The Callisto Protocol is beautiful. Please keep this fact in mind while consuming the numerous criticisms that follow in this review. When I mention how imprecise the mechanics are during horde combat, know that the ensuing death screens are pristine. As I talk about my protagonist stalling at the base of a short wall while I frantically mash the vault button, remember that the festering wounds of the monster that rips off my head are juicy and gorgeously rendered. While I try and fail to swap weapons or dodge, remember, through all of this frustration, The Callisto Protocol is stunning on PlayStation 5. Unfortunately, it’s just not a great video game.

I had high hopes for The Callisto Protocol. I played an hour-long preview a few months ago, and I walked away with stars in my eyes and visions of blood-soaked mutants dancing through my head. The portion that I tried was horrific, mechanically satisfying and gorgeous, and it laid the foundation for an expansive world of familiar sci-fi terror. The Callisto Protocol comes from Striking Distance Studios and Dead Space co-creator Glen Schofield, and it shares DNA with that classic horror hit, including its lack of a HUD, the stomping and gravity-controlling abilities, and a de-emphasis on headshots overall.

Striking Distance Studios

Despite these touchstones, Callisto doesn’t feel like Dead Space for long. It eventually introduces a snowy alien world and a massive mining operation, but the first third of the game is the most familiar: tight metal corridors dotted with debris and dead bodies, sparking wires, malfunctioning security systems and vents where mutated creatures can hide. This section is set in Black Iron, a prison colony on Jupiter’s moon that’s run by an evil organization with grand plans for the future of humanity. A mysterious plague has swept through the prison, transforming inmates and guards into violent monsters, and smothering some areas in fleshy alien goo.

This is the section I played in preview and it’s easily the best part of the game. The Callisto Protocol steadily introduces enemies, abilities, weapons and beautiful, mazelike environments – until, eventually, the game collapses under the weight of its own mechanics.

Striking Distance Studios

Dodging is a core aspect of Callisto, and this is the move that disappointed me most clearly and most often. There’s no dodge button; you hold left or right before an enemy hits you, and then hold the opposite direction if there’s another attack incoming. It’s a simple back-and-forth mechanic, but it’s inconsistent, especially when surrounded by multiple enemies. Dodges just don’t land sometimes, even when the animation goes through. This is incredibly frustrating when most bosses kill you in one hit. It’s not only dodging, either: Vaulting over short walls doesn’t always work on the first tap, and this seems to be an issue with an overly sensitive camera.

Other basic mechanics, like melee attacks, firing a gun or swapping weapons, are often too sluggish to be effective, or they simply don’t happen, or their timing is variable for no discernable reason at all. This isn’t every time, but it’s enough to destroy the rhythm of the game. Callisto quickly abandons its sci-fi horror foundation and tries to become an action experience with horde rushes and boss fights against overly powerful enemies, but imprecise mechanics drag the whole thing down.

The first weapon players get is an electro-charged baton. Striking Distance has been clear that Callisto is supposed to be a melee-heavy experience, with “about half” of its combat based on baton-swinging, though there’s just one such weapon in the game. The baton is upgradable, as are the five guns that the protagonist picks up over time. There’s also the GRP glove, which unlocks telekinesis abilities. The GRP ability is exceedingly useful (and fun!), allowing players to throw projectiles and lob enemies into environmental hazards like fans, spike walls and rotating motors, securing an instant kill in the process. However, the gravity glove doesn’t have a ton of battery and it recharges slowly, even when maxed out at the upgrade station. There are also some enemies that simply can’t be picked up with this ability, and the only way to discern which is to give it a try during a fight.

Now, if five guns sounds like a lot for a game that’s designed to emphasize close-combat melee, that’s because it is. I have myriad issues with Callisto’s gun-management system, starting with the fact that there are too many firearms in the first place. The game’s main battle mechanic revolves around securing melee combos until a reticle locks onto the enemy, allowing players to get in a few quick shots with a gun. At least, that’s the idea. In practice, the reticle system is inconsistent, at times lingering on an enemy and other times disappearing in a flash, offering no time to actually shoot. This combo simply doesn’t feel powerful, even when the extra shots actually connect.

