This seemingly minor addition allows players to sprint and dive in every direction so crunch moments can feel like a ridiculously fun John Woo shootout Here is a statement of fact that I am not entirely proud of: I have played every Call of Duty game since the series launched in 2003. I’ve been there through the extremely good times (Call of Duty 4) and the extremely not good (Call of Duty: Roads to Victory). And while I may have cringed at some of the narrative decisions, the casual bigotry rife on the online multiplayer servers, and the general “America, fuck yeah!” mentality of the entire series, I have always come back. In that time, I’ve seen all the many attempts to tweak the core feel of the games – from perks to jetpacks (thanks Advanced Warfare!) – but having spent a weekend in the multiplayer beta test for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, I think developer Treyarch may have stumbled on the best so far. It is called omni-movement. Continue reading...

PC; Blizzard On the verge of World of Warcraft’s 20th anniversary, Blizzard appears to have pulled off a tentative return to form for this historic game World of Warcraft has an enduring identity problem. What was once one of the biggest games in the world is now approaching its 20th birthday, and with every year that goes by, developer Blizzard has the unenviable challenge of trying to prove that WoW still has a place in today’s gaming world. This goes some way to explaining the many times that Blizzard has tried to reinvent WoW. Six years after its initial release, the developer attempted a radical do-over of the game’s world in 2010’s Cataclysm expansion, in which an ancient dragon ravaged and reshaped the realm of Azeroth (an experience you can relive through the recently relaunched Cataclysm Classic). Since then, Blizzard has experimented with numerous gimmicks to try to keep WoW current, including a now much-maligned mechanic that saw players building their power level for two years, only to lose that power at the end of every expansion cycle. Continue reading...

PlayStation 5, PC; Game Science Prior to this release, few would have heard of Chinese developer Game Science, but the studio has produced a totally original epic Black Myth: Wukong is a video game obsessed with spectacle – but inspiring awe requires confidence. Such self-assuredness is a rarity in big-budget games, where concerns about mainstream palatability often inspire timidity instead on the part of their developers. Thanks to its state-of-the-art graphics, Black Myth: Wukong looks as though it belongs among the blockbusters, but this action game is actually the product of a Chinese indie outfit, Game Science. Yet the experience is so fully formed that it’s hard to believe that this is the studio’s first “premium” game. It is based on the seminal 16th-century east Asian novel, Journey to the West, which has already inspired enormous swaths of modern pop culture, from Dragon Ball to the 2010 game Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. You play as a stone monkey, Sun Wukong, a major character in the novel whose description always seemed destined to become a video game protagonist. In the original story, Wukong is said to possess incredible strength and speed – but that’s not all. He can also transform into all sorts of animals and objects, and can manipulate the weather. Oh, and he can make copies of himself, too, just in case one all-powerful monkey isn’t enough to take care of the job. Continue reading...