Infinity Ward has released the full patch notes for the December 18 update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The update is pretty big, adding several new pieces of content and implementing numerous balance changes and bug fixes.

In terms of what’s new, the update adds three maps to the multiplayer rotation: Shipment, Vacant, and Winter Docks (the latter being a winter-themed variation of the Docks map). Long-time Call of Duty fans will recognize Shipment and Vacant as remakes of the same two maps from 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. With the addition of these new maps, both Vacant and Shipment have been rotated into the 24/7 multiplayer playlist. Cranked mode has also been rotated in, as has Gunfight.

The new update also adds a new Operator to Modern Warfare, Nikto. A former Russian FSB undercover agent, Nikto is an Allegiance Operator. Thanks to the update, you can also now jump into Special Operation Strongbox and classic Special Operations Disinform and Bomb Squad.

The full patch notes for this update are long, too long to cover in any meaningful depth. Instead, the remaining bug fixes and balancing changes are outlined in bullet list form below. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC–if you haven’t tried it, you may want to as the game has set new records as the most-played Call of Duty title this console generation.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare December 18 Update Patch Notes

What’s New

• New Operator: Nikto
• New Maps
  • Shipment
  • Vacant
  • Winter Docks (Winter themed Docks 2v2 map)
• Playlist Update
  • Vacant and Shipment 24/7
  • Cranked
  • Gunfight is back
• New Special Operation! “Strongbox”
• New Classic Special Operation Missions! “Disinform” and “Bomb Squad”

General

• Fix for a bug that could players to be stuck in a “Update requires restart” loop
• Fix for a bug where creating a custom mode could prevent access to private match game mode options
• Fix for players disconnecting and experiencing the “TURTLE” error code
• Fix for a bug where the green new notification icon was not clearing off the screen even though there weren’t any new items to view
• Implemented fixes for various exploits and boosting techniques
• Fix for some players experiencing a drift while using an Xbox controller
• Fixed two bugs that could cause players to accidentally use multiple XP tokens due to a delay between clicking the button and confirmation on our end
• Fixed an issue where Care Packages could fall through the roof of various buildings in Port
• Fixed a bug where players were unable to swap Field Upgrades after selecting Field Upgrade Pro
• Attempting to deploy the Weapon Drop Field Upgrade at the beginning of a round-based mode would result in the Field Upgrade becoming unusable until the player respawns. This has been fixed
• Fixed a bug where all tablet-based killstreaks/Field Upgrades have a zoomed-in view when using on Aniyah Palace
• Made some slight UI adjustments to the base and officer rank progression screens to both have similar designs
• Fix for watches not appearing in modes with preset loadouts
• Added a new menu that allows players to launch a specific Trial
• Fixed a bug that caused keybinds to reset to their default values
• Friend Request & Party Invite Notifications option will be set to Enabled by default after the patch. Players can disable that option through the Account tab of the Options menu
• Implemented several settings for the Auto-Sprint option (Always Sprint, Always Super Sprint)
• Added an Auto Move Forward feature for Keyboard and Mouse as well as Controller
  • For Keyboard and Mouse, a keybind can be added in the Options menu via the advanced section of Move Forward
  • For Controller, when this feature is enabled in the Options menu, it can be activated in game by pushing the movement stick forward twice
• Keyboard and Mouse
  • Improved navigation in the Store and Battle Pass menus
  • Added a Change Zoom/Toggle Hybrid Behavior gameplay option to change which keybind triggers the Change Zoom/Toggle Hybrid
• Audio
  • Footsteps: reduced audible range of 3rd person footsteps
  • Increased occlusion on footsteps
  • Adjusted various foley sounds that played at a larger range than footsteps during ADS/crouch movements
  • Fix for air vehicles not occluding properly
  • General occlusion adjustments to all air vehicles
  • Fix for knife impact sounds missing from kill cams
• Weapons
  • Adjusted hip spread for the .357 Snake Shot so it’s consistent regardless of stance
  • Reduced flinch on the Kar98k, EBR-14, and MK2 Carbine
• PC
  • Several fixes were implemented to prevent crashes and improve stability
• Special Operations: Survival
  • Various exploit fixes

