Category: Gaming

Tekken 8 development chief Katsuhiro Harada has hit out at a threat of violence over whether or not a character will be in the game.

Harada tweeted a response to the threat from a Twitter user demanding Tekken character Eddy Gordo is playable in the upcoming Tekken 8.

“When people make these silly threats, I and everyone at FGC [fighting game community] suffer the following losses,” Harada began before making three key points (below).

One, event operators overreact and increase security, which increases costs and the burden on players. Harada said in some cases his attendance at events may end up being cancelled.

Two, company bosses respond to these sorts of threats by asking Harada to cancel “inclusion in the game”, which relates to the inclusion of certain characters in Tekken, such as Eddy.

And three, if the person making the threat uses the word “we” instead of “I”, the probability of the first two points becoming a reality increases.

“By enthusiasts behaving excessively, repeating these words and actions, or fake information and hoaxes, or threats, the motivation of the development staff will decrease rapidly, and as a result, the requests of enthusiasts will be far from being realised,” Harada said.

Harada has been an outspoken critic of toxicity from the Tekken fanbase, often pulling no punches when it comes to responding to tweets from “fans”.

“Thank you for [the] pointless reply,” Harada replied to one Twitter user who criticised his tweet. “I’ve never seen anyone as unreadable as you. You ‘seriously’ need to study up. Farewell.”

It sounds like Harada has had enough of these sorts of threats, which are on the rise as Tekken 8’s roster of playable characters comes into focus. Harada’s tweet went viral, with 2.3 million views and trending status on Twitter. “Seriously?” Harada tweeted in response.

Harada’s tweet is a stark reminder of the shocking abuse video game developers often face from so-called fans. It’s an age-old problem, but it shows no sign of improvement. In July, Destiny developer Bungie said it refuses to return to the game’s subreddit due to abuse.

Earlier this week, Harada confirmed Tekken 8 does not include anti-piracy software Denuvo. Harada made the statement after a now-deleted tweet pointed out Tekken 8’s End User License Agreement [EULA] on Steam mentions Denuvo is being used under the third-party software category.

“[T]his EULA is probably simply a copy/paste of Tekken 7 or something…” Harada said. “Anyway, I’ve no plans to introduce Denuvo or anything else in Tekken 8, so stop your tedious allergic reactions to every single thing and sit quietly (sit the hell down).”

Tekken 8 is set to launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC. Check out IGN’s Tekken 8 hands-on preview for more.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Just as likely to break windows and knock down doors as it was to temporarily fracture friendships, 2020’s Moving Out was a raucously entertaining co-op game that took the typically tiresome task of shifting furniture and turned it into a giddy form of slapstick. The hilariously chaotic couch-carrying fundamentals of the original remain relatively unchanged in Moving Out 2, but the formula has been refreshed to a substantial degree via a more outlandish approach to level design and added environmental interactivity that brings a bit more depth to the furniture-flinging strategy. It’s a shame that little has been done to make it more compelling for solo players, so just like the chore it’s based on you’ll have to wrangle at least one buddy into helping you out, but when you do Moving Out 2 delivers tightly packed tension and hilarity by the cardboard boxload once again.

Multiverses may well have been done to death by super hero movies at this point, but Moving Out 2 uses them to good effect here in order to place you into a series of entertainingly absurd scenarios. Things get fantastical right away when a number of interdimensional portals open up around the small town of Packmore, leading your team of heavy lifters to steer their delivery truck through tears in the fabric of space and time in order to pick up and pack an assortment of quirky cargo.

In one moment you’ll be struggling to steer a sofa-sized croissant through a swirling roulette table made of gingerbread, and in the next you’ll be dodging out of the way of sliding obstacles in a tilting cottage being held aloft by a giant landlord. Moving Out 2 is stacked high with personality, and its light story is stuffed with so many guilty-pleasure puns it feels like it was at least partially scripted by throwing darts at a board covered in dad jokes.

