TechNews

Nintendo may be finally ready to bring its storied handheld gaming library to the Nintendo Switch — Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles will soon join the 100-plus NES and SNES games that it offers via its Switch Online subscription service, according to rumors from the “Nate the Hate” podcast, corroborated by Nintendo Life on Tuesday and now again on Friday by Eurogamer. It’s not every day we see a Nintendo rumor that strong.

There’s no word on which titles might arrive, and I wouldn’t necessarily expect your favorites to be among them, particularly to start. Nintendo has curated its NES and SNES libraries for Switch very slowly, some of them are pretty deep cuts, and many titles like Earthbound, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG are still MIA two years later.

But it makes a lot of sense that Nintendo would ramp up more classic content, particularly now that the Switch is well into its life and Nintendo is watching its competitors capitalize on remakes, remasters and next-gen patches that make older games look better and give their new consoles some extra life.

For a while, we were wondering if Nintendo would continue going down the NES Classic and SNES Classic route, releasing cute limited-edition miniature USB versions of its Game Boy or Nintendo 64 with preloaded games on board, too. But the Game Boy’s 30th anniversary came and went without a miniature Game Boy, and now we’re in the midst of a global chip shortage. I’d love to see more opportunities to let new gamers in on old classics, and not just in terms of remakes like Link’s Awakening (originally on Game Boy, Game Boy Color).

Here’s hoping for Game Boy Advance, too, because folks playing the new Metroid Dread deserve to play its amazing prequel Metroid Fusion, and some of the best Fire Emblem games ever made came out there. Oh, and Golden Sun. Eurogamer does say other consoles beyond Game Boy and Game Boy Color may be “on the cards.”

Amusingly, Nintendo offered this official statement: “We have nothing to announce on this topic.”

Which Game Boy and Game Boy Color games are on your shortlist? I’m going with Wario Land and Pokemon Pinball.

Switch Online costs $4 a month, $20 a year, or $35 a year for a family membership.

A growing number of Pixel 3 and 3 XL users say their phones are dying an early death. For months, reports have been piling up on Google’s issue tracker, support forums, and Reddit, all saying basically the same thing: one day, the phones suddenly stop working and become completely unresponsive. The phones can’t boot into Android and will only show a Qualcomm recovery mode called “Emergency Download (EDL) mode.”

The phones that display EDL mode are completely useless bricks. Some Googlers in the support thread are asking for Android-generated bug reports, which collect a ton of diagnostic data about running processes. But users can’t submit those reports, because the phones won’t boot into Android. The normal tricks used to flash a fresh version of Android onto the devices won’t work, as users can’t get out of EDL mode and into the normal bootloader, where they can use the standard recommended flashing tools like “fastboot” or Google’s slick, new browser-based Android Flash Tool.

EDL mode is rarely used in the Android hacking and recovery scene, but it’s meant for recovery, presumably before any of the standard Android boot and recovery chain gets loaded onto the phone. When plugged into a PC, phones in EDL mode will identify as “QUSB_BULK_CID,” followed by a serial number. The PC software that communicates with EDL mode is called “QPST,” or the “Qualcomm Product Support Tool,” and could theoretically attempt to flash a new copy of Android onto the Pixel 3, assuming you could get the full NAND image in the right format. Google admirably provides dozens of Pixel 3 system images for download, but they’re meant for the normal Android flashing tools, not QPST.

Getting the right files still probably wouldn’t solve anything. We can only speculate about what the problem is, but reports of phones dying over the course of several months and a complete lack of recoverability indicate that the issue is not due to a software update. This sounds a lot like a batch of hardware components with a poor shelf life. It’s all very reminiscent of the bootloop problems that plagued LG phones for years, including the Google-branded LG Nexus 5X. In that case, phones would suddenly stop booting thanks to poor solder joints between the board and the CPU.

The Pixel 3 marked the start of Google being a more independent hardware company (instead of partnering with various competing Android OEMs), and most reports peg the Pixel 3 as being manufactured by Foxconn. The Pixel 3 was released at the end of 2018 and continued to sell for about 18 months, so whether you are still under the two-year warranty or not will depend on when you bought your phone. Google recently extended the Pixel 4 XL warranty to three years due to certain hardware issues, such as random reboots and a quickly draining battery. It would be nice to see the company provide the same support for Pixel 3 owners.

Today, let’s talk about the latest project from a co-founder of Vine and what it tells us about how the tech industry is evolving. This is a rare tech story where basically every fact of it has surprised me on some level. And while some of the ideas here are way out there — to the point that I’m imagining many of you slamming your laptops closed to avoid hearing any more — the far frontier they represent appears to be inching closer to the mainstream every day.

The road to Loot

When I wrote in March about non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, I tried to dazzle you by rattling off some of the more impressive sales numbers from the time: $600,000 for the Nyan Cat meme, $5.8 million for artwork by Grimes, $230 million in lifetime sales for NBA Top Shot.

What has happened since then has been enough to make some of those numbers look minuscule by comparison. On Thursday, the owners of an NFT associated with the original doge meme, which had been purchased for $4 million in June, sold partial ownership in the piece via tokens. (Coindesk has a great explanation of how this works.) Buyers snapped up the token, and now that single NFT is valued at $225 million.

