Call of Duty’s Season 5 Reloaded update went live this week, bringing a bunch of new changes and content to the game. Treyarch has shared the patch notes for Black Ops Cold War’s mid-season changes. This includes new maps and modes, Zombies changes, another double XP event, and much more.

New Multiplayer Maps, Modes, And Playlists

Black Ops Cold War’s “new” map for Season 5 Reloaded is a remake of Zoo from the original Black Ops. Zoo will have a 24/7 playlist of mixed 6v6 modes.

The objective-based Demolition mode comes to Black Ops Cold War as well. Demolition is a respawn mode that requires the attacking team to attempt to destroy two enemy bomb sites, while the defending team must prevent the attackers from …

When Stonefly promises a chill and tranquil adventure it’s not telling the whole truth. Annika, a capable young pilot searching for her engineer father’s stolen mech, finds herself under frequent attack from the bugs that protect the resources she so desperately needs. Much of Stonefly is spent propelling your insectoid mech through an arboreal maze, hopping from leaf to leaf and catching the breeze to higher layers of canopy. But the various minerals you must extract to craft mech upgrades are fiercely protected, and so the game’s rhythm becomes one of sedate exploration punctuated by frantic skirmishes.

While Annika can modify her mech for combat, improving existing functions and installing new ones, the pattern remains the same throughout. While airborne, sh…

Slender Man has captured a large part of the popular psyche–large enough that two girls stabbed a third girl 19 times, and other children commit acts of arson, all in his name. I can’t help but blend those headlines with subsequent forays into the Slender Man mythos. Although he is without a doubt fictitious–a legend manufactured wholecloth in full view of the internet’s many denizens–he’s transcended himself. He’s now a self-reinforcing curiosity of the modern era, reflecting the deep-seated fears of our connected culture.

For those unfamiliar with this phenomenon, Slendy, as some affectionately call him, was born on the internet forums of the 21st century. A few Photoshop projects featured a thin, suited figure without an apparent face. The first few images of him d…

Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes franchise has quietly become one of the best names in adventure gaming. The games based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary sleuth and his sidekick Dr. John Watson have been steadily getting better for a decade now, continually building on top of the Mesozoic point-and-click mechanics and visuals of early releases. Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments takes the series to a new level when it comes to game mechanics, storytelling, and visuals. Rigorous detective work and an affinity for the unique Sherlockian atmosphere do everything but put a deerstalker on your head and a magnifying glass in your hand.

Story structure veers away from the single cases featured in previous games in the series. Crimes & Punishments lives up to its name with six s…

In English, most fairy tales lead with the phrase “once upon a time.” In Hungarian, they begin with the word “Operencia,” which roughly translates to “far, far away.” And that’s exactly where Operencia: The Stolen Sun transports you–to a realm steeped in magic and mystery, wonderfully detached from all things real.

Operencia is a dungeon-crawler RPG set in a fantasy world. It begins by plunging you into the salivating jaws of a three-headed dragon. However, as soon as you slay the colossal serpent, the prologue ends. Before you know it you’re no longer a dragonslayer, but a runaway farmhand determined to follow their dreams. Those mad powers you had ten seconds ago? Gone. You’ll have to make your own destiny if you’re to retrieve the mythical land’s stolen sun…

Square Enix’s president has commented on Marvel’s Avengers, saying the game was not as successful as the company wanted it to be, for a variety of reasons. That being said, the company said it will continue to develop games-as-a-service titles, though it will seemingly be more discerning in selecting the right studio for the right project.

Yosuke Matsuda said in Square Enix’s latest annual report that the game faced a “variety of unexpected difficulties” in the final stages of its development at Crystal Dynamics. This included a transition to work-from-home due to the pandemic. Matsuda said the team overcame the challenges, but the game was “unfortunately not proven as successful as we would have liked.”

“Taking on the GaaS model highlighted issues that we are likely to face…