Awishday

Call of Duty’s matchmaking is no longer a mystery.

Last year, Activision promised fans that it’d finally open up about how matchmaking works in Call of Duty. Today, it delivered: The unprecedented blog post dives deep into exactly which factors Call of Duty is looking for when grouping you with other players, and where its priorities lie. The post does not cover Warzone matchmaking or ranked modes.

It’s a longer list than you might assume. For instance: whether or not you have voice chat enabled affects matchmaking, as does what maps you’ve played recently. The blog also reaffirms comments from Activision studios over the years that Call of Duty values low matchmaking times and ping above all else. Yes, player skill is a factor too, but Activision says it’s not “the dominant variable.” Perhaps in this case, “skill-based matchmaking” is a misnomer.

Here’s how Call of Duty matchmaking works in order of importance, according to Activision:

1. CONNEC…

Out of all the bosses added in Diablo 4 season 2, The Beast in the Ice was the most annoying one to kill. Not only did he have a lot of attacks you had to dodge out of before you could get a hit on him, he was also a pain to reach in the first place. If you wanted a chance at some of the most powerful items in the game, you had to collect nine frustratingly rare items every time you wanted to summon him.

In season 3, which starts tomorrow, The Beast in the Ice will get five new Unique items added to his loot table. Each of them are powerful enough to build your character around, like a new pair of gloves that increases the damage of your most basic skills by 200%. Instead of having to cross your fingers and wait for them to randomly drop, you can seek out The Beast in The Ice and hope you get them after a handful of runs.

It’ll still require the same amount of Distilled Fear to fight The Beast in the Ice, but Blizzard has increased the drop rate of Distilled Fear in Nigh…

Prime Day (Two) is ongoing and so far it’s been… a lot. Sales left, right and center, while wonderful, can also be a little overwhelming. And no small number of these deals still run triple- or even quadruple-digit price tags.

• We’re curating the best Prime Day PC gaming deals right here.

Not all deals are thus, though. We’ve seen our fair share of sub-$100 corkers, and many of these are still on offer with big discounts. From capacious and snappy SSDs to clackety keyboards and colorful RGB lighting, there’s plenty still on offer for under $100. Who said that PC gaming had to break the bank?

There are, of course, more peripherals than internal components in the sub-$100 category. You’re simply unlikely to get a great modern CPU or graphics card for under $100. There are a couple of less-for-function, more-for-aesthetic deals worth checking out, too. Without further ado, here are our favorite Prime Day d…

The US government is soon to begin awarding up to $52 billion in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing. The funding is a part of the CHIPS and Science Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in August 2022. But before the funds are given, the US Commerce Department is introducing rules to ensure beneficiaries of the funding don’t spend it elsewhere, and it particularly doesn’t want it feeding back to China.

According to a report by Reuters, the proposal seeks to prevent recipients of funding from funneling money into ‘countries of concern’ such as Russia and China. A company with a global reach could theoretically engage in research or development of sensitive semiconductors in countries the US does not want to be sharing with.

The measures seek to restrict sensitive technologies from falling into the wrong hands. This includes quantum computing and AI technology, radiation hardened chips and communications equipment that could be used for things like m…

Where once it had to ask politely to put high-profile farming machine brands in Farming Simulator, Giants Software now has too many requests to be in the wildly popular simulator series, a new profile of the game in The Guardian says.

“In the beginning, we had to ask manufacturers to be included in the game,” said Wolfgang Ebert, Giants’ marketing manager, to The Guardian. “Today, we have to consider who we can integrate and what benefit there is to the game—we have many, many brands waiting to be included.”

It’s a fascinating look at how a once-niche game has taken pride of place as prestige advertising in the highly specialized world of farm equipment manufacturing. Giants can only include some 500 pieces of equipment in a Farming Simulator release, and how much money changes hands certainly has an affect on what goes in the game—though Giants is clear that its primary business is game development.

It’s definitely part of the appeal to manufactu…

Visions of Mana is the first new entry in Square Enix’s Mana series in 15 years, and with that comes some fundamental changes. Following my hands-on preview with Visions of Mana, I had the chance to ask producer Masaru Oyamada if cooperative multiplayer was ever considered for Visions of Mana, and if multiplayer had a place in the Mana series’ future.

“When I played Secret of Mana, the multiplayer co-op mode was something that really stood out and left a strong impression on me.” Oyamada said. “So when we were proposing this game internally, and discussing what it should be, we actually had that discussion on whether we should incorporate a feature like that.”

Though 1993’s Secret of Mana was the second game in the Mana series, it was the first entry to include cooperative play. Many subsequent Mana games carried on this tradition, including the Super Famicom version of Trials of Mana, Legend of Mana, and Children of Mana for the Nintendo DS.

“As things kind of dev…

The surprise sequel Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 was announced back in July, and it struck us as something of a do-over, but with a heavy emphasis on more: More stages and updates of existing stages, a new campaign mode, more modes in general, crossplay, a visual spit-shine to every existing character, new minigames, and of course new characters. And now we’ve got the reveal of the final character coming to the lineup: It’s the Avatar firebender Azula, princess of the Fire Nation and daughter of Fire Lord Ozai.

Azula is a powerful firebender, but possesses something of an unstable personality: She’s a driven perfectionist with little patience for those who she believes fall short of her demands, and often treats those around her harshly, and even irrationally. She’s very handy in a fight, though, and her speed and agility make her dangerous even without her powers.

How does all that translate into NASB2? Developer Fair Play Labs has the word:

“Azula is a fierce…

Gamescom is right around the corner, and you definitely don’t want to miss the opening night on August 21. Our sister site GamesRadar+ will be there powering the Future Games Show, dazzling our screens with over 50 games from publishers like 2K, Plaion, and Nacon, as well as some extra treats along the way.

If you’ve tuned into a Future Games Show before then you’ll know each one is hosted by two iconic videogame voice actors, and this upcoming showcase is no different. These folk are real Rockstars, with Red Dead Redemption 2’s Alex McKenna (Sadie Adler) and Grand Theft Auto 5’s Ned Luke (Michael De Santa) helping to present everything the Future Games Show has on offer. McKenna promises the showcase will have “an exciting mix of games from indie to blockbusters you don’t want to miss,” while Luke said “We’re going to be showing off some world premieres and going hard on some of 2024’s hottest new games.”

They’re not the only guest stars this time, either. The …