First-Person Shooters

Rebellion, one of the world’s most successful independent studios, has today revealed that its award winning Sniper Elite franchise will return in 2022 with the release of Sniper Elite 5. Launching simultaneously on Xbox Game Pass, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 4 & 5, Epic, Steam and Windows Store, Sniper Elite 5 will see elite marksman, Karl Fairburne, travel to France in 1944 to destroy Operation Kraken.

To celebrate the announcement Rebellion has released the first trailer for the forthcoming game using all in-game engine footage. You can view the new trailer HERE.

As part of a covert US Rangers operation to weaken the Atlantikwall fortifications along the coast of Brittany, Karl makes contact with the French Resistance. Soon they uncover a secret Nazi project that threatens to end the war before the Allies can even invade Europe: Operation Kraken. It’s Karl’s mission to take out the high ranking Nazi officers and end Operation Kraken once and for all.

Based upon real world locations from France in 1944 the new game maps are the largest and most immersive in the franchise’s history with the new traversal system offering players an even greater sandbox of options when it comes to taking out their targets. You can even invite a friend to help you on your mission with enhanced co-operative gameplay options.

Sniper Elite 5 continues the franchise’s unparalleled tactical sniping experience complete with incredible ballistics and enhanced kill cam taking the genre-defining feature to the next level. New customisation options allow you to adjust your rifle, other weapons and ammo to suit the mission and your play style.

Game Features:

• Expansive Campaign – real-world locations have been captured using photogrammetry to recreate a living, immersive environment, and multiple infiltration and extraction points and kill list targets provide a whole new perspective on each mission. Take on the Nazi plot solo or work with a partner, with improved co-op mechanics allowing you to share ammo and items, give orders and heal each other.
• Advanced gunplay physics and traversal – use ziplines, slide down slopes and shimmy along ledges to reach the perfect vantage point, or to sneak past a sharp-eyed lookout. Factor in rifle stock and barrel options along with gravity, wind and heart rate while you line up your sights on the target.
• High calibre customisation – use workbenches to customise and upgrade virtually every aspect of your weapon. Change scopes, stocks, barrels, magazines and more. Rifles, secondary weapons, and pistols all have a huge variety of options. On top of that you can select the ammo to suit your target, from armour-piercing right down to non-lethal.
• Invasion mode drop-in PVP – you can invade another player’s Campaign as an Axis sniper and engage in a deadly game of cat and mouse, providing a new dimension to the challenge as you stalk your prey. Alternatively, as Karl you can call for assistance and have a second sniper drop in to help you out of a tricky situation.
• Tense adversarial multiplayer – customise your character and loadout and earn XP, medals and ribbons as you take on intensely competitive 16 player battles that will really test your sharpshooting skills. If co-op’s more your style, you can team up with up to 3 other players against waves of enemies in Survival mode.
• Enhanced kill cam – more realistic and grisly than ever, the trademark X-ray kill cam returns, showing you the true destructive power of each shot. Bones deflect bullets unpredictably, ripping a new path through enemy bodies. SMGs and pistols can also trigger kill cams, including multiple shots in dramatic slow motion.

Sniper Elite 5 will release on Xbox Game Pass, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 4 & 5, Epic, Steam and Windows Store in 2022 with more news to come in the run up to release. To keep up to date with all the latest Sniper Elite 5 news please visit sniper.com.

Featuring Three Standout, Distinct Multiplayer Experiences with All-Out Warfare, Battlefield Hazard Zone and Battlefield Portal

Electronic Arts Inc. has launched the highly-anticipated first-person shooter, Battlefield™ 2042. Powered by groundbreaking technology through the use of the Frostbite game engine, Battlefield 2042 features up to 128 player matches on the latest consoles* and PCs. The game introduces epic maps, a dynamic world and signals a return to modern settings which opens up the immersive sandbox gameplay through vehicles, weapons and more. Battlefield 2042 has been hailed by EGM as a “true evolution” for the series, IGN lauded the game’s “impressively huge and gorgeously detailed maps,” while Game Informer described the title as “an easy recommendation.”

