The big mid-season update for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is now live, adding a veritable arsenal of new weapons, modes, maps, and features to the multiplayer shooter. The patch, which also adds new content to Warzone, lays the groundwork for continuing updates throughout the rest of the season. It's packed with new content, so here's what you can expect.New ModesFor starters, the update adds a handful of new maps and modes, with more on the way to drop in the coming days ahead.First is Dropkick, a new Multiplayer mode in which teams battle for control of a briefcase holding the nuclear launch codes. The one who holds the briefcase gets access to a pistol, while the rest of the team tries to keep them safe. But as your team gets picked off, they won't revive until the carrier is eliminated too, whittling down your defenses. Holding the case progressively adds to your team score, and the first to 200 points wins.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Developer Psyonix is reviving a four-year-old limited-time mode for Rocket League this weekend on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.For fans of the mode, Rocket Labs may sound familiar. Four years ago, the studio dropped an experimental mode called Rocket Labs Arena that randomly changed the field. Sometimes this meant new obstacles appearing out of thin air. Other times, the whole Rocket League arena would change shapes, drastically altering the layout and flow of the map. Rocket Labs is back as a new, rotating LTM. And this weekend's first one is Soccar on Galleon.Originally found in Psyonix's 2008 title Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, the Galleon map has been reimagined for Rocket League and this new Rocket Labs LTM. Check out the announcement trailer below to get an idea of what Soccar on Galleon will look like.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Steam sales fall into a yearly pattern, and we always know roughly when to expect each major sale--for example, the summer and winter sales always kick off around the end of June and December, respectively. While we can anticipate the time period for the sale, Steam rarely announces exact dates beforehand. However, this info somehow manages to "leak" ahead of time on a consistent basis, and the tradition continues with the next big Steam sale, the 2021 Lunar New Year Sale.According to Steam Database (@SteamDB) on Twitter, the Steam Lunar New Year Sale will kick off on February 11 and run until February 15, which means the next big Steam sale is roughly one month away. As SteamDB points out, Chinese New Year 2021 starts on February 12, so the dates make sense. While a start time was not given, Steam sales usually start around 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET.The dates reportedly leaked from an email to Steam partners. For context, Steam Database is an account unaffiliated with Valve that tracks various updates related to the platform, and it has a history of accurately reporting upcoming Steam sale dates--but as always with rumors, take this info with a grain of salt.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Pokemon Go's January Community Day takes place this Saturday, January 16. The featured Pokemon this time around is Machop, and Niantic is making it a little easier for players to evolve it during the event.From January 15-18, Niantic is temporarily increasing the game's trading distance to 40 km, allowing you to trade Pokemon with a friend from farther away than usual. This should help make it a bit easier to evolve Machoke into Machamp, as it's one of a handful of Pokemon that can essentially evolve by trading, just as in the mainline games.If you receive select Pokemon like the aforementioned Machoke in a trade, its Candy requirement to evolve will be completely removed, effectively allowing you to evolve it for free. Considering that it normally costs 100 Candy to evolve a three-stage Pokemon into its final form, this is a nice alternate means of evolving some monsters.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

As part of a wide-ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter, actor Ben Affleck discussed why he took on the role of Batman, and it's for a pretty wholesome reason.He explained that he did it to make his kids happy. "I did Batman because I wanted to do it for my kids," Affleck said. "I wanted to do something that my son would dig. I mean, my kids didn't see Argo."Affleck's first appearance as Batman came in Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which was followed by appearances as the Caped Crusader in Suicide Squad and Justice League. Affleck is coming back once more to play Batman in 2022's The Flash.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

A rare Batman comic has sold for $2.2 million, beating the previous record for the highest-priced Batman comic sold at auction of all time. The near-mint Batman #1 was first published in 1940, and survived those decades with almost unheard-of quality.THR reports that the comic was sold as part of a Heritage Auction event on comics and comic book art. This Batman comic was published a year after the character's debut in Detective Comics #27. Aside from being the first title issue for Batman, it also introduced iconic characters like the Joker and Catwoman.The comic received a 9.4 on the Certified Guaranty Company (CGC) scale. On that scale, a 9.4 is described as "a very well-preserved collectible with minor wear and small manufacturing or handling defects." This comic in particular is said to have been preserved so well that its pages are still white.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Activision Blizzard has announced that its holiday charity campaign was very successful, with its employees collectively giving more than $1.6 million to thousands of charities.In December, Activision Blizzard kicked off the Holiday Giving Initiative, which gave every employee $200 to donate to a charity of their choice. More than 8,000 employees took advantage of the offer, donating to more than 3,200 charities and raising $1.6 million.Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and COO Daniel Alegre released a statement on the initiative:Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

YouTuber and "hardware hacker" Mike Choi has combined an exercise bicycle, Mario Kart 8, and the Ring Fit Adventure controller to create a fantastic way to get in shape. The Labo Fit Adventure Kart Kit, as he calls it, lets you control your favorite Mushroom Kingdom character by pedaling, squeezing, and working your butt off."This kit allows you to control your kart by pedaling on the Bike-Con and steering and using items with the Ring-Con," Choi said in a tweet. "This is a fully-functional concept product that I developed myself."The Labo Fit Adventure Kart Kit is powered by the TAPBO module, a small wireless robot that hugs the Joy-Con and presses buttons when it receives signal from the Bike-Con and Ring-Con. Here’s a video explaining how it works: pic.twitter.com/Joz4Q5z67q — Mike Choi (@mechachoi) January 14, 2021Choi uploaded a video to YouTube and Twitter where he can be seen huffing and puffing as he showcases his home brew creation. The "full-body exercise experience" gets extra difficult when he picks up a golden mushroom and has to squeeze the Ring Fit controller every time he wants a boost. "Even when you lose in the game," Choi said in the video. "You're winning at exercise."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

