The world of World Of Warcraft will resume its warring on August 14th with the launch of the Battle For Azeroth expansion, Blizzard announced today. As ever, it’ll explore new lands and raise the level cap, while also introducing new activities. This time it’s war, for really reals. The expansion is based around the Alliance and Horde going head-to-head again, with both sides recruiting new playable races, scrapping over resources in new modes, and generally getting back to good old-fashioned war. (more…)

A new event mode starts in Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds tonight, and it focuses on something close to my heart. For three days, the Tequila Sunrise squad mode will arm everyone with only shotguns and melee weapons for a showdown on Miramar starting with a smaller safe zone. I’m delighted. I’m a sucker for the tension and risk/reward of weapons which fire slowly but can spit wild damage, and often found clinging to my over-and-under shotgun for as long as possible. Let’s do this.

In other Plunknews, a team deathmatch mode with respawning, named War, has popped up unannounced in its Custom Match options. Those rounds are fiddly to get into but hey, it’s there now if you really want it. (more…)

The next cooperative PvE event mission for Overwatch will travel back in time to Venice and what I’m told is “a critical Blackwatch operation that ultimately led to the fall of Overwatch.” Arriving next Tuesday, April 10th, Retribution will see McCree, Moira, Reyes (pre-Reaperisation, as Soldier: 24), and Genji fighting through the streets and along the canals to escape Talon. New skins are coming too, of course. And this is the first taste of the Venetian new map, named Rialto, which will be coming to the regular game as an Escort map soon. Here, watch the trailer setting up the story: (more…)

Bad news for anyone still rocking a really, really> old Intel processor today, as the CPU giant has announced it’s going to stop developing microcode updates to deal with the ongoing security problems caused by Spectre and Meltdown for certain types of architecture. The news comes with the release of a new microcode revision guide that sets out the current schedule of planned updates for each type of affected CPU.

(more…)

Good, bad or otherwise, you can’t keep an online, service-focused Ubigame down. Following in the footsteps of the likes of Rainbow Six Siege and For Honor, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is the latest in the publisher’s stable of multiplayer games to be signed on for a second season’s worth of content updates. Much of it looks to be free, which is always a reasonable price.

(more…)

With great esports comes great bigotry. Not quite the snappiest of mottos, but relevant to Rainbow Six Siege, which has gone from strength to strength this past year at the cost of an increasingly ornery playerbase. In an attempt to help reduce the awfulness of public play, Ubisoft have outlined plans for the coming year to keep both verbal and mechanical abuse to a minimum.

(more…)

Update Night is a fortnightly column in which Rich McCormick revisits games to find out whether they’ve been changed for better or worse.>

You d not think that a dude who calls himself Doomfist would be a particularly complex personality, but returning to Overwatch for the first time since Blizzard started adding new heroes to its team shooter, I found him the hardest to understand. That’s no bad thing. It’s a pleasure to return to a game and find new characters who aren’t simply the Ken to an existing Ryu. Overwatch’s new characters add a variety of playstyles, and have made the game more interesting and challenging. Despite the challenge of all this new variety, it might even have become a friendlier place to spend time since I last played.

(more…)

Fans of FMV adventure cheese have a treat due this Halloween: The 13th Doll is a sequel to the 7th Guest series, officially licensed but developed by a crew of fans who grew up playing the originals. It promises all the hammy acting, obvious CGI scenery and logic puzzles you’d expect, and they’ve even managed to bring back one-time actor Robert Hirschboeck to reprise his role as the series’ ghostly villain Henry Stauf.

(more…)

Amazon Game Studios, the development branch of the online bookshop/digital media empire, have officially ditched one of the three games from their initial PC lineup. They’ve confirmed rumours that the 4v4 MOBA-tinged fantasy fighty ballsport Breakaway is essentially dead, saying they couldn’t do it right. (more…)

In an ironic twist, GTA Online‘s latest competitive mode puts heavy firepower in the hands of players, but reserves it purely for shooting at safe, inanimate targets. In the new Target Assault mode, players pair up to crew a heavily armed vehicle racing down a circuit, with the driver trying to provide the turret gunner as clear a shot as possible at the big floating targets surrounding the track. Not to say that the mode is non-violent, of course…

(more…)