There’s also no quick way to see how much ammo your weapon has before shooting – there’s no HUD in this game, so no persistent ammo or loadout indicators – and swapping among weapons is enraging. Pressing left on the D-pad transitions between two guns only, so even if you have five weapons in your inventory, you won’t find them no matter how many times you spam the swap button. Pressing right pulls up a mini gun menu with your full arsenal, but this is difficult to parse. Small handguns can only be swapped for small handguns, and large for large, though there’s no clear distinction between the two types in the pop-up menu. It’s difficult to manage this system in moments of quiet, and nearly impossible in the middle of combat. Too often I found myself smashing the left button, uselessly swapping between two guns with zero ammo and frustrated that I couldn’t access my additional weapons.

In the middle of fights with multiple enemies, the reticle and ammo guessing game is often lethal, and it’s an exceedingly annoying way to die.

Maybe this is all by design. Maybe by making the gun system annoying as hell, developers thought it would drive players to rely on melee moves. But then why make shooting a core part of the melee experience, and why offer so many damn guns, each with a unique ammo type? An unreliable lock-on system actively discourages close-quarters fighting, there are ammo drops all over the place, and there’s nothing to indicate when a basic melee attack is actually the most powerful move in your arsenal. Not to mention, dodging is dodgy as hell. This turns some boss and horde battles into frustrating, drawn-out sequences with dozens of death screens, until you randomly use a basic melee attack at the right moment and the fight starts progressing at speed.

Striking Distance Studios

In the end, it feels like the game provides resources it doesn’t actually want you to use, and then punishes you for using them. Melee combat isn’t smooth or powerful enough to emerge as the obvious solution in any situation. Striking Distance may have been clear that Callisto is a melee experience, but the game itself does not.

The main ideas here could have worked, if only there were a hint of on-screen feedback. Callisto doesn’t have a HUD – just like Dead Space – and it eschews common video game features like glowing weak points (at least until the literal last fight) and persistent on-screen text. This is ostensibly with the goal of creating an immersive experience, but instead the lack of information pulled me out of the flow more than anything else. My tip is to max out the GRP glove and focus on environmental kills – and when in doubt, try a basic melee attack.

The biggest tragedy of The Callisto Protocol is the fact that it’s just not scary. There are some deliciously gruesome death scenes and moments of high tension – I particularly enjoyed the stealth moments – but these are overshadowed by rage-inducing gameplay issues. Its story beats are generic and so is the protagonist (played by Josh Duhamel), while the setting feels like a 1980s Hollywood vision of sci-fi dystopia, with a splash of Resident Evil’s monster design and The Last of Us’ clicky audio cues. This isn’t to say that generic ideas are automatically bad: All of these references could have easily coalesced into an engaging, even scary, game – if only the actual mechanics were functional.

But please, remember: The Callisto Protocol is beautiful. I emerged from multiple annoying boss fights frustrated and filled with ick, only to step into the next environment and go, “Wow, that’s pretty.” It’s just not that scary – or enjoyable.

It’s a strange feeling. The Callisto Protocol is a new game from a studio with zero releases to its name, but playing it feels like coming home. Its mechanics, environments and monsters are deeply familiar, unapologetically feeding off the immersive sci-fi horror concepts of Dead Space. While playing a preview of The Callisto Protocol on PlayStation 5, I was reminded of that scene from Wayne’s World where the boys are looking down on a film set that looks like Wayne’s basement, but it’s not actually Wayne’s basement, and Garth says, "Isn’t that weird?" They all agree it is.

Playing The Callisto Protocol, I found myself trapped in a world between old and new. Like I said, it was strange. However, once the weirdness wore off, playing The Callisto Protocol just felt good.

Callisto is the first game out of Striking Distance Studios, a team led by Dead Space co-creator Greg Schofield — so yeah, all the references are coming straight from the source. And there are plenty of similarities to go around: Callisto stars a lone space dude fighting through rooms of mutated humans; headshots are less effective than shooting extremities and tentacles; there’s no UI and the protagonist’s health is displayed on the back of his neck; stomping enemies is the best way to ensure they’re dead; there’s a gravity gun that functions like a kinesis ability; and the death screens are particularly gruesome. One early level even has a vignette with the phrase, "shoot the tentacles" scrawled across the wall in blood, riffing on the classic Dead Space blood tag that read, "cut off their limbs."

