The record-breakingly popular Call of Duty Mobile (it was downloaded over 100 million times in its first week) has kicked off its first seasonal event just in time for Halloween.

There will be limited-time content releasing throughout the Halloween event period, including new treats to acquire, new skills to master in Battle Royale, a limited-time Hard Point game mode, Molotov cocktail scorestreak, and more. There’s also a Halloween-themed version of Black Ops 2‘s Standoff map available in Team Deathmatch, Seek and Destroy, and Domination. More details on the event are scheduled to arrive today via Activision’s Games Blog.

Elsewhere, developer Tencent Games says it’s listening to player feedback in its latest community update. Players reporting cheating are “something that the team cares a great deal about. We’ll keep doing our best to keep cheaters out of your matches and to make sure those who don’t intend to play fair are caught.” Tencent also wants players to continue leaving feedback on what limited-time modes should be made permanent, and future updates promise to reward those who have already reached the highest possible rank.

In terms of bug reports, Tencent says it is investigating a reported issue where reload animations are not syncing up with the actual time it takes to reload. If you’re still having problems linking your Facebook account to COD: Mobile, the developer has outlined some troubleshooting options. “First, please try clearing your cache on your phone, then log back into the Facebook app, and lastly try logging in again on the COD Mobile login page. You can find a step by step breakdown of how to clear your cache on Activision Support’s COD Mobile FAQ.” For those encountering issues with transactions, Tencent says to make sure the transaction was successful, wait a few hours and restart the game in case there is a delay, and contact player support if you still don’t see the purchase.

Aside from COD Mobile, the long-running series also sees the release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare this Friday, October 25 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Early copies have already made it out into the wild, so beware of spoilers. For those waiting till Friday, we have all the details on when you can begin pre-loading the game, and there’s a handy rundown on how its multiplayer progression works.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/call-of-duty-mobiles-first-seasonal-halloween-even/1100-6470733/

As is tradition, dates for Steam’s upcoming sales have leaked, allowing gamers plenty of time to save up for those sweet PC game deals. According to a tweet from Steam Database (@SteamDB), an account unaffiliated with Steam that tracks various information about the platform, the dates for Steam’s Halloween, Autumn, and Winter sales have been revealed online by “multiple developers” who “posted about it in multiple places despite Valve asking otherwise.”

As with all rumors, take this information with a grain of salt, but the dates listed below do line up closely with dates from previous years. The Steam Database Twitter account also has a history of reporting leaked dates that later turned out to be correct, including this year’s Steam summer sale.

Steam 2019 sale dates:

• Halloween sale: Oct. 28 – Nov. 1
• Autumn sale: Nov. 26 – Dec. 3
• Winter sale: Dec. 19 – Jan. 2

The first one up will be the Halloween sale, and it’s expected to kick off in about a week, lasting only a few days. This will be the best time to snag any horror games on your wishlist at a great price, but you’ll find plenty of games that aren’t strictly horror on sale too. Some of last year’s best Halloween sale deals included Friday the 13th: The Game and Soma for $6 each, Salt and Sanctuary for $9, Hollow Knight for $10. and Dead Cells for $20. If you’ve held off on buying some of this year’s horror releases, like Resident Evil 2, The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, or Blair Witch, this may be your chance to grab them for cheap.

In the meantime, other digital stores have already begun their Halloween sales, including the Epic Games Store, which is offering some solid discounts on Borderlands 3, Control, Rainbow Six Siege, and more, as well as two spooky games that you can claim for free: Alan Wake’s American Nightmare and Observer. The PlayStation Store’s Halloween sale is also going strong, with markdowns on A Plague Tale: Innocence, the Resident Evil franchise, The Evil Within 2, and much more.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/dates-leaked-for-steams-2019-halloween-autumn-and-/1100-6470724/

Hitman 2 is all about murder, but usually it’s the playful, wacky kind of murder. Once in a while Agent 47 gets deadly serious and downright scary, though, as in the case of the upcoming Halloween event. A special Escalation Contract available starting October 22 is full of spooky decor, and just to put a fine point on the festivities, the trailer is cut like a slasher flick.

