PUBG has been updated to version 39.2 on PC today, with consoles getting the update on January 15th, and this update has intensified the environmental conditions that were first introduced as part of Erangel: Subzero. In addition, there is a new danger from the skies with the introduction of a new Satellite Crash Special Zone. Additionally, there is some new gear including the frost zone bomb and the thermal protection suit to help survive the plunging temperatures. You can read the full patch notes below.

PUBG Update 39.2 Patch Notes

Erangel: Subzero

Erangel’s harsh cold intensifies, ushering in a range of changes.

Special Zone: Satellite Crash

• The Special Zone spawns four times per match, primarily within the Safe Zone.
• When a Satellite crash is detected, a warning message appears on screen.
• Upcoming Special Zone locations are displayed on the World Map and Minimap.
• After a short delay, Satellites crash down along with multiple modules that generate Blue Zone spheres.
  • Blue Zone spheres deal 10 damage per second.
  • The freezing effect is applied to the Blue Zone spheres.
• Various items can be looted from the crashed Satellites.
• Crashing Satellites deal impact damage.

New Weapon: Frost Zone Bomb

※ Not available in Team Deathmatch.

• Inventory slot: Throwables
• Weight: 40
• Can be deployed using the left mouse button.
  • Deployment can be canceled midway.
  • Deployment may be canceled by damage, collisions, or movement.
  • Can be placed on flat surfaces, with restrictions on certain terrain and objects.
  • Can be deployed on most vehicles, with a few exceptions. It attaches to the exterior upon deployment.
• Cannot be destroyed or defused once deployment is complete.
• A warning sound plays for a short duration before detonation.
• Creates a Blue Zone sphere with a maximum radius of 20 m upon detonation.
  • Deals 14 damage per second.
  • The freezing effect is applied.

• Spawns only from Satellites.

New Item: Thermal Protection Suit

• When worn, it blocks a certain amount of Blue Zone damage.

  • Blocking Blue Zone damage also prevents the freezing effect.

• The suit’s appearance changes with durability, reflecting its damage state.
• When worn together with the Jammer Pack, anti-Blue Zone protection is cumulative.

• • Item durability is consumed in the following order: Jammer Pack → Thermal Protection Suit.

• Spawns only from Satellites.

Weather

• As blizzards sweep across the map and Erangel is blanketed in white, the climate grows increasingly unforgiving.
• Applies to Normal Match, Ranked, and Custom Match.

World: Rondo

Following the recent changes to Rondo, we’ve rebalanced item spawns across the map to ensure a smoother and more consistent looting experience.

Spawn Changes

• To provide a looting experience comparable to other 8×8 km maps, spawn rates for various world spawn items have been adjusted.
• Weapon, attachment, and Throwable spawns inside Secret Rooms have been increased.
• Fixed spawn spots and the total spawn quantity for the Inflatable Boat have been reduced.

(PC) New Feature: Secondary Password

※ The following updates apply to all PC platforms.

Setup & Usage Guide

• The secondary password must be a 6-8 digit number, and SMS authentication is required for both initial setup and resets.

  • Even if you have previously completed SMS authentication for Ranked play, reauthentication is required to set up the secondary password.
  • You can set up the secondary password by clicking “Set Secondary Password” from the Career – Overview page or the Ranked menu.
  • The same digit cannot be used 3 times in a row.

• Accounts with a secondary password enabled will be prompted to verify the password every 24 hours when entering the lobby.

  • If you log in from a different PC, secondary password authentication will be required regardless of the time.
  • You must complete secondary password authentication to access the lobby.
• The secondary password can be reset by clicking “Reset Secondary Password” from the Career – Overview page or the secondary password authentication popup.
• After five or more incorrect attempts, you will be directed to the secondary password reset process.

Important Notes

• Secondary password authentication is required to play Ranked matches.

  • Accounts without a secondary password can still access all other content except Ranked mode.

• The existing SMS authentication requirement for Ranked mode has been removed and replaced with the secondary password setup.
• If any member of a party does not have a secondary password enabled, the party will not be able to play Ranked matches.
• If you forget your secondary password, you can reset it. However, disabling the secondary password requires contacting Customer Support.
• If SMS authentication is attempted more than 10 times, sending pin codes will be restricted for 24 hours.

Arcade

Team Deathmatch

※ The following updates apply to Custom Match as well.

• Adjusted the images, display duration, and size of on-screen notifications based on player feedback.