Striking Distance Studios

I had the luxury of playing the Callisto Protocol preview just a week after trying out Motive Studio’s Dead Space remake, so the similarities stung sharply — but so did the differences. The Callisto Protocol does some things that Dead Space couldn’t, and it’s clearly a bigger game in a more complex world. Where the USG Ishimura in Dead Space often felt claustrophobic, the dead-moon prison colony in The Callisto Protocol feels vast and mazelike, with ladders, vents, long hallways, tight corridors and open laboratories with multiple access points for enemies, all of it overgrown with alien life.

The early game features a variety of enemy types — rushing monsters, tall spitters, leather-daddy tanks and invisible beasts with too many legs, to name a few — and they’re each difficult to kill in their own special ways. The twist is that all of the infected humans, or Biophage, will mutate in front of the player’s eyes when they’re not killed quickly enough, growing stronger in their evolved form. Enemy spawn points are not randomized, a fact that I discovered after dying a few times in a row in a single room. (The death screens are numerous and reach Mortal Kombat levels of brutality in the best possible way.)

All of these details result in a rich sense of strategy, with explodables, ammo drops and escape routes secreted around each combat area. Callisto is a video game for video game people, offering little actual direction while relying on the environment to communicate escape and attack opportunities — a suspiciously red canister in the middle of a long walkway, a ladder rung dangling just within reach, a box barely big enough to duck behind. Each detail blends smoothly into the futuristic surroundings, only standing out when a horde of Biophage are breathing down your neck.

TheCallisto Protocol is a fully formed concept executed with proficiency. The Striking Distance crew clearly know how to make a game feel tense and horrific and satisfying, and with Callisto, they’re just showing off. Only one segment of my playthrough sticks out negatively in my mind: The protagonist essentially finds himself on a water slide, and players have to navigate the concrete pillars and other obstacles in his path. It isn’t a terrible concept, but personally, I don’t need any more on-rails sequences in my games. Overall though, the preview was a haze of sci-fi gore, action and surprise, and I’m excited to play the full game when it comes out on December 2nd.

To be honest, I almost expected more out of The Callisto Protocol — more growth since Dead Space, a new perspective on horror, a stronger attempt to be different than that iconic game. Instead, Callisto leans into Dead Space’s original ideas and competes with them directly, even down to the release timing — the Dead Space remake is due out just eight weeks after Callisto. Something about that feels personal, like The Callisto Protocol is shoving something in Dead Space’s face; as if, more than a decade later, Schofield is trying to prove something to EA. That’s not based on any conversations with developers, it’s just a gut feeling I have.

Striking Distance Studios

Conspiracy theories aside, it’s fortunate that Dead Space provides such a timeless foundation for The Callisto Protocol’s playground. The original ideas — immersive UI, strategic combat, horrific killscreens, tight metal corridors — remain effective today, and modern hardware only provides more room for these mechanics to breathe.

The Callisto Protocol contains a few fresh concepts, but its most satisfying mechanics are the familiar ones, spit-shined for a new generation. That said, The Callisto Protocol’s success isn’t guaranteed just because it’s riffing on proven ideas — the game still has to run smoothly and look beautiful. Luckily, it seems Striking Distance got it right in these areas, too. Playing for an hour on PS5, the game is perfectly polished, terrifying and gruesome. Somehow, The Callisto Protocol is entirely new, yet exactly as I remember.

A new Bayonetta game is like the circus rolling into town. Bayonetta is the ringmaster, of course, and she shows up out of the blue with boxcars of strange beasts, weird friends, dangerous spells, magnificent clothing and endless promises to impress. Her stories don’t always make sense, but they’re filled with melodrama and action, magic and gunfire, and once Bayonetta enters the spotlight, there’s no looking away. Especially not when she’s dancing her way through a spell in an outfit made of her own hair, while 40-storey monsters fight to the death at her back.

