Activision brought Steam multiplayer for 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 offline to combat hackers.
TechCrunch reports hackers were infecting players with a worm that spreads automatically in online lobbies from one infected player to another. As Techcrunch points out, this suggests hackers have exploiting bugs in Modern Warfare 2 to execute malicious code on players’ computers.
“Multiplayer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) on Steam was brought offline while we investigate reports of an issue,” Activision said in a tweet.
📢 Multiplayer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) on Steam was brought offline while we investigate reports of an issue.
These older Call of Duty games, while still playable online a decade after launch, were riddled with hackers, boosters, and cheaters. But reports emerged last week that some unannounced work was done to improve matters on Xbox 360 versions of the games, and, when word got around, thousands of fans ended up jumping back in.
But players have reported hackers continue to cause problem in lobbies, and it seems a particular concern on PC.
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.
Homeworld Remastered Collection, the bundle which contains prettier versions of cult-classic RTS’ Homeworld and Homeworld 2, is currently free to keep from the Epic Games Store. We thought it was a corker of a collection when it first released eight years ago, so strategy-heads who like to build space fleets may want to get on this one.
Hold the front page, PS5 consoles are officially on sale right now. Not only that, but it’s a proper standalone discount as well, not a bundle deal like we’ve seen before. As part of PlayStation’s Summer Sale, PlayStation 5 consoles have seen an impressive discount of up to £80 in the UK. The PlayStation has been a massive success for Sony, selling over 40 million units as of July 16, 2023, putting it only slightly behind the sales pace of PS4 (likely due to the previous semiconductor shortage).
But this shortage is absolutely over, and with the console well stocked it’s also now on sale. In the UK, The console can now be bought for £404.99 from Amazon or John Lewis, and £399 from retailers like Argos, Currys, and ShopTo. There is currently no word on a discount in the US, but we’re anticipating this will happen sooner or later so keep an eye on this page or @IGNDeals for further updates.
Spider-Man 2 PS5 bundle and its accessory preorders are also live today at 10 AM local time, or 7 AM PT in the US, so it’s a big day for PlayStation owners. We’ll leave all the relevant links you need here but don’t forget that there are also a bunch of other deals to check out today for PlayStation fans in the UK.
This includes games like The Last of Us on sale, new deals on DualSense Controllers, and even discounts on PS5-compatible SSDs. For folks in the US, we’ve already got a handy PlayStation deals roundup to explore, but as we’re nice we’ll also add a few of the new deals in here once they go live.
This week marks the release of Disney Illusion Island on the Nintendo Switch. It’s a brand-new 2D platformer with Metroidvania design – starring Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy. It also happens to include both solo and co-op play where you work together to “run, jump, swim, and swing your way to victory”.
Call of Duty is known to have unique and unexpected skins. From the recent The Boys crossover event, to a feline Operator cosmetic set, Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0 lobbies are filled with outlandish characters. And now, players can expect to see Nicki Minaj and Snoop Dogg enter the fray.
The official Call of Duty Twitter account shared images of both artists. Minaj can be seen holding a bright pink gun, while Snoop Dogg is holding a blue and gold rifle. Information regarding the cost of the skins is currently unavailable, but they are set to release with the Season 5 update launching on August 2.
According to the official account, the two musicians are part of a 50-year celebration of Hip Hop. Alongside the skins, players can expect to hear “…free War Tracks spanning three decades of a culture that transcends music and gaming.” The website for Season 5 also includes information on weapons like the 9mm ISO sub machine gun and the 5.45x39mm AN-94 assault rifle.
For multiplayer, players can also expect to play on new maps like Livestock, Petrov Oil Rig, and Harbor. While Warzone 2.0 features new locations like the Verdansk Stadium, and a roaming train.
The celebrity musician crossover is not the first peculiar addition to the game. Recently, Call of Duty added three characters from The Boys to the Operator collection, each with their own weapon skins and brutal finishers like Homelander’s laser eyes. As more outlandish Operators arrive, the similarities to Fortnite’s vast selections of celebrities, streamers, and pop culture icons are apparent. Future additions to the game are anyone’s guess.
And of course, this isn’t the first time that a celebrity hip hop artist has been in a shooter. Remember 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand?
Grant Stoner is a disabled journalist covering accessibility and the disabled perspective in video games. When not writing, he is usually screaming about Pokémon or his cat, Goomba on Twitter.
F1 Manager 2023 takes all the excitement of a race weekend and shifts the focus to behind the pit wall. If you’re a fan of the Codemasters F1 games, you know how stressful the tight turns on some of these street circuits are. I can’t tell you how many times a qualifying lap has been ruined by a “light touch” of the wall at Monaco. In F1 Manager, that’s not my problem; my only job is to tell the driver to watch their tires, fuel consumption, and about a dozen other metrics – on not just one F1 car, but two. F1 Manager 2023 fixes minor mistakes from the series debut last year and adds new ways to play, and it remains a compelling motorsports management simulation that’s committed to helping you grow both your knowledge and love of the sport.
