Author: Game Infliction

Activision and Treyarch have revealed more Call of Duty crossover content in the form of a Terminator event and themed cosmetics for Black Ops 6 Season 2.

The developers behind the long-running first-person shooter franchise detailed its plans for the upcoming seasonal content drop in a blog post on its website. It comes with news about all the maps, modes, guns, and changes set to arrive when Season 2 starts next week. Included in the rundown is information about how The Terminator will make its Call of Duty debut with a special limited-time event that comes with unlockable rewards and in-game store skins that look like they were cooked up in a Skynet factory.

The Terminator Tracer Pack is the real headline here, as it comes with two skins modeled after the T-800 cyborg Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron made popular in the ‘80s. The Titanium Core skin is ripped straight out of the movie, featuring the machine’s iconic, cold facial features and glowing red eyes. The T-800 skin, meanwhile, aims to bring Schwarzenegger’s appearance to the battlefield, though it doesn’t exactly look like the younger version of the action star it’s based on. Still, it’s no doubt a fun callback to a classic series that also comes with four Weapon Blueprints, a special finishing movie, the “Tracking…Tracking…” emote, “What Pain?” emblem, and “Lookin’ Fly” calling card.

The Terminator Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Season 2 crossover content doesn’t stop there. From February 6 to February 20, Warzone, Multiplayer, and Zombies players will enjoy The Terminator event, which sees players collecting skulls to unlock up to 13 rewards. This is in addition to two other events – Shadow Hunt and St. Patrick’s Day: Clover Craze – which will add even more unlockable upgrades in February and March, respectively. Activision and Treyarch tease more reveals for the upcoming Season 2 Reloaded patch set to arrive at a later date.

The Terminator collaboration follows Season 1’s popular Squid Game crossover event, which included more tie-in skins that coincided with the release of Netflix’s Squid Game 2. Although some players were upset to find its rewards locked behind a premium battle pass, many were quick to purchase bundles that included cosmetics like the Young-hee bundle and the Pink Guards bundle. We’ll have to wait to see everything included in The Terminator Call of Duty crossover, but in the meantime, Black Ops 6 Season 2 is set to launch January 28, 2025.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP.

Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

The first time I lost my mech in Synduality Echo of Ada was on my second sortie, and lot of things went wrong. I didn’t buy insurance beforehand and I took way too much stuff out with me because I hit the wrong button, and then I chose not to take a moment to repair right before I got into the encounter that killed me. I made a series of avoidable mistakes followed by a bad decision, and this mech-flavored extraction shooter made sure I lost everything I had for it – so it’s a good sign that, after I was done cursing Synduality and then myself, I was immediately excited to try and get it all back. I have much more to do and see before I am ready for a final review, but that trial by fire will certainly stick with me until the end.

Synduality has a pretty cool premise: In the far future, humanity has been nearly wiped out by a mysterious blue rain called the Tears of the New Moon. In addition to killing humans on contact, the blue rain also made animals and plants gigantic and aggressive. To survive, society has moved underground and adopted the use of enormous mechs called Cradlecoffins to explore the surface world and gather energy-producing AO Crystals to survive. You step into the role of a nameless, faceless Drifter — someone who pilots a Cradlecoffin. Your goal? Get up there, get the things you need to upgrade your base and make some cash, and get out before the locals turn your Cradlecoffin into a grave.

Cradlecoffins aren’t your traditional mechs. They’re slower than something you’d find in Armored Core – though similarly armed, as they’re still bipedal and wield weapons – but faster than the behemoths you’d see in MechWarrior. Ready for a deep cut? They’re actually a lot like the mechs from 2002’s Phantom Crash, which is to say they are a nice balance of being reasonably fast but still heavy and limited in terms of, shall we say, vertical mobility. Armored Core mechs can dunk like Jordan. Cradlecoffins got no ups.

