Destiny 2 (opens in new tab) players love to complain, and—over the past few years—many of them have groused about the armour sets released for the game’s twice-a-season PvP event, Iron Banner. The oft-stated grievance among sci-fi fashionistas is that Destiny 1’s sets just looked better. In Destiny 1, the Iron Banner armour was heavily inspired by Medieval knights—an appropriate style for the Iron Lords of the game’s own post-Collapse dark ages.
Destiny 2’s Iron Banner sets, meanwhile, draw their inspirations from further afield, such as the samurai-themed Iron Rememberance set, and lean into some of the sequel’s more specific armour design philosophies that—honestly—have never been as celebrated by the community.
(Image credit: Bungie)
For those stuck in the past, then, there’s good news for next season. Destiny 1’s Taken King-era Iron Banner set will be available in Destiny 2.
The new (read: returning) armour set will be among the Iron Banner rewards in season 19, replacing the Forerunner pieces that have been available for the past year. Honestly it’s great news for Hunters specifically: that wolf’s head looks sharp.
Attached to the new rewards is a new mode, with Iron Banner continuing its streak of offering tailored, special variants of core PvP play. In season 19, Iron Banner will feature Fortress, a variant of the Zone Control mode. “The real fun begins when Caiatl gets involved,” writes Bungie, cryptically referencing the Cabal emperor. “Let’s just say, a few of you may be dying to cap a hill.”
PvP was the main focus of yesterday’s This Week at Bungie blog. A new ranked ladder is replacing the old Glory system on the competitive side, and Clash and Control are being smushed together in a single playlist for casual play. There are also some tweaks being made to matchmaking, as Bungie continues to iterate on the skill-based matchmaking system that launched this season. Naturally community reaction remains mixed. Destiny 2 players love to complain.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668795928_Bungie-is-bringing-back-one-of-Destinys-most-loved-armour.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-18 18:04:272022-11-18 18:04:27Bungie is bringing back one of Destiny’s most loved armour sets—the one with the wolf’s head
The biggest rumour about Call of Duty: Warzone 2 since its launch this week is that, somewhere on the Al Mazrah map, there’s a nuke hidden away: a weapon that, when used, will instantly end the match for all players and declare one squad the victor. The lack of any hard information about this, and the odd bit of developer teasing, has led to players tearing apart Al Mazrah to try and find the weapon.
Take a bow Wagnificent, and not just for the excellent handle. The streamer is the first Warzone 2 player to set off a nuke, and he did it live. In fact, he’s is still live on the same stream at the time of writing, but here’s the video proof that, yes, Warzone 2 has a nuke.
Wagnificent and his squad are currently trying to replicate the feat but it wasn’t completely obvious first time around what triggered the opportunity for the nuke. Here’s what we know so far:
On the stream it looks like the squad picked up a specific quest or contract that appeared on their map as soon as the match started. The conditions for getting the quest aren’t clear, but Wagnificent thinks he might know how his squad got it.
After accepting the “Champion’s Contract”, the pair began flying to marked locations to collect pieces of the nuke. We know there are at least three pieces: Tritium, Beryllium, and Plutonium. The pieces themselves are orb-shaped nuclear cores in a special container. The squad holding the cores seems to be marked for every other squad on the map with a very prominent golden crown.
We think a squad needs all three cores to set off the nuke and, yes, other players can steal the cores from one another. Once all the cores are collected, the nuke can be triggered from a marked bomb site.
(Image credit: Wagnificent on Twitch)
When it explodes, the nuclear blast takes over Wagnificent’s screen and ends the match, putting his squad in first place with a bespoke, mushroom-cloud-filled ending cutscene. Nukes have been in Call of Duty since the original Modern Warfare 2 (how old that makes me feel), where in that case players could have a Tactical Nuke as a killstreak reward for 25 kills.
Wagnificent’s squad for this feat included EthanStellar (opens in new tab) and opmarked (opens in new tab).
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/The-Warzone-2-nuke-is-real-someone-just-detonated-it.jpg7141200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-18 18:01:402022-11-18 18:01:40The Warzone 2 nuke is real: someone just detonated it live on stream
Valorant released in the pandemic. Codenamed Project A, this game was designed and built during normal world operation only for social interaction to collapse in on itself as a potentially deadly virus swept the planet. While we all scrambled to understand this new, isolated way of living, Riot had a game almost ready for release and kept its head down, set on releasing it anyway.
Instead of a trip to see Riot Games and meet everyone behind it in Barcelona back, it was 2020 and I was in my parents’ basement with my cobbled together new set up in a Discord of hundreds of people. We listened to the developers explain little bits of what the game was, what it intended to do, and how to play. I was then left to play with some of the best shooter players in the world making it the hardest and possibly most personally miserable introduction to a game I’ve ever had. Fast-forward a few years and Valorant isn’t only a massive shooter that boomed during the pandemic but it also has one of the most successful esport scenes in the world. And so much of that happened from peoples’ homes.
