The DMR 14, a weapon added to the battle royale as part of the integration of Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, is currently dominating the Warzone meta. Dominating is too soft a way to put it - the DMR is considered essential to success, and it’s absolutely everywhere. The DMR 14 is a semi-auto tactical rifle, with increased fire rate and minimum recoil. It’s devastating at long rage, maintaining reliable damage to down enemies in a blink of an eye....

In a tweet announcing Modern Warfare 2 ranked play’s planned release window, the studio said it was working with partners to deliver a number of key features at launch, including competitive modes, competitive rewards, ranked skill divisions, and top 250 leaderboards - with more details to be shared at a later date. As part of its announcement, Treyarch also confirmed Activision will be terminating league play in Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War and ranked play in Call of Duty: Vanguard as of 22nd November this year....

According to Bloomberg, “high-level employees” at Activision have discussed ditching Call of Duty’s current annualised release schedule, which has been in place since 2005. This follows Microsoft’s $68.7bn purchase of Activision Blizzard - a deal expected to go through by the end of June 2023. There is no suggestion that this year’s Call of Duty, expected to be Infinity Ward’s follow-up to 2019’s Modern Warfare, will be delayed from the series’ usual slot before Christmas....

Here’s how it works. The Modern Warfare 2 launcher will serve as the all-encompassing interface to access Modern Warfare 2, DMZ and Warzone 2.0. This is known as “Call of Duty HQ” and is presented with the same Netflixy style of tile interface courtesy of Infinity Ward’s director of UX/UI William Faler who previously served the same role at Hulu. The integration of Warzone into Modern Warfare has been a contentious issue amongst fans....

The remaster, which we reported on over the weekend after a full playthrough was posted to YouTube, is now available to download and play via an emulator. Digital Foundry’s John Linneman has verified the game is playable. It runs at a smooth 60FPS, and you’re able to switch between the old and new graphics at any time. Watch him play it in the video below: In 2007 Microsoft-owned Rare developed an HD remaster of its N64 classic to be released on XBLA, but copyright disputes saw the project shuttered....

Monster Hunter Rise has now sold 9m copies on PC and Nintendo Switch since launch (with an additional 1.3m this year). Monster Hunter World: Iceborne has shifted 9.2m copies to date, with a further 400k copies this year across PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The original Monster Hunter World sits at 18m sold, making it Capcom’s best-selling game ever. All of Capcom’s top five best-selling games come from the past five years: Monster Hunter games World, Iceborne and Rise, plus Resident Evil 7 and the 2019 remake of Resi 2....

This port from Simon Brown, aka DrBeef, features motion controlled lightsabers and the ability to deflect oncoming blasts - perfect for all your Storm Trooper slicing and dicing needs. I feel compelled to write something about how “I thought they smelled bad on the outside…” here. Known as Jedi Knight: Quest, this first-person taster offers an amusing (and a very satisfying looking) way to make one’s way through that beloved galaxy far, far away....

Here, we’ll be taking you through all of the important mechanics surrounding Religion, Faith, Pantheons, beliefs, and more in Civilization 6, which should serve as some pretty comprehensive prep and companion detail for our dedicated Civ 6 Religious Victory guide. If you’re looking for more resource-focused Civ 6 guides, meanwhile, we also have pages on how to earn Science, how to earn Gold, and how to earn Culture and Tourism in Civ 6, too....

As the ‘4’ in the title indicates, It’s About Time is a direct continuation of 1998’s Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped - a game that got a gorgeous remake as one third of 2017’s Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - and very much takes inspiration from the early series’ brand of platform action. There are wrinkles to the formula, of course, including masks that slow time, flip gravity, and phase objects in and out of existence, as well as various new modes and playable characters - each with their own unique abilities and stages - but it should all be immediately familiar to Crash fans....

The announcement capped off today’s Unreal Engine 5 presentation by Epic Games, which was timed alongside the engine’s general release. Unreal Engine 5 is the powerful toolset behind Epic Games’ recent The Matrix Awakens demo, and which also runs the ever-changing Fortnite. “This new engine translates to next-level storytelling and gameplay experiences, and that’s why we’re thrilled to announce today that we’ve just started development of our next Tomb Raider game, powered by Unreal Engine 5,” Crystal Dynamics said today....