Even as NFTs slipped out of the headlines in the mainstream press, then, the number of people creating, acquiring and trading them continued to grow.

That brings us to Dom Hofmann. Hofmann is best known as the co-creator of Vine, which helped to establish the short-form video format on mobile devices and became an incredible engine of meme culture along the way. Later he created Peach, a pop-up social network that remained beloved by its users far after its brief moment in the spotlight faded. More recently he worked on an effort to revive Vine as an app called Byte; it sold earlier this year.

Like a lot of software engineers, Hofmann had kept tabs on the world of cryptocurrencies as they evolved over the past decade, occasionally buying coins to better understand how they work. In the last decade, most of the focus on the blockchain was related to the original project: Bitcoin. More recently, though, developers have grown fond of an alternative blockchain, Ethereum, which is designed to let them create decentralized applications through more sophisticated smart contracts than Bitcoin enables.

For the first few years after Ethereum was invited, nothing much materialized that would be of great interest to the mainstream. But then a bunch of companies started growing really quickly last year by building decentralized finance apps on its blockchain, over a handful of months that came to be known as “DeFi summer.” (The worst part of writing about blockchain technologies is every single name involved.)

After that happened, Ethereum became like any other platform that had suddenly proven itself capable of generating huge amounts of money: it started to attract developers in droves.

Hofmann was one of them. In December, he began to teach himself Solidity, the programming language for creating smart contracts on Ethereum. He also sold an art piece he had created as an NFT and enjoyed the process. As he created, he became more and more interested in using NFTs to inspire decentralized creative projects.

In March, he created Blitmap, which he described as a “community-created fantasy universe.” It wound up serving as a kind of blueprint for what Loot would become.

Working with 16 other artists, Hofmann created 100 32-by-32 pixel images combining elements of science fiction and fantasy; those were then “remixed” into 1,600 “siblings.” The idea was to use the Blitmaps as the basis for a kind of blockchain version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, turning characters into merchandise, games. The project was a modest hit — the cheapest Blitmap today costs about $98,000.

More importantly, it set the stage for what was to come.

Loot drops

One of Hofmann’s other side projects in recent years was to create a text-based adventure of the sort that served as the basis for some of the original video games. As part of the development process, he wrote a random item generator: a piece of software that would return names for various weapons, pieces of armor, and accessories.

Since Blitmap’s launch, Hofmann had been thinking about other novel ways to promote the creation of blockchain-based art and communities to surround them. One idea he had was to let people create (or “mint,” in blockchain-speak) NFTs based on his random-item generator for free — essentially just to see what would happen. He would not provide any art work or any instructions on what to do with them. And he would give these “bags” of items away for free, minus the transaction fees required by the Ethereum network.

“A lot of people have been wanting some sort of game that takes place in a fantasy realm, or a science-fiction realm,” he told me. “They want it to be compatible with with other realms. They want to be able to build on top of that. They want to know that the items that they have will always be with them. [I was] just kind of building in that direction. It was an experiment.”

His only real goal, he said, was that people would choose to mint all the bags he made available.

Last Friday night, Hofmann announced Loot in a tweet:

An uncharitable way of describing all this is to say that Hofmann created a way to let people pay the Ethereum network to return a list of useless names to them. But Hofmann’s fans saw it very differently, and quickly turned Loot into a phenomenon.

The 7,777 bags that Hofmann offered up for minting were all snapped up more or less instantly. In the next five days, Coindesk reported, Loot bags were resold for $46 million, and had a market cap of $180 million. On Wednesday, the cheapest Loot bag could be had for about $20,000. That price more than doubled overnight, and would now cost more than $46,000.

So far, this seems like any other NFT story: weird artwork is released, price goes up quickly. What makes Loot different is the number and variety of projects that have spun up around it at a staggering speed.

First, of course, people started drawing pictures of the Loot bags: some by hand, and some by artificial intelligence-generated pixel art.

Then they began to create guilds based on the items found in their bags. Owners of ”divine robes,” of which there are only 396 in Loot, set up their own community — along with a storefront for robe purchase (cheapest price: $169,142).

Then, they used smart contracts to let people sell individual items from within their Loot bags to, as the creator put it, “upgrade your adventurer.”

At this point I feel it necessary to point out that there are no adventurers in Loot. There is no game in Loot. There are just items, and pictures of those items, and tens of millions of dollars betting that it will all somehow turn into something much more. As one tweet put it: “Loot is NFT improv.”

Now the question is whether Loot will somehow evolve backwards from a set of in-game items to an actual, playable experience. If so, who will develop it? And how? For the moment, no one really knows.

“Obviously, games are very involved,” said Hofmann, who has been monitoring all these developments as a moderator of Loot’s thriving Discord server. “It remains to be seen what’s done with that, but it’s definitely a possibility. I think it would be really cool.”

One thing that interests him is seeing whether Loot items can span different games built by different people — a concept which is key to what tech leaders this summer have taken to calling the metaverse.

A key aspect of making that happen is to make Loot more accessible — the vast majority of people being unwilling to spend thousands of dollars to participate. On Wednesday, Hofmann announced “synthetic Loot” — essentially, a replica Loot bag that can be claimed by anyone who sets up an Ethereum wallet for free.

