Cow levels are a proud tradition in the Diablo games. They’ve appeared in one form or another in both Diablo II and Diablo III, and fans have every reason to expect that there’s a version in Diablo 4 as well. But if it exists, it’s well hidden, and Blizzard definitely isn’t confirming one way or another.
Still, we couldn’t help asking Diablo IV producer Joe Piepiora about the famed bovine level in our recent interview in the run-up to the release of Season 1, which is titled Season of the Malignant. Not only did Piepiora refuse to confirm whether the cow level was real, he claimed he didn’t even know what fans were talking about.
“I don't know what a cow level is, so I don't really understand the interest in it. I get asked this a...
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It’s rough out there for Hardcore Players in Diablo IV. All it takes is one inopportune disconnect to have hours of progress wiped out via permadeath. It’s a frustrating situation driven in part by Diablo IV’s focus on online connectivity, but Blizzard may have a solution.
Speaking with IGN on the occasion of San Diego Comic-Con, producer Joe Piepiora suggested that the Scroll of Escape could be a solution for Hardcore Players suffering an untimely disconnect. The Scroll of Escape is an existing item in the core game that is used to teleport a player to safety, but Blizzard wants to expand its utility in future seasons.
“In Season 3, the Scroll of Escape is going to work in such a way where once the player has been disconnected, if...
Blizzard has explained its decision-making around the miniscule drop rate for Diablo 4’s coveted Uber Unique items, insisting obtaining one should be a "fall out of your chair moment".
Diablo 4 players have criticised Blizzard for the extreme rarity of these Uber Uniques, with some saying the chances of seeing one drop are lower than winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning.
Initially, just six of these items were in the game, but following the release of the highly-controversial pre-Season 1 patch there are now seven. Blizzard warned players that this seventh Uber Unique, a World Tier 4 staff called Ahavarion Spear of Lycander, is an “extremely rare drop”. “We wish you luck in recovering it from the armies of the Burning...
The Last of Us Part 1 on PC is being modded by one fan to include a brutal and bloody first-person mode.
As reported by ComicBook.com, YouTube user Voyagers Revenge uploaded an eight-minute video of the mod in action, showing the intense and graphic battles of The Last of Us from a new perspective.
Featuring a handful of sections of the game alongside some modded content, the video shows the player taking on human and infected enemies alongside the creepy clickers and bloaters that are even more terrifying in first-person.
Showing off a handful of weapons too, from grenades to pistols to molotov cocktails and assault rifles, the mod truly displays the goriest side of The Last of Us.
No release date for the first-person mode was...
Classic Call of Duty games have shot up Xbox’s top paid games list, fuelled by recent improvements to matchmaking and an eye-catching sale.
2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is currently the top paid game on Xbox, followed by 2012’s Black Ops 2, 2010’s Black Ops, and 2011’s Modern Warfare 3. Treyarch’s World at War and Black Ops 3 are also in the top ten.
These older Call of Duty games are outselling big-hitters such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Hogwart’s Legacy, Elden Ring, and even last year’s Modern Warfare 2.
It’s a remarkable resurgence for a collection of games once thought consigned to the history books, but recent developments have rekindled interest in this golden age of Call of Duty, fuelled by apparent matchmaking...
It's not a traditional collector's edition, but this new Phantom Liberty collectible gear set should certainly be on the radar of all Cyberpunk 2077 fans. CD Projekt Red has unveiled a brand new Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty 'Secret Agents' collectible Gear Set, including a new statue featuring Solomon Reed (Idris Elba) and Songbird, a NUSA Challenge coin with clamshell display box, a Chimera Schematic Metallic Lithograph, and a new Cyberpunk 2077 comic book titled: Ten of Swords.
While this premium gear set won't include Cyberpunk 2077 or the Phantom Liberty expansion, it does look like the perfect companion for gamers' ventures into the dangerous district of Dogtown. Whether you're exploring a secret agent's underground bunker or...
When you look back at the history of new games and their sequels, oftentimes it’s not until the second attempt at a bold new idea that things really hit their stride. Following in the footsteps of breakthrough sequels like Borderlands 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 before it, Remnant 2 iterates on the original to phenomenal effect. Combat is even smoother and more satisfying, loot and buildcrafting have been greatly improved to allow for countless possibilities and reasons to grind, boss fights have been completely overhauled to ditch spongy bosses aided by endless waves of minions, and each of the realms feel diverse and brimming with things to do and secrets to uncover. But procedurally generated, impressively replayable levels remain its...
Gundam Evolution shuts down this November just a year after launch.
Bandai Namco said the free-to-play 6v6 shooter will end on November 29, 2023, making it unplayable. Gundam Evolution launched on PC in September 2022, then on console in November last year.