I attended Masters in Copenhagen earlier this year and had the opportunity to speak to Arnar Hrafn Gylfason, Valorant’s senior game director about building a game and an esports in a pandemic. At the time Masters 2022 was the first time Riot Games had held an in-person esport for Valorant, over two years after the first physical event was supposed to happen. A lot had changed for everyone, but I was still interested to learn more about what it took to make Valorant the success it was, even when the world was turned on its head.
(Image credit: Riot Games)
And while yes, of course, we always hoped in our hearts of hearts that it would become a successful esport I wouldn’t say we built it for esports specifically.
PC Gamer: Valorant has become one of the biggest esports almost overnight in terms of how big some of the games it’s competing with in viewership. What’s it like building an esports game from the ground up?
Arnar Hrafn Gylfason, senior game director: It’s funny, because I’m gonna butcher this quote, and misattribute it. But overnight success takes years of preparation. I wasn’t on the starting team of Valorant, but I’ve been on Valorant for five years. And when I joined the team it was very clear that while, sure, there were concepts that maybe this would become an esport one day, the goal was never “let’s make a great esport”. The goal was “let’s make the absolute best tactical FPS that we can”. Let’s bring something fresh to the genre, let’s create something that is tight, and feels good and is expressive, and is creative, and is fun to play, and is highly competitively integral to the player. And it just so happens, that the genre we are in and the visual aesthetics of the game and how approachable it is—not grim or dark, it’s more kind of bright and flourishy—it just lends itself very well to esports. And while yes, of course, we always hoped in our hearts of hearts that it would become a successful esport I wouldn’t say we built it for esports specifically. We believed it was a great game.
Pulling from our experience, from Riots’ experience on League of Legends, and pulling from a lot of the developers’ experience on games that they had worked on, or played professionally we knew what doors not to close in order for us to be able to become successful and supporting an esport should it ever turn into that. And here we are. And while we certainly feel happy with how Valorant esports has started, Masters is absolutely amazing. I think we always feel like “oh, if only we had done a little bit more before this tournament, it would have been so much better”. So from a developer perspective, we are passionately invested in our game and continuing to make it the best tactical FPS, best competitive shooter that you can get your hands on. But we are equally passionate to make sure that our esport is elevated, and get the support that we can give it to continue building on it.
(Image credit: Riot Games)
Obviously, there was development before the launch of Valorant and then development after launch. Development of agents and maps that has straddled both sides of that. What was that shift like?
Yeah, I would say it hasn’t really changed. We don’t create our maps or agents with esports in mind, we create them in mind of how they play at the top tier competitive level and how they play it at the… perhaps lower levels of competitive play. How do they play if you’re having fun and not thinking too much about if you’re winning or losing. But thinking about the agents at “hey, how will this play in a five versus five, high skilled, very highly coordinated team environment” gets us to the esports angle as you’re talking about it. We think about our maps, our agents, our content, our gameplay always from the: what does the top tier performance in this game space look like? And in terms of is it pleasing for the audience? I think luckily, if it’s pleasing to play, it’s pleasing to watch. And so we lucked out with a twofer with that one.
(Image credit: Riot Games)
Valorant is an interesting game in that it really stuck the landing in terms of an esports focus but that doesn’t happen with every game. When Valorant arrived the kind of comparisons were CS:GO and Overwatch. CS:GO’s esports scene flourished but Overwatch didn’t hit that same high. What do you think about Valorant that helped it stick the landing when other competitive games struggle.
I am woefully under-prepared to answer in any detail or intelligence. But taking a stab at it I think at no point during the sort of early beta days or pre-beta when we were very nervous, we were about to ship, did we think we would turn into this so quickly. We were hopeful. Wouldn’t the best case scenario be amazing? But I think even the best case scenario we had in our minds, was not this. Neither from gameplay or from an esport perspective. And so to start off, this is incredible.
What made it stick? I think from our perspective, I don’t know if it’s magic, or if it’s just luck, or whatever it is. But I think from our perspective, we never looked at it from the lens of how do we get more viewers or how do we even get more players. We looked at it from the lens of creating the best competitive shooter that we can, the best tactical shooting that we can, what do we believe are the right ingredients? And I guess in a lot of ways we were right. That resonated with the audience of people coming from Overwatch, people coming from CS, people coming from Fortnite and Apex Legends. We have an incredibly diverse background of players coming from other games. And they all seem to get something that they were looking for in Valorant. And we are just, we feel very happy and lucky and privileged to have been able to service that.
I feel incredibly blessed to have worked with all these people who just fucking nailed it.