The event takes place in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, but it will be given a makeover with decorations like pumpkins and skeletons. Successfully completing the contract, by killing your targets, will earn you the Tactical Wetsuit and Bat Shuriken tool.

The update will be available for free to anyone who has the (also free) Starter Pack. That acts as a demo, which means you can try out the Halloween content and then use those rewards you earned in the full game. It also offers an expansion pass for even more contracts on top of the base game.

“Hitman is about experiencing the anticipation of seeing whether a plan will work when you try it for the first time,” said Edmond Tran in GameSpot’s review. “It’s about feeling the tension of briskly walking away from a bad situation, hoping you can lose the suspicious guards. It’s the satisfaction of knowing the machinations of a level so well that when a target moves into a particular place at a particular time, you have the perfect way to intervene. Hitman 2 is a familiar experience, but in the Hitman world, familiarity is an incredible strength.”

Meanwhile, Hitman developer IO Interactive recently announced it’s working again with publisher Warner Bros. on an entirely new universe. It’s currently staffing up for the project, though, so we may not see what it is for some time.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/hitman-2-free-halloween-event-shows-the-scary-side/1100-6470732/

Fallout speedrunner Tomatoanus will be playing at January’s Awesome Game’s Done Quick event under a different, less butt-centric name, after reaching an agreement with the event’s organisers.

The accomplished speedrunner has competed at six Games Done Quick events under the name Tomatoanus, but considering it’s a family-friendly event for charity, three of his six runs have not been displayed publicly due to the whole “anus” thing not being quite wholesome enough.

Tomatoanus explained in a recent statement that he’s decided to appear under the name “Tomatoangus” as a compromise. “[Games Done Quick] told me that my submissions were not automatically denied, and that they would be considered just as any other submission, but they would not be publicly viewable on their website as long as I submitted with my username being ‘tomatoanus’,” he explains. “This is obviously because they’re a professional organization representing a charity, which I understand and accept.

“I continued to submit under the same username for the next few events, and eventually decided I would prefer to have my submissions be publicly viewable so people could see that I was submitting on their website rather than only know based on me tweeting what my submissions were.”

The name change will only affect his appearances at Games Done Quick. Tomatoanus’ Twitch and YouTube accounts will remain the same, anus and all.

His speedrunning feats are definitely worth watching. In the past he’s set a world record by dashing through the Fallout Anthology (Fallout 1, 2, 3, New Vegas, and 4) in under 1.5 hours. He also managed to set a “sex%” world record in the same games, sitting atop an unofficial speedrunning category that involves having sex in each of the main games as fast as possible. With a name like that is it any surprise?

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/fallout-speedrunner-tomatoanus-subtly-changes-name/1100-6470722/

Marvel’s Spider-Man from Insomniac was a bona fide hit for Sony, but it also helped introduce a new version of the wallcrawler to the Marvel universe. The instantly iconic design almost immediately began popping up in comic books featuring the multi-verse, and now it’s been immortalized as a collectible statuette.

The online shop Sideshow Collectibles has debuted the remarkably detailed statue, but it will cost you. The item features Spider-Man in his Advanced Suit–the one with the white flourishes on the chest and arms from Insomniac’s game–caught in mid-thwip against a Mr. Negative base. It stands at 24-inches tall, and comes in two versions: an exclusive edition with a webbing element, and a collector’s edition without.

It costs a hefty $1,100, or you can go on an installment plan of about $125 per month. There doesn’t appear to be a price difference between the exclusive and collector’s versions, but the one with the extra design element is limited to one per customer, while the other is limited to two. The statuette is expected to arrive between January and March 2021.

Insomniac had worked closely with Sony for years, but following the success of Spider-Man, Sony acquired the developer. Insomniac CEO Ted Price said the move felt “more like a homecoming.” The studio hasn’t revealed its next project, but Spider-Man certainly left the door open for a sequel. If you need to catch up with the original and all of its associated DLC, you can grab the Game of the Year edition of one of GameSpot’s Best Games of 2018.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/insomniacs-spider-man-immortalized-with-super-pric/1100-6470715/