“Creators building on top of Loot can choose to recognize Synthetic Loot as a way to allow a wider range of adventurers to participate in the ecosystem, while still being able to easily differentiate between ‘original’ Loot and Synthetic Loot,” he tweeted.

Future games

So what next? Hofmann says he has no plans to shift full time to working on Loot. Due to the decentralized nature of the project, he’s not sure he could truly steer the community, even if he wanted to. (He remains the biggest shareholder in the project, due to the hundreds of bags he has yet to release for minting.)

“I’m not leading the project,” he said. “I’m providing guidance, when wanted.”

Mostly, he says, he’s just interested to see what the community does next.

One question I had is whether you can build giant fictional worlds this way. Right now the NFT market is full of speculators hoping to flip their acquisitions for a quick profit. There is more than a little of the mania that fueled this winter’s meme stock enthusiasm to be found on the crypto Discords. (More than a little cynicism among the investors, too.) How much will these folks ultimately be willing to contribute to building a world?

But it’s also true that plenty of people get deeply involved in fictional worlds without owning the underlying intellectual property.

“At the end of the day, these are just items on a list,” Hofmann said. “It’s just what people do with it and how they ascribe value to it. And value doesn’t have to be a dollar amount. It can be many things.”

Of course, it’s also possible that the bottom falls out: that the frothy Loot market won’t be able to sustain itself. Perhaps owning these artificially scarce goods won’t prove as attractive over the long run as they have been to collectors in 2021.

But this has always been the bear case for the blockchain: that eventually enthusiasm for it would fizzle out, and everyone would lose their money. I’ve never been quite that bearish myself, but I get it: to the average person, it’s still not clear what anybody needs a blockchain for.

The thing that has always stopped me from being a blockchain bear is that each year, the number of smart people I know who are developing on it goes up. With every month that goes by, a bet on the failure of Ethereum means betting against a growing number of talented people. The odds on that bet don’t feel great to me today — and they’re getting worse all the time.

With projects with Loot, we can begin to see something new coming into focus: an open-source … something with potentially broad appeal.

On his blog, gaming company founder Kyle Russell envisioned a successor to Marvel’s cinematic universe popping up on a project like Loot:

Assuming the project’s originators went with the direction of the Loot zeitgeist, all of this would be [intellectual property] that could be re-used and remixed by anyone. That might sounds crazy — isn’t the point to own it, and the point of owning it is to control how it’s used?

That’s the Disney status quo. In a world of projects like Loot, you want to reinforce the value of the NFT you own — and that value reflects that NFT’s renown and reputation. Echoing the phrase “all press is good press”: any remix is a good remix. To be referenced is to still be culturally relevant. So if you own an NFT describing Arachnid Person, you want to contribute to an environment where as many people want to include Arachnid Person in their works as possible so that Arachnid Man #1 becomes something worth owning.

In the meantime, for the couple thousand people who managed to acquire them, Loot has been life-changing. Jackson Dame, who is the content and community manager at the cryptocurrency wallet Rainbow, told me he had only started paying attention to cryptocurrencies eight months ago.

Dame, 28, followed Hofmann’s work closely — he loved Blitmap — and was able to secure some Loot bags as part of the initial release.

“He was doing something very different with a lot of creative depth in comparison to most NFT projects,” Dame said. “So I sensed it had longer-lasting potential.”

After the price spiked, Dame sold part of his collection for six figures — he landed two divine robes, among other things — and was able to pay off his debts and contribute to his family members’ retirement.

As for Hofmann, he continues to work on multiple projects. There’s a Blitmap release coming up soon, he said. And he’s working on Supdrive, an effort to build a fantasy gaming console on the blockchain. In the meantime, he says he’ll work on Loot “as just another builder” — “finding new ways to iterate on it and expand it,” he said.

What he’s not doing is raising a bunch of venture capital and doing a traditional startup.

“Companies are difficult,” he said. “I’m enjoying having a respite from that.”

Nauka launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on July 21 and docked on July 29.

During Friday’s spacewalk, Novitskiy and Dubrov will connect cables for power, ethernet and data between Nauka and the Russian Zvezda service module. The two cosmonauts will install handrails and complete any leftover tasks for the cable routing work during the September 9 spacewalk.

For both spacewalks, Novitskiy will be extravehicular crew member 1 in the Russian Orlan spacesuit with the red stripes, and Dubrov will wear the spacesuit with the blue stripes as extravehicular crew member 2.

The outings will be the second and third spacewalks for both Dubrov and Novitskiy, as well as the 242nd and 243rd spacewalks in support of assembling, maintaining and upgrading the space station.

Meanwhile, a spacewalk scheduled for August 24, which was to include NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, will now take place on September 12 — with some changes.

While no further details about this issue — outside of the fact that it was not a medical emergency — have been shared, Vande Hei will now provide internal support during the September 12 spacewalk as he continues to recover.

European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet will take his place alongside Hoshide. During the walk, Hoshide and Pesquet will install a modification kit that will prepare for future Roll-Out Solar Array installation work.

This will be the first spacewalk conducted out of the orbiting laboratory’s Quest airlock by two international partner astronauts at the space station, according to NASA.

A 360-degree virtual reality camera will film Hoshide and Pesquet during their spacewalk.

