Call of Duty is about to get its biggest update since the release of Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2 last year. Activision spilled the whole beans on next week’s Season 3 update in a voluminous blog post detailing new maps, guns, modes, and features coming to the 6v6 and battle royale corners of CoD.

That’s “maps” plural for traditional multiplayer—a total of three 6v6 maps and two larger “battle maps” adapted from the Warzone map, which is a nice change of pace from what has been a somewhat slow start to Modern Warfare 2’s post-launch support.

Both halves of the community seem pretty well served this time around, which makes me think it could be the first CoD update in a while that makes everyone happy (or at least less angry than usual). Here are the most pertinent details from the Season 3 update coming April 12:

Modern Warfare 2

• 5 new guns, including the famed Intervention sniper rifle from Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
• 3 new …
  

After laying off thousands of employees over the past couple years, games industry executives appear to be adopting a more efficient method of what they euphemistically call “reprioritization”: closing entire studios. Take-Two axed two studios just last week, and now Microsoft has bulldozed four more, including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, which it acquired when it bought Bethesda in 2021.

The dissolution of these talented, well-respected teams has reinforced the feeling among gamers and developers that nothing is good enough to earn security under big publishers today. In one popular tweet, indie developer Maisie Ó Dorchaidhe listed 11 things “that will no longer keep you safe in this industry,” including “a good game,” “a profitable game,” and “long hours and sacrifice.”

Indeed, Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush was deemed by Microsoft to be a “break out hit” in “all key measurements and expectations” last year. And in his email to staff today (acquired by IGN),…

Samsung has priced up its new 34-inch OLED gaming monitor, yours for a piffling $1,499. That’s far more expensive than Alienware’s alternative 34-inch OLED gaming monitor, which itself is based on Samsung panel tech and starts at just $1,099.

Specs wise, the new Samsung G8 G85SB OLED Ultra looks like a dead ringer for the Alienware AW3423DW. We’re talking 3440 x 1440 pixels on a 34-inch, 21:9 aspect panel. The maximum refresh rate is 175Hz for both, too.

Both brands rate typical full-screen brightness at 250 nits, with Samsung also quoting a minimum full-screen brightness of 200 nits, while Alienware also claims 1,000 nits peak in a small window. 

The new Samsung panel has AMD FreeSync Premium Pro adaptive refresh support, the same as the base $1,099 variant of the Alienware 34. For a little more context, Alienware charges $1,299 for its Nvidia G-Sync Ultimate model.

Samsung is claiming 0.03ms for GTG pixel response, while Alienware pegs their OLED panel…

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If things go according to schedule, we’ll be playing Oblivion remade in Skyrim next year. The latest trailer for the Skyblivion project shows it looking pretty smooth (apart from one discolored face and a horse walking while going nowhere), highlighting two quests in and around the town of Chorrol. Chorrol itself looks lush and colorful, with some real pretty windmills on the outskirts and an impressive fountain outside the Mages Guild. Everything is so nice to look at that it makes the blandness of the actual quests in this quest showcase stand out.

First up is Fingers of the Mountain, one of way too many quests you have to complete to earn commendations so you can begin the Mages Guild storyline, which is even more boring than the main questline of Oblivion. This is a game where there are famously a heap of sidequests more interesting than the central one, like the Dark Brotherhoood, Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild, and Daedric Shrine questlines, so to demo dud sidequ…

Stig Asmussen, the director of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, is leaving Respawn Entertainment “to pursue other adventures”.

Originally reported by Bloomberg, Asmussen’s departure was later confirmed by EA in a statement, explaining “Stig Asmussen has decided to leave Respawn to pursue other adventures, and we wish him the best of luck.”

Asmussen joined Respawn Entertainment in 2014, where he oversaw development of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order before helming its superior sequel. Prior to that, he spent a decade at Sony America, where he worked on the first three God of War games, serving as Creative Director on God of War 3.

