Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be getting its next big update on March 7 and it will include the highly anticipated New Game+ mode alongside new suits and more.
Insomniac shared the news on X/Twitter, adding that it will be revealing the complete list of features closer to the actual release of the update.
❗ OUR NEXT UPDATE IS COMING MARCH 7
Our title update for Marvel’s #SpiderMan2PS5 arrives next month and adds highly requested features like New Game+, new suits, and more!
In the delay announcement, Insomniac also noted it was looking to add the ability to “change the time of day, swap tendril colors, and replay missions.”
In our Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 review, we said it “delivers Insomniac’s best tale yet, and despite its open world falling short, is a reliably fun superhero power trip.”
Good news, star admirals with decent CPM! Gearbox and Blackbird Interactive’s strategy escapade Homeworld 3 has a demo on Steam. It’s been live for a few days, actually, but whether due to the bombardment of other Steam Fest goodies or my being led astray by the similar-but-nerdier Nebulous: Fleet Command, I didn’t try it till last night. The demo includes a tutorial mission, four maps and the War Games mode, a one-to-three player affair which essentially turns Homeworld into a roguelike – pitching you up against unpredictable opposition while unlocking new fleets and doling out Artifacts that augment your vessels.
Microsoft has picked up spooky indie adventure game Hauntii as a day-one Xbox Game Pass title.
Publisher Firestoke and developer Moonloop Games announced Hauntii is coming to Game Pass though didn’t offer any details as to when that might happen, as the game only has a second quarter of 2024 release window on Steam and its marketing otherwise lists a vague 2024.
“Hauntii is a beguiling adventure built around a creative haunting mechanic that lets you possess the environment and the creatures that inhabit it,” its official synopsis reads. “Once you’ve taken control, you can take on enemies using the special abilities of Hauntii’s denizens and come up with ingenious solutions to overcome the many challenges littered across the game’s enchanting world.
“You will be possessed by a captivating blend of exploration, puzzle solving and twin-stick shooting, all set in a stunning hand-crafted world filled with charming characters, and underpinned with a ghostly mystery that will see you diving deep into your past.”
Those interested in the idea can download a demo on Steam until February 12, but will otherwise have to wait until it comes to PC and Xbox later this year. A Nintendo Switch and PlayStation version has also been announced.
EA Sports has made its annual Super Bowl prediction after simulating the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers game in Madden NFL 24.
The simulation predicted an incredibly close game but put the Chiefs on top in a 30 to 28 victory. This would make the Chiefs the eighth team in history to win back-to-back Super Bowls, and only the ninth instance of it in NFL history.
EA Sports also predicted Chiefs quarterback Partrick Mahomes will become the third player in history to win back-to-back Super Bowl Most Valuable Player awards.
49ers fans perhaps shouldn’t worry too much about the prediction, however, as Madden NFL hasn’t always been accurate in its simulations. The last 10 years have seen it proved wrong 70% of the time, though it did perfectly anticipate the New England Patriots’ 28 to 24 victory over the Seattle Seahawks in 2015.
It was wrong last year, predicting a 31 to 17 Philadelphia Eagles victory over the Chiefs, in a game the Chiefs ended up winning 38 to 35.
In our 6/10 review of EA’s latest, IGN said: “New animations and improved AI make Madden NFL 24’s on-field action the best it’s ever been, but everything that happens off the field is a slog of dated modes and laggy menus that brings everything around it down.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Just in time for Super Bowl weekend, Saber Interactive has today announced a new wave of DLC for its arcade gridiron title, Wild Card Football.
The ‘Legacy QB Pack’ is pretty much what you would expect, adding four legendary quarterbacks for you to slot into your lineup. Included this time are Warren Moon, Steve Young, Kurt Warner and Randall Cunningham, each of whom comes with their own unique outfits.
Can you believe it? Ten years of tanks! The game known today as World of Tanks Modern Armor officially made its debut in the console arena on February 12, 2014.
As one of the first free-to-play titles available on consoles, WoTMA (or just “World of Tanks,” as it was known then!) helped lay the foundation for experiences that PlayStation players would enjoy over the next decade. Of course, the game couldn’t have come as far as it has without the support of a thriving community… or without the efforts of a dedicated staff.
In fact, several of our Wargaming staff members who were present for the game’s early days are still part of the team today. Together, they’re taking a look back at the game’s history and a sneak peek at what’s ahead during the year-long event we’re calling Celebrations.
The past
It takes more than a few people to bring a game like World of Tanks to market, but five who made the game what it is today are:
Andy Dorizas, Art Director
Valerie MacCracken, Director of LiveOps Operations
Ben Crawford, Senior Player Experience Manager
JJ Bakken, Senior Producer
L. Daniel Burr, Live Game Director
Any of them will tell you that hard work and scrappiness were key to their efforts. Valerie MacCracken, who started at Wargaming in 2011 in a customer support role, drives the point home, saying, “The first North American office was brand new when I joined, and there were only maybe fifteen employees; I recall that on one of my first days, we assembled furniture for the lobby area!”