King’s Bounty 2 is a tired sigh of a Euro-style tactical RPG. Not the kind you make when you’re frustrated or relieved, though; it’s more like when you sit down after walking up a long flight of stairs and feel sort of distantly content. For the most part, it’s fine. The tactical combat is actually pretty enjoyable, the music is great, and the world looks nice. But it feels janky and unpolished in a lot of technical aspects, and the mediocre storytelling rarely got me motivated to see how the next step of the adventure might unfold.

In a lot of ways, this long-overdue sequel is comparable to RPGs like ELEX or The Technomancer: a mid-budget contender that really wants to be something like a blockbuster BioWare game but doesn’t really have the resources or the expertise to get there. King’s Bounty 2 is a bit less ambitious than either of those other two, and probably the better for it – it doesn’t try to do anything wild and sticks to the fundamentals. But from the general glitchiness of the camera to the phoned-in story cutscenes, I still got the sense that the developers at 1C bit off more than they could chew.

The voice acting, for one thing, is very inconsistent. The sorceress Katherine, one of the three playable characters and the one I spent the most time with over 40 hours of adventuring, has a pleasing timbre with a haughty, aristocratic delivery. But some of the random NPCs scattered throughout the world sound more like they’d just grabbed someone who hadn’t been in front of a mic before and handed them a script, if the distractingly bad performances are anything to go by. And those moments detract from the worldbuilding.

Characters are introduced very abruptly, just like everything else in the story, and you’re sent ping-ponging from one clue to the next with little room for anybody to develop relationships with others, much less as individuals. There were a couple of surprises that felt worth the wait, but in general the motives of the various leaders and factions were always presented with so little nuance that nothing that happened left much of an emotional impact. It feels very by-the-numbers, like all of the heart went into building out the setting and very little into the cast and story.

That’s a bit of a shame, because the fantasy world 1C has put together is pretty slick for a project this size. The graphics are a bit dated-looking, especially with the lighting, creature animations, and some of the faces. Compared to even a six-year-old game like The Witcher 3, it comes up short. However, they’ve gone with an art direction that’s just stylized enough it didn’t bother me all that often. Zooming in on individual units reveals a lot of depth and detail, especially on some of the bigger monsters, and I particularly liked how increasing a squad’s veterancy would spiff up their equipment visually as well. While large portions of the map can feel a bit samey – a lot of it is just hilly green woodland – it’s also packed with little lore tidbits like discarded notes and history tomes that were entertaining to paw through.

If only getting around weren’t such a huge pain. Your default run speed is just slow enough to be thoroughly irritating from the first moment to the last, and for some reason there’s a walk button but no sprint. Why anyone would want to move through this sprawling country even slower than you move by default sure beats me. You do get a horse fairly early on, but it has clunky controls, it’s restricted to walking speed in larger towns, and it has a lengthy animation to get on and off that freezes you in place. That never ceased to be frustrating.

What saves King’s Bounty 2’s bacon is the turn-based tactical battles. Granted, there are some unpleasant difficulty spikes, especially if you’re playing a magic build in the early game. But they’re actually pretty good fights once you get into the swing of things. You take an army of up to five units into each one, with dozens of choices from human knights, to gruesome undead, to deadly mythical beasts that result in practically endless interesting compositions. They’re divided into four factions of Order, Anarchy, Power, and Finesse, and normally you’ll want to stick to one to get the best synergies – but there are ways to build your character to be more faction-agnostic, at the cost of not being able to focus on beefing up one faction to their max potential.

King’s Bounty 2 Review Screenshots

The talent tree has an interesting twist to it as well, in that higher-level talents are tied to ethical decisions you’ll make in both the main story and side quests. To unlock the most powerful magic spells, for instance, you’ll have to choose Finesse over Power when given multiple ways to complete a mission. It turns out, though, that this is a better idea in theory than in practice. Finesse options tend to be the better choice in almost all cases unless you really want to put yourself in unnecessary danger for the sake of a challenge, and Anarchy vs Order typically ends up boiling down to moustache-twirling bad guy versus righteous hero. I would have liked to see a bit more complexity and nuance that could have led to more difficult decisions.

Where this got a bit awkward is when I realized that there are only a finite number of battles, and a finite amount of treasure, throughout the entire world. That means you can’t grind out weaker enemies for experience and better gear if you’re stuck, so some sections felt like I was running around from side quest to side quest looking for a fight that I could actually win with my current power. It also means you can technically get a “game over” by losing all of your units and not having the money to replace them. King’s Bounty 2 lets you save anywhere at any time, so this is more of a theoretical issue. But it’s also kind of a poster child for the handful of awkward design decisions that just don’t seem well thought-out.

“No one should have to experience malicious and hateful attacks based on who they are or what they stand for, and we are working hard on improved channel-level ban evasion detection and additional account improvements to help make Twitch a safer place for creators,” the statement read.

Repeated racist incidents led users to launch the day off

Twitch is a venue for streamers, typically gamers, to interact with users in real time, often while playing a video game. Its users include the e-sports titan Ninja, T-Pain and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

While racism on the platform has always been a problem, Raven said, “the scale of abuse has escalated to the point where marginalized people are EXPECTING to be hate raided.”