Valorant’s launch coincided with when everything went into lockdown. I can’t help but feel maybe launching when there was nothing else to do would have attracted people and obviously people had a lot of time to get good at the game quite quickly. Can you talk a bit about launching an esport in a pandemic?
Yeah, wow, launching an esport in a pandemic, I think, posed us with a layer of problems and challenges, just unexpected things on top of launching a new game, which does that anyway, that we never would have expected. I don’t even know how to say this, but I can never be grateful enough to the team that we work with. On the esports side of the publishing side on the development side, but you know, a month and a half into the scariest unknown circumstances a lot of us have ever been in, stuck the landing on sticking to our dates, shipping a game shipping an esports supporting it on a global scale, being able to figure out how to do online tournaments. for a company that really, really only knows how to do big major events. I feel incredibly blessed to have worked with all these people who just fucking nailed it. Is that gonna get me in trouble? They fucking nailed it.
(Image credit: Riot Games)
When it comes to launching something that is good for all levels of gameplay from here at Masters to Iron 1, how do you figure out a good mix of geometry for all players?
How do you figure it out? Oof, I mean, we start with a basic premise of, you know, what are the challenges we expect the map to pose to the players on the defence side, on the attack side? Are those challenges approachable to players in roughly every skill level? If we want to talk about challenges, it is like Icebox. Hey, would you like 30,000 angles to clear, does that challenge you? Are you having fun now? With Haven do you understand how to set up across three sites instead of two sites. With Fracture, there is no mid to contest, right. So all of these maps have different challenges that get players to think about the game in a different way. And I think because we approach it from that angle, we can kind of tune the maps, then, once the premise is good, to not be too challenging to our more fun-having players, while still obviously being highly challenging. And I’ll just say this, looking at a map like Haven that has been in play for so long, played yesterday and seeing that wall and Raze satchel that I’ve not seen before. It’s two years after launch and we’re still finding new ways for players to approach the challenges that the maps posed to them. And that’s the beauty of seeing these maps played in competitive play is that even if we know roughly where the floor is and where the ceiling is, it is still growing. And that’s super exciting.
(Image credit: Riot Games)
Valorant is constantly evolving its maps and agents to fit several fields of play from casual to professional. How is Riot still finding that balance?
Creating gameplay content that is equally viable at all levels of play is of course a challenge, one we continually try to get better at. But the reality is that player skill has a significant impact on how an agent plays or how they use the map space. We can’t assume any changes to gameplay will have equal impact to all players but we always have to make sure that impact isn’t outsized for any subset of players.
Another aspect of this is also how players approach competitive gameplay at different levels, something we’re excited to see evolve when Premier [a new feature of Valorant that allows all players to host their own season of pre-scheduled matches as if they were esport competitors] becomes available to players worldwide. Practising teamplay, having set agent pools and team compositions and running practices on a set map pool can change a lot of how players of any skill level approach the game.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668862348_Valorant-How-Riot-launched-a-successful-esport-in-a-global.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-18 17:42:492022-11-18 17:42:49Valorant: How Riot launched a successful esport in a global pandemic
Blizzard has changed its mind about console aim assist in Overwatch 2 crossplay lobbies. The game’s latest patch has now enabled aim assist for console players across all games except competitive.
In the November 17 patch notes (opens in new tab), Blizzard said it found that having the feature disabled was causing problems on both sides of the peripheral pond. “In our data, we found many groups were crossplay groups between PC and console players. This meant if you were playing on console and grouping with players on PC, you were opting into a bad experience for yourself to play with your friends. Also, if you had a group that was primarily console, but one of your friends was a PC player, you had to leave the PC player out to have a good experience.”
Blizzard reiterated that the aim assist was for console players only, with the option unavailable for PC players regardless of peripheral. The developer also said it was “monitoring the deployment of this change carefully and making changes quickly if needed.”
🧊MEI🧊IS🧊BACK🧊 (AND A BUNCH OF OTHER UPDATES!)Check out the full list of #Overwatch2 Patch Notes. 👀 https://t.co/XPwjZFGLye pic.twitter.com/n6k5TRCI2QNovember 17, 2022
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The lack of aim assist in crossplay parties proved to be a point of contention when Overwatch 2 launched in October. Though the feature has been disabled since Blizzard introduced crossplay to the original Overwatch last year, it was brought back to attention with its sorta-sequel’s influx of new and returning players. As Morgan Park pointed out when crossplay tensions were simmering (opens in new tab), aim assist in modern games isn’t as obvious a choice as it used to be. Games like Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone have cracked-out aim assist, with some arguing that it makes using a controller advantageous over keyboard and mouse inputs. It makes implementing it in a crossplay environment more of a grey area, and a balancing act in pleasing both sides.