Physical infrastructure for various offices wasn’t the only challenge; there were technical challenges in developing the game, too. According to Andy Dorizas, who was Lead Artist at Day 1 Studios before it became Wargaming Chicago, “We had to trim things down just to get it to run on early hardware. Art assets had to be shrunk or compressed. Levels had to be simplified… It was a seriously large mountain to climb.”
JJ Bakken, who joined the Chicago studio as an Associate Producer in 2013, adds another issue the team faced: the novelty of what Wargaming was doing! “This was the studio’s first time developing a free-to-play game, and it was early in the days of F2P on console platforms,” he says. “Figuring out a new genre and a new way to connect with game players is always challenging, but exciting at the same time.”
How did they do it? MacCracken says that the process was gradual, “with the alpha, beta, [a] soft launch in certain regions, and then [the] full launch happening, back-to-back.” She also ran what she calls a “super-secret” forum, available only to early testers. “When I saw the passion that the game was creating among our early testers, many of which are still around today, I knew we had something good going.”
Bakken echoes this: “…there is always extra trepidation on launching a live-service game (will the servers perform, etc.), so we were hopeful all our technical efforts would be rewarded. Spoilers: it went pretty well and here we still are, ten years later!”
The future
Ben Crawford, who started with Wargaming Europe ten years ago as a Customer Experience Manager, is excited about the changes he sees in WoTMA’s technology and services, saying, “The evolution is evident in the updated portal [website], new support tools, expanded capabilities outside the game, and enhanced in-game features.”
Daniel Burr, who began at Wargaming as a Solution Architect managing network services, notes, however, that development brings new opportunities, and not just for Wargaming: “Ten years ago, the F2P space on consoles was very new, and so there were no console-specific best practices upon which to lean. Today, F2P on consoles is a much more thoroughly understood model, and new F2P games take full advantage of that.”
So, progress and challenges alike lie ahead, but WoTMA is prepared to embrace it all, starting with the Celebrations event!
At the heart of Celebrations is a dedicated website that will allow players to track their progress in each season throughout 2024, starting with the Lunar New Year-themed Year of the Dragon season that launched on January 30. Players will also be able to compare and share stats with their friends and work toward not one but two special reward tanks that will be awarded when Celebrations ends.
That’s not all. February brings players opportunities to claim two new 10th anniversary tanks, the Lago M38 and the MBT-B, complete the first Celebrations Monthly Challenge (as an Anniversary event with shared community goals and rewards), and so much more.
In the end, every aspect of Celebrations is intended to commemorate what makes WoTMA special: not the tanks (as much as we love them), but the people. “Not very many industry folks can say they’ve been at the same company for over a decade, but we have this stability that allows us to build bridges not only between each other, but between us and our community as well,” says MacCracken.
The game’s big ten-year anniversary is underway. Join us for the Celebrations!
Palworld players have come up with an ingenious way of defeating the game’s toughest bosses, and it involves building an actual in-game ‘stairway to heaven’.
As reported by GamesRadar, the video posted to Twitter / X shows how one player created a huge stairway and led a level 50 Jetragon to the top. From there, it’s a simple case of jumping off, gliding to the bottom, and destroying the lower portion of the stairway. Without this foundation, the structure comes crashing down with the Jetragon, presumably so bemused it forgot it can fly, falling to its death. The power of gravity!
This strat is so simple you imagine it’s not long for this world. Palworld developer Pocketpair has yet to indicate its readiness to take action, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s noticed (the tweet above has had just shy of two million views, after all) and plans a fix in an upcoming patch.
Speaking of Palworld patches, update v0.1.4.1 is out now on Steam and makes more welcome fixes. The Xbox patch, v0.1.1.4, is also out now. There is a disparity between the Xbox and Steam versions of Palworld, not least in the Xbox version’s lack of dedicated servers, which limits the number of players who can play together. Microsoft has said it will work directly with Pocketpair to assist in supplying the resources necessary to keep the momentum of the monster survival game going strong, including providing support to enable dedicated servers.
Palworld is a smash hit, crossing over an eye-watering 19 million players across all platforms since going on sale January 19. It’s the most-played game on Steam, and the biggest third-party launch in Game Pass history with over seven million players and a daily player peak of just shy of three million. On Steam alone, Palworld has sold 12 million copies.
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.
If you played and liked last year’s excellent slice-of-life adventure A Space For The Unbound, stop what you’re doing and go and download the Steam Next Fest demo for Until Then. Go on, I’ll wait. Right, sorted? Let’s continue. Like A Space For The Unbound, Until Then is a coming of age story where the ups and downs of everyday high school life start intermingling with strange, supernatural occurences.
It has gone down as one of the most tumultuous days in video game development history, but even now, nearly 14 years later, we’re still getting insight into the day Activision fired the founders of Infinity Ward.