In a note to players, executive producer Kazuya Maruyama said the announcement was made “with great sadness”, and issued an apology to players.
“We wanted to create a title that brought FPS fans and Gundam fans together,” Maruyama continued. “We challenged ourselves to create an authentic Gundam FPS game that could be played globally. Unfortunately, we have determined that it is no longer possible for us to provide a service that satisfies our players.
“We want to express our...
Blizzard will address the backlash to Diablo 4’s latest patch in a livestream set for this Friday, July 21.
Game director Joe Shely, associate game director Joseph Piepiora, and associate director of community Adam Fletcher host the Campfire Chat livestream on July 21 at 11am PDT.
Diablo 4’s long-awaited pre-Season 1 patch, 1.1.0, sparked vociferous complaints from the game’s community, who accused Blizzard of turning the action role-playing game into a “slog” with a slew of heavy-handed nerfs to all classes, experience point gain, endgame progression and more.
In a tweet (below), Fletcher said the Campfire Chat will address this “feedback”.
“We have been hearing feedback from players regarding some of the changes in 1.1.0 for...
Going down the cursed checklist, Unholy certainly has enough elements to make for an absorbing horror adventure: it casts you as a desperate and vengeful main character, pits you against a malevolent religious cult that must be infiltrated and overcome, and arms you with a suite of emotion-fuelled special powers in order to get the better of every guard and ghoul who stands in your way. Unfortunately, like trying to crucify someone on a cross made of cardboard, Unholy’s execution just doesn’t hold up. Unresponsive controls, erratic AI, and frustrating instant deaths make for a seven-hour journey that regularly feels about as much fun as a spot of self-flagellation.
Young mother Dorothea wants to escape the grip of a religious cult...
By now you would have heard the good word: Pikmin 4 is quite the catch. If you're looking to scoop this 9/10 up cheap, I've found the lowest price in town. Meanwhile, PS folk can get a great deal on seriously reduced PS4 must-owns, including The Last of Us Part II.
It's also a particularly auspicious day for gaming birthdays. 22 years ago, we got our first PS2 Gran Turismo, and because I was working retail at the time, my ears were brutalised by a demo machine "doo doo doo-ing" this intro at me. Non-stop. I now suffer from GTPTSD.
This Day in Gaming
Aussie birthdays for notable games and hardware
- Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (PS2) 2001. Sequels
- The Darkness (PS3) 2007. Get
- Limbo (PS3) 2010. Get
Table of Contents
Nintendo...
Though Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard has cleared its biggest hurdle (the FTC), the deal isn't quite done yet. And all parties involved have given themselves more time to finalize the deal. We discuss that, plus Sony finally signing its 10-year Call of Duty deal with Microsoft, the death of Xbox Live Gold and its somewhat confusing replacement in the form of Xbox Game Pass Core, and more!
Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 of this week's episode. For more awesome content, check out my recent interview with Todd Howard, who discussed the realization of his vision for Starfield after eight years, how Red Dead Redemption 2 was something of an inspiration, what his...
AI is at the center of the ongoing strikes in Hollywood, as writers and actors are concerned over how studios will take advantage of the rapidly-advancing technology moving forward. Those concerns are also bleeding into the world of video games, specifically in the voice actor community.
Last week, we shared the controversy in the Skyrim community, where dozens of voice actors discovered AI-generated NSFW Skyrim mods using synthetic versions of their actual vocal performances. The characters in these mods sound like the real-life actors, but they're saying lines the voice actors never actually performed — often in pornographic contexts. Many of these mods are hosted on the mod distributor Nexus Mods.
Now, Victoria Atkin — who played...
After seeing the massive, three-tiered world of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it’s easy to forget that Breath of the Wild’s map was once considered massive in both breadth and detail. When the game first came out in 2017, players spent hundreds of hours combing its nooks and crannies, and were still making incredible discoveries years later.
Now, one player is revisiting every last inch of that original Breath of the Wild map by reconstructing it to the tree… in Minecraft.
Meet Grazzy
Grazzy is a content creator on YouTube who, prior to his great Hyrule building adventure, filled his channel with videos of the mobile game Geometry Dash, and later, playing Minecraft in Hardcore mode. After a few years, he became bored...
After crusading through the hallowed, freakish 2D corridors of the original Blasphemous in 2019, I wondered how its followup, Blasphemous 2, might iterate upon a solid first stab. As it turns out, despite the rather fanatical setting they’ve created, the developers don’t appear to be afraid of ditching the dogma of the past to shake things up. Nowhere is that more apparent than with how this sequel retains its combat-focused strengths while significantly overhauling the puzzles and platforming to be more in line with its genre peers. From the few hours I’ve played so far, that gamble seems like it will pay off, and I’m more excited than ever to dive back into this sickening, pixelated soulslike.