Equalising two different ways of playing the same game can be tricky, especially when those two methods collide in the same match. It’ll be interesting to see how big a difference it makes for both PC and console users, and if Blizzard ends up walking back its decision. For PC players who have previously been shunned by their console pals, let’s hope the change will stick around.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668792265_Overwatch-2-introduces-crossplay-aim-assist-says-lack-of-it.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-18 17:07:122022-11-18 17:07:12Overwatch 2 introduces crossplay aim assist, says lack of it was bad for both console and PC players
The crypto exchange FTX collapsed into bankruptcy last week (opens in new tab), after a liquidity crisis exposed a financial black hole that no-one yet knows the full extent of. As the recriminations begin in the crypto world, the man who’s been charged with overseeing FTX’s bankruptcy, and working out just what this company has been up to, reckons this is even worse than Enron.
And he should know. John Ray III has over 40 years’ experience of legal restructuring, including being CEO of Enron during its liquidation, and working on huge corporate bankruptcies like Nortel, Residential Capital, and Overseas Shipholding. He’s now filed a declaration to Delaware bankruptcy court (opens in new tab) about his initial findings with FTX, which begins with the assertion that “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”
The filing goes on to outline FTX’s “compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad”, and the concentration of power in the hands of “a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals”, before adding “this situation is unprecedented”.
Let’s just pause to fully put that in context. The Enron scandal was, in 2001, the largest bankruptcy in US history. It remains to this day the emblematic corporate scandal, the ultimate example of what can happen when regulators are asleep at the wheel. So when the guy who took charge of restructuring Enron is blanching at the state of FTX, you know this is incredible.
There is a chart at the end of this filing that lists more than 100 companies associated with FTX spread across 27 countries (opens in new tab). This is how the firm’s leaders were allegedly funneling money around and using customer cash to make financial bets, without it seeming to affect the balance sheet of FTX.
Going hand-in-hand with this, Ray notes “the absence of lasting records of decision-making”, and that former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried “often communicated by using applications that were set to auto-delete after a short period of time, and encouraged employees to do the same.” Tell me you’re up to no good without telling me you’re up to no good.
Other eyebrow raising moments include that company money was used “to purchase homes and other personal items for employees and advisors” in the Bahamas. There is no documentation suggesting that these were loans, and “certain real estate was recorded in the personal name of these employees and advisors” in Bahamian records. If only all jobs came with a free holiday home in the Bahamas, eh.
Ray said a “substantial portion” of FTX’s supposed assets are either “missing or stolen”. The bankruptcy process has so far secured around $740 million of cryptocurrency, though the filing notes that “at least $372 million of unauthorized transfers” took place on the same day FTX filed for bankruptcy. These transfers are being investigated.
Ray notes several times that he does not trust this company’s accounts, now or historically, and warns creditors not to take FTX’s information as accurate.
The filing ends on a withering note as regards FTX’s former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the man more responsible than any other for this company, who’s been giving interviews and saying he regrets filing for bankruptcy (opens in new tab). Ray emphasises that Bankman-Fried is no longer in control and doesn’t speak for FTX. He says that Bankman-Fried is currently in the Bahamas (naturally), and “continues to make erratic and misleading public statements.”
Ray says Bankman-Fried’s “connections and financial holdings in the Bahamas remain unclear to me”, and that the former CEO “recently stated to a reporter on Twitter: ‘F*** regulators they make everything worse’ and suggested the next step for him was to ‘win a jurisdictional battle vs. Delaware’.” Which of course is exactly the kind of thing a Delaware court wants to hear.
The collapse of FTX is another low point in what has been a terrible year for crypto, and cynics may well be wondering what’s next. One of the things about these assets is how interconnected they all are, and the domino effect of FTX is still playing out. FTX is expected to have more than a million creditors (good luck to them) and, as well as the bankruptcy process, regulators globally are looking closely at the smoking ruins of what was until recently one of the biggest crypto exchanges on the planet.
In case you’re wondering, yes: the Bahamas does have an extradition treaty with the United States.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668865969_The-guy-who-took-Enron-through-bankruptcy-is-now-boss.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-18 16:15:432022-11-18 16:15:43The guy who took Enron through bankruptcy is now boss of FTX and has never seen ‘such a complete failure’
Like a surreal modernisation of the 1914 Christmas truce (opens in new tab), players in Call of Duty: Warzone 2 are setting aside their differences and laying down their arms in the name of, uh, providing short-distance cab rides. War is hell.
Spotted by VG247 (opens in new tab), a Warzone 2 player by the name of crescendummain has been gaily jaunting about Warzone 2’s maps in a chop top, pulling up alongside his opponents and (if he can talk them down from riddling him with bullets) using the game’s proximity voice chat (opens in new tab) to offer them rides to a destination of their choosing.