But you’re not alone. In addition to your mech, you’ve got a Magus — think a humanoid AI you can fully customize and play dress up with — helping to guide you when you’re out on the surface by marking objectives on your map, alerting you to threats, and even keeping track of the weather. You can be as normal or as strangely intimate as you want about the creation process, though it kinda seems as if Synduality assumes you’re more likely to pick a robo-girlfriend than a robo-boyfriend based on the clothing choices available. (Even the AI-controlled Cradelcoffins have robo-girlfriends.) There are several different personalities to choose from, including supportive mentor lady, demure, eager-to-please girl; encouraging big brother, and spicy athlete who just wants you to be the best version of yourself. They’re a weirdly likeable little crew — I chuckled when my spicy athlete robo-girlfriend essentially told me to stop whining and eat my veggies (read: weeds that we had removed from the base) or she’d beat me up. And since they’re the only companion you’ll have for most of your time with Synduality, their presence is welcome.

In addition to their clothes and look, you can also customize the special abilities and focus of your Magus, whether that’s finding AO Crystals, providing more info about different Enders (the name for that superpowered flora and fauna I talked about earlier), or giving you the low-down on the other Cradlecoffins you’ll run into once you pop out on the surface. So far I’ve liked both the one that’s good at protecting me from the evil rain and the one who has a knack for spotting other Cradlecoffins at range because hearing another engine in this game is stressful, but I appreciate that you can tailor your Magus to assist you be the best Drifter you wanna be.

You’ll run into other players in Synduality’s world, but in my experience, most of them aren’t out there to kill you and take your things. Usually, an encounter with another player means the two of you being very cagey, aiming your guns at each other, until one of you finally uses the wave emote. Then the other returns it and you both go on your way. It’s admittedly tense, and an extraction shooter like this should be, because you’re never more than a single insurance-less run away from losing all your things. The whole “we’re all working together to help humanity” thing sets up that cautious camaraderie, but there is always the danger that someone’s gonna see your shiny shotgun and think “I want that and I don’t wanna work for it,” so… you know. This does seem (so far) like a kinder, gentler extraction shooter, but you should still be careful around other people, even if they do the wave emote.

Managing each mission means making a lot of interesting choices. How far from the elevators that bring you to and from the safety of the underground are you willing to venture? What kind of materials are you looking to collect for your base, and how much are you going to risk to get them? How much ammo will you head out with? What kind of mech? Will you prioritize carrying capacity or defense? All of these choices matter, and you may regret your words and deeds when you’re sitting at low health with no repair kits, far away from an elevator in a world where everything wants to kill you.

So far Synduality has mostly just been this loop played over and over again, but it’s at least an amusing one, with a little bit of fun base building and dress-up in-between that I haven’t had a chance to dig too deeply into yet. What’s less amusing are the microtransactions and battle pass (we live in hell!) that can speed up the process of getting a better Cradlecoffin substantially despite this not being a free-to-play game. You get almost nothing in the free track of that pass, which is a standard-issue problem to some degree, but I’ll need to play more to see how much these systems feel like they impact the overall pace of progression without spending any money. I don’t think I would have all the nice things I have now, which replaced the stuff I lost, if I didn’t have that battle pass.

I am at least enjoying Synduality for now, though I have yet to unlock the single-player missions or the second map. Once I put some time into those, expand my base, and just generally Do More Stuff, I’ll have a better idea of where Synduality falls. Until then, I’ll be out in the world, trying not to die too much. Buy insurance, kids. It’s a scam, but it may save your life – or, at least, your mech.

Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has joked that beloved PlayStation exclusive platformer Astro Bot “almost outdid Nintendo at its own game.”

Fils-Aimé made the comment while presenting at the New York Game Awards, where Astro Bot took home not only the overall Game of the Year award but also Best Music and Best Kids’ Game. It overcame Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and more to win Game of the Year.

Though Nintendo is famous for making games of all genres and has many beloved franchises such as The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, and more, it’s perhaps the platforming Mario series which is most iconic. Astro Bot clearly took much inspiration from the 3D platformers such as Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Odyssey, but put its own spin on the concept and wrapped it in a celebration of PlayStation history.

Indeed, Astro Bot director Nicolas Doucet paid tribute to Nintendo when accepting the Game of the Year award at The Game Awards 2024 last month, saying: “I remember I was a kid in 1989 Christmas, and I got a grey box, there was a game packed in, it was called Super Mario Bros. and it was really, really great – so we are in Japan, we are in Tokyo, they are in Kyoto, but I want to pay tribute to the company who really put like platformers and showed us innovation and quality consistently, and inspired us to actually make the game that we made… And I’ve managed not mention them, have you noticed? But you all know who they are.”