Moves Like Stagger

Like a box of fine china that’s been carefully carried to the back of the delivery truck, SMG Studio has taken an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach to the central gameplay of Moving Out 2. Much like the original game, ferrying objects to the designated drop-off point in tandem with your co-op partner is a delicate dance that involves careful verbal coordination and constant battle between your combined inertia and the obstacles in your path. The movers themselves – a roster of bizarro bobbleheads that has been greatly expanded in numbers since the original – feel just as deliberately clumsy as ever, and their move set is every bit as simple. This familiarity admittedly meant that, for the opening set of levels at least, Moving Out 2 initially felt closer to a standalone expansion pack than a fully-fledged sequel.

However, before too long a number of welcome environmental enhancements bring more noticeable points of difference to proceedings. There are some satisfyingly silly new ways to complete each moving job, like playing a game of beer pong with a toaster by bouncing it off the taut fabric of an open umbrella and watching it soar into the flatbed of the truck, or piloting a wrecking ball drone to crash through a series of pillars in order to clear a path for your fellow movers. In one level the deliverable items were strung up high above the stage, and my co-op partners and I had to position a large fan to blow us up into the air to try and drag everything down using our combined weight. There’s still a fair amount of time spent manoeuvring stubborn, L-shaped couches through narrow hallways and tearing microwaves straight out of the walls, but there are enough distinct little diversions in each scenario to make Moving Out 2 consistently feel like more than a mere retread.

Other environmental elements are introduced in order to place a greater emphasis on carefully planning your routes through each level, like doors that only open one way through mazes of interconnected rooms and even colour-coded portal gates that blink you from one side of the map to the other, both of which can quickly lead to confusion if you don’t keep your wits about you. Elsewhere, giant batteries aren’t just tricky to transport around but they also only last for a short period of time when placed into power circuits, putting you under greater pressure to push and pull furniture through open doors before the batteries deplete and the doors slam shut. There’s generally a fair bit more to coordinate this time around, and by coordinate I essentially mean yell incoherent directions at your friends or loved ones and then try not to lose your cool when they inevitably misinterpret you. If your group’s anything like mine, the collective mood will swing from frustration to elation at regular intervals.

That’s not to say every stage demands such a shouty amount of collaboration, and Moving Out 2 weaves in plenty of straightforward score attack stages over the course of the journey that more closely resemble Mario Party-style mini-games in their relative simplicity. Lobbing gumballs through moving basketball hoops or dragging luggage through a Fall Guys-style gauntlet run makes for some more focussed slices of fun amidst the more elaborate tasks. This healthy balance between more involved objectives and instantly gratifying goals helps Moving Out 2 maintain an enjoyable rhythm as you crash the delivery truck in and out of the three main parallel worlds – the sugarcoated Snackmore, the wizarding world of Middle Folkmore, and the futuristic floating city of Pactropolis – before arriving in a fourth and final realm where fragments of each of the disparate realities are merged into a series of wacky endgame mash-ups.

Cloudy with a Chance of Pratfalls

Some of Moving Out 2’s scenarios were more popular than others, though, at least among the players on the couch beside me. The regenerating clouds in some of the sky-high apartments that must be continually sucked away with a handheld vacuum proved to be exhausting in every sense of the word, while any job that involves the corralling of chickens into farmyard pens is generally pretty clucking annoying. Also, if I smash my nose with one more stepped-on garden rake I’m likely to become as certifiable as Sideshow Bob. But thankfully, Moving Out 2 mixes things up so often that no single element – popular or otherwise – ever really outstays its welcome, whether they be ziplines, pulley systems, or even drivable trains.

At times it even flips the work order entirely, giving you the job of moving in by emptying the delivery truck and furnishing a house by positioning each object in a predetermined place; the fun, of course, comes from gleefully bashing and crashing every package towards the front door like you’re Ace Ventura posing as a UPS delivery man. While moving in was eventually patched into the original as a way to effectively play the main levels in reverse, here it’s implemented in a far more deliberate manner, like in one particularly ludicrous level where you have to forcefully furnish a lounge room by firing television sets and sofas through the windows with an oversized slingshot.