Miraculously, it actually seems to work. After sweet-talking three apparent strangers into climbing aboard his car, crescendummain drives them over to the Hydroelectric location on Warzone 2’s Al Mazrah map, sticking to the roads in order to provide the smoothest ride possible. They don’t even vaporise him in a hail of bullets once they’ve been dropped off! Truly a testament to the generosity of the human spirit.
Well, almost, anyway. I’m sure crescendummain has a folder full of videos that didn’t end quite as well as the one above. But still, it’s always fun when these kinds of organic absurdities rise up out of systems designed for something much, much different.
Crescendummain is far from the only Call of Duty: Warzone 2 player to have stumbled on this side-hustle. Players all across Al Mazrah are lending a whole new meaning to the term ‘five-star general’ by getting in on the lucrative ridesharing meta. A TikToker named ziccs (via Eurogamer (opens in new tab)), for example, has been carting punters around Al Mazrah and making good money doing it: He got a 4510% tip on a $100 fare for his trouble.
And there’s plenty more besides. Players and streamers across all five million different social media platforms are moonlighting as Warzone 2 chauffeurs. I’ve included a couple more examples down below.
While this is obviously the most important story to come out of Call of Duty: Warzone 2, it’s hardly the only one. Earlier today it came to light that Warzone 2—a free-to-play game—was inexplicably locking players out (opens in new tab) and demanding they buy Modern Warfare 2 before they could get in. Meanwhile, players who could access the game were lamenting its “Microsoft Excel” looting system (opens in new tab). Don’t worry though, like our Warzone 2 review-in-progress (opens in new tab) says, none of that dulls the shine of the game’s fantastic map (or the Uber drivers who’ll carry you around it).
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668788614_Roleplaying-Uber-drivers-is-what-Warzone-2-is-really-about.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-18 16:11:152022-11-18 16:11:15Roleplaying Uber drivers is what Warzone 2 is really about
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (opens in new tab) won’t officially be out until November 30, but a pre-order beta means you can start playing now, so it’s time to pick one of the four Darktide classes. With five operative slots, you can take them all for a spin, but you’ll really want to focus on one class.
Be warned, though, that changes and potentially even wipes may occur, as this is still a beta. There have already been some significant changes since the last beta, and this has also created some inconsistencies when it comes to the official class spotlights, tutorials and tool tips.
With that disclaimer out of the way, onto the class guide!
Ogryn Skullbreaker
(Image credit: Fatshark)
Ogryns are behemoths that tower over normal humans, and with all that size comes plenty of strength. The Skullbreaker lives up to his name by charging into fights and cracking heads with his trusty club. Unsurprisingly, this is a class that shines in melee, but you’ll also get your hands on a devastating close-range cannon straight away. With your size and strength, you’ll feel invincible at first, but even a mighty ogryn can become overwhelmed when they are trapped in a Chaos mosh pit.
While it’s a lot of fun to go on the offensive, you’re also a protector. Your size alone can block enemies from getting to your squishier allies, and you’re an even more effective tank once you get your hands on a shield—it’s just a shame you don’t start with one, especially since you’ll quickly encounter enemy ogryns wandering around with a bit of extra protection. Why do they get the fun toys straight away?
Counter-intuitively, this bruiser is also something of a medic. Everyone can throw down healing items to help their teammates, but your skills come into play when someone has already been downed. You won’t be getting your medical doctorate any time soon, but your thick skin means you won’t be interrupted while reviving a fallen ally.
Strengths
Melee powerhouse
Effective against hordes
Skilled at staggering and suppressing enemies
Starting loadout
“Brunt Special” Mk I Bully Club: versatile, strikedown
Lorenz Mk V Kickback: spreadshot, close combat
Tactical action
Big Box of Hurt: Throw an entire box of grenades at a target for some high damage.
Passives
Excessive Force: A 25% buff to melee stagger makes it easier to disorientate enemies.
Loyal Protector: Taking damage while assisting or reviving allies won’t interrupt you.
Thick Skin: Your natural armour reduces toughness and health damage by 20%.
Class ability
Bull Rush: Charge at enemies to knock them back, giving you 25% more attack and movement speed for 5 seconds.
Coherency bonus
Allies get a 10% bonus to heavy melee attack damage.
Psyker Psykinetic
(Image credit: Fatshark)
Psykers are simultaneously one of the Imperium’s best weapons and biggest threats, always on the cusp of being overwhelmed by Chaos. Psykers have all sorts of exotic skills in 40k, but Darktide’s Psykinetic class is mostly interested in making heads pop. There’s something very special about watching an elite enemy’s brain explode.
Watch out, though, because your sanity will keep being tested, and if you generate too much Peril by using abilities like Brain Burst, you’ll be the one blowing up. Some tweaks since the last beta also mean that you generate a lot more Peril—there’s been a 20% bump. When you’re in danger, you can use Psykinetic’s Wrath to reduce Peril by 50%, which is nice, but not as nice as the 100% that it used to be. It does at least create a shockwave that knocks back groups of enemies. You can also hold down your Quell ability to lower your Peril, but it actually seems faster to just let it go down passively.