The user ShineyPen, who works with Raven on the Underworld charity streaming team, suggested to Raven that the two pursue a “blackout,” or a day where they both avoided streaming from their channels. LuciaEverblack, a transgender streamer, joined them. Raven said the trio had been planning to take the day off later than September 1 but sped up the process after users began “doxxing” streamers, sharing their personal information online.

Omega Jones, who streams as CriticalBard and is a member of the LGBTQ-focused Rainbow Arcade Stream Team, didn’t stream Wednesday in support of #ADayOffTwitch. Jones, who uses the pronouns they and he, said they’ve been targeted by multiple hate raids and “follow bots,” or a deluge of users (who may be fake accounts or bots) who followed Jones at once, all with Nazi symbols as their photos.

“To be honest, it was becoming overwhelming,” said Jones, who has more than 16,000 followers on the platform, in an email to CNN. “As one of the affected, it should not be on MY shoulders to have to leave the site for a day, but that is what it has become.”

Jones, whose Twitch channel is a primary source of income, said the one-day break from Twitch is just the first in a series of steps users should take to demand change.

“For this movement to be a complete success, one day of abstaining from Twitch will not be enough,” Jones said. “We need constant support, constant eyes on Twitch’s Safety team, and we need to continue to speak out.”

How Twitch can improve, according to the streamers

One way to end hate raids, Raven said, is to “give the creators control of their spaces.” To Raven and her fellow #ADayOffTwitch organizers, that means allowing creators to decide who can enter their chats based on how old their accounts are (many of the accounts who make racist comments are less than a day old, she said).

Jones said the platform must end “mass account creation,” since one user can attach their email address to more than one account and create countless more with different email addresses.

Raven and Jones said neither of them are ready to leave Twitch yet. Both are hopeful the platform’s safety team will take major steps to protect them and other creators from marginalized groups.

“My identity markers aren’t Twitch exclusive,” Raven said. “I am Black and queer 24/7/365 and that’s gonna follow me wherever I go. I don’t want to leave. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, it’s greener where you water it.”

Raven said they’ve been in contact with Twitch since the platform caught wind of her videos of racist comments from viewers. They can’t say much about their conversations but said the people they spoke with are “actively working as quickly as possible to make it harder for these things to occur.”

Jones said he hasn’t heard from Twitch regarding his own racist treatment on the platform, so he’d like some more transparency from its safety team on the steps they plan to take to improve streamers’ experiences. And in the meantime, he’ll continue to speak out against the racism he and his fellow Black and queer streamers face daily on the platform.

“I do love this place and the community I have built,” Jones said. “I will protect my peace, but I will also fight to make Twitch be what it should be.”

The Call of Duty community now knows what it can expect to experience with all of the exciting details for Warzone and Black Ops Cold War Season 5 Reloaded being announced, including its action-packed roadmap.

The start of Season 5 brought plenty of changes to the worlds of Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops Cold War with new perks and weapons like the Tec-9 SMG and EM2 Assault Rifle.

However, the action of Season 5 is not stopping, as Warzone and Black Ops Cold War Season 5 Reloaded will be bringing even more content and changes for players to experience ahead of the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Vanguard, thanks to the release of the official Warzone and Cold War Season 5 Reloaded roadmap.

Here is everything you need to know about what is coming in the Warzone and Cold War Season 5 Reloaded Roadmap:

Warzone and Cold War Season 5 Reloaded Roadmap

The Story So Far: 16-5-18-19-5-21-19… 9-19… 8-5-18-5…

“16… 11… 1… 9… 21…”

Around the world, from the warzone of Verdansk to a Zoo in the Ural Mountains, there are reports of Operators on both sides hearing an unfamiliar voice reciting numbers in their earpieces.

A few have described seeing these “numbers” as a strange visual hallucination, leaving them questioning their own mental states.

These are only reports from the Operators who have returned to base. Others appear to have gone rogue, suddenly turning on their squadmates mid-battle.

Evidence is mounting that these rogue Operators are now only responding to orders from Perseus…

The numbers… what do they mean?

Officially launching next Thursday following updates to Black Ops Cold War on September 7 at 9 PM PT and Warzone on September 8 at 9 PM PT, Season Five Reloaded introduces a variety of free content in Multiplayer and Zombies, with The Numbers Event delivering content across both games later in the season. From a reimagined overhaul of Warzone Rumble known as Clash to a new functional Melee weapon, the fight rages on in the ‘80s as we prepare for the upcoming sixth season in Black Ops Cold War and Warzone.

Meanwhile in the Store, a familiar Operator to Black Ops veterans returns to bolster NATO’s forces, while the Warsaw Pact receives a new Bundle to help them lay down the law.

This – and much more – arrives in Season Five Reloaded. Here’s what you need to know:

BLACK OPS COLD WAR CONTENT:

There’s no cage that can hold you from the fight ahead.

First seen in the original Black Ops’ Escalation DLC pack in 2011, Zoo is a medium-sized map specifically designed for 6v6 game modes in Black Ops Cold War, trimming the playable space down to its main animal exhibit and park area for Multiplayer.

Be sure to take a “ride” on the monorail to get an incredible vantage point on the action below, or head to the souvenir shop to dole out plenty of free pain to your enemies. Jump into the action with the dedicated Zoo 24/7 Featured Playlist at the launch of Season Five Reloaded.