Still, at other times you fumble the goods even when you don’t mean to. Playing on the Nintendo Switch, there was a shared sense among my co-op partners and I that characters seemed a little more prone to randomly dropping items than they were in the original, and such is the deliberate wonkiness of the general movement and physics I’m not completely sure if this is an intentional handicap to add extra unpredictability to the mayhem or merely a bug with the controls. Either way, it never became a major issue, but certainly it seems that while you can customise your character’s head to be anything from a cassette tape to a corn cob, no matter what you do they all share the exact same set of butterfingers.

Speaking of those characters, I appreciated the way Moving Out 2 litters its levels with hidden character crates, alternative costumes, and bonus arcade game cartridges to find. Sniffing out these unlockables encouraged repeat playthroughs of the majority of Moving Out 2’s 50-odd main levels and provided additional reward to poking and prodding every corner and curious mechanical device I came across. That said, it’s a shame that the returning cryptic clue-based side objectives don’t give a little onscreen pop-up as you complete them like they did in the original, because it did lead to a fair bit of trial and error as I repeatedly wandered around a specific stage trying to work out exactly which optional task an obtuse hint like ‘Best Friends Forever’ could possibly be referring to.

On that note, it also seems a little punitive that Moving Out 2 demands you successfully meet the main delivery quota in any given stage in order to register the completion of any side objectives. In the previous game, you would still get credit for these optional tasks even if you were timed out before loading the truck, which made it easier to go back and hoover up anything you missed the first time through. There are also some missing presentational flourishes, like the way the loaded truck doesn’t shutter its doors and peel out at the end of a level like it did in the original. Instead, it just sits there while you’re booted back out to the main map. In coming up with the many grand designs for Moving Out 2, it seems like some of these minor details may have been overlooked, and I can’t help but notice their absence.

Lastly, while moving house on your own in Moving Out 2 is substantially easier on your back than moving house on your own in real life, it’s only marginally more fun, and as was the case with the original it remains the least enjoyable way to play. There’s significantly less challenge shifting a series of objects when you don’t have to coordinate with a partner, and equally there’s not the same sense of unpredictability to conjure up anywhere near as many laughs. Thankfully, Moving Out 2 features online multiplayer for the first time in the series, and while I wasn’t able to test it as part of this review process, it’s nice to know that players who might not be able to enjoy local multiplayer games can still enjoy clearing houses with friends without having to leave the comfort of their own.

Dragami Games’ remake of Lollipop Chainsaw officially has a name. Unfortunately for fans of the series, it also has a delay.

Dragami Games revealed today that the remake will be titled Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP while also announcing that its release is being pushed back in summer 2023. It had previously been slated for summer 2024.

“Although development of RePOP was carried out with the intention of a 2023 release, our commitment to providing the best possible quality experience to our players led us to making the hard decision to extend the development period in order to ensure this,” Dragami Games wrote in a statement.

“We sincerely apologize to all who had been waiting for the latest installment in the Lollipop Chainsaw series, and kindly ask for your understanding in this matter.”

Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP was first announced back in 2022. It’s a remake of the original 2012 hack-and-slash action game from Grasshopper Manufacture, though neither Goichi “Suda51” Suda or writer James Gunn (yes, that James Gunn) are involved.

We weren’t the biggest fans of Lollipop Chainse, writing in our original 5/10 review, “Lollipop Chainsaw doesn’t even attempt to differentiate itself from the genre, and most of what it does try new in the realm of its characters and writing ultimately ends up taking away from an incredible-on-paper action game.”

Nevertheless, it became something of a cult hit, and fans have pined for a re-release as it has become harder to play on modern consoles. With Lollipop Chainse RePOP, they’re finally getting one… eventually.

Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP will be out in summer 2024. It has not yet announced which consoles it will be supporting.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Making one of Atomic Heart’s quirkiest side characters the star of its first dose of DLC is a clever touch. Few moments in the main game were more memorable than those spent with NORA, the sex-mad Soviet AI running riot within the lewd and lustful upgrade machines dotted throughout Facility 3826. Annihilation Instinct’s story picks up after the weaker of the main game’s two anticlimactic endings and pits us against NORA, who’s gone completely rogue. Unfortunately, unlike the main campaign itself, the gauntlet you run in Annihilation Instinct is a largely linear and fairly forgettable few hours, with a stripped-back suite of weapons and power-ups giving it less of an opportunity to distinguish itself.

The added context Annihilation Instinct eventually provides about why NORA has consistently had the hots for our main man P-3 in the first place feels inessential, but it fits firmly within the fiction. What’s less elegant is the fact that, since Atomic Heart has two entirely different endings, Annihilation Instinct can only pick up from one of them and – at least for a while – it didn’t seem entirely clear which one that was. If you’ve only finished Atomic Heart once (and battled all the way to Sechenov’s office in the process) you’re probably going to be thoroughly confused at the outset.

It also creates a weird kink in the storytelling where we know more about certain characters than P-3 does himself in this timeline, thanks to a pivotal encounter that appears now to have never occurred. I will admit, there were also times where Annihilation Instinct leans a bit too heavily into its techno-babble, to the point where I found myself simply nodding along politely. It’s a little like trying to explain nuclear fission to your dog.

All of this takes place in Mendeleev Complex, an entirely new location which is under the iron grip of the naughty NORA, and once again there’s admittedly little to fault in Annihilation Instinct’s visual design. It features a terrific set of environments that are easily on-par with the atompunk-inspired labs and facilities of the original, and the retro-futuristic aircraft hangar is particularly strong – even though it’s not actually somewhere you need to linger long. However, while it includes some open space above ground, Annihilation Instinct otherwise funnels us through a linear set of encounters that don’t give us a great deal of scope to explore its interesting world.

The new robot types are well designed – not surprising, following the strength of the enemy designs in Atomic Heart – but there are only two of them. The new humanoid robots – which are characterised by a more crash test dummy appearance than the sleek, moustachioed attack bots we were carving up back in February – creepily tiptoe towards us like deadly dolls. They also toss their limbs like boomerangs, which is a neat idea cheapened by the fact that this attack could be effective through walls.

The others are BEA-Ds, which are basically inflatable gym ball-sized bots that can combine to form more powerful foes. There are two scripted boss fights against a few-dozen BEA-Ds that have formed what essentially looks like a giant, weaponised Mr. DNA from Jurassic Park. It is, however, just the same boss fight twice, so the second time around it’s a lukewarm and repetitive way to close out the chapter.

The sparse new enemy types would be less of a downer if there were a lot of new ways to dispose of them and their older counterparts, but disappointingly, there aren’t actually many weapons available in Annihilation Instinct. Only two are new – there’s a melee weapon that’s part halberd and part gardening tool, and a jerry-rigged light machine gun that doesn’t quite have the stopping power I’d expect from something so large and menacing. These can be upgraded, although I don’t know that it’s worth schlepping back and forth across the Mendeleev Complex to do so. A hugely explosive power-up disguised as a chocolate bar makes an appearance too, but I ransacked a lot of rooms and only ever came across a couple of them. It’s a grand effect – and crucial in a late, unfair encounter that pins P-3 in a small room to fend off a ridiculous wave of robots – but it’s a rare sight.

I did get a lot of use out of the new ability to slow down time within a bubble around me, but most of the other powers from Atomic Heart (like ice and telekinesis) are absent in this DLC for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Combined with the fact the only original weapons that reappear are a pistol, a shotgun, and a club, there are times when Annihilation Instinct feels more like a demo that gives you a taste of the main campaign than post-release DLC that adds on new stuff.