Asmussen’s departure from Respawn is an interesting turn of events. Earlier this year, Asmussen expressed his desire to make the Star Wars Jedi series into a trilogy, an idea that was being discussed before Jedi: Fallen Order launched in 2019. “We were already talking about the second game,” Asmussen said in an interview with IGN. “Frankly, we were …

No judgments, but did you binge all eight episodes of Prime TV’s Fallout show as soon as they dropped? I showed a lot of restraint by watching four episodes one day and four more episodes the next day, but I know certain members of PC Gamer watched the entire season in a single session. 

We’re not alone in jetting through the Fallout show, either: according to Amazon, 65 million people watched the show in the first 16 days of its release, which began when all eight episodes became available on April 10. That’s a lot of pairs of irradiated eyeballs making Fallout the second-most watched show ever on Prime, following The Lords of the Rings: The Rings of Power which aired in 2022.

According to Variety, which has access to a press release I was never sent (I’m not mad, I’m just saying), Fallout is Amazon’s most-watched show ever among people aged 18-34 (I just missed that cutoff because I am 35, as far as you know). It was also especially a hit in Brazil, France, and th…

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Bethesda popped up at Gamescom Opening Night Live to reveal that the Rev-8, a vehicle for traversing Starfield’s giant planets in bumpy style, is “available tonight” for free. I gotta say I’m getting big Mass Effect Mako vibes from this thing, but in a charming way—it looks bouncy, seemingly has the ability to hover to help you clear large gaps, and yeah, of course it’s got a gun on it.

The bigger news, though, is that Starfield’s first expansion, Shattered Space, has a release date. As teased at the end of the trailer above, it’s out on September 30. You can read more about the surprise patch on Bethesda’s website, which includes details on a number of bug fixes and details how to get ahold of your own Rev-8 (okay, it’s pretty simple: just talk to your ship technician).

Today’s ground vehicle DLC release answers what may be Starfield’s most-requested feature. Almost immediately upon release last year, Todd Howard was fielding questions about why there wer…

I’ve walked on nearly 200 different planets in Starfield in environments ranging from frozen tundra to baking infernos to toxic atmospheres. And in all that time I’ve only suffered one affliction that I felt a need to rush to a doctor to fix: I contracted a lung condition that eventually got so bad it made sprinting consume my oxygen supply in a matter of seconds, and I didn’t have the meds to cure it myself.

Just getting a single severe illness from all of those alien planets is a little weird, and it’s surprising how tame the environments on alien planets in Starfield really are—especially when you get regular warnings for hazardous weather, extreme heat and cold, and radiation. Turns out what we’re playing with in Starfield are the remnants of a more complex and challenging planetary survival system that Bethesda heavily scaled back before the game launched.

“The way the environmental damage works in the game on planets and on your suit, you have resistances to …

Lords of the Fallen, formerly known as The Lords of the Fallen, will release on October 13. That’s according to a new trailer, embedded above, which bears an unashamed whiff of From Soft grandeur. It’s all there: opaque and exquisitely accented narration, grim Book of Revelation vibes, a place called “Mournstead” and, of course, a glimpse of the gameplay itself.

It looks pretty good. The environments range from fiery hellscapes through to resplendent green forests through to the obligatory ice area. We all know by now that a Soulslike can look the part and still not be very good, which is kind of what happened with the first Lords of the Fallen game. It’s all about how it feels, and how those environments come together. 

Tyler had a hands-off session earlier in the year, so while he’s seen more of the game than us, the question of how it plays is still an open one. Based on what the trailer shows, it’s promising: there’s a flash-looking quick dodge, …

When Valve introduced the Steam Deck, the company was adamant that its handheld gaming device was, at its core, a PC, with all the customizability and user freedom that entailed. “You shouldn’t do any of this,” Valve said in a teardown video, before proceeding to show everyone how to take apart the Steam Deck. So when Valve now tells Steam Deck owners they shouldn’t be sticking their noses next to the handheld’s exhaust vents and taking a big, deep breath, I have to wonder if, y’know, they really mean it.

Okay, they probably do really mean it—but that’s not stopping people from huffing anyway.