In March 2010, Infinity Ward co-founders Vince Zampella and Jason West were escorted out of the studio by security after being fired for breach of contract and insubordination. The shocking news came just a handful of months after Activision had released blockbuster hit first-person shooter Modern Warfare 2, developed by Infinity Ward and launched to $1 billion in sales.
What happened next is well-documented: West and Zampella sued the Bobby Kotick-led publisher Activision for $36 million. Activision counter-sued, accusing West and Zampella of meeting EA in secret “to steal the [Infinity Ward] studio.” Of course, West and Zampella did end up co-founding rival FPS studio Respawn Entertainment with EA, bringing plenty of disgruntled Infinity Ward staff with them, and went on to develop Titanfall before smash hit battle royale Apex Legends. Complaints about unpaid royalties were lodged. In the end, all the messy lawsuits were settled. What was left of Infinity Ward went on to release Modern Warfare 3 in 2011, with the help of the likes of Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software.
Now, as spotted by PC Gamer, NetEase games lead designer and former Infinity Ward member of staff Paul Sandler has penned an article on LinkedIn dubbed ‘That day when Activision fired Jason and Vince.’ It’s a fascinating read that reveals what it was like for the rank and file to go through such a dramatic series of events.
What sticks out for me is Sandler’s recollection of Activision’s attempt to prevent Infinity Ward and thus Modern Warfare 3 from collapsing:
“There was an emergency company meeting in the kitchen space. A group of top Activision high-ups were already at the studio, ready to steady the ship. The Infinity Ward team piled into the kitchen and glared at the group of executives standing behind the long kitchen island table. One of them tried explaining what was happening, which nobody on the development team bought or cared for. The response was mostly stoic silence. Then, a team member asked bluntly if we were going to be paid the bonuses we have already earned for shipping Modern Warfare 2. Reading the tense vibe in the room, another executive took his turn and tried a different strategy. Paraphrasing, he said: ‘Guys, if you stay with the studio to make Modern Warfare 3, you will receive your MW2 bonuses. AND we will also give everyone a fifty percent salary increase’. He paused slightly before repeating: ‘That is a five and a zero, fifty percent’. The looks on peoples faces did not change. If anything, most of the team was feeling even more upset. The executive spoke again: ‘Look, I get it. I know this is a tough situation. But, just take the money and get over it.’ I specifically remember him telling us to ‘Get over it’.”
IGN has asked Activision for comment.
As we know, despite Activision’s attempts, Infinity Ward suffered a mass exodus of staff following the firing of Zampella and West. Sandler says around 40 developers quit from a total headcount of about 100. “Activision had inadvertently splintered their flagship studio, which was also one of the best studios of all time.”
Much has changed over the course of the last 14 years. Infinity Ward endured a poor run of form with Call of Duty: Ghosts and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, before kicking off Call of Duty’s comeback with 2019’s soft reboot, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and the phenomenally popular battle royale Warzone. Infinity Ward has also released Modern Warfare 2 and last year’s Modern Warfare 3.
EA ended up buying Respawn in 2017 after the release of Titanfall and Titanfall 2. Apex Legends followed, with another team making the successful action games Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and its sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Respawn is currently working on a third Star Wars Jedi game, as well as an untitled Star Wars FPS. Zampella rose through the ranks at EA to become Group General Manager in charge of Apex Legends, Star Wars Jedi, Battlefield, and Need for Speed.
Image credit: Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
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.
Season 2, which kicks off later today, February 7, is the first big update of 2024 to the first person shooter, and adds a number of new maps, a new battle pass, and of course new cosmetics.
The free trial runs from February 8 to 12 and grants access to the new Season 2 map Stash House as well as eight other multiplayer maps across Team Deathmatch, Hardpoint, Kill Confirmed, Domination, and Team Gun Game. It also grants full access to Modern Warfare Zombies.
Season 2 itself adds a good deal to Modern Warfare 3 Multiplayer. Four new core 6v6 maps arrive across Season 2, including three brand new 6v6 maps and a remaster of Das Haus. There are two “otherworldly” themed map variants based on Skidrow and Terminal as well.
There’s a new War map, Operation Tin Man, in which you assault a downtown Urzikstan skyscraper from the skies. Five new game modes (Team Gun Game, Snipers Only, Hordepoint and Bounty, and Juggermosh) and a Vortex Playlist are all in-bound. Elsewhere, expect Season 2 Ranked Play, and the new Ninja Vest for silent running, as well as a bonus knife and throwing star ammo.
As for Zombies, the Dark Aether story act continues with a new anomaly in the Exclusion Zone, the Second Rift, new challenges and schematics, and the addition of Warlord Keres, who’s set up shop at the Killhouse in the Orlov Military Base.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 Season 2 Release Times:
West Coast North America: 9am PT
East Coast North AMerica: 12pm ET
UK: 5pm GMT
Western Europe: 6pm CET
Japan: 2am JST December 8
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.