The Psykinetic is one of the trickier classes to play thanks to the constant threat of Peril and their general squishiness, though veterans of Vermintide 2 who played the Pyromancer should feel right at home. That said, it’s been significantly nerfed and now feels comparatively ineffective in combat, so you might want to hold off until Fatshark has done some more tinkering.
Strengths
Effective against elites
Blowing up heads and getting buffs
Starting loadout
Catachan Mk I “Devil’s Claw” Sword: flurry, crowd control
Accatran MG Mk II Heavy Laspistol: mobile, high capacity
Psychic ability
Brain Burst: Target an enemy and unleash this ability to watch their head go “pop!”
Passives
Warp Siphon: Killing with Brain Burst generates a stackable Warp Charge, up to four, each increasing your damage by 3%.
Battle Meditation: On a kill, there’s a 10% chance to reduce your Peril by 10%.
Class ability
Psykinetic’s Wrath: Warp Charges can be discharged, creating a wave of Warp energy that knocks enemies back and reduces your Peril level.
Coherency bonus
Allies get a 10% damage boost against elites.
Veteran Sharpshooter
(Image credit: Fatshark Games)
The vets of the Astra Militarum know how to take down a foe: stand your ground and use overwhelming firepower. The Sharpshooter class—and there should be no surprises here—specialises in ranged combat. You hang back and pick off the choicest targets, like dangerous specialists, with your precision skills making you a headshot machine.
Now, the nature of Darktide means you’ll often be facing teeming hordes of enemies, where precision doesn’t really matter. Thankfully, you’re still deadly when you spray and pray, and in a pinch you can whip out your shovel and start smacking things.
If FPSs are where you’re most comfortable, then this is probably the class for you. Like all the other classes you’ve got passives and special abilities, but they are all centred around simply shooting things and lobbing frag grenades. Nice and straightforward!
Strengths
Ranged combat
Headshots
Straightforward
Starting loadout
Standard-issue Munitorum Sapper Shovel: versatile, crowd control
Kantrael MG Ia Infantry Lasgun: versatile, high capacity
Tactical action
Frag grenade: Throw a grenade on a short fuse timer, then enjoy the explosion.
Passives
Make Every Shot Count: Damage to weak spots is increased by 15%.
Be Prepared: All ranged weapons have an increased ammo reserve of 40%.
Class ability
Volley Fire: Instantly equip your ranged weapon and enter a ranged stance for 5 seconds, where you can set all specialists and elites (except for ogryns) as priority targets. The stance increases your ranged damage by 50%.
Coherency bonus
You and your allies will receive a small amount of ammo whenever you take down an elite.
Zealot Preacher
(Image credit: Fatshark)
The Imperium’s zealous Preachers are holy warriors who gladly rush into battle to slaughter heretics in the name of their undead God-Emperor. These angry eccentrics love putting themselves at risk, and the more they fight and take a beating, the more dangerous they become.
With your impressive melee capabilities, you’ll always want to be in the fray, but it’s not all about charging into the biggest group of enemies. You can also serve as a ranged enemy hunter, identifying dangerous targets, and blitzing ranged enemy positions with your stun grenade before charging them. They won’t stand a chance.
To better purge heretics, you’ll eventually get access to flamers, purifying foes by burning them to ash. Preachers know how to have a good time.
Strengths
Hard to kill
High damage melee attacks
Starting loadout
Rashad Mk II Combat Axe: strikedown, armour piercing
Ius Mk III Shredder Autopistol: mobile, torrent
Tactical action
Stun grenade: Throw a grenade that stuns every enemy in its blast radius.
Passives
Martyrdom: For every 15 health that you lose, gain 5 damage, which you can stack up to three times.
Until Death: Taking damage that will kill you instead makes you invulnerable for five seconds. This passive only activates every 90 seconds.
Swift Exorcism: Your attack speed is increased by 10%.
Class ability
Chastise the Wicked: Charge towards an enemy, replenishing your toughness and increasing the damage of your new melee attack by 25%.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668869750_Darktide-classes-guide-Should-you-play-as-an-Ogryn-Psyker.png6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-18 16:03:072022-11-18 16:03:07Darktide classes guide: Should you play as an Ogryn, Psyker, Veteran or Zealot?
What is it? A Spidey spin-off with a far more interesting protagonist. Expect to pay £50/$60 Release date November 18 Developer Insomniac Games/Nixxes Software Publisher Sony Reviewed on Nvidia GeForce RTX3070, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, 16GB RAM Multiplayer No Link Official site (opens in new tab)
While I’ve never been a big superhero girlie, I’ve always had a soft spot for Miles Morales. He’s my preferred Spider-Man—I find him a more interesting and personable character than Peter Parker’s various iterations.