Workshop

New item sets have been added to the Hunter’s Chest and Archivist’s Chest.

• Minx and Maven
• Survivor Pass: Spirit Squad

Survivor Pass

• A brand new Survivor Pass is prepared for Update 39.2.

Hideout

• The maximum number of weapon skins that can be salvaged at once has been increased from 24 to 60.

UX/UI

• (Console) Adjusted visual effects that displayed differently on Xbox.

Bug Fixes

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where the sound effect for the Adrenaline Syringe would intermittently cut off during use.
• Fixed an issue where, under specific circumstances, seat priority became locked when boarding the Motor Glider, preventing players from boarding correctly.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where sprint did not resume after using Bandages when sprint toggle was enabled.
• (Console) Fixed an issue on Xbox where in-game audio did not work properly when Dolby Access was enabled.

World

• Fixed an issue on the Rondo map where Safe Zones spawned in unintended locations.

UX/UI

• Fixed an issue where part of the BP icon was cut off on the End of Match screen.
• Fixed an issue where notification indicators on Special Vehicle skin customization items were displayed incorrectly in the Edit Skin screen.
• Fixed an issue where Korean particles following nicknames ending in a lowercase “n” or “m” were displayed incorrectly in the Match Log and other areas in the Korean language settings.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where a system message appeared twice when pressing the assigned hotkey without a Throwable equipped.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where the spacing between the character status panel and the HP bar appeared abnormal while spectating.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where Player 1’s markers were not displayed while the “Show Team Markers” setting was enabled in Observer Mode.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where parts of Player 1’s waypoints were still displayed while the “Hide Team Markers” setting was enabled in Observer Mode.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where the DirectX Version shown in the Settings – Graphics – Advanced tab did not match the version actually applied on first launch.

Items & Skins

※ Clipping issue: Graphics that are shown outside the visible part of an image/object.

• Fixed an issue where the Mirado vehicle skins were not displayed correctly after returning from the System menu on the Customize – Vehicles page.
• Fixed a clipping issue when wearing the Balenciaga 360 Mask Sunglasses or Balenciaga Venice Beach Mask with certain hats.
• Fixed a clipping issue when wearing the PGC 2024 Light Top or Cerberus’ Jacket with a vest.
• Fixed an issue where the tire wheel textures of the “Panamera Turbo S” Sedan skin were displayed incorrectly at certain distances.
• Fixed a clipping issue around the shoulders when the female character wore the PNC 2023 Trailblazer Top with the Happy Hibernation Hoodie (Sand).
• Fixed a clipping issue around the pelvic area when the female character wore certain skirts.
• Fixed an issue where the XingHun’s Tiger Starfire Mask and earrings could be worn together.
• Fixed an issue where the left rear door frame of the “Panamera Turbo S” Sedan skin was not displayed correctly.
• Fixed an issue where the ankles became transparent when the female character wore the Shiba Jogger Leggings with Mad Nurse’s Boots.

Source:  NEWS – PUBG: BATTLEGROUND

Welcome back from the CODMAS holiday. Did you get your rest? Good, because it's time to sweat again.

Black Ops 7's newest update, Season One Reloaded, is ready to re-load the game with content across all modes, including multiplayer, Zombies, Endgame, and even Warzone, as Treyarch's live-service season kicks back into gear after the holiday break.

Here's what CoD players can look forward to in January 2026 as part of BO7's Season One Reloaded update's patch notes.

BO7 Season 1 Reloaded patch notes

New weapons

Two new weapons, the Hawker HX sniper rifle (BO2 Ballista) and Sturmwolf 45 SMG (reminiscent of the UMP 45) will be added as event rewards for all players to unlock for free.

The Hawker HX is unlocked in the Quantum Exchange limited time event, while the Sturmwolf 45 is available as part of the Call of Duty x Fallout event pass as a free reward.

New multiplayer content

New weapons need new locations to play in, including some remasters of classic maps.

• Maps
  • Meltdown (BO2 remake)
  • Fringe (BO3 remake)
  • Yakei (new)
  • Vault Town (Fallout-themed Nuketown variant)
• Modes
  • Takeover
    • "Take what’s yours in this highly playable, dynamic objective mode. Two teams of six fight over three neutral territories, earning a point for each zone they control. Highest score at the end wins the game. When all three of the zones are captured, there’s a slight cooldown before all three territories move to a new set of locations within the map."

