343 Industries have announced some changes and fixes coming to Halo Infinite this week, targeting two of the most heavily criticised elements of the game: the broken Big Team Battle matchmaking and in-game store pricing. The BTB matchmaking issues have persisted since before Christmas, with many users encountering countless error messages when trying to join a match. 343 Industries were unable to isolate and fix the problem before the holidays, but has made it a priority since returning to work this year. A hotfix has made its way through internal testing and is now with Xbox certification for an expected release in the middle of the week. As a kind of compensation, all users that open up the game within the next month or so will be handed 5 XP Boosts and 5 Challenge Swaps. Here’s the statement from 343 from Friday: As promised, back with a quick update on the status of Big Team Battle. Yesterday the test pass was completed and the hotfix is now in the process of going through Xbox certification. As long as no issues arise, we are targeting releasing this hot fix middle of next week. (note that Monday is an office holiday in recognition of MLK Jr Day) To kick off the new year and also offer a small token of appreciation for your patience during these issues, all players will be granted 5 XP Boosts and 5 Challenge Swaps. This will be active once the hotfix is released and automatically added to the inventory of every player who logs in. This grant offer will remain active for about a month so just log in any time before then and you’ll get hooked up. As well as fixing BTB, 343 Industries are finally able to adjust the in-game shop for premium cosmetics in the free-to-play Halo infinite multiplayer. These have come in for strong criticism for being far too expensive for the amount of value that they offer, and 343 are hopefully going to be able to bring prices right down. Starting Tuesday, the Shop experience will vary week-to-week. We are focused on reducing pricing across the board, providing stronger values in our bundles, starting to put individual items outside of bundles, and more. — jerry hook (@hookscourt) January 15, 2022 Pricing will be reduced across the whole in-game shop, with individual items now available outside of pricey bundles, and with the shop now being modified week-to-week. All positive sounding changes, but a bigger problem with the store remains in how it relates to the Battle Pass in the game. Season 1 of Halo Infinite is running for an extended 6 month period instead of the originally planned 3 months, and with details from dataminers, this seemingly combined with 343 Industries stripping content from the pass and shunting it over to the premium store. Not only that, but the way that customisation works in the game means that the store has had very basic red and blue colour schemes for Spartan armour being sold for $10. A bit nuts. 343 Industries community managers and producers have said on a number of occasions that they’ve heard this criticism and are working to address them in future. A patch expected in mid-February will be targeting issues with cheating in particular, but 343 note that “work continues on plans/updates to other key topics we know are top of mind for the community (economy, armor customization, ranked, cheating, networking, etc.).” Halo Infinite’s free-to-play multiplayer and paid campaign are both now available across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. In our Halo Infinite review, Dom said: “Halo Infinite marks a clear moment in 343 Studios’ handling of the series. They finally have a grasp on what makes Master Chief tick, and they bring all of that knowledge to bear in often-spectacular fashion. While some issues nag, it’s clear that Halo Infinite is a brilliant new entry in the series, and one that makes this particular sci-fi FPS relevant once again.” Source: Halo Waypoint, Jerry Hook
Smartphones might not be the best place for playing an FPS, but there are still some brilliant ones out there on the Play Store. So much so that... Continue reading
The games industry doesn’t hibernate for very long over the winter and holidays, so there’s already the first stirrings for what looks to be one of the busiest periods in gaming that I can remember. The next few months are jam-packed with game releases, many of which were delayed from the end of last year, and more trailers and announcements are starting to drop. That’s in addition to PC gamers getting a month where they can catch up on some huge games that are being ported to their platform for the first time. In the News This Week Hitman 3 Year 2 starts 20th January – Freelancer mode, a new level and free updates revealed All Xbox One consoles were discontinued by the end of 2020 Take Two purchasing Zynga for $12.7 billion Troy Baker backs a voice based NFT site but won’t be selling his own voice Deep Rock Galactic gains 6 million players in one week after PS Plus launch STALKER 2 hit with massive delay More Days Gone sequel plans revealed by game director Jeff Ross Overwatch 2 LEGO set delayed due to Activision Blizzard allegations PUBG’s free-to-play relaunch is now live on PlayStation, Xbox and Steam Techland clarify how long Dying Light 2 takes to complete Giveaways We’ve got a great giveaway this week for fans of the RuneScape MMORPG. Celebrating its 20th anniversary, which is mind-boggling for pretty much every game, Jagex created a gorgeous RuneScape: The First 20 Years book looking back of the game’s history. We’ve got five copies of the Deluxe Edition for a giveaway, which you can enter here. Games in Review and Featured Articles January seems to be the month of choice for games to get ports to PC, with both Monster Hunter Rise and God of War making the jump to keyboard & mouse. How did they hold up? Monster Hunter Rise – PC, NSW – 9/10 God of War – PC, PS5, PS4 – 8/10 Battle Brothers – PS4, XBO, PC – 7/10 Elsewhere, we took a good long look at The Anacrusis, a new sixties sci-fi themed take on the Left 4 Dead formula that’s now in Early Access and Xbox Game Preview, while Gareth dove back into the mind of Far Cry 4’s arch villain with the Far Cry 6 – Pagan: Control DLC. His mind is rather similar in structure to Vaas’ from the first DLC… Over the weekend, we had two features, the first from Eric delving into The Legend of Zelda Second Quest, and the second with Reggie asking what happened to Arena Shooters? Finally, What We Played featured The Anacrusis, Far Cry 6 and Fantasian. Trailer Park We could post trailers for days this week, but here’s a few of the highlights: Gran Turismo 7 gameplay trailer heads to the Daytona International Speedway Pokémon Legends: Arceus trailer reveals more gameplay from its Hisuian adventure Kirby and the Forgotten Land is coming out in March – new gameplay and co-op revealed in trailer New ELEX II trailer dives into the overhauled RPG combat Your Achievements And finally for this round-up, we come to… you! MrYd finished of Ghost of Tsushima’s main story and started on the Iki Island expansion. He also enjoyed playing through Life Is Strange 2 and got sucked into the cave-dwelling delights of Deep Rock Galactic. And willbuchanan is aiming to finish off Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend. He might even shoot for the platinum, which just depends on getting all of the outfits. That’s it for this week’s gaming round-up. Have a fun weekend, wrap up warm, and we’ll catch you again next week.
Klang 2 is a very solid entry in what has become a niche genre in the past couple of console generations. Tinimations has done a wonderful job of building a more tightly tuned follow-up complete with a hard-hitting soundtrack.
Netmarble announces plans for closed beta testing of Overprime, an upcoming MOBA played from a third-person shooter perspective. The test is planned for...
We’re excited to announce Operation Zeta, our third game in the Inevitability universe. Set in the same galaxy as its predecessors, this game was a totally new style for us; a jaunty rogue-lite, space action game. In this installment, you will navigate the warzone of Operation Zeta (a failed battle against the galaxy’s vacuous foe: […]
Here is a wrap-up of the top NFT news from this week: TIME Studios has partnered with NFT collections Smilesssvrs and Toy Boogers, which will come to life on TV soon. Back in November, the television, film, and immersive studio announced that it will feature Pablo Stanley’s Robotos NFT collection on TV. Gary Vaynerchuk’s VCR […]
Open source Redis is being increasingly used in Machine Learning, but running it on Colab is different compared to on your local machine or with Docker. Read on for a 2-step tutorial on how to do it.
Welcome to Next Week on Xbox! In this weekly feature, we cover all the new games coming soon to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows PC as well as upcoming Xbox Game Pass and soon-to-be released ID@Xbox games! You can get more details on these games below and click their profiles for pre-order details […]