Battlefield 2042 places players in a near-future, all-out war experience where resources are limited and the world powers of the United States and Russia are in conflict, while refugees from collapsed nations known as the Non-Patriated (“No-Pats”) struggle for survival. The game features the franchise’s signature Levolution, as well as dynamic storms and environmental hazards, that create an added layer of action that alters the battlefield and tactical combat.

The PC version of the game is available through Origin, the Epic Games Store, or Steam.

For more information about Battlefield 2042, visit the games website.

A free update to celebrate the kick off of the upcoming year of new content…

With Operation: Warlord’s release today, escort or assassinate a VIP in the exciting new game mode Ambush. Race from cover to cover through tight alleyways in the new map Gap. Show off on the battlefield with brand new cosmetics and master the P90 and Vector to take down enemies with style.

…and a wealth of premium new cosmetics to choose from

In addition to free weapons and cosmetics, the new Praetorian Set Bundle has been released, including four Warlord themed gear and weapon skin sets. These premium cosmetics are the first step for Year 2 content within Insurgency: Sandstorm. Owners of the Gold Edition or the Year 2 Pass can download them for free.

The free Operation: Warlord Update is now available on PC and coming soon to consoles. Insurgency: Sandstorm, along with its Deluxe and Gold Editions, are available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. In addition, Steam players can enjoy up to 50% off, while Xbox Gold Members get 15% off for a limited time.

Watch the Insurgency: Sandstorm – Operation Warlord Update Trailer HERE.

Visit the official Insurgency: Sandstorm website for more game information.

A few days in, Champion Hill is one of a handful of stand-out features.

By Seth Macy @ IGN

Call of Duty: Vanguard’s multiplayer is fast, fun, and more than anything, familiar. There are some great new additions by way of expanded game modes, including the excellent new Champion Hill, but if you’d told me I was playing a patched version of Call of Duty: World War II or a reskinned Black Ops: Cold War (which itself felt like a reskinned Modern Warfare) I would probably have believed you, you devious trickster.

Read on…

A fun, truly cinematic campaign that lacks variety over its brief runtime.

By Simon Cardy @ IGN

Call of Duty: Vanguard’s campaign starts off on the right track – literally. An explosive train sequence through a burning Hamburg, Germany thrills as you jump between carriages, fending off dozens of angry Nazis on your way to a submarine base. It’s a cinematic opening to a game that wears its film influences proudly; whether that be the tense behind-enemy-lines aspects of D-Day in The Longest Day or the vivid depictions of the Pacific in Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line. No shadow hangs heavier over this latest Call of Duty World War II story, however, than Inglourious Basterds. Its tale of a small group of expert soldiers on a secret mission to stop the Third Reich may sound familiar to anyone who has seen the 2009 movie, but Vanguard plays it with a much straighter face than Tarantino ever could. Even so, Vanguard’s campaign is over quickly, and its small series of battles are all too rarely memorable high points.

Read on…

Source: Blue’s News

Call of Duty: Vanguard is now available for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation, putting out the call for players to reenlist in the military shooter series in a return to a World War II setting. The Windows edition is for sale on the Battle.net Shop as either a Standard Edition or an Ultimate Edition with additional skins and blueprints, a battle pass bundle, and an XP booster. The game kicks off with a solo campaign, a new zombies experience, and 20 multiplayer maps with crossplay support between PC and consoles. A new season of Warzone will kick off on December 2nd, bringing the free-to-play battle royale to the war in the Pacific. Here’s the previously released Launch Trailer featuring Jack White along with more details:

In Vanguard, players will experience the origins of Special Forces fighting across four major theaters of World War II like never seen before.