It’s one of the many standout offers as part of the latest Big in Japan sale, which features hundreds of discounts on games developed in or inspired by the Land of the Rising Sun. I’ve drawn particular attention to 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim while it’s £24.99, though, as it’s one of those strange curios that I feel many people have had an eye on but haven’t dared make the leap yet in fear of bouncing off it completely....

Behaviour Interactive has a livestream planned for the 17th May where new content for the game will be revealed. However, as posted up on Reddit, some of that content has allegedly leaked early. Spoilers follow. The new (24th) chapter will include a new killer called The Dredge and a new survivor: Indian psychic investigator Haddie Kaur. Perks and abilities for both characters have also been revealed. The Dredge has the ability to teleport to lockers where survivors may be hiding, as well as activating Nightfall that forces survivors to operate in total darkness....

Intriguingly, this appears to be the original version of the game, rather than its more recent Director’s Cut. Published by 505 Games, the PC version of Death Stranding first arrived in July 2020, around eight months after it first popped up as a PlayStation 4 console exclusive. 505 Games does not own publishing rights to any other console versions, so it’s unlikely we’ll see the game pop up on Xbox itself....

“Essentially, the word ‘volunteer’ comes from the Latin word ‘voluntarius’, meaning ‘willing’ or ‘of one’s own choice’,” it explained. “Anyone who is open to life can become a volunteer with Fntastic, and there are two types of volunteers. Today we have over 100 full-time internal volunteers (employees) from Singapore, Russia, the Netherlands, Thailand, Ukraine, Finland, Kazakhstan, and Belarus who work as engineers, artists, HR professionals, etc. We also have 40 external US and worldwide volunteers (supporters) who help with testing and reviewing our products at a very early stage....

For the Daily Deals promotion, they’ve cut the price of the Destiny 2 Legendary Edition down 47% to £36.95. It’s a good time to jump into the juggernaut sci-fi bandwagon, as the new Season of the Chosen update just launched. If you want to add some extra bells and whistles to the base game, the Forsaken, Shadowkeep and Beyond Light DLC are also on sale. The daily deals run out at 16:00 GMT tomorrow, but there’ll be more coming on Monday....

Thankfully, developers are trying to ensure these players are not going to see their efforts wasted when Stadia ultimately closes its doors. Sharing an update on Twitter, Hitman developer IO Interactive announced it was currently “looking into ways” for its Google Stadia fans to “continue [their] Hitman experience on other platforms”. This sentiment was shared by the Destiny 2 team at Bungie. On learning the news of Stadia’s termination, the company stated it had “begun conversations about next steps” for its Destiny 2 players on Google Stadia....

Kicking off with PlayStation 5’s 1440p update, we’ll be covering this more extensively, but the headline points are fairly straightforward - the beta firmware works fine with 1440p displays, with a new test option that puts any connected display through its paces at 1440p resolution in both 60Hz and 120Hz, and in both HDR and SDR modes. From there, everything works exactly as it should - typically, games are downscaled from their 4K outputs to 1440p, providing a form of super-sampling anti-aliasing....

Despite covering off most of the bullet-points from the older talk once again, there are still some interesting nuggets of new information and integrated I/O is a great case in point. Cerny points out that Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PS5 has much the same storage footprint as the PS4 version, despite a wealth of new asset data. In many other cases, PS5 versions of PS4 titles are much, much smaller....

You’ll be able to play Diablo Immortal on mobile and PC, levelling up to earn new ranks and rewards. There’s even a Battle Pass to work through, available in different levels depending on how much you want to spend. To help you work through the ranks as you play, you’ll find a breakdown of the Diablo Immortal Battle Pass below. On this page: Diablo Immortal Season 1 Battle Pass rewards There are two main tracks for Diablo Immortal’ Battle Pass: the free pass and the Empowered pass....

The new app will be a “collectible role-playing game” and a “strategic, social-competitive experience”, EA said in a press release this afternoon. A beta will launch in various regions this summer. Expect turn-based combat, “deep collection systems” and a familiar cast of characters from both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. If a mobile-only Lord of the Rings game isn’t for you, perhaps the biggest news here is the renewed partnership between EA and Middle-earth Enterprises....