That feeling extends to their respective games. Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a great mini sequel-slash-spinoff to Insomniac’s 2018 web-slinging endeavour. In Rick Lane’s Spider-Man review (opens in new tab), he wrote that it was a mostly good port of a mostly good game. The bad news is Miles Morales’s PC port is still just “mostly good.” The good news is it’s one of a far better game.
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)
Miles Morales is a more streamlined experience than its predecessor. There may be less to do, but almost all of it is in a way that benefits Miles and New York. Much of the bloat has been cut—there are fewer sidequests to distract and the story is far shorter than its predecessor. It’s a perfect opportunity for a tighter, more intense storyline, and Miles Morales delivers.
Things kick off with a quick recap, getting me up to speed on where Miles is at now. The narrative’s focus splits between the teen balancing his family life—particularly in the wake of his father’s death in the previous game—and performing his new spidey duties while the OG takes a cheeky winter vacay. Routine web-slinging shenanigans lead Miles to some serious beef between Roxxon Corporation and the Underground, a high-tech criminal gang led by the Tinkerer. It’s got its fair share of superhero-level predictability in its various twists and turns. But the game does a great job of fleshing out its cast, giving those predictable moments an emotional charge that affords some forgiveness.
Going for Miles
A more engaging story is undoubtedly aided by the fact Insomniac has somehow managed to make being Spider-Man feel even cooler than it was before. It may be a snow-covered replica of Peter Parker’s New York, but the developer has tweaked its near-perfect web-slinging to feel even more satisfying. I feel more in control of wallrunning and steering around buildings this time around. I defaulted to traversal via controller, but gave keyboard a shout and found port developer Nixxes has translated the inputs over surprisingly well. It took a bit of getting used to but eventually felt just as intuitive as using a Dualsense.
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)
Beating on bad guys is mostly the same between both Spideys, but Miles gets a few key additions that differentiate him. His Venom abilities shake up the combat a bit, allowing Miles to deal some burst electrical damage to enemies. The hits feel weighty and have some nice, snappy camera work to make the fights feel more dynamic. By and large though, the core moveset remains the same. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but those looking for drastic combat evolutions may feel disappointed.
There’s still an overabundance of stealth missions, requiring Miles to delicately balance on poles and beams while quietly webbing up enemies out of sight. They’ve never been my favourite, and I usually end up tired of repeatedly scanning each enemy to see if they’re safe for a stealth takedown. Numerous times I gave up and threw myself into the fray, finding slamming down an entire group of Underground goons with my Venom Smash far more pleasing.
“Insomniac has somehow managed to make being Spider-Man feel even cooler than it was before.”
With Miles Morales zipping over to PC from the PlayStation 5, the game’s already a graphical feast. For the most part, the port looks equally gorgeous, if not better. I did experience some aliasing issues, particularly during cutscenes. There were also a few graphical bugs throughout my few hours in New York, like textures not loading in properly and Miles missing altogether during loading screens, leaving some stray gappy web behind.
(Image credit: Insomniac Games)
I also had an absolute mare with frame drops and crashing. My rig didn’t get on with the ray-tracing options too well, and even when switched off I found some pesky framerate issues during combat and traversal. It also crashed on me several times which, thanks to auto-saving, isn’t a huge issue for the gameplay side of things. But having to boot the game up multiple times in one night began to become a tad frustrating. On the plus side, there are tons of graphical options to tinker around with. Knocking down traffic density and disabling ray tracing let me play on high settings with relatively few hiccups, bar the crashing problem.
I still recommend playing Insomniac’s first Spider-Man, purely because it compliments the strength of this game’s story. But for those who just want to kick it around a wintry New York, sling past skyscrapers at breakneck speed, and kick bad-guy butt, Miles Morales should be your one true Spider-Man. It’s easily the hero’s best adventure to date, and it won’t eat up a ton of your time either.
Industry analyst Canalys is predicting that ARM chips will snag 30 percent of the PC market by 2026. (opens in new tab) It also predicts that half of cloud server market, currently dominated by x86 CPUs, (opens in new tab) will also fall to ARM processors in the same time frame. But what could that all mean for gaming PCs?
Steve Brazier, president and CEO of Canalys, reckons it all adds up to an “extraordinary industry-changing event that simply has not been taken seriously enough.”
Depending on how you define a PC, ARM chips are already found in a sizeable chunk of the market—nearly all Apple Macs now use ARM-based CPUs. (opens in new tab) And Apple has a surprisingly high 13.5 percent share of the PC market. ARM chips are also found in a wide range of cheapo Chromebooks.
Other analysts are somewhat more conservative when it comes to ARM’s overall market share in PCs. But another analyst outfit, Mercury Research, still thinks ARM’s share of PC processors doubled from seven percent in mid 2021 to just over 13 today. That’s a rapid increase by any measure.
