The New Call of Duty Has a Title
This year's installment in the Call of Duty series will be called Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.
The title could briefly be found on an empty entry on the US PS Store on PS4, at the top of the Trending section - it has since been removed. Here's a screenshot:
The PS Store entry for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.
Earlier today, a leak suggested the new game from series veterans Infinity Ward would be revealed by next week.
The Flash Slows Down This Week
How do you continue The Flash without The Flash? That’s the question facing Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and his friends on the CW series after the events of last week’s episode in Tuesday night's new episode, "Back to Normal."
As executive producer Andrew Kreisberg notes, “Barry and the team are dealing with the fact that Barry doesn't have his powers anymore.”
Kreisberg remarked that taking Barry’s speed away actually gave them a chance to do a relatively calmer episode, explaining, “You know, we've been going at such a breakneck pace. I know the TV scheduling put a couple of arbitrary stops in there, but if you think about it going from the Earth-Two saga to King Shark to the Trajectory episode to the flashback episode to last week and all the revelations and Barry losing his speed, we've been pedal to the metal at a breakneck pace, and this episode where Barry loses his powers was literally designed to slow everything down and let everybody catch their breath, before the next four episodes.”
May’s Games With Gold Have Been Announced
Next month’s Games with Gold have been revealed.
Here's the list, and when you'll be able to grab your free download:
- Defense Grid 2 - May 1-31, Xbox One
- Costume Quest 2 - May 16-June 15, Xbox One
- Grid 2 - May 1-15, Xbox 360
- Peggle - May 16-31, Xbox 360
In our reviews, we gave Defense Grid 2 an 8.0 - praising its smart additions to the addictive original's formula - and Costume Quest 2 a 7.8, saying its "combat and story are both surprisingly good for an RPG that concludes in roughly a half-dozen hours".
Sherlock Holmes 3 Gets a New Writer
James Coyne will be doing a rewrite of Warner Bros' Sherlock Holmes 3.
This news comes via Deadline. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law will be returning as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and Guy Ritchie is back on board to direct.
Coyne worked on adaptation of Treasure Island for Sherlock producer Lionel Wigram last year, which appeared on 2015's Black List for unproduced screenplays. Originally, Iron Man 3 writer Drew Pearce was on script duty for the film back in 2011.
13 Movies Worth Watching on Steam Right Now
This week, Valve made over 100 Lionsgate films available to rent and stream through its Steam client.
More and more movies will be added to the line-up "as the partnership continues to expand worldwide," but for now, here are 13 movies from the existing catalog that are worth watching on Steam right now.
Mad Max: Fury Road redefined action movie standards last year with its expertly choreographed, adrenaline-fueled chase sequences, stunning practical effects, and incredibly detailed art direction, taking home six Academy Awards for its achievements.
Severed Review
Drinkbox Studios' games all share a unique, rather dark sense of humor and very distinctive artistic flare. With Severed, the studio has turned its attention to classic first-person dungeon crawling, and the result is a creative touch-screen adventure with sharp, colorful graphics that mask an incredibly dark center.
Severed places you in the role of Sasha. Her home burned, her family taken, and her left-arm severed, she wakes up to find everything she loves destroyed. When a mysterious and frightful vision bestows her with a living sword that sucks up power by severing limbs, Sasha ventures forth into a nightmarish maze in search of a resolution.
While Severed is heavily influenced by classic dungeon crawlers, it’s not exactly an RPG. Sasha doesn’t have traditional stats that increase throughout the game. Instead, you use the body parts collected during combat--and occasionally find strewn about the environment--as currency to buy or upgrade abilities, which include increased damage and health, the ability to leech health from enemies, or a longer window of time to sever limbs during combat, to name a few. Each new ability and piece of armor Sasha earns by killing a boss has its own upgrade tree, so there’s a good amount of depth to the customization system overall. If you prefer to rely on straightforward sword-slashing, you can focus heavily on that skill tree, but there's plenty of room to experiment with Sasha's repertoire of equipment and abilities.
Fighting consists of swiping over enemies to attack or to parry incoming attacks in real time, but within that basic framework, Drinkbox has created a rewarding system where every move counts as you seek to collect body parts for new upgrades. Monsters' attacks are tied to a cooldown timer, and you can successfully counter them by swiping toward an attacking appendage. When done successfully, this will open monsters up to consecutive attacks. Facing a monster one-on-one is usually not a problem, but Severed doesn’t make it that easy—the game frequently throws three or four monsters at you at once. This means you have to keep a very close watch on the timer for each monster and shift your focus accordingly in order to attack and defend at the right time.
