Author: [email protected] (Morgan Park)
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Unprecedented ‘inside look’ at Call of Duty matchmaking debunks fan theories on SBMM and confirms our assumptions: ‘Skill is not the dominant variable’
Call of Duty’s matchmaking is no longer a mystery. Last year, Activision promised fans that it’d finally open up about how matchmaking works in Call of Duty. Today, it delivered: The unprecedented blog post dives deep into exactly which factors Call of Duty is looking for when grouping you with other players, and where its…
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I have Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth’s $110 Ultimate Edition, and it’s making the game less fun
You know that thing in games where you finally get acquainted with the controls, make it through the opening level, and then get a billion popups at once about the DLC you’ve unlocked? Those pop ups are how I discovered I was playing Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth’s $110 Ultimate Edition. I didn’t intend to…
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Halo Infinite is done with seasons, will get smaller ‘content updates’ from now on
Halo Infinite’s next big update is coming January 30 with a new arena map, a new operation, a free Mark IV Spartan core, and the long-awaited ability to equip shoulder pieces on any armor. 343 showed off the update, which also includes new Covenant items in Forge, in a livestream today. It looks like a…
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A fan-made, 7-hour Portal 2 prequel just hit Steam for free and it’s so good that I’m sad Valve stopped making Portal all over again
Remember when Valve made an ingenious pair of puzzle games about portals and then failed to count to three? Nothing new there, but it’s a shame Portal remains one of Valve’s forgotten children while the company aims to keep exploring Half-Life. These days, the hallowed halls of Aperture Labs only make an appearance when Valve…
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Valorant is getting its first new gun in 4 years, a ‘high impact, double-barreled sniper rifle’
When new guns appear in Call of Duty, it’s an occurrence so regular that you’d be forgiven for not even noticing. When Valorant gets a new gun, it’s the biggest thing to happen in Riot’s competitive FPS since launch. After almost four years, a new sniper rifle is on the block: the Outlaw, a double-barreled…
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The Finals players are tormenting each other with the unexpected power of the Goo Gun
The Finals, the newest competitive FPS on the block, has gotten lots of praise for its gunplay and movement, but its carousel of physics objects and dynamic destruction is what truly sets it apart from the pack. Under its sweaty game modes and leaderboard chasing is the spirit and toolset of an immersive sim, and…
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Live service gaming’s best new trend is actually an old one: letting players decide how to have fun
Do you ever miss when multiplayer games had lots of stuff to do? I was pretty young in the 2000s, but I remember what it was like to fire up an FPS and not be absolutely certain which flavor of shooter I was gonna play. One of a handful of developer-made modes or dozen-plus maps,…
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I was so wrong to sleep on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, because it’s Ubisoft’s best open world game in years
I spent half of 2023 being cranky about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. I caught a theater demo at Ubisoft Forward in June and came away confused and disappointed that Ubi wasn’t making the Avatar Assassin’s Creed I’d been building up in my head. It seemed so obvious—you could climb up trees, ride an alien horse,…
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The surprise return of a legendary Mountain Dew flavor made me very happy this year
Last month, I got way too invested in a Mountain Dew. I searched multiple websites trying to get it delivered to my apartment, annoyed store clerks with questions about unstocked Dew they might have sitting “in the back,” recruited friends to scout out Walmart locations, and became an expert on the official online Dew tracker.…
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The Finals speedruns into ‘too sweaty’ discourse as Reddit mods shut down SBMM complaints
Now that The Finals has been out over a week and lots of people are still playing, its burgeoning community is grappling with a question that we all ask of our preferred shooters at some point: is it too sweaty, and is it skill-based matchmaking’s fault? It started last week, when developer Embark Studios released…