When it comes to gaming hardware, 'big' is the description that most often applies, whether it's the original Xbox or the latest Nvidia RTX 3090 card. High-fidelity gaming takes a lot of horsepower, which often means you'll also be dealing with large hardware. But Intel is trying to change our minds at CES 2021 with its next set of laptop processors, enabling gaming on the thinnest and lightest laptops yet.Intel hopes to do this with its 11th-gen Tiger Lake-H CPUs and Intel's own Xe graphics tech. Intel has three chips on the way that will make up this segment of its market: The Core i7-11375H Special Edition, i7-11370H, and i5-11300H. These are four-core, eight-thread CPUs that each draw 28-35W of power, compared to 35-45W for the 10th-gen laptop processors. The four-core count is a reduction from the previous generation's six-core models, which Intel says was necessary to fit the chip into the same space.These chips are built on Intel's Tiger Lake H35 10nm architecture, which means that they support Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, Intel's Xe graphics architecture, Wi-Fi 6/6E, PCIe Gen 4, and Resizable BAR. If you follow PC tech, you may have come across this with AMD's Smart Access Memory. Similarly, Resizable BAR allows the CPU to allocate an optimal amount of video memory instead of having to do it in smaller 256MB chunks. That lets the CPU and discrete GPU move data around more quickly, which translates to better graphics performance and loading times. Nvidia recently announced its plans to support Resizable BAR, too. The Core i7-11375H SE also features Intel Turbo Boost 3.0, which lets the CPU shoot up to 5GHz frequency on a single core.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Developer Respawn Entertainment has rolled out a new patch for Apex Legends on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S that stabilizes the game.The patch comes after numerous players reported errors while playing the game on all platforms. Specifically, players were getting caught in infinite loops that freeze the game or the game would crash entirely. Respawn said that while it couldn't replicate whatever's causing the hiccups, the new patch "improves stability and (hopefully) fixes the freezing issues."In addition to trying to address technical issues on the server side, the latest patch for Apex Legends fixes a variety of other problems. This includes issues with Fight Night event skins like Haute Drop and Gold Standard getting in the way of the reticle when aiming down sights, errors with selecting the Steam Friends list, and other problems related to clubs and text chat.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

2014's Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt action movie Edge of Tomorrow--or, Live Die Repeat as it was rebranded--was a critical success and as a result, fans have been calling for a sequel. Director Doug Liman has now provided an update on how it's coming along.He told Collider that, if indeed a sequel is made, he would want it to be a smaller-scale movie. Sequels often go for bigger action and more explosions, but Liman said this pales in comparison to giving Cruise and Blunt more screen time because they are such great actors."I've always been interested in the idea of a sequel being more character-driven than the first film, because that's not how things are normally done," he said. "That's been my approach when developing the sequel and because Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt are such phenomenal actors. I get sometimes the sequel just has to have more firepower or more explosions but no visual effect is going to top what you're going to get from a great scene performed by Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

A notoriously tricky "ultra-shortcut" in Mario Kart Wii has been performed by a human, after years of attempts. The shortcut is on the final track, Rainbow Road, and though players have known about its theoretical existence for almost five years, no one has been able to pull it off.As noted on Reddit, streamer @ArthuurrrP is the first person to have performed the shortcut. You can see it in the streamed video below: The racer stops and turns their kart just after the starting line, then rides the railing and hops over to a piece of the track, bypassing most of Rainbow Road and going straight to the finish line. Total lap time: 22.5 seconds. Doing this successfully is said to have taken thousands of hours.This is one of the "ultra-shortcuts" in Mario Kart Wii, and a 2018 video from Summoning Salt explains what makes it so rare and tricky. Mario Kart Wii uses a series of checkpoints to load in and make sure you've finished the entire track in sequence, so if you find a shortcut, you need to trip those markers or it won't count your progress. This particular shortcut was discovered in March 2016, and had been recreated with bots, but there wasn't yet a record of a person actually performing it.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Fans of real time strategy games can pick up Bomber Crew, a game about managing the inner workings of a World War 2 bomber, for free by subscribing to the Humble Bundle newsletter. The offer is only around for the next three days, so players will need to act quickly if they want to grab this freebie.Visit Humble Bundle's official website, click on the banner on top, create an account, and enter your email in order to receive a copy of Bomber Crew. This offer will end on January 17, 2021 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET.Bomber Crew puts you in charge of various crews flying missions at the height of World War 2. You'll act as their invisible leader, giving engineers, gunners, and other crewmate's orders. The graphics may look charming, but there is a real challenge hidden behind Bomber Crew's colorful visuals.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Nintendo has added a couple of new physical rewards to its My Nintendo loyalty program. My Nintendo members can now spend their points on a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate greeting card set or a Splatoon 2 keychain set.The Smash Bros. greeting card set costs 400 Platinum points and is designed to resemble the series' signature invitation letter. The Splatoon 2 keychain set, meanwhile, costs 350 Platinum points and comes with keychains of the Super Mushroom and Super Star, the two Mario power-ups featured during this weekend's Mario-themed Splatfest.Smash Bros. invitation greeting card setGallery Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Looking for something new to play but don't want to spend any money? Microsoft has announced the latest additions to the Free Play Days promotion, and they include some big-name titles. Now through Sunday, January 17, Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass Ultimate members can play Star Wars: Squadrons, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Yooka-Laylee for the low, low price of $0.00.To get started, you can queue up a download of each game through the Xbox website. You can also download the games on your Xbox by visiting the Subscriptions tab of the Xbox Store and then navigate to the Gold member area to find the Free Play Days library.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com