The main instruments in Blasphemous 2’s...
Skybound Games has announced The Walking Dead: Betrayal, a new multiplayer social deception and survival game from the makers of Steam hit Project Winter.
This eight-player game set in The Walking Dead universe challenges players to work together to survive, but always watch out for traitors. The debut trailer is below:
You’ll need teamwork, communication, crafting, and cooking to survive, and of course you’ll want to occasionally deceive and betray your fellow players. Thankfully, death is not the end as you can seek your revenge as a walker.
The Walking Dead: Betrayal is described as a Project Winter game. Project Winter is a well-received social deception and survival Steam game developed by Other Ocean Interactive for launch in...
After years of dogged commitment to its own PC launcher, Battle.net, Blizzard is finally caving and releasing a handful of its games on Valve's popular storefront, Steam. And it's starting with Overwatch 2.
Overwatch 2 will come to Steam on August 10, with a store page for the game already live. This release will coincide with a new content update, Invasion, which includes PvE story missions, a new PvP game mode, two new maps, and a new hero. Users will still need to connect a Battle.net account to the game to play Overwatch 2 via Steam.
In a blog post today, Blizzard explains the reasoning behind its decision to release select games on Steam as driven by a desire to "break down the barriers" between gaming communities.
“It’s our...
The Nintendo Switch version of The Witcher 3 has finally caught up with its PlayStation and Xbox counterparts as CD Projekt has released a patch that includes the best features from version 4.0, otherwise known as the next-gen update.
Patch 4.04 was announced on the Witcher website, and while this includes a handful of bug fixes and smaller updates to all versions of the game, it's the Switch version that will see the biggest changes.
Though it doesn't include more technically demanding features like ray-tracing that the PS5, Xbox Series, and PC versions get to enjoy, the Switch has finally received the more exciting parts of the updates like gameplay changes, major quality of life improvements, and a new quest.
Combat is at one...
Call of Duty has around 90 million monthly players, with half of all Call of Duty engagement on mobile, Activision Blizzard has revealed.
Confirmation comes as Microsoft’s long-running pursuit of Activision Blizzard nears its conclusion. Today, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard officially postponed their merger deadline to allow more time for the $69 billion deal to gain approval from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). A resolution is expected in the coming weeks.
The importance of Call of Duty was at the heart of the Federal Trade Commission’s failed attempt to block the deal, with Sony boss Jim Ryan drafted in to highlight the phenomenal popularity of the shooter series. Call of Duty, it was argued, is the world’s...
Activision Blizzard has revealed that Overwatch League teams will vote to decide the fate of the league at the end of this season, while lay-offs signal a dark future for the company's esports plans.
Revealed in its second quarter 2023 financial results, Activision Blizzard announced it's offering Overwatch League teams like the San Francisco Shock and London Spitfire a $6 million payout if they opt not to continue. "As previously disclosed, our collaborative arrangements for our professional esports leagues continue to face headwinds," the report said.
"Following the conclusion of the current Overwatch League season, the teams will vote on an updated operating agreement. If the teams do not vote to continue under an updated...
The launch of Diablo 4 propelled Blizzard’s financials to record levels as over 10 million played the game.
Reporting its latest financial earnings, Activision Blizzard said Blizzard revenue grew over 160% year-over-year and operating income more than tripled year-over-year, each setting new quarterly records driven by the launch of Diablo 4 in early June. However, Activision Blizzard has yet to announce a sales figure for Diablo 4, preferring to focus on the number of players metric.
Blizzard brought in just over $1 billion in revenue in the three months to June 30, with an operating income of $409 million. During the same period last year, Blizzard brought in $401 million for an operating income of $94 million. In-game net bookings...
Overwatch 2's engagement and player investment is declining, the game's publisher Activision Blizzard admits.
In its Q2 2023 earnings report, Activision Blizzard revealed its free-to-play shooter has "declined sequentially" this quarter. However, it thinks the game's next major update, Overwatch 2: Invasion, which releases next month, should help circumvent the issue.
"While engagement and player investment in Overwatch 2 declined sequentially in the quarter, the Overwatch team is looking forward to the August 10 release of Overwatch 2: Invasion," the publisher wrote in its earnings report. "This will be the largest seasonal update yet, planned to include new PVE Story Missions, a new game mode, and a new hero progression system as...
Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher video games, has spoken out on his prostate cancer diagnosis and the importance of getting tested.
Speaking to IGN, the beloved voice actor explained he had no obvious symptoms pointing to cancer but a combination of different factors led him to get checked.
"I had no symptoms, no pain, nothing I could point to in my body that was telling me that I have prostate cancer," Cockle said. "In that sense my diagnosis was a big surprise." A family history of prostate cancer had always been in the back of Cockle's mind, however, and after watching a documentary in which an interviewee spoke of lower back pain — something he experienced as a result of mild sciatica — he decided to get...