Timing is everything in Severed: the only way to collect body parts is to fill your sever meter by consistently attacking without being blocked, and, by parrying incoming attacks. Screwing up your timing or the angle of your swipe may lead to a blocked attack, which in turn prevents your meter from filling up. You may still win the fight, but you will walk away empty-handed. Combat can quickly become a hectic, even stressful affair. Thankfully, there are no random encounters here. Severed lets you know where the monsters are with a glowing flame in the room ahead. There’s also no real penalty to dying in the normal difficulty level.
Severed's map bears more than a passing resemblance to Metroid-style games. The overall world is quite large, but the meat of the game is figuring out how to reach new, tucked away areas. Much like Metroid, this is usually done by defeating a boss and earning a new ability. Sasha can learn how to change the land from day to night and back again to open special doors, for instance.
This is a world that takes you through spooky forests, forgotten temples, fiery wastelands, and more in Sasha’s quest to find her family. The landscapes are equally dreamlike and nightmarish, with bizarre plant growths and areas defined by isolation and ruin. There’s an intriguing use of organic shapes and objects throughout. A giant skull might be resting along a forest path, and within the dungeons, the actual doors are frequently living creatures—scary, toothsome maws that open when given the right object. At one point, you’ll go through a living door, only to find it’s still connected to an actual creature—some huge, worm-like thing that produces foul toxic gas. The whole world of Severed is full of strange sights that make it worthwhile to comb every inch of its multi-level maps.
Severed starts out deceptively simplistic and bizarre. The weird, old-school scrolling method and touch-based interactions hide a remarkably deep and involving mix of action, adventure, and role-playing. The more hours you pour into Severed, the more complex it becomes and the darker the story gets. It takes a while to grasp, but once the game picks up steam, it becomes an intriguing experience that's unlike any other game on Vita to date.
Rumor: New Call of Duty to Be Unveiled by Next Week
Leaked retailer documents seem to point to the next Call of Duty game being revealed by next Tuesday, May 3.
Posted by games critic Jim Sterling on Twitter, the document seems to indicate changes to in-store marketing, which includes the "Call of Duty Reveal".
The next Call of Duty will apparently get unveiled by next Tuesday. Getting listed in retailers at any rate. pic.twitter.com/eYnVX5spdh
— Jim Sterling (@JimSterling) April 26, 2016
UK Street Date Broken for Uncharted 4
Although not scheduled to release until May 10, 2016, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is already in the hands of some fans.
Videogamer reports that at least one person has picked up the game from retailer CEX in the UK, with others sharing news on Twitter that Amazon, too, has dispatched two weeks ahead of the street date. MCV also reports unconfirmed assertions of early deliveries in Germany and North America, with auctions already showing up on eBay.
Epic Reveals Paragon Open ‘Stress Test’ Dates
Epic Games has announced the first free stress test weekend for Paragon will begin on April 28, and end on May 1.
A second phase will then begin on May 5, and last until May 8. For the first phase, you'll have to be in the first 500,000 people who signed up to the beta. However, for the second phase, all players will be invited, including everyone who signed up before May 1.
If you're already taking part in Paragon Early Access, Epic is offering a double XP boost if you play during those weekends, and your existing Boosts will stack with the extra bonus.
More beta weekends will be announced in the future before the June 7 release date. It will be free-to-play, however there is a $60 retail version available which contains a lot of paid content.
Blizzard Responds to Illegal Server Closure Complaints
Blizzard has responded to complaints sparked by the closure of the World of Warcraft Nostalrius server.
The unlicensed server offered a vanilla World of Warcraft experience - running a very early version of the game - that Blizzard itself no longer provided, and last month's closure spawned a petition to reinstate it that gathered over 235,000 signatures.
Stating the developer had to close the server in order to preserve the developer's intellectual property, World of Warcraft's executive producer, J. Allen Brack, wrote on the official forum (via Eurogamer) "failure to protect against intellectual property infringement would damage Blizzard's rights". While Blizzard had "looked into the possibility" of working with unofficial servers, there was "not a clear legal path to protect Blizzard’s IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server".