  Classic Special Operations:

  • Fixed a bug where players were receiving inconsistent amounts of XP

Special Ops

• Fix for rank up UI splashes no working as intended
• When using a Respawn Flare, no UI icon would appear on the minimap (Operation Harbinger)
• Fixed a bug where pistols were dealing too much damage against Juggernauts compared to other weapon classes
• In Operation Crosswind, nearby enemies will not become alerted if a player uses a rocket launcher, causing the player to not break stealth. This has been fixed
• Fixed a bug where players were able to go prone with the minigun if they get revived while having it equipped
• Added the reward players could earn if completing an Operation within the playlist menu

Call Of Duty League

• Reduced the lethality of non-car explosives
• Adjustments to spawns for Hardpoint
• Search and Destroy
  • Fix for a bug where the defending team could see the bomb carrier objective icon
  • With the Weapon Pings on Minimap option is enabled, the bomb carrier would not show as a red dot on the minimap when shooting their weapon. This has been fixed
• COD Caster
  • Added an in-game data view to display various stats
  • Implemented support for Domination

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/new-call-of-duty-modern-warfare-update-adds-cod4-m/1100-6472334/

Steam has revealed the system requirements for Capcom’s Resident Evil 3 Remake. While the recommended requirements remain unknown, we’ve gathered the minimum specs necessary to run the game on PC.

Turns out RE3 Remake’s minimum PC specs are not too dissimilar from Resident Evil 2 Remake. If your machine had no problem running that game, then you should experience the same kind of performance since the two remakes share nearly identical requirements. It remains unclear whether the same can be said for the recommended requirements though, as those have yet to be published for RE3 Remake.

Resident Evil 3 Remake Minimum System Requirements

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: WINDOWS® 7, 8.1, 10 (64-BIT Required)
• Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4460 or AMD FX™-6300 or better
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 or AMD Radeon™ R7 260x with 2GB Video RAM
• DirectX: Version 11

RE3 Remake leaked ahead of its official reveal during Sony’s last State of Play for the year. Capcom showed off a few trailers following the game’s announcement. We’ve also compiled a list of everything we know about the forthcoming remake, including a cameo and tie-in achievement in RE2 Remake.

Resident Evil 3 Remake is now available to pre-order ahead of its April 3, 2020 release on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Doing so nets you some bonuses, including an exclusive Classic Costume Pack for Jill and Carlos. The remake will also include Project Resistance, a 4v1 asymmetrical online multiplayer experience.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/resident-evil-3-remake-pc-system-requirements-reve/1100-6472333/

With Xbox Series X–the official name of Project Scarlett–Microsoft is aiming to eliminate load times. To that end, the Xbox Series X is getting a significant hardware upgrade in comparison to the Xbox One.

“It’s really about giving the developers the tools and the capabilities to use the hardware in the most efficient way possible,” Xbox partner director of program management Jason Ronald told GameSpot in an exclusive interview. “A good example of that is on the [solid-state drive] side–we’ve basically reached the limit of [what’s] possible with the traditional rotational drive. We’re basically at the upper bounds of the raw performance we can get there. So we’ve invested in MVME SSDs and we’re also giving developers a lot of new capabilities on top of that to try to virtually eliminate load times.”

Ronald continued: “You know, whether that’s a level-based game and I’m going from level one to level two, or if you think about a massive open-world game and actually want to fast-travel or teleport from one end of the world to the other, I shouldn’t have to [have] this loading experience [that takes] me out of the immersion, and that’s all possible with some of the investments we’ve made on the I/O side.”

Xbox Series X cuts down on latency too, which should benefit those who play competitive games–especially shooters and fighting games, where every frame can matter. “We partnered with HDMI Forum to bring gaming-centric features into the living room,” Ronald said. “Things like 120Hz support, things like variable refresh rate, which has been available in the PC space for a while but it’s never really been available in the living room–things like 8k capability.”

