’t the only way Sony will be improving the user experience, however. While game installs will still be mandatory on PS5, Sony says players will have more control over which aspects of a game they wish to install.
“Rather than treating games like a big block of data, we’re allowing finer-grained access to the data,” Cerny says. An example Wired mentions is only installing a game’s multiplayer component, or installing the entire game and then deleting the single-player portion from your system once you’ve completed it.
Sony has officially announced the PlayStation 5, along with new details on the PS5 hardware, controller, and UI. The big question remains when you’ll be able to get your hands on one, and while Sony hasn’t put a stamp on a specific date, it did narrow it significantly.
The announcement from SIE CEO Jim Ryan said it will be “launching in time for holiday 2020.” That assures it will come out sometime before the gift-giving season, and the phrasing suggests it will be sometime close to the holidays. New PlayStation hardware has usually launched in the fall, so the PS5 will likely hit late next year.
That will give Sony plenty of time to continue outlining the new hardware. Ryan says “there’s much more to share about PlayStation 5 in the year ahead,” which again suggests a release in late 2020. It’s unknown at this point if Sony will hold dedicated reveal events or appear at E3 2020, after deciding to forgo a presence this year.
What we do know is that the new (unnamed) controller will feature haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, and Bluepoint Games is already at work on something “big” for the system. A new user interface will also give you more information without needing to jump directly into a game.
Sony has officially announced the PlayStation 5 is coming next holiday season and started to share more details on hardware including the new haptic controller. Of course, games make all the difference, and we know of at least one developer currently on a PS5 project.
“We’re working on a big one right now,” said Thrush. “I’ll let you figure out the rest.”
The comment could indicate another port, optimized for the PS5 hardware, or Bluepoint may have been tapped to help with the workload for another studio’s game. Alternatively, Bluepoint could be making its own original game, having spent years developing on PlayStation hardware.
We know that the PS5 will use an SSD for quicker load times, and supports ray tracing. The controller is said to have haptic feedback and adaptive triggers that allow developers to program the level of resistance when you use them. All of that hardware power and new bells and whistles are starting to go out to developers with official dev kits, so it remains to be seen how it will be used.