As players delve deeper and deeper into the full launch of Baldur’s Gate 3, certain companion characters are standing out as especially beloved to fans. There’s problematic faves Asterion and Shadowheart, who players are convinced they can “fix.” There’s (of course) the bear everyone wants to bang. And then there’s Karlach, who early access players are discovering has gotten one heck of a glow-up in the full release:

As many players have pointed out on Reddit, Karlach used to look, well, quite different. As you can see above, her earlier look left a lot to be desired. It was early access, after all. She’s gone through multiple appearance changes throughout early access, from her very first character model shown above to her current (quite literally) hot self. In fact, fans are so happy with her glow-up that some are taking the opportunity to see the old model off in, well, dramatic ways (CW: violence).

However, other fans have pointed out that there’s yet another version of Karlach they’d prefer that’s neither the early access version nor the current version. During early access, fans found a datamined Karlach appearance with a scarred face that they like so much some are modding it into the current game. Though the scarred appearance didn’t make it into the final version, many feel it suits Karlach’s battle-hardened backstory, contrasting well with her lighter, goofier personality.

But one thing everyone can agree on is that we all love Karlach and would protect her with our lives. If you haven’t tracked her down yet in Baldur’s Gate 3, I highly recommend you get on top of that with our Karlach companion guide. And for everything else you didn’t know you didn’t know about Baldur’s Gate 3, check out our guides to Races and Subraces, Classes and Subclasses, and How to Build a Character before you get started, and take a peek at our walkthrough whenever you find yourself stuck.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Picture this: Faerûn, 1492 DR. You’re walking down the road with your pals when you suddenly smell smoke. Around the bend, you come across an inn engulfed in flames. Inside, you can hear multiple voices screaming for help. You know you should rush in and save them, but your party is a bit battered from the last battle with the local goblins. So you sit down, make camp, and take a long rest to make sure you’re fit to save everyone. Hours later, your health replenished, you stand up, only to discover the inn has burned to ash and everyone died.

Well, yeah, what did you think was going to happen?

There’s been a lot of discussion lately in the Baldur’s Gate 3 community about the intersection of long rests, missable events, and quest progression. A number of people have reported finding themselves in situations where a quest seemed to progress without their input, a character moved on from the location they were supposed to meet them in, or someone died because the player didn’t help them fast enough. Several theories have been thrown around as to why this is happening, and one prevalent suggestion is that taking too many long rests can push the clock forward and cause certain events to progress.

For instance, one player reported a situation with an early quest involving a druidic ritual they wanted to stop. They claimed they went off to do some other things, but when they came back the ritual had completed and they weren’t given a chance to stop it. Multiple other users replied, suggesting the player may have taken too many long rests.

But is that really what’s going on? Should we all be terrified of long resting? We checked in with Larian Studios to see if long rests do, in fact, progress the clock forward. This was the studio’s reply:

“It’s not about how many long rests you take. but when you choose to take a long rest can have an effect. For instance, if you enter a town and see an inn on fire and you immediately decide to go to bed, that may have consequences.”

But that answer from Larian leaves one unanswered question: what’s happening, then, with all those people reporting quests moving forward without their input? The answer varies based on the situation, but in most cases, it sounds like players are completing other quests elsewhere that are then influencing events elsewhere in the world. For example, most players meet Lae’zel near the wreck of the Nautilid, but my party accidentally missed her. When we came back to find her, she had moved on. We’re not sure what exactly triggered her to disappear, but we’d completed dozens of quests by then, so it’s extremely likely something else we did caused her quest to progress. Given the situation she was in, it would have been silly to expect her to hang around anyway.

Additionally, it’s worth pointing out that moving from Act 1 to Act 2 will automatically complete most possible Act 1 events and make it impossible to backtrack and pick up those dropped threads. So if you beelined your way through the first act and then wondered why you missed stuff back in Emerald Grove, that’s likely the reason.