New to Black Ops Cold War – Demolition Returns to Multiplayer

After a hiatus since Season Three of Modern Warfare in 2020, Demolition is back for Black Ops Cold War!

First introduced in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare™ 2 (2009), this game mode is akin to a respawn-enabled, amped-up Search and Destroy. In Demolition, one team of attackers attempts to destroy a pair of bombsites while defenders must prevent the detonations.

All-out chaos ensues when time is extended after the first bomb site is destroyed, and both teams have a chance to play offense and defense before the match ends. If there is a tie, expect even more madness: a single neutral bomb site becomes active, with the first team to detonate it winning the match.

Learn more about Demolition through our Mode Recon on it here.

New Zombies Outbreak Region: Armada

Agents of Requiem have even more to explore once Season Five Reloaded arrives, including a new Outbreak Region in previously uncharted waters for Zombies.

Located in the North Atlantic Ocean, Armada was the site of NATO and Warsaw Pact skirmishes over a sunken prototype nuclear submarine. With the Dark Aether spreading into the Atlantic, it seems nuclear armaments weren’t the only volatile element in the area. A dimensional rift has caused an intense energy spike, making the area rich in Aetherium Crystals, Essence… and the ravenous undead.

Expect to take on Objectives and World Events on the high seas in this new Region custom-tailored for Outbreak, including a new World Event for those looking to bolster their loadouts.

New World Event in Outbreak

Across the Outbreak Zones, Requiem is reporting the presence of a new chest type alongside the usual small, medium, large, and golden varieties: the mysterious Black Chest.

Much like previous World Events found throughout the Regions, the exact details of this event are for Requiem agents to discover. Once they do, they may find the reward far outweighs the risk…

Rampage Inducer in Round-Based Maps

Operators heading back into round-based experiences to complete those Season Five Challenges will also find a new feature to ramp up the action from the very start: the Rampage Inducer.

Appearing as an orange Essence canister in the starting area, the Rampage Inducer will temporarily ramp up the difficulty to Cranked-level proportions if all members of a squad agree to take on the challenge. Once activated, this canister will speed up zombie spawn rates and cause all zombies to sprint endlessly until Round 20, turning up the action until the second major round milestone is reached… or a total squad wipe long before then.

New Onslaught Content and Weapon Blueprint Reward (PlayStation)

PlayStation Operators – don’t be left in the dark in Season Five Reloaded.

Onslaught receives a new map and narrative Intel with Onslaught Drive-In, as well as a new limited-time mode: Diminishing Light, a hectic twist on the traditional formula where the circle shrinks over time. If the Orb collapses on itself, it will implode and destroy you and your duo partner – shoot it to slow down the shrink rate or collect clock power-ups to pause the collapse.

Completing Surges will revert the Orb to its original size, and these are key to earning a brand-new Weapon Blueprint. Those who conquer 30 Surges in this limited-time mode will earn the “Soviet Red” Legendary Assault Rifle Blueprint (shown above), which is based on the reliable AK-47 rifle and features plenty of high-level attachments.

WARZONE CONTENT:

New Warzone Mode: Clash

50v50 combat is back in Warzone.

Building off Warzone Rumble, a deathmatch based in Verdansk, Clash takes select areas from this massive map and pits two teams of 50 v 50 against each other in an unlimited respawn fight to 500 points. Whether it’s Downtown, the Boneyard, or even the popular-drop zone of the Factory, your mission in these Clash areas remains the same: earn points by eliminating enemies and completing Contracts for in-match rewards and collect powerups from defeated enemies that give gaming-changing abilities.

This is Team Deathmatch on an epic scale, with all your loadouts accessible, along with the Ping and Armor System, Cash, Buy Stations, and Vehicles from the regular Battle Royale and Plunder modes.

Get ready for the biggest team fights in Warzone and consider updating those Loadouts – you’ll have access to them right off the drop, allowing you to use those go-to armaments or level up and complete camo challenges for weapons from Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare®.

New Warzone Mode: Iron Trials ’84

Do you consider yourself a Tier One Operator of the highest caliber? Now’s the chance to prove it: Only the strongest survive in the toughest Battle Royale mode to ever come to Verdansk! Flex your mastery over the entire arsenal of weapons, prove you can handle any firefight with any type of armament, and earn an exclusive Calling Card to prove your mettle. The rules have changed. Here how the mode works:

    Health and Regeneration: An iron will and a serious constitution is needed to survive, so expect your base health to be increased, and your health regen rate to be changed too. This is set to affect the feel of combat, time to kill, weapon, Perk, and Equipment viability as the entire game is effectively altered!

  Loadouts: There are no free passes in this mode! Complementary Loadout Drops have been removed, meaning you’ll need to purchase your preferred weaponry. The cost at a Buy Station has risen, too.

    Gulag: The Gulag is open, but the emphasis is on a one-on-one skillful takedown against your opponent. No akimbo. No semi-auto or fully-auto shotguns. Almost no tactical equipment. The only thing standing between you and redeployment is the agility of your trigger finger. Win the Gulag? Then you can drop back into Verdansk… with whatever weapon and equipment you were carrying at the end of your Gulag bout!