In a now-viral Reddit post from Tuesday, a Steam user messaged Valve support to ask if it’s “safe to inhale the exhaust fumes from the top vent of the Steam Deck.” Valve’s customer support got back with a polite, amusingly dry response: 

“As with all electronics, it is generally not recommended you inhale the exhaust fumes on your device. While there are n…

Focus Entertainment has unleashed another trailer for its upcoming retro shooter Warhammer 40:000: Boltgun, a game that I was genuinely excited for before I watched it. After watching it, I must confess I’m slightly less excited than I was before. Not because of the game itself, but because the trailer’s voiceover is actively off-putting.

The trailer’s clearly shooting for an attitude-eta, “John Romero’s-about-to-make-you-his-bitch” vibe that the classic shooters Boltgun is inspired by emerged alongside. Putting aside that this is the one element of mid-nineties shooters we don’t want back, the obnoxious narration and slightly lame metal backing track doesn’t fit with the gothic grandeur of 40k, even when viewed through the lens of a fast-paced, pixelly FPS. It smacks of a marketing department that only understands what it’s selling at a surface level, and as someone who has played pretty much every retro shooter since DUSK, it doused my interest in the game rather…

Here you’ll find as much help as you do—or don’t—want to solve the January 27 (587) Wordle. Prefer a little prod in the right direction? Then take a look at the clue written just below. Hoping to improve your daily game? You’ll find general tips on this very page. Need the answer in a hurry? It’s only a click away.

This was one of those days where I had the right idea but not enough guesses to see it through to the finish, and that meant I ended up just two letters off a full row of greens at the end. My final guess was no less valid than the right answer—and it’s that little bit of luck that makes Wordle so unpredictable and exciting.

Wordle hint

A Wordle hint for Friday, January 27

Today’s Wordle means to be concerned, anxious, or unhappy about something coming up in the future—anything from a large credit card bill to an important job interview.   

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Is there a double letter in today’s…

Hunting for hardware news sometimes takes you places you’ve never been before or shows you things that will forever be etched in your mind. Our superchiefintendo Dave pointed me to this one and well, you can’t deny that it’s definitely a thing. What you’ve got is a wireless headset that’s been modded to sport a hulk-sized battery and some wonderfully garish looks.

Posted over at SweClockers, Sweden’s largest PC and hardware website, the project involved two key improvements (or regressions, depending on your view) for a Sennheiser GSP 670 wireless headset: A replacement battery that has four times the capacity of the original and a new set of gel-filled earpads.

Now it’s worth pointing out that the GSP 670 isn’t exactly a budget model and generally retails around the $200 mark, but the modder in question (who goes by the name Shogou on SweClockers and Old World Tech on YouTube) wasn’t happy with the one-day battery life, not to mention that the ear pads had real…

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The first-ever gameplay trailer for the upcoming Batman: Arkham Shadow appeared at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live showcase tonight, giving us our first proper look at the upcoming VR take on the adventures of the most therapy-averse billionaire in history.

The new trailer focuses on exploration, dialogue, and of course plenty of fisticuffs, as the world’s greatest detective whomps the living hell out of dozens of flunkies and underlings on his way to ensuring that nothing ever really gets better in the bleak, crumbling metropolis of Gotham City. 

“A corrupt system has failed you,” the villainous Rat King (at least, I assume that’s the Rat King) says at one point. “Are you not angry? Fight back!” The man has a point, right? If your life is an endless swamp of futility and hopelessness, and the best the people in power can offer is a sock in the chops from a guy dressed up like a flying rat, well, I think I’d be a little angry about things too.

Anyway, b…

Pokémon Card Game—not to be confused with the Pokémon Trading Card Game—isn’t a real game. It’s malware disguised as a Pokémon NFT game that’s designed to fool unsuspecting Pocket Monster fans into clicking on a compromising link. This malicious Fakémon installs remote control software on infected computers, which hackers can then use to access private user data and make your PC susceptible to more malicious attacks.

According to cybersecurity analysts at ASEC, via bleepingcomputer, hackers went as far as creating a pretty convincing fake website for their fake game and even a fake marketplace where you can claim and mint Pokémon Card NFTs. The fake site offers no real Pokémon NFTs, however, just headaches. 

Clicking on the “Play on PC” button on the website (which we won’t link for obvious reasons) downloads an installer that, instead of installing a game, buries a tool called NetSupport Manager deep into your f…