Bayonetta 3 is full of classic Bayonetta madness, all of it amped up by one degree. The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been, the enemies are absolutely massive, Bayonetta’s magic is incredibly powerful, her outfits are outstanding, and the fights don’t stop coming. A loose plot holds the entire game together – an army of man-made bioweapons called Homonculi is threatening the existence of the multiverse – but it’s just an excuse to throw Bayonetta and friends into an endless string of battles in a variety of crumbling cities. In that way, Bayonetta 3 isn’t very different from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though PlatinumGames’ latest installment has way more witchcraft, silliness and shoe-operated guns than anything helmed by Robert Downey Jr.

Structurally and mechanically, Bayonetta 3 is as rich as its predecessors. Bayonetta acquires new skills and weapons throughout her quest; she collects fragments of fallen enemies to purchase items, consumables and accessories in the Gates of Hell shop, while orbs unlock abilities on her skill tree. Combat is all about performing stylish combos and executing well-timed dodges, and each fight is infinitely replayable if you’re chasing high scores. There are also plenty of challenges and secrets to find in each level.

Bayonetta 3 is a Switch exclusive, and it struggles as much as any fast-paced action game on that console: At times, inputs feel sluggish and it becomes difficult to track which moves are actually lined up. The game does a fine job of providing visual indicators for attacks and there is a rhythm to be found in the fray, but the entire thing runs in Switch Reaction Time (does not adhere to daylight saving).

For fans of the series, there’s nothing missing in Bayonetta 3 – in fact, there’s just more. More weirdness, more one-liners, more swag, and more combat mechanics. For instance, one section puts players in control of Bayonetta’s witchy buddy, Jeanne, for a side-scrolling action sequence with 1960s espionage flair. Another mechanic allows Bayonetta to control time in short bursts, at times reverting to her younger self. Throughout the game, the Demon Masquerade ability adds hellish features to Bayonetta’s weapons and allows her to transform into various demons, while the Demon Slave skill allows her to summon and control giant creatures of hell, each with a specific moveset.

Most of Bayonetta’s demons are inspired by classically spooky animals like moths and spiders, but one of her forms is a literal train. A little over halfway through the game, Bayonetta is infused with the energy of Satan’s choo-choo and she’s able to summon a hellish tank engine during fights. Attacking as the train with Demon Slave slows down time temporarily, allowing players to quickly draw a track and indicate points of damage along the route, ideally in the path of nearby enemies. Let go of the Demon Slave button and the train barrels down the ghost track in real time, dealing hefty damage to anything it hits. Bayonetta also acquires the ability to turn into a literal train-witch hybrid through Demon Masquerade, rushing forward with heavy-duty chainsaw-like attacks. Because of course she does.

Nintendo/PlatinumGames

By the time the train demon appears, it actually fits into the rest of the game nicely. Bayonetta’s world has always been wacky, and 3 is no exception. If you can handle the idea of Umbra Witches and bartending angels, you can deal with some light locomotive play.

I don’t take Bayonetta games too seriously and this feels like the right move, especially after playing the third installment. The series’ sense of combat is rich and its storyline is incredibly intricate, involving divine wars and parallel universes, and yet it all just feels like an excuse to make Bayonetta dance her way through a spell while massive monsters fight in the background. Thankfully, this is the best part of the series – Bayonetta is powerful and fighting in her (gun)shoes feels great, but her personality is what makes this franchise a cult hit. Bayonetta is confident, sarcastic and always correct; her outfits are stunning and so are her friends; she dances like an angel; she never has a hair out of place and her one-liners never stop. She’s a drag queen in a universe loosely held together by witchcraft, and the chaos of this combination is truly magical.

Bayonetta 3 is ridiculous and slightly disjointed, but that's precisely what makes it so wonderful. It builds on a multiverse of weird and witchy ideas, and it delivers exactly what fans of the series expect – something totally unexpected.

Nintendo/PlatinumGames

Silent Hill fans, hold onto your butts. Konami today dropped a ton of news about the future of its iconic horror franchise, and aside from confirming a long-rumored remake of Silent Hill 2, the studio revealed three new games in the same universe: Silent Hill Townfall, Ascension and f. They all sound like incredibly different experiences.

Townfall comes from Annapurna Interactive and No Code, a Glasgow studio known for strong narrative skills and horror world-building in titles like Observation and Stories Untold. The short teaser for Townfall features an old-school pocket television clipping through tense conversations and disturbing scenes, and it looks to be the most traditional Silent Hill game of the trio.