Your next machine
(Image credit: Future)
Best gaming PC (opens in new tab): the top pre-built machines from the pros Best gaming laptop (opens in new tab): perfect notebooks for mobile gaming
Of course, you wouldn’t want a Mac or Chromebook as your primary gaming rig. But what Apple’s M1 and M2 chips (opens in new tab) certainly have done is prove that ARM can compete with traditional x86 CPUs for raw performance, something that was never previously true.
Meanwhile, Qualcomm is making big claims for its own new custom-designed Oryon ARM cores, due out next year. (opens in new tab) They’re built specifically for Windows machines and the aim for Qualcomm is to be competitive with Apple’s M1 and M2 chips.
If Qualcomm achieves that, it will by default be competitive in pure performance terms with Intel and AMD x86 chips. The question then becomes one of software support. Porting games—and other critical software like graphics drivers—over to ARM from x86 would be a major effort.
So, while a big chunk of the PC market could well be running on ARM within a few years, we think it will take much, much longer for gaming PCs to make the jump—if indeed that ever happens. ARM-powered gaming PCs are one of those much mooted new technologies that’s always just over the horizon. Long predicted, but seemingly never actually getting much closer.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668877030_ARM-CPUs-expected-to-own-30-of-PC-market-by.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-18 15:15:192022-11-18 15:15:19ARM CPUs expected to own 30% of PC market by 2026
You’ll be familiar with Call of Duty: Warzone 2 perk packages if you’ve played Modern Warfare 2. These are essentially a set of four predefined perks, two of which are active at the start of a match and two which activate at a set time during any given game. Choosing the right one is vital if you’re planning your best Warzone 2 loadout (opens in new tab).
It’s not possible to select custom perks in Warzone 2 right now, though this is something you can do in Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer so it’s not a reach to think it might come to the battle royale in the future. In the meantime, I’ve listed the Warzone 2 perks below, what they do, and the predefined perk packages that are available.
All Warzone 2 perks
There are 17 perks to choose from in Warzone 2 and these are broken down into three categories. Base perks are active from the start of the match, Bonus perks will activate after four minutes and Ultimate perks come online after eight minutes.
In Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer, this time can be lessened by increasing your score but it’s unclear if a similar mechanic is in place in Warzone 2.
Here are the Warzone 2 perks, broken down by category:
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)
Base perks
Double Time: Double the duration of Tactical Sprint. Increase Crouch movement speed by 30%.
Bomb Squad: Take reduced damage from non-Killstreak explosives. Reset fuze timers when picking up live grenades.
Scavenger: Resupply ammo and an extra plate from dead players.
Strong Arm: Throw equipment farther and see a preview of the trajectory.
Tracker: Enemies leave behind a footprint trail and enemy death markers are visible. Kill markers are hidden from the enemy team.
Battle Hardened: Reduce the effect of enemy flash, stun, EMP, gas grenades, and shock sticks. Immune to Snapshot grenades.
Overkill: Carry two primary weapons.
Bonus Perks
Resupply: Start with an additional Lethal. Recharge equipment over 30 seconds.
Fast Hands: Reload, use equipment, and swap weapons faster.
Spotter: Spot enemy equipment, Field Upgrades, and Killstreaks through walls. Aiming down sights highlights them for the team. Hack enemy Claymores, Proximity Mines, C4, and Trophy Systems.
Focus: Reduce flinch when aiming down sights and extend Hold Breath duration.
Cold-Blooded: Undetectable by AI targeting systems and thermal optics. Does not trigger High Alert warning. Does not highlight in enemy Tactical Cameras, Recon Drones, and Spotter Scopes.
Ultimate Perks
High Alert: Vision pulses when spotted by an enemy player outside of view.
Ghost: Undetectable by UAVs, Portable Radars, and Heartbeat Sensors.
Overclock: Field Upgrades are rechargeable and you can store an additional charge. Recharge rate decreased by 20%.
Survivor: Enemies that down you get automatically pinged. Get revived faster by allies.
Birdseye: UAV and Radar pings reveal the enemy’s direction.
Warzone 2 perk packages
(Image credit: Activision)
There are eight perk packages to choose from which offer different combinations of the perks listed above. The first two are base perks available from the match’s start, and then the last two become active at four and eight minutes, respectively. You are currently unable to edit perk packages in Warzone 2
Here are the eight Warzone 2 perk packages:
Vanguard: Double Time, Bomb Squad, Resupply, High Alert
Commando: Scavenger, Strong Arm, Fast Hands, High Alert
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/1668784953_Heres-how-perk-packages-work-in-Warzone-2.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2022-11-18 14:32:062022-11-18 14:32:06Here’s how perk packages work in Warzone 2
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