Juggling multiple metrics and managing a pair of the most elite race cars on the planet may sound overwhelming on paper but, in practice, everything feels like an opportunity to learn. And to help you learn, F1 Manager 2023 adds a brand new scenario mode called Race Replay. Race Replay features both full race replays and team-specific objectives for each track. The first moment I tried was a moment at Silverstone that required me to push both McLaren cars up to the podium after a yellow flag restart. It was the very first thing I played, so I was still trying to get my bearings. Despite the text of the challenge telling me that Norris needed to pit, I waited for about half a lap for Norris to suggest the pit stop himself. This resulted in him taking longer to get into the pits, but there was also a pit stop error – which resulted in Norris dropping to 10th position and causing me to fail the challenge. When I restarted, this time I immediately told him to pit as soon as the game let me. On this occasion there was no pit stop error and Norris held track position in fourth, making it very easy for him to overtake and win the challenge.
It’s this ability to A-B test your own actions that makes me feel like F1 Manager 2023 genuinely wants to teach the value of confident decision making and how crucial that is to becoming a world champion constructor. This ethos is the thing that shines brightest in F1 Manager, and is so inviting that I often find myself wanting to play Race Replay more often than the flagship career mode. If any of this sounds interesting, the deluxe edition of F1 Manager 2023 includes 14 additional race moments, including a scenario at the brand-new Las Vegas Grand Prix if you’re itching to see how it drives without simming most of a career season.
That career mode allows you to take control of any of the ten teams on the grid and manage everything a team principal would. You have the ability to design car parts, build or upgrade team facilities, and manage the staff and drivers that work under you. You can even micromanage your pit crew and have them run drills as a unit to help cut down on errors and make them faster. All of these decisions end up producing confidence from your Board of Directors. Keep them happy, and you can manage your millions as you see fit – but if you’re unable to meet their demands, you may see yourself getting walking papers rather quickly.
Which team you decide to manage will determine a lot about how detail oriented you need to be.
Which team you decide to manage will determine a lot about how detail oriented you need to be. Red Bull is not only flush with cash, but regularly cleans up race after race; even if you automate an entire weekend, they will do fine. This means that they can afford to take a long-term approach and aim for a locked-up championship at the halfway point of the season. Meanwhile, at the other end of the paddock, you have a team like Alpha Tauri (which, despite having good drivers, just has an outright lousy car). This means that they need to scrap and claw every weekend just to make it out of the first qualifying session. It’s this wide spectrum of challenge that makes F1 Manager stand out.
Even if you manage to have a perfect relationship with your board and amass millions thanks to your sponsors, you’ll eventually run into the Cost Cap. The Cost Cap is a rule put in place so that teams can’t just dump billions into their teams. While it helps promote fairness, as each season has gotten longer and longer, even the top dogs like Red Bull and Mercedes have to be careful not to just burn through car parts. It means that in F1 Manager 2023, you always have to be making decisions. Sure, you can decide to save your money now and not upgrade your car parts, but that might cost you three races down the line.
F1 Manager 2023 also makes sure to keep its authenticity intact by adding the two new tracks that were added to the 2023 calendar, as well as the sprint weekend format for six race weekends. These two simple additions make the strategy layer of career mode entirely different from last year. Sprint weekends forgo a practice session in order to run a shorter-distance race on Saturday for a crack at more constructor points. While it’s caused heated debate among F1 fans, it’s a perfect example of what makes F1 Manager stand out: it’s an opportunity to collect data and feel comfortable.
F1 Manager also goes an additional step further than its Codemasters cousin by including not just F2 drivers but F3 as well. That said, drivers from these feeder categories were also available in F1 Manager 2022; I’d actually love to see this fleshed out more by letting you create custom drivers that you can sign and build from the ground up.
Once you’re ready for a race weekend, you have three main mechanics to push the pace of your cars on track. Asking your driver to increase the heat on your tires will cause them to speed up, at the cost of literally burning rubber. Run your tires too long and too hard and you’ll turn a two-stop race into a three-stop race and likely force your driver and team out of the points. Managing your tires throughout an entire weekend can be difficult if you aren’t careful. Certain tracks are harder on tires than others; if you use up most of your soft tires in practice or qualifying, you might get stuck starting the race on a worn set. It’s an authentic juggling act.
Fuel is a bit more straightforward. Ask the driver to keep his foot on the accelerator, and he’ll also have to hammer on the brake, thus burning more fuel. Because refueling is banned in F1, if you run out of fuel, you literally cannot finish a race.