    Supplemental: Also expect additional changes to environmental elements and a variety of important aspects that impact your Warzone experience. More expansive intel available soon.

    Classified Weapons: Be certain you [[REDACTED]] as these can [[REDACTED]], critical information we hope won’t get [[REDACTED]].

There’s no participation trophy for this mode, soldier: Only those placing first will receive the exclusive Calling Card!

WARZONE AND BLACK OPS COLD WAR CONTENT:

The Numbers Event – Embrace Perseus’ Broadcast and Be Rewarded (In-Season)

Initially installed at the start of the season, the Mobile Broadcast Stations around Verdansk will soon begin amplifying the “Dragovich Program” tapes – A.K.A. the Numbers broadcasts – across the region.

These are the focus of The Numbers Event, an upcoming limited-time reward stream for Operators brave enough to investigate these trucks placed by Perseus. This limited-time event will begin on September 21 at 10 AM PT. Although Operators have recently reported odd noises and sights when near them, there are two incentives for anyone willing to interact with these Mobile Broadcast Stations:

The first is an instant $2,000 Cash bonus in the current match, more than enough for a set of Armor Plates at a Buy Station. The second is directly tied to the limited-time Numbers Event: for each unique Mobile Broadcast Station activated during the event, you will receive an exclusive reward such as a Sticker, Calling Card, or Charm, in addition to some XP.

In addition to the nine challenges in Warzone centered around the Mobile Broadcast Stations, the Numbers Event also includes a set of nine challenges within Black Ops Cold War based around new maps and modes for Season Five Reloaded. Through these challenges, you can unlock even more cosmetic rewards, as well as another arcade cabinet game for your Black Ops Cold War collection. While this prize is a secret, here’s our key hint: there are no Billy Club patches for those who play this retro arcade classic and hit 35,000 score or more.

The Sai – Unlock a New Melee Weapon Through the Numbers Event

Those who complete all nine challenges within Warzone OR Black Ops Cold War during the event will receive a new functional melee weapon: the Sai.

This dual-wield Melee weapon, often used in stealthy martial arts, is the first ever functional weapon to be awarded via limited-time event. Hundreds of years ago, it was introduced to the island of Okinawa and eventually became adopted by the local police to aid in arresting criminals. For an outlaw like Kitsune, who grew up nearly 1,200 kilometers away in Kobe, wielding one is an irony she relishes.

Its lightweight design allows for improved agility and fast attacks, which is great for taking out zombies or the competition in Multiplayer and Warzone.

New Limited-Time Outbreak Mode for Hardcore Agents: Survival (In-Season)

While the Black Chest and Rampage Inducer are both set to test Requiem’s most elite Operators, the most hardcore zombie slayers looking for a serious challenge can test their abilities in Outbreak Survival when The Numbers Event launches.

This limited-time Outbreak mode amps up the survival horror aspect of the Zombies experience, fundamentally changing Outbreak to make it a truly punishing-yet-rewarding challenge.

Operators will only bring in the Field Upgrade from their starting Loadout, with their primary weapon being replaced with a single 1911 handgun. Once boots hit the ground in a random Region, more modifiers become clear: the mini-map and overhead map are disabled, music is turned off, and the HUD displays little intel.

Whenever an Operator takes damage, there is no auto-regeneration to save them. Instead, they must find a brand-new item – Food – to heal.

These Food items have four rarity levels:

·      Uncommon (e.g. Canned Corn) – Heals 50 HP

·      Rare (e.g. Chocolate Chip Cookies) – Heals for 100 HP

·      Epic (e.g. Chicken Soup) – Heals for 150 HP

·      Legendary (e.g. an entire Pizza) – Heals for 200 HP AND heals 1 HP per second for 60 seconds

Other than these modifiers, the mission remains the same: survive the Outbreak Zone, complete the main Objective, and either Exfiltrate before the horde rips you limb-from-limb, or Warp to another region to continue the fight.

ROGUE TRANSMISSION INCOMING…

As this announcement was drafted, HQ has received the preceding image (above). Perhaps Raven Software will help make sense of this in their incoming patch notes…

This is not the only intel we received – here’s what another source, who is deeply embedded within NATO, sent us:

As The Numbers Event goes online, intel suggests that [[REDACTED]] are under Verdansk and that [[REDACTED]] has gone AWOL – their position is reportedly related to coordinates for these [[REDACTED]]. This has led NATO to send in Special Agent [[REDACTED]] to stop this unauthorized operation, as it could jeopardize the agency in discovering and stopping [[REDACTED]].

Hudson Returns – New Operator

Although NATO’s redaction system has left their intelligence and future all but unintelligible, our best spies have figured out one piece of the puzzle:

They are sending in Special Agent Jason Hudson to aid in their current and upcoming operations, including a search and rescue of a fellow NATO Operator gone missing.

Hudson: NATO (In-Season)

Born and raised in Washington, D.C. with dreams that he would serve his country like his older brother did in World War II, Hudson saw action in Korea before earning magna cum laude honors in one of D.C.’s top research universities and entering the CIA.

From there, he pushed Operation 40 member Alex Mason to his limits to neutralize Major General Dragovich… but nearly 20 years later, Dragovich’s tapes have ended up in Perseus’ hands.

