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Major League Gaming finals head to New Orleans in October
The Major League Gaming World Finals, featuring championships for Dota 2 and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, will be held in New Orleans at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center from October 16th to the 18th. The 2015 MLG Finals boast a prize pool of more than $500,000, and it will be the organization's 100th live event (that's some nice timing). MLG, founded in 2002, is the longest-running eSports organization in existence and it's awarded more than $13.5 million in prize money across a range of games over the years. A General Admission pass for all three days of the Finals runs $50, or snag a Dota 2 or Advanced Warfare VIP pass for $200 each. Pro gaming fans, purchase tickets in the MLG store.
Of course there's a shark in this 'Call of Duty' Exo Zombies video
Carrier, the latest map for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's Exo Zombies mode, is a seafaring vessel infested with hordes of ravenous former-humans. Since it's on the open seas, of course the ship has a tank with a monstrous, toothy shark just chillin' inside. The shark isn't the intended star of this trailer -- Bruce Campbell and the zombie-slaughtering gunplay is -- but anything with that many teeth is sure to steal the show. See for yourself below. Exo Zombies Carrier is part of the Supremacy DLC pack, due to hit Xbox Live on June 2, with additional platforms to follow.
You probably bought 'Call of Duty' and 'Destiny'
It's true: you probably bought Call of Duty and/or Destiny this year. If you play games or buy presents for someone who does, there's a strong possibility that you paid for one or both of these two blockbusters this year. They're number one (Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare) and number two (Destiny) on this year's top sales list, and they're both from one publisher: Activision. Do you know how many games Activision publishes? Three games, more or less: Call of Duty, Destiny and Skylanders. There's a strong possibility you've heard of that third game from your children, who won't stop hounding you for more and more $12 toys to use with their $60 game.
Why are so many video games broken at launch?
Allow me to begin with my very best Andy Rooney impersonation: When I was growing up, there was no such thing as a "day one patch." I went to Video Station on Saturday with my parents -- if I was lucky -- and came home with a single rented game for the weekend. James Pond or Bubsy the Bobcat or Blast Corps or whatever. Maybe I'd have to blow out the cart, or erase the last renter's save file before playing whatever game I rented. Let's imagine a similar scenario today: You go to a Redbox kiosk or GameFly mails you a disc for your Modern GameBox™. Upon inserting said disc, your GameBox turns on and begins installing the game. The wait begins. It's now several percentage points in and ready to start running. You hit the button. "An update is required to play this game." This is when you take a moment to swear under your breath. This is "the future"? Now imagine your next step is finding out that multiplayer is broken, or that the game won't load, or that it barely runs. You've got our current situation.
Recommended Reading: a brief history of female superheroes
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you'll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read. Suffering Sappho! The Tortured History of Female Superheroes by Molly Lambert, Grantland With the truckload of recent comic book movie announcements, female superheroes are poised to make a big splash at the box office in the years to come -- including Gal Gadot (above) as Wonder Woman. However, previous female-led efforts in the genre haven't done well, and the biggest films continue to have dudes as the lead actors. Grantland takes a look at the troubled history of female superheroes as both Marvel and DC Comics prep to give the ladies another shot at Hollywood glory.
'Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare' is having a rocky launch on Xbox One and PlayStation 4
Call of Duty continues to be a pretty big deal. Despite annualized releases and the occasional stinker (we're looking at you, Modern Warfare 3!), people still love to wage virtual war on Activision's battlefields. Hey, we hear this year's game is pretty good! And when you've got a new Xbox One or PlayStation 4 this holiday, there's a strong possibility you'll want to check out this year's entry, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare -- statistically speaking, anyway. Should you be one of those folks: beware! Both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of CoD are having issues. The kind of issues that make the game outright unplayable. Somewhere in Los Angeles, Kevin Spacey is shedding a single tear and he doesn't know why.
'Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare': The Joystiq Review
You get just a novel snippet of peace in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. In this shooter's future, technology has trumped terrorism, rooted out the last evil masterminds and flexed its bionic muscles in total defiance of lead-footed politicians who'd rather talk than get things done. "The world is running out of bad guys," your partner says, hopeful but tragically unaware that he's basically describing a video game glitch. Call of Duty never runs out of bad guys. This one gets points for honesty, though, in that there is no pretentious cover-up of why the good guys beat the bad guys (or why the plot finds them easily interchangeable). In Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, you win because you have better guns, stronger sights, super abilities and superior movement. Whether it's in the rich and varied multiplayer mode, or the frantic, thrill-a-minute single-player campaign, you're constantly relying on cool weapons and combat data to make taking lives easier. Advanced Warfare front-loads the benefits of power in a franchise that has always made technology the exalted, almost fetishized solution to every problem. And you know what? It's more fun when it admits as much. Click here for more
This year's 'Call of Duty' on PS3 and 360 comes with a free new-gen upgrade
Activision is taking a page out of its own book and throwing Call of Duty fans that haven't yet upgraded to new consoles a bone. That's right, if you pick up a digital copy of this year's Advanced Warfare for either the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, you'll get a free upgrade to a new-gen copy within the same console family. That means PlayStation 3 begets a PlayStation 4 download and Xbox 360 in turn unlocks an Xbox One version. What's more, each console will retain its respective license and you'll still be able to play online with your buddies on new and old boxes (with frickin' lasers!) after you do the deed. The offer expires at the end of next March, and like with Destiny before it, premium content like season passes will carry over too. Sounds like a pretty great deal unless, of course, you were planning to pick up one of those special edition Xbox Ones.
This year's 'Call of Duty' is coming to everything but the Wii U
If you were looking forward to playing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare on the Wii U this fall, well, we have some bad news. It turns out that publisher Activision has made the decision that Nintendo's latest console won't see the futuristic shooter at all. On Twitter, a fan recently asked co-founder of Sledgehammer Games, CoD:AW's developer, if the title was coming to the Wii U and Condry replied that that wasn't happening, and that his team is focused on launching for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. "That was an Activision decision," he wrote. This is despite the fact that CoD has appeared on the Wii U for the past two years and that a version of Advanced Warfare is coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, which are similar in horsepower to Nintendo's HD console.
Here's a closer look at the white Xbox One and its Call of Duty-themed brother
Want to get really intimate with the two new Xbox Ones announced at Microsoft's Gamescom 2014 press conference? Well, unless you're here in Cologne, you probably can't get that close quite yet, but we did find said consoles hanging out behind glass. Good news: the white Xbox One completely delivers on its promise. It's got white plastic! As for the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare-themed Xbox One, well, it's absolutely what it promises: Call of Duty symbols are plastered all over the outside. Of course, that COD-themed box also has a 1TB internal hard drive while the white Xbox One is simply bundled with Sunset Overdrive. Neither box was paired with a similarly-themed Kinect, which tells us not to expect a Kinect in the box when both arrive later this year. Head into the gallery below for a closer look, and we've dropped a couple of Vines of both consoles after the break.
'Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare' is getting a custom Xbox One with 1TB of storage
The long-running relationship between Microsoft's Xbox consoles and the Call of Duty brand is expanding into hardware: a custom Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Xbox One is in the works for this holiday. Better yet, it comes ready for all that downloadable content you're going to buy, packing a one terabyte hard drive internally. And what about Kinect? No Kinect, sadly. We say "sadly" because the bundle costs $500. Which is to say, "It costs the same amount as an Xbox One with a 500GB hard drive and a Kinect." Sure, you get Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and you get a custom Xbox One with a larger HDD, but will $500 still be too much for mainstream folks who haven't picked up an Xbox One just yet? We'll see when it arrives on November 4th.