With development led by Sledgehammer Games, Vanguard enlists players in an engaging blockbuster campaign as ordinary soldiers from diverse backgrounds rise on all fronts to do the extraordinary and turn the tides of war. Multiplayer features 20 maps, 12 Operators and over three dozen Weapons in the revamped Gunsmith all starting day one. Vanguard multiplayer delivers new ways to play with the Combat Pacing system and the fast and frenetic multi-arena survival Champion Hill mode. Vanguard also brings a franchise-first Zombies crossover developed by Treyarch, expanding upon the Dark Aether storyline that players were introduced to in Call of Duty®: Black Ops Cold War.

Source: Blue’s News

Friday is D-Day for Call of Duty: Vanguard, as that’s when the World War II first-person shooter is set to invade PCs and consoles worldwide. The World Premiere Video Link says the video premiere will go live at 9:00 pm EDT on Wednesday. Those who’ve preordered the Windows edition can begin preloading tomorrow at 1:00 pm EDT to be ready to play when the switch gets flipped. Publisher Activision and developer Sledgehammer offer a new trailer showing off PC specific enhancements. There’s also a new article on the Call of Duty Blog on the subject. This includes presumably final PC specs formatted, well, oddly:

Video Card

• Minimum: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon RX 470
• Recommended: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580
• Competitive: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070/RTX 3060 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 5700XT
• Ultra 4K: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT

Video Memory

• Minimum: 2 GB
• Recommended: 4 GB
• Competitive: 8 GB
• Ultra 4K: 10 GB

Source: Blue’s News

A new trailer from NVIDIA shows off some of the enhancements owners of GeForce RTX video cards will see in Battlefield 2042 when the military shooter is released later this month. The clip shows off support for RTX ray tracing, DLSS, and Reflex. Here’s an explanation:

PC gamers will get a Battlefield 2042 experience like no other, because a PC allows you to enjoy higher detail levels, uncapped frame rates, and gameplay enhanced by variable refresh rate G-SYNC monitors, TVs and displays.

Graphics on a PC are next-level with ray-traced ambient occlusion (available only on PC), and GeForce RTX-based PCs have dedicated RT cores to deliver excellent ray tracing performance. With NVIDIA DLSS, performance is boosted without sacrificing image quality. NVIDIA Reflex optimizes system latency to assure shot accuracy for maximum competitiveness.

Source: Blue’s News

Electronic Arts now offers a new Zombies Reveal Trailer, showing how the undead will participate in the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Vanguard. The video is allowed to speak for itself, as it includes just this minimal description:

Your mission: Stop the undead army with a new set of Dark Aether skills.
Welcome to Call of Duty: Vanguard Zombies.

Track: Billie Eilish – bury a friend (Chris Avantgarde Remix)

Greetings No-Pats! During the last few months we’ve shown you how Battlefield 2042 is enhancing the series’ All-Out-Warfare suite of classic modes and how we’re giving you the tools to build the Battlefield experience of your dreams with Battlefield Portal.

Today, we’re excited to dive into Battlefield Hazard Zone, a mode unlike anything we’ve done before, where you and your squad must scavenge for valuable resources as foes and cataclysmic storms close in. So strap in and get ready to deploy. Things are about to get intense.

Watch the Battlefield 2042 Hazard Zone Official Trailer HERE.

In the year 2040, a worldwide event known as The Blackout has caused over 70% of satellites in orbit to malfunction and fall into the atmosphere. Communication, navigation, and surveillance were crippled, bringing an already tenuous relationship between the US and Russia to the edge of war.

In response, both countries have begun to use satellites equipped with capsules containing radiation-hardened Data Drives to collect important intelligence throughout the world. These capsules are dropped down into US/RUS controlled territories for the Occupying Forces to secure.

Such Data Drives are essential to No-Pats around the globe, providing them with valuable information to keep all No-Pats (including non-combatants) safe. And when necessary, the information can be sold to the Dark Market in return for supplies needed for survival.

This is where you come in.

In Battlefield Hazard Zone, you play as an Elite Task Force assigned to retrieve these critical Data Drives. You and your squad must locate, gather, and extract these drives before a storm overtakes the area in a high-stakes, one-life experience.

Every bullet, every skirmish, and every decision counts.

Read more…