After having Adler and Woods handle the dirty work against Perseus up until this point, Special Agent Jason Hudson is ready to finish the fight once and for all, even if it means taking a detour into the Dark Aether.

Get Hudson as part of an upcoming Store Bundle along with three Legendary Weapon Blueprints and more, to be released following the launch of Season Five Reloaded.

He is the LAW – Judge Dredd Operator Skins for Beck Available for Limited Time (In-Season)

Ingo Beck of the Warsaw Pact has been known to be a tactical operator who is calm and dependable when it comes to demolitions and bomb disposal… but in Season Five Reloaded, a side to him unknown to us will come alive. When it comes to laying down the law – even when discussing comic books with squadmates in his downtime – he can be the judge, jury, and executioner.

Later in the season, the limited-time Tracer Pack: Judge Dredd Store Bundle will become available to purchase. The Bundle includes two new Legendary Operator Skins for Beck: “Judge Dredd” and “Comic Strip,” a black-and-white cel-shaded variant of the lawful bringer of justice.

These are both based around Joe Dredd, a man cloned from the founder of the Judges, the “Father of Justice” Eustace Fargo. Uncompromising and unwavering his commitment to the Law, Judge Dredd’s mere presence is enough to strike terror in the hearts of any criminal. Beck wears this very uniform as the conduit for Dredd in Black Ops Cold War and Warzone.

In addition to these two Skins, the Bundle includes three Weapon Blueprints: the “Quick Judgement” SMG, the “Arbitrator Rifle” Assault Rifle, and the “Lawgiver” Pistol, based on the standard-issue weapon given to all Judges (note: no palm print needed to operate). It also has the “Incendiary” Finishing Move, “Book of Law” Weapon Charm, “Judge’s Watch” Wrist Accessory, and an Animated Calling Card and Emblem.

More in Store – New Pro Pack, Mastercrafts, and Tracer Packs

Kicking off the mid-season update is the Tracer Pack: Ghost Ship Mastercraft Store Bundle, which includes the Ultra-rarity, spectral inspired “Flying Dutchman” Tactical Rifle Weapon Blueprint. Haunt the seven seas with this new armament or use the “Keelhaul” SMG to make your enemies walk the plank.

Beer and cheer are alive and well in Call of Duty with the Tracer Pack: Oktoberfest Store Bundle available later this season.

From the “Lederhosen” Operator Skin for Beck to two Weapon Blueprints featuring the new Beer Tracer Fire effect, this Bundle can help you “pop off” in your next Multiplayer, Zombies, or Warzone match.

Plus, for the first time ever in a Bundle, you can earn back COD Points for completing specific challenges tied to this pack – look to the Bundle in-game when it releases for more details.

Plenty of other Bundles will be available before the end of Season Five, but it’s not a new season of Store Bundles without a brand-new Pro Pack.

The Chemical Reaction Pro Pack, available later this season for $19.99 USD (or your regional equivalent) is a seven-item Bundle built for those looking for a better bond with victory. Its most notable item is a new “Diabolical” Ultra Operator Skin for Stone and also includes two Weapon Blueprints – the “Primary Injection” Assault Rifle and “Tactical Syringe” Sniper Rifle – which can both make a loadout go nuclear.

Plus, purchasing this Pro Pack gives you 2,400 in COD Points, allowing you to pick up another Store Bundle, get the Season Five Battle Pass before the end of the Season, or gift those Bundles or the Battle Pass to a friend or squadmate.

Now that you know the arsenal, personnel, and the operation at hand via The Numbers Event, you have your exact mission parameters in Warzone and Black Ops Cold War.

Heed the call and execute the mission.

Source: Call of Duty Blog

Image Credits: Activision

We’ll finally get a better picture of what lies ahead for the PS5 during a September 9 showcase, Sony announced on the PlayStation Blog today.

The PS5 showcase will run around 40 minutes and include updates from various PlayStation Studios about games “releasing this holiday and beyond.” The PlayStation Blog stressed that the showcase won’t feature any information about Sony’s upcoming PS5 VR headset, but will have post-show interviews with developers, diving into more detail on some of the announcements.

News of the showcase comes after a relatively quiet summer from PlayStation. Sony didn’t hold any big livestreams of its own or make a substantial appearance at third-party events like E3. Outside of one-off announcements for PS5 ports like the Ghost of Tsushima and Death Stranding Director’s Cuts, the most we’ve heard came when Guerilla Games appeared at Gamescom last week to confirm the delay of Horizon Forbidden West until February 2022.

As a result, the PS5 first-party release calendar has been looking a little light for this fall heading into the holiday season. After the timed-console exclusive Death Loop comes out next month there’s cross-gen action adventure game Kena: Bridge of Spirits and then…not much else outside of cross-platform blockbusters like Battlefield 2042 and Guardians of the Galaxy.

The upcoming untitled God of War game that everyone has taken to calling God of War: Ragnarok had previously been teased for a 2021 release, but was also postponed. A number of other games have also slipped to 2022 due to ongoing work complications resulting from the pandemic.

The PS5 got off to a strong start this year with Returnal and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Hopefully it still has a surprise or two up its sleeve to finish 2021 out. The September 9 showcase is scheduled to start at 4:00 p.m. ET on YouTube and Twitch.