Blizzard has promised to address “feedback” from players on Diablo 4’s latest patch following backlash from the community.
Diablo 4 got its long-awaited pre-Season 1 patch, 1.1.0, yesterday, and it didn’t take long for players to criticise Blizzard for implementing heavy-handed nerfs.
The patch makes sweeping nerfs across the board, with Sorcerer players in particular bemused by the significant hit to the power of their class. The popular endgame activity, Helltides, has been made harder and, with an increase to the cost of opening Mystery Chests, slower (the low Cinder drop rate is a bug).
Experience bonus for killing monsters at higher levels has been nerfed, and, crucially, Blizzard significantly nerfed crit strike damage...
Congratulations on slogging it through to mid-week. Wasn't easy. Wasn't fun. But now we've crested the hill, rich weekend fields are in full view. I reckon it's time we both made advanced plans to squander it in a glorious, game-filled fashion. Hence the discounts below.
Personally, I'd recommend giving Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut a look. Recently, I've been (half) watching my eldest slash through it for the first time, and do you know what thoughts kept popping into my brain? "Holy crap, this was a breathtakingly beautiful title" and also "this probably deserved to be in the 9 Metacritic range, rather than the mid-8s". Buy it for yourself and make the call on your own, I say.
This Day in Gaming
Aussie birthdays for notable...
The Borderlands series may be getting an all-in-one collection, fittingly titled The Borderlands Compilation: Pandora’s Box, according to a new listing from the South Africa ratings board.
As first spotted by Gematsu, The Film and Publication Board of South Africa’s list of classified films and games for April and May 2023 leaked, which includes The Borderlands Compilation: Pandora's Box, having been rated for PC and consoles on April 21.
That’s not the only news that came out of the listings; Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster also got a PC rating on May 11. While we already knew the remaster of the beloved Gamecube games was coming to the Nintendo Switch, a PC version was not previously revealed.
But as for Borderlands, Pandora’s Box...
With Diablo IV Season 1 nearly upon us, Blizzard has released a hefty 8.84GB patch featuring balance changes to classes, unique items, and more.
Diablo IV Patch 1.1.0a, which is intended to prepare for the upcoming Season of the Malignant, introduces a number of gameplay changes, such as making Altar of Lilith unlocks available account-wide. It also heavily rebalances some of the classes, most notably the Sorceress, which is getting a heavy nerf to the Devouring Blaze skill that is critical to many of their builds. This is on top of changes to monster movement, XP progression, accessibility and more.
But it's the new Unique Items that will really catch the eye of players. Here are some of the highlights.
General
Ahavarion Spear of...
There’s no doubt that the Nintendo Switch changed the idea of what portable gaming could be, but the Steam Deck, the best handheld gaming PC, brought it to a whole new level. Featuring an NVIDIA Tegra chipset, it would make sense for AMD to create something similar for PC gaming. This has led to a revolution of handheld gaming PCs featuring Zen CPUs and RDNA GPUs starting with the incredible Steam Deck.
TL;DR – These are the Best Handheld Gaming PCs
Valve Steam Deck
Asus ROG Ally
GPD Win 4
AYANEO Air PRO
GPD Win Max 2
AYANEO Geek
The ability to play PC games from anywhere means gamers can play everything from Street Fighter VI to Cyberpunk 2077. Other than the Steam Deck, a majority of handheld gaming run a full version of Windows...
Here’s some good news for fans of Diablo IV, the latest installment in Blizzard’s popular action RPG franchise: A limited collection of handcrafted jewelry based on the game is coming exclusively to the IGN Store. It’s from RockLove Jewelry and Blizzard Entertainment, and it includes a number of high quality pieces based on characters from the game. You can register here to receive an exclusive discount and early access to the collection starting Thursday, July 20.
Sign Up for Early Access to RockLove's Diablo 4 Jewelry Collection
The Diablo IV jewelry collection consists of five pieces based on the characters Lilith and Inarius. There’s a necklace and a ring inspired by the rogue angel Inarius. Lilith, queen of the succubi, is the...
Several Republicans in the US House of Representatives have composed a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urging the regulator to drop its ongoing legal feud with Microsoft regarding the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
The letter, which was addressed to FTC chair Lina Khan and commissioners Slaughter and Bedoya, calls on these three to drop its antitrust case against Microsoft, requesting the agency "return to its long history of a sensible, consumer-oriented antitrust enforcement."
"The FTC's case against Microsoft's acquisition of Activision is the latest in a series of actions that are clearly designed to impede legitimate mergers and acquisitions, while ignoring decades of settled FTC practice across...