The Energy Recovery System (ERS) is the internal battery of the car that charges the engine and is, for me, the toughest part of the on-track mechanics to master. While F1 Manager 2023 thankfully doesn’t let you shoot yourself in the foot by draining the battery completely and shutting down the car, it does force you to go back to 1x speed when you hit zero.
You can also give your individual drivers some very basic commands to shape their on-track behavior. While your AI drivers can do a decent enough job of overtaking and defending themselves, mastering when to issue these commands yourself can help you avoid getting stuck in the middle or back of the pack. However, it’s slightly disappointing that there’s no way to design full team plans, like telling your A driver to swap positions with the B driver because the B driver has better pace. Drivers don’t have a relationship with each other but are simply there to take instructions. It stands out because team orders are a divisive but common facet of F1 authenticity, and it’s something missing from F1 Manager 2023. I hope it’s something Frontier can improve on in future games.
Management games have always had a bit of difficulty deciding how to present themselves. Doubling down on intricate systems often means that developers can’t invest as much in stunning visual quality as their traditional sports game cousins. While it’s true that graphics aren’t necessarily at the forefront of Frontier’s focus, F1 Manager 2023 nonetheless looks pleasant in motion. That said, the studio’s level of achievements with this year’s audio is extremely commendable. Getting to hear real pit wall audio from the drivers is an absolute joy. Hearing my favorite driver, Yuki Tsunoda, swear at me after he dropped back to last place genuinely made me cackle – and took the sting out of a race weekend that was otherwise a failure.
The first thing you might ask yourself when you start playing One Punch Man: World is — why does it take so many darn punches to put down basic enemies? It says “One Punch” right there in the title. The reason for this was not made clear during my recent 30-minute play session. Fortunately for One Punch Fans, you’ll find an action game that looks and plays like an interactive version of the anime. Key moments have been accurately recreated in-engine, and you’ll even be able to expand on what was seen in the show. At a glance, you might even think you’re watching the anime instead of playing the game.
My time in One Punch Man: World began with a scene of our hero, Saitama, being rudely awakened from deep sleep in his own bed by subterranean monsters emerging from underground and causing havoc in the streets. This is a beat ‘em up: You can punch, kick, dodge, and even use a couple special attacks you’ll have to build up to. Combos can be ended with a flourish that sends enemies flying into the air — at least with Saitama. Other characters from the anime are playable and presumably have their own combos. Every now and then a quicktime event will occur, asking you to mash buttons to trigger an action set piece. One such event caused a highway to come crashing down, bringing the fight to a new location.
Combat is a little on the simpler side, perhaps because One Punch Man: World is currently only scheduled for mobile and PC — no consoles, unfortunately. If it’s going to work on a phone screen, the controls can’t be that intricate. My playtime was with mouse and keyboard on PC, and clicking the left mouse button at enemies did the job for the most part. While the amount of punches it takes to defeat enemies remains a quandary, I do appreciate the juicy explosions of blood that occur when the requisite number of punches is achieved. These enemies are like big water balloons filled with viscera.
The fight eventually left the surrounding city blocks in smoldering ruin, at which point the gigantic leader of the mole people (the Subterranean King) emerged. He has four arms and wields four laser swords, and definitely took more focus to bring down than his children (his words). He telegraphs his enormous sword swipes, and you must make use of Saitama’s dodge and dash abilities to avoid them, then close the gap to get in a few punches (again, why so many punches? He’s literally the One Punch Man). A couple more quicktime events and the King was dethroned.
Outside of combat you can explore Z-city, which looks very much like a dense area of Tokyo. Convenience stores can sell you meals that provide stat boosts. Arcades are full of One Punch Man takes on classic games like bullet hell shooters and fighting games. At least one of them is playable: Panzer Cyborg, a simplistic on-rails affair where you fly over a city collecting coins and dodging the odd obstacle. (Curiously, it begins by playing music from the NES game Life Force, which is a Konami property. I have to imagine it’s being used as a placeholder for some 8-bit sounding original tune.)
Around town you can take on sidequests and talk to other characters — who might even provide a different point of view of the events of the show.
Other playable characters fans will recognize include Genos, Mumen Rider, Lightning Max, and Atomic Samurai. While you begin the game with just Saitama, other characters will be made available as you encounter them in the story. A PvE raid mode allows you to team up with three other players in order to take down a powerful boss like the Beast King, who first appeared in Episode 2 of the anime.
One Punch Man: World probably isn’t going to knock the socks off fans of action games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. Its appeal seems to be to fans of the anime and manga that want to relive some of the epic battles and spend more time with their favorite characters. Those fans can get their punch on for free when it launches later this year for PC and mobile.
Thieving co-op revival Payday 3 is due for release in September, but it’ll enter closed beta next week. From August 2nd until August 7th, players accepted into the beta will be able to play a single heist so that developers Starbreeze can test their servers and the game’s stability.