Faster load times and less latency will affect more than fast-traveling around large open worlds and playing competitive fighting games. Similar to the PS4’s Dualshock 4, the Xbox Series X controller will have a share button that allows you to capture screenshots and record gameplay, which, according to Ronald, you’ll be able to “instantly” publish. You’ll apparently be able to run multiple games simultaneously too–allowing you to quickly hop back and forth between what you’re playing without needing to wait for each one to load from scratch, not unlike what you’re able to do with a single game on Xbox One or PS4 today.

“Those are things that we can do with the platform level to make the gaming experience just better,” Ronald said. “It’s really about ensuring there’s less waiting and more time playing because that’s ultimately what we all want to do.”

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/microsoft-wants-xbox-series-x-to-virtually-elimina/1100-6472330/

2020 is almost here, so we’ve asked GameSpot’s staff to share which games they’re looking forward to most in the new year. New consoles are going to dominate the headlines, but at the end of the day it’s all about the games, and there are a ton of exciting ones to look forward to. When you’re done reading this entry, follow along with all of our other end-of-the-year coverage collected in our Best of 2019 hub and our Most Anticipated of 2020 hub.

The end of the decade has been very, very good for the Ryu Ga Gotoku series. Yakuza 0 set Western audiences on fire and brought a whole new generation of fans into this insane series. Yakuza Kiwami gave us a good remake of the first game, and Yakuza Kiwami 2 gave us a great remake of the best game in the series (I will be taking no comments on this matter). Yakuza 3, 4, and 5 have remastered releases on the PS4. Judgment, a spin-off game in the same universe, gave us some great new characters.

But most importantly, we got Yakuza 6, which marked the final chapter in the story of Kazuma Kiryu, the series’ mainstay protagonist for some 15 years. It was an emotional farewell, and if you asked me at the time, I could’ve given you a bunch of ideas about where I thought the series would go next.

I could never have predicted this. No one could have ever predicted this.

The next game in the Yakuza series will feature new protagonist Ichiban Kasuga–that much we knew for a long while. What completely blindsided us, however, was the fact that Yakuza 7, officially titled Yakuza: Like A Dragon in the West, would completely do away with the series’ real-time action combat mechanics in favour of a team-based, menu-based, and turn-based RPG battle system.

Discreetly revealed as part of a 2019 April Fool’s Joke, the combat system of Yakuza: Like A Dragon partly ties into Ichiban’s love for Japanese role-playing games like Dragon Quest–so much so that the team at RGG Studio got permission from Square Enix to explicitly name-check the series in its own game. Fights will still be initiated by encountering hostile people on the street, but will transition into a screen that will be familiar to any JRPG fan–you’ll find a turn order meter, a command menu, and vital stats like HP and MP for each person in your team. You’ll be able to take advantage of things like elemental and area-of-effect damage, partner attacks, some absolutely wild summons, positioning and environmental factors, and an elaborate job system that gives you access to different fighting styles.

It’s absolutely wild, but it… kinda works? The Yakuza series has always had its absurdist side, and Like A Dragon seems to be using its new, more carefree protagonist as a license to lean a little more into that. Ichiban’s story is steeped in a melodramatic tale of crime and betrayal of course–we’ve seen glimpses of Chinese Triads, the Korean Mafia, and right-wing nationalist groups–but Ichi seems to have an energetic, boisterous and childlike naivety to him which really puts a different spin on the perspective we’re used to seeing.

It also means that the transition to the wackier side quests and activities of Like A Dragon probably won’t be as jarring as it was with our beautiful serious boy, Kiryu–we’ve already seen things like kart racing, karaoke, hostess clubs, pachinko machines, trash collecting, and a minigame where you try not to fall asleep while watching a movie.

2019’s Judgment showed us that RGG Studio could drop Kiryu completely and still create a compelling story with lovable characters. Now, I’m very keen to see whether it can drop the core mechanics it’s also been leaning on for 15 years and still fly high. With the Japanese release looming, we’re getting a ton of new information that we’re trying our best not to spoil ourselves with, but the hype is too real. Let’s go, Ichiban!

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/yakuza-like-a-dragon-edmond-trans-most-anticipated/1100-6472278/