Ascension is the least game-like installment here, but it comes with a big name attached: JJ Abrams. It's an interactive streaming series where "the entire community shapes the canon of Silent Hill," and its tagline is "Face Your Trauma Together." Ascension comes from Abrams' studio, Bad Robot, and Genvid, a company that produces interactive live shows. It's described as "a new form of entertainment that blends community, live storytelling and interactivity." Ascension is due out in 2023.

And then there's Silent Hill f, a game that sounds like an exciting departure for the series. It's coming from Ryūkishi07, a creator known for crafting acclaimed visual novels with psychological horror and supernatural mysteries at their core. The teaser for f is gorgeous and gruesome, featuring a young woman as she's consumed from the inside-out by the tentacles of a flesh-eating plant. A YouTube description for the teaser says the game is "set in 1960s Japan featuring a beautiful, yet horrifying world." The video only gets bloodier as it goes, so dip out early if it's making you squirm — or lean in and get a good look, you lovely freak. There's no word yet on a release date or platforms for f.

And that isn't where Konami's renewed interest in Silent Hill ends — alongside Bloober Team's remake of Silent Hill 2, a new movie called Return to Silent Hill is in the works from Christophe Gans, the director of the 2006 film adaptation.

As the rumors suggested, a remake of Silent Hill 2 is in the works from Bloober Team. Bloober is the studio behind Layers of Fear and The Medium, and it's a complete remake, not a remaster of Konami's 2001 horror game. You'll remember it as the one that introduced Pyramid Head.

The surprise for this one comes in the platforms — the remake will be exclusive to PS5 and PC, and the PlayStation Store page for the game is live now. There's no word on a release date so far.

Konami

It's been 10 years since Konami released the last installments in the Silent Hill series, Downpour and Book of Memories (RIP the Vita). PT, a teaser for a Silent Hills game that never materialized, came out in 2014 and was an instant cult hit, reigniting interest in Konami's horror universe. Rumors have been flying about the series this year, including hopes for a PT-style game and the Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team.

Konami revealed the Silent Hill 2 remake during a live stream today.

Google has turned its attention to tablets with today's Chrome on Android update, which focuses on improving tab navigation. The update introduces a side-by-side tab design that makes swapping open pages easier, and an auto-scroll back feature that brings you directly to your previous tab. When tabs become too small, the new Chrome on Android will get rid of the close button on each one, hopefully preventing accidental exits. There's also a new visual tab layout, which organizes tabs in a grid with a preview of each page.

Google is also adding drag-and-drop among apps, allowing you to take an image, text or link from Chrome and slide it into Gmail, Photos or other programs. Finally, today's update brings desktop mode to Chrome on Android.

The update is live now on all Android tablets, and it'll come to the Pixel Tablet when that lands next year. It makes sense that Google is trying to spruce up its tablet interface ahead of the Pixel's launch, and this likely won't be the last update in this space over the coming months.

Google has already confirmed that a future update will add tab groups, a popular desktop feature, to Chrome on Android.

The Dead Space remake has to be better than Dead Space. The original came out 14 years ago and imploded common ideas of what a horror game should be: It decreased the power of the headshot and stripped away all on-screen icons to immerse us in the ravaged corridors of the Ishimura, where we were stalked by half-human monsters with freakishly elongated limbs. Dead Space was terrifying and thrilling and surprising, and these emotions have only made the game shine brighter in our memories. This is the version of Dead Space that the remake has to compete with — the one that lives only in our heads, filtered by nostalgia. It seems like an impossible standard to reach. But I think the Dead Space remake nails it — mostly.

Motive Studio and EA held a demo event for Dead Space last month, and I got to play the first three chapters of the remake, stopping just after Isaac restarted the centrifuge. This was the full game in pre-beta form and I played on PC with an Xbox controller. It was immediately impressive by modern standards: The metallic rooms of the Ishimura were filled with crisp, horrific details, and the health indicator running up Isaac’s spine was clearer than ever. Tense instrumentals and mechanical humming noises rose and fell as he explored the ship, and sharp audio cues kept the sense of impending doom alive. Some of the sounds tapped directly into my nostalgia neurons, particularly at the save stations and while picking up items.