There you have it, then: If you are in an immediate, urgent situation where someone’s about to be murdered or an inn is burning down, don’t camp out overnight right in front of it; solve the problem first. But if you’re dealing with a more long-term problem, like an infestation of goblins in the next town over, it sounds like you can long rest as much as you like and still have goblins left to boot out.

For more details about how all this stuff works, we’ve got a guide to all the things Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t tell you, and another guide to resting specifically. And for everything else you didn’t know you didn’t know about Baldur’s Gate 3, check out our guides to Races and Subraces, Classes and Subclasses, and How to Build a Character before you get started, and take a peek at our walkthrough whenever you find yourself stuck.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

To kick off QuakeCon 2023, Bethesda and ID Software have released a remaster of Quake II.

Complete with visual enhancements, a new expansion, multiplayer, and the Nintendo 64 version of Quake II bundled in, this remaster is available now on Xbox One and Series S | X, Nintendo Switch, PC, and both PS4 and PS5. It’s also available through both Xbox and PC Game Pass and is playable via Xbox Cloud Gaming.

This shadow drop mirrors that of Quake 1’s remaster which hit Xbox, Switch, and PC, and was announced at QuakeCon and released the same day in 2021. QuakeCon, one of the world’s biggest LAN parties, has been around since 1996.

The bring-your-own-controller event has always been a hotbed for arena shooter-style multiplayer, but it’s also perched almost exactly halfway between summer events like E3 or Summer Game Fest and the holiday shopping season, making it ripe for ID and Bethesda to show off what they’ve been working on before their games hit store shelves. For example, leads from ID Software took the stage in 2018 to reveal extended gameplay for DOOM Eternal.

Some fans expected the remaster since numerous clues hinted towards its existence. In June, IGN reported on a listing for ‘Quake II Enhanced’ on a South Korean ratings board, which was initially spotted by Gematsu, in June. More recently, reliable video game industry leaker, billbil-kun, predicted the announcement, even nailing the game’s release time and USD $9.99 price point.

This isn’t just a remastered version of the beloved 1997 FPS. In addition to a fully remastered version of the original game and its Nintendo 64 port from the same year, this remaster also includes 28 new campaign levels and one new Deathmatch map developed by MachineGames, the studio behind the recent Wolfenstein games and the upcoming untitled Indiana Jones game.

QuakeCon isn’t the only event on Bethesda and Xbox Game Studios’ calendar this month. Gamescom, the world’s biggest gaming convention, kicks off on August 23. Microsoft has confirmed that it will have a presence at the Cologne, Germany-based convention with plans to show off new gameplay from Starfield, Forza Motorsport, and more.

Charlie Wacholz is a freelance writer at IGN.

Overwatch 2: Invasion is out now August 10th on all platforms including, for the first time, Steam. Invasion brings in Story Missions, new Support Hero, new game mode Flashpoint, and more. Here’s everything you need to know about the Invasion season update in Overwatch 2.

New Support Hero: Illari

Illari is the 10th Support Hero to be added to Overwatch 2. Illari gets her power from the sun, and her kit revolves around solar powered attacks and healing. Here’s how she plays:

• Primary – Solar Rifle: Illari uses a long range auto-charging rifle | Secondary Fire: A medium range healing beam that consumes solar energy.
• Ultimate – Captive Sun: Illari shoots a fire ball of solar energy that slows hit enemies and explodes them after taking significant damage. (Similar to how the Needler works in Halo)
• Tactical – Healing Pylon: Drops a pylon that heals allies (it can last however long as long as it is not shot down).
• Shift – Outburst: Launches Illari in the direction she’s moving and knocks back enemies while giving her a slight health boost. Holding the ability will cause her to jump higher.

