Month: September 2019

The beta for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has begun pre-loading on PC and Xbox One, so you can load up your version of choice to be ready for the impending test.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Open Beta on PS4
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Open Beta on Xbox One

The pre-load comes on the heels of a successful first beta test that ran from September 12-15. That one was exclusive to PS4 owners, but another test planned for the weekend of September 19 will expand to PC and Xbox One pre-orders as well. It will include the first taste of the massive Ground War multiplayer mode, as well as the ability to throw down against other players cross-platform. According to an FAQ, you can opt out of cross-platform play if you only want to play with your own platform compatriots. You can also earn a shotgun by participating in the beta.

Meanwhile, Infinity Ward recently revealed that the campaign will be around the length that you’ve come to expect from a Call of Duty title, though studio narrative director Taylor Kurosaki did say that the hour count can vary.

One thing Modern Warfare definitely won’t have, though, is a battle royale mode. The studio said while it loves battle royale, it’s just not pursuing that direction for this game. Kurosaki joked that with all the other modes, battle royale “won’t fit in the box” and asked, “how much do you want?!”

Modern Warfare releases on October 25 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. For more details, check out our Call of Duty: Modern Warfare pre-order guide.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Beta Details

PS4 Exclusive Beta Dates

• September 12-13 (Early Access, PS4)
• September 14-16 (Open beta, PS4)

Cross-Play Beta Dates

• September 19-20 (Early access, PC and Xbox One; open beta, PS4)
• September 21-23 (Open beta, PS4, Xbox One, and PC)

Cross-Play Beta Start Times

• September 19 (PS4 open beta; Xbox One/PC early access)
  • 10 AM PT
  • 1 PM ET
  • 6 PM BST
  • 3 AM AET (September 20)
• September 20 (PS4, Xbox One, PC open beta)
  • 6 PM PT
  • 9 PM ET
  • 2 AM BST (September 21)
  • 11 AM AET (September 21)

Ahead of its launch next month, developer Nihon Falcom’s The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III has a free demo available now on PlayStation 4. You may need to free up some space as the demo sits at about 13GB, but it seems you can transfer your save file to the full game.

The demo will allow you to experience the “opening moments” of Trails of Cold Steel III as you come to know the next generation of Class VII. The PlayStation store outlines how to acquire the trophy for completing the prologue. Create a save before the final boss encounter, transfer that save file to the full game, and beat the boss in the full game to get the trophy.

Sony’s Trails of Cold Steel III guided demo overview, below, walks through basic combat mechanics, character introductions and lore, gameplay features, and more. Some activities available in the demo include fishing and a new collectible card game called “Vantage Masters.” The demo will also include a “Backstory” tab where you can catch up on the series.

Last month, we sat down with Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo to talk about localization and the future of the Trails franchise. Kondo also said his studio is negotiating with “multiple publishers” on porting its games to Nintendo Switch. For now, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III will launch on October 22 exclusively for PlayStation 4.

Pokemon Go‘s September Community Day may have only recently ended, but developer Niantic has already announced the first details for next month’s event. October’s Community Day is set for Saturday, October 12, and this time, players will have more chances to catch another Pokemon originally from Ruby and Sapphire: Trapinch.

Throughout the event, Trapinch will appear in the wild much more often than normal, and you’ll also have a chance of encountering a Shiny Trapinch in Go for the first time. On top of that, the Ant Pit Pokemon will be able to learn a special event-exclusive move if you evolve it all the way into its final form, Flygon, by the end of the Community Day, although Niantic hasn’t revealed what that attack will be yet.

In addition to increased Trapinch spawns, Niantic will offer a couple of other bonuses during October’s Community Day. This time, you’ll earn three times the usual amount of XP when you capture a Pokemon during the event. As usual, any Lure Modules you use during the Community Day will also last for three hours rather than 30 minutes.

Much like September’s Community Day, October’s event will take place earlier than usual, from 11 AM to 2 PM local time. You can find more details about the event on the official Pokemon Go website.

In the meantime, the first Gen 5 Pokemon have made their debut in Pokemon Go. The new monsters arrived as part of the mobile game’s final set of Ultra Bonuses, which also includes the return of Mewtwo to five-star Raids. Alongside the new Pokemon, Niantic has added a new evolutionary item called the Unova Stone, which is used to evolve certain Gen 5 monsters. You can read how to get the Unova Stone in our guide. For more Pokemon Go news, be sure to check out the links below.

A figure who appears to be Cryto–long believed to be the eleventh playable character coming to Apex Legends, thanks to datamining and outright leaks–has been spotted in Respawn’s battle royale. If you travel to Singh Labs, added to King’s Canyon during the limited-time Voidwalker event, you can spot the character believed to be Crypto in a secret room.

Crypto disappears once you spot him, so if you want to see him, your squad will have to reach the Singh Labs and enter the secret room ahead of other players. Upon entering the labs, head towards some suspiciously propped open doors, noticed by Reddit user FrozenFroh, and break them down. You can also squeeze by them if you prefer. Inside you’ll see Crypto finishing up a download on one of the labs’ computers. Upon noticing you, he’ll panic, yank out his hard drive, and run out with his drone in tow.

The mysterious hacker has had a presence in Apex Legends for a long time, first teased back in June after Octane’s introduction and before Wattson was even on most player’s radar. FrozenFroh found that teaser too–Crypto’s laptop secretly hidden on the King’s Canyon map. Crypto would then be alluded to again during the start of Apex Legends Season 2, when the cinematic trailer for the season showcased the hacker as the one responsible for destroying the tower that kept the flyers and leviathans at bay.

As Season 2 has wound down, Crypto’s presence in King’s Canyon has grown more noticeable. In the Wraith-focused cinematic short that released alongside the start of the Voidwalker event, you can see the interdimensional skirmisher insert a flash drive into a Singh Labs’ computer, which injects hacking software that’s marked with Crypto’s trademark callsign.

King’s Canyon has experienced strange glitches too, most likely the result of the person who’s attempting to decrypt…the King’s Canyon computers? Maybe? It hasn’t been very clear. All we know is that some of the screens in King’s Canyon have glitched out and begun showing a progress bar for the decryption and the bar has been steadily filling up more each time throughout the Voidwalker event, finally completely filling this past weekend–which coincides with Crypto’s appearance on the map. The announcer’s voice has also been occasionally garbled in the game–the glitch popped up whenever one of Crypto’s decryption attempts failed to fully complete. Crypto wants something, but what he wants remains unclear.

His recent appearance on the map presents the most clues, hinting that Crypto’s hacks have not been malicious against the Legends and he is actually trying to achieve something. The computer Crypto is pulling data from seems to control the massive void portal connected to the labs. Thanks to the Wraith cinematic short, it’s now confirmed that the void portals can connect to other dimensions and someone can travel to them with the right harness. In Wraith’s case, she uses the gauntlet on her forearm and the labs seem to be studying how to emulate this technology so others can do the same.

Before he shuts down what he’s working on, you can see Crypto is trying to redirect the void portal to connect to a place called World’s Edge. World’s Edge isn’t a reference to anything Titanfall-related so it’s difficult to accurately guess what it could be, or if it even matters for Crypto’s official introduction–which is expected to coincide with the addition of a new weapon and map change with the launch of Season 3. Given that it seems to be a new location, however, it could be possible that World’s Edge is in reference to the Season 3 map change or a hint that we’re getting a brand-new, second map for Apex Legends. Only time will tell.

Apex Legends is available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.