EA

The Dead Space remake has fresh voice acting, puzzles, storylines and mechanics, and an AI-driven director that maximizes the horror of each scene. This system doesn’t randomize the behavior of enemies, but it sets off environmental features like steaming pipes, harsh whispers and flickering lights. Whatever the horror director was doing during my playthrough, it worked — I was suitably scared in every setting.

In the demo, Dead Space followed a familiar cadence of dark hallways and towering necromorphs, but it also offered a handful of surprises. For one, the pulse rifle had a new alternative fire that threw out a small proximity mine, rather than a 360-degree spray. (Nothing about the plasma cutter was changed because the plasma cutter is and always has been perfect.) And then there was the revamped zero-gravity mechanic — instead of clinging to surfaces and leaping off of them in an extended jump, the Dead Space remake let me swim through the air, opening up new puzzle and exploration opportunities, especially in conjunction with the stasis and kinesis abilities. It all felt entirely natural, as if this was what developers wanted to do with Dead Space the first time around, but our 2008 hardware just couldn’t handle it.

EA

Honestly though, today’s hardware can’t handle this version of Dead Space, at least not in its current preview form. There are no loading screens in the remake and this feature caused critical problems during my playthrough. I encountered significant and persistent framerate issues throughout the demo, particularly after walking through doorways, as background loading kicked in. My game crashed once and I voluntarily restarted it another time, after slogging through multiple scenes of stuttering animations. The framerate issues were extremely frustrating. Isaac also felt sluggish at certain points, causing me to misfire my weapons or waste time stomping on already-dead enemies. I wasn’t the only player in the room to experience these problems, though some demos seemed to run just fine from start to finish. Developers at Motive made it clear they were aware of these issues and promised they'd be resolved before release day, but my preview experience was less than seamless.

Outside of the framerate frustrations, the Dead Space remake was a delicious slice of old-school video game terror. The necromorphs attacked from the shadows and screamed with guttural, humanlike cries, their long blades and bloody intestines lit only by the glow of Isaac’s plasma cutter. The Dead Space rhythm of stasis, shoot, stomp still worked wonders on nearly every enemy, and headshots didn’t do much to stop the onslaught. Resource management was a crucial aspect of play and each monster took multiple hits to die, leaving infected limbs and tentacles strewn across the floor after each encounter. Some elevator rides were also conspicuously long, as was Isaac’s time on the horizontal people mover — developers told me this was all on purpose, not to cheat in extra loading time, but to give players a moment to breathe and think about the horrors ahead.

I screamed within two minutes of playing the new Dead Space. Even in the crowded demo room, surrounded by PR people, developers and other reporters, the remake sucked me in and scared the hell out of me. It didn’t matter that I’d played the original when it came out in 2008; it didn’t matter that I knew what to expect out of the necromorphs and NPCs; the first three chapters of the remake were tense and terrifying.

EA

More impressively though, the new Dead Space made me smile. Even in its pre-beta form, the remake felt familiar but fresh, and I could’ve kept playing all day — well, if the framerate issues had abated. This problem worries me slightly, but there’s time for Motive to address it before the game hits PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles on January 27th, 2023. When the remake ran smoothly, its lack of a HUD was still effective as an immersive tool, the necromorphs were horrifying, and the upgraded mechanics slid smoothly into the frantic rhythm of the game. Overall, this was Dead Space, but better than I remembered.

Overwatch 2 is set to go live and free-to-play on October 4th, and in preparation for the big day, Blizzard has outlined a suite of moderation tools aimed at curbing abusive and disruptive player behavior. The new system will require a phone number to be linked to every account, and will introduce audio transcriptions of reported voice chat interactions, among other changes. Blizzard is calling the initiative Defense Matrix, named after D.Va's hologram shield ability.

The phone-linking system, SMS Protect, means every Overwatch 2 player will need to connect a phone number to their Battle.net account, and that number can't be used to operate or create another account. This makes it easier to enforce suspensions and bans, and makes it harder for players to cheat the matchmaking system. SMS Protect isn't a new idea in the world of competitive online gaming, and it's a proven way to reduce smurfing — a practice where skilled players create new accounts and creep into lower-tier matches, whether to boost their friends, avoid a ban or simply troll.