Story Missions

Overwatch PvE Story Missions

Story Missions on Invasion take place in three maps: Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, and Gothenburg. Your mission is to fight back against Null Sector, a rogue Omnic group that invaded Paris at the start of their global takeover. Chronologically, this Story Mission takes place after Winston’s Recall short when he put out a call for help to band together Overwatch. So Lucio hasn’t even met Reinhardt yet and this story will follow how these heroes met each other and what happened before the invasion happened.

Each mission will take about a half hour or forty minutes depending on difficulty level and player coordination (we all have that one friend who can’t seem to stick together). I was lucky enough to have played the previous Rio de Janeiro Story Mission at Blizzcon 2019 when the original demo for that mission was available.

There have been some updates since that build but it was honestly hard to point out all of the changes since it had been so long. The two noticeable changes are that you’re allowed hero choices now and AI improvements have been made for your PvE team when you load in and are missing a player and a bot takes their place.

In order to access story missions you have to purchase the Overwatch 2: Invasion Bundle for $15. This grants you access to the story missions during the season and permanently after, 1000 Overwatch Coins (which is how much the Premium Battle Pass costs), new Sojourn Legendary skin, and permanent access to Sojourn as a playable hero for new players after completing Story Mission Challenges.

New Limited Time Event: King’s Row – Underworld

Underworld is a new co-op event that is free to play for everyone. Players will be going to King’s Row to stop Null Sector from completetly taking over the Omnic Underworld by reactivating a combat bot to help omnics escape.

The Null Sector force will be more challenging this time around in Underworld and a new support bot will be healing the big boss OR-14 attack bot you’re facing off against. There will be new challenges added to Underworld throughout the limited time it’s available. Underworld will only be availabe from August 10th to September 5th.

New Game Mode: Flashpoint

Suravasa

Flashpoint is the new core game mode added to Quickplay and Competitive this season. In this mode, two teams of five will face off and have to secure rotating capture points called Flashpoints. The first to three capture points will win the game. There will be five different Flashpoints randomly activated throughout the map.

The two maps available for Flashpoint are Suravasa and New Junk City. These matches are a bit quicker than Control since the capture speed is 50 seconds faster in Flashpoint. The Control capture time is 120 seconds and Flashpoint capture time is 70 seconds.

New Junk City

These matches should take about 8-15 minutes to complete and will be coming to Competitive queues after a few weeks of launch and balancing.

Gameplay Changes

With the new season launch, there’s a new way to warm up and practice with a new Hero Mastery mode. Hero Mastery consists of training courses that are specially designed for testing your abilities with each hero. These Hero Mastery missions will be free and have global leaderboards if you want to compete for the top spot for specific heroes.

Overwatch 2 Firing Range Changes

Hero Mastery Mode will launch later into this season but you can access a brand now Practice Range right away. The Practice Range has an updated way of testing your aim and warming up with more dynamic bots, shielded bots, and customizable settings on the bots you’re testing aim and skills with.

There will also be a Hero Progression system that tracks the way you play individual heroes through different categories and level up. So players are going to be assessed for their skill in using each hero’s abilities and factors like damage done, damage mitigated, and healing done will all factor in depending on the hero’s abilities.

As you move up the levels for any heroes, you’ll earn different emblems for each of the heroes you play with for this new progression system. Progression will also be available to view on your player profile with each hero you play.

There is also a new Weekly Challenge called Making Progress that earns you 8 Progression Levels instead of additional Battle Pass XP. This challenge will reward 150 Overwatch Credits to buy items from the Hero Gallery. Overwatch: Invasion is out now for all platforms, including Steam.

Stella is a Video Producer, Host, and Editor at IGN. Her gameplay focus is on competitive FPS games and she’s previously reviewed Apex Legends, Hyper Scape, Halo Infinite Multiplayer, and Battlefield 2042. She regularly hosts and shoutcasts competitive Apex Legends and Halo Infinite tournaments when she isn’t streaming on her Twitch channel after work outs. You can follow her on Twitter @ParallaxStella.