Another notable feature of Defense Matrix is the addition of audio transcriptions for problematic voice chat recordings and automated review tools for the resulting text. The transcription process relies on players reporting abusive speech as it happens — but once someone is reported, this system collects a temporary recording of the match's voice chat and transcribes it to text. That text is then analyzed by Blizzard's existing AI-driven abuse-detection tools. 

When it comes to the longevity of the recordings and text files, Blizzard said the following: "Once the audio recording has been transcribed to text, it’s quickly deleted as the file’s sole purpose is to identify potentially disruptive behavior. The text file is then deleted no later than 30 days after the audio transcription."

The studio said audio transcriptions will roll out in the weeks after launch. Additionally, the general chat feature won't exist in Overwatch 2, leaving Twitch streamers one fewer outlet for their watch-me spam. Blizzard outlined the complete Defense Matrix strategy on the Overwatch blog, alongside checklists for existing and new players. October 2nd is the final full day to play the original Overwatch, and Overwatch 2 is scheduled to go live worldwide at 3pm ET on October 4th.

Call of Duty is doubling down on mobile play with Warzone Mobile, a battle royale heading to Android and iOS devices in 2023. Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile will feature 120-player matches with operators, weapons, locations and combat familiar to existing Warzone fans. The game will support a shared Battle Pass, social features and cross-progression with Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0, both of which are due out at the end of 2022. The base game will be free.

Activision hasn't shared details about potential microtransactions in Warzone Mobile, but that'll likely be the case. In-game purchases have been built into Call of Duty: Mobile since its debut in 2019, and that plan seems to have worked out just fine for Activision — the studio has made more than $1.5 billion off of Android and iOS players in less than three years, according to SensorTower. Call of Duty: Mobile has been downloaded more than 650 million times globally.

If Call of Duty: Mobile was a test run, Warzone Mobile is Activision's end game. Warzone Mobile is part of a unification scheme for the entire Call of Duty franchise, with Activision pulling the annual installment, Warzone and mobile play into one ecosystem with the same underlying technology. This move unlocks shared progression, socializing and payments across platforms and titles, transforming Call of Duty into more of a state of mind than a video game.

Though the franchise is coming together in new ways, Warzone Mobile will feature mobile-specific playlists, events and content. Activision also promises deep customization options for handheld play. The game is being developed with input from multiple studios, including Activision Shanghai, Beenox, Digital Legends and Solid State Studios. Pre-registration for Warzone Mobile is live now on Google Play.

Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 will officially land on November 16th, bringing Modern Warfare II environments, gameplay and technology to a large-scale battlefield. This release date has been floating around the internet for a few months now, and Activision confirmed it today during a showcase about the new, connected future of Call of Duty.

Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0 will mark a turning point for the Call of Duty franchise, with a focus on cross-progression and shared technology among its various versions. MWII comes out on October 28th, just a few weeks before Warzone 2.0. Both games will use the same underlying technology, a fresh version of the IW engine that powered 2019's Modern Warfare. 

Warzone 2.0 will serve as an extension of MWII multiplayer, set in a fictional region of Western Asia called Al Mazrah. The battle royale has a revamped circle mechanic for end-game play, with multiple enclosures dropping down, rather than a single shrinking circle. There's also a new sandbox experience called DMZ and a revamped Gulag, where killed players can fight for the chance to rejoin a match in 2-on-2 skirmishes.

AI mechanics in Warzone 2.0 will be ripped from the mainline installment as well — MWII will feature AI-driven advancements in squad positioning and enemy behavior, offering more lifelike reactions to player movement across the board. This AI system will also be live in Warzone 2.0. Both titles will use Activision's Ricochet Anti-Cheat, a kernel-level solution that monitors your rig while the games are active.

MWII multiplayer emphasizes amphibious play, stealth and vehicular combat, and later this year it'll get a new 3-v-3 Raids mode. The MWII multiplayer open beta goes live September 16th on PlayStation, and September 22nd on Xbox and PC (and still PlayStation). This'll be open to folks who pre-ordered the game.

Warzone 2.0 will be free-to-play, just like its granddaddy, Warzone.