EA has announced EA Sports FC Mobile, a mobile football game launching on September 26.

FC Mobile is a free update for those who already have FIFA Mobile so there’s no need to redownload, but new players will of course need to download the FC Mobile app to play. Real Madrid and Brazil star Vini Jr. is the FC Mobile cover star.

FC Mobile has authentic running styles, penalty kick stances and celebrations for certain players (Vini Jr. is a given), a “mobile-first and tactile” game speed, a revamped shooting system, a power shot, a knock on dribble, and a hard tackle move.

EA said its mobile community has over 100 million active users, which gives you an idea of just how big FIFA is on mobile.

Meanwhile, EA Sports FC Online, which is aimed at the free-to-play PC Asia market, has over 53 million players across Korea, China, Thailand, and Vietnam. EA Sports FC Online is also an official medaled discipline at the XIX Asian Games, set to be held in Hangzhou later this year.

2023 is a big year for EA Sports. Without the FIFA licence, EA FC is EA Sports’ first non-FIFA football video game. Although, as IGN discovered during a recent hands-on preview event, EA Sports FC is FIFA 24 in all but name.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Modern Warfare 3’s latest trailer includes snippets of in-game footage that have set tongues wagging within the Call of Duty community.

While it’s clear from the trailer (below) that Modern Warfare 3 will see Captain Price and company attempt to take down franchise antagonist Vladimir Makarov once and for all, fans are speculating about the missions and settings the campaign may include.

The headline here is a potential fresh take on No Russian, one of the most controversial video game levels of all time. The original No Russian is a mission in 2009’s Modern Warfare 2 in which the player participates in a mass shooting at a Russian airport. While the player is not forced to shoot any civilians, and can even skip the level, No Russian was a graphic depiction of civilian death at the hands of terrorists that caught the attention of press and politicians across the world.

Fast forward 14 years and Call of Duty fans think we’re in for a fresh take on No Russian. Modern Warfare 3’s Makarov trailer includes a brief clip showing panicked civilians in what looks like the Verdansk Stadium. There’s a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ shot of the badge of fictional football team Verdansk Sparks, confirming the original Warzone and Modern Warfare 2019 setting returns.

Given Verdansk was nuked (supposedly destroyed for good, if you believe the developers) in 2021, fans speculate what we’re actually looking at here is a flashback mission that reveals Makarov orchestrated the invasion of Verdansk all along. According to this theory, the player will get a first-person look at this invasion in a new take on No Russian.

The Invasion of Verdansk, dated March 3, 2020, acted as a prelude to the war against Al-Qatala. The conflict includes the Siege of Verdansk Stadium, in which Al-Qatala attack, causing panic among a crowd of football fans who were on their way to a game. Al-Qatala troops end up killing hundreds of civilians, eventually taking control of the stadium. The theory is Modern Warfare 3 includes a flashback mission that makes this siege playable, a No Russian-esque mission that sets up Makarov as the game’s big bad.

Taking this theory a step further, redditor Equinox_106 suggested the live action portion of the Makarov trailer, which shows the terrorist in a prison of some sort, is actually showing us Makarov in the Verdansk Gulag, waiting to be freed during the invasion.

Countering this, however, is the suggestion Modern Warfare 3’s take on the original No Russian is instead a level set on an airplane. In a post-credits scene from 2022’s Modern Warfare 2 campaign, Makarov sends a terrorist cell to hijack a Russian airliner with civilians onboard. Makarov orders them “No Russian” via a text message just before they start the attack. Perhaps Modern Warfare 3 thrusts the player right into the chaos on the plane.

Of course, all we have is speculation for now. But the marketers at Activision know exactly what they’re doing: teasing the Call of Duty fanbase with nostalgia-fuelled nods to 2009’s much-loved Modern Warfare 2 and the original Warzone experience.

We’ll find out more on August 17, when a Modern Warfare 3 event is set to take place within Warzone. The game itself comes out November 10.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.