New Zombies content

Along with the guns, there's new content to play with in Zombies mode.

• Directed Mode: Astra Malorum
• Survival map: Zarya Cosmodrome
• New LTM: Project RADS
  • "Feral Ghouls and Deathclaws invade Ashes of the Damned and Astra Malorum in this Fallout-themed LTM exposing the crew to increased levels of radiation with each passing round. In this mode, the usual means of healing and earning Essence are replaced with a system of drops given by fallen enemies that assist the crew in staying fit, keeping rad levels at bay, and gaining vital resources."

New Endgame content

Additions to the PvE Endgame mode include new world events and a new skill track based on melee attacks.

• World event: Wraith Wing
  • "This advanced Guild aircraft appears to have cloning capabilities with very lethal consequences as this squadron seems hellbent on eliminating as many JSOC Operators as it can. Disable it, fire at the exposed aircraft, and down that bird."
• World event: Deathclaw Hunt
  • "In this Limited Time World Event, a bomb blast reduces a portion of Avalon into a Fallout-inspired wasteland. Head inside the blast zone, if you dare, to brave the toxic air and take on ferocious Deathclaws defended by hordes of Feral Ghouls."
• Skill Track: Phantom
  • Ambush: Critical hits from behind on unaware enemies deal more damage.
  • Fast Melee: Faster Melee speed.
  • Trap Avoidance: Traps and Mines take longer to detect you. Undetectable when fully upgraded.
  • Silent Movement: Quiets movement and reduces enemy detection distance.
  • Elusive Target: Reduces accuracy of enemies shooting at you.
  • Decoy: Taking significant damage deploys an Echo Unit that distracts enemies.

Returning BO6 equipment

A bunch of loadout equipment from Black Ops 6 is making its way into BO7 via this update, including:

• Shock Charge (tactical)
• Impact Grenade (lethal)
• Thermo Grenade (lethal)
• War Machine (scorestreak)
• Archangel Launcher (scorestreak)
• Grim Reaper (scorestreak)
• Death Machine (scorestreak)
• Combat Bow (scorestreak)
• Dreadnought (scorestreak)
• Strategic Bomber (scorestreak)
• Morphine Injector (Field Upgrade)
• Tactical Insertion (Field Upgrade)

Fallout (TV series) collab

The collaboration with the Fallout TV show on Prime Video will include operator skins, an event pass, store bundles, a Nuketown map variant, and more. Operator skins include Lucy MacLean, Maximus, and The Ghoul, but there are also limited time modes in Warzone, Zombies, and multiplayer, too.

New challenges and events

Additional weekly challenges will come every Thursday throughout the end of season one, along with limited-time events where players can unlock much of the free content, like weapons and more.

Warzone updates

Additional updates are coming for Warzone, including weapon balancing and more. But there are also two limited time modes:

• LTM: High Octane
  • "All players deploy into the map with their chosen custom Loadout, so you’re ready to engage the enemy will a full kit of gear right from the start. Scavenge juiced up loot across Verdansk including Gas Masks, Grappling Hooks, and Legendary Weapons. Cash payouts have been greatly increased as well, pairing perfectly with the ability to call up and purchase from the Buy Station interface at any time in the match. Don’t spend it all in one place, as you’ll need some money on hand to activate the automatic self-buyback should you go down."
• LTM: Power Armor Royale
  • "Ready to dominate your foes with the help of some Power Armor? Hold on there, Vault Dweller, you’re gonna have to charge up that Fusion Core first. Every Operator deploys with a Fusion Core, but it’ll take some work to power it up enough to step into the suit. Operators can fill their Fusion Core by looting Fusion Core canisters, earned by completing Contracts, eliminating enemies, opening Supply Boxes, and dealing damage to enemy Power Armor users."

Meanwhile, there's been a slew of weapon balancing changes, including a big buff for the Mid-Range Barrel for BO7 assault rifles. The full list of changes for Warzone in the update can be found here.

---

For all of the BO7-specific bug fixes and changes in multiplayer, Zombies, and Endgame, see here.

The post Black Ops 7 Season 1 Reloaded patch notes – Fallout collab, new guns, new maps, and more appeared first on Destructoid.

Every time people discuss new things they would love to see in long-running MMORPGs, I see at least a few people speculating about things that aren’t just not happening but would fundamentally break the game. And it always makes a little twitch start up right behind my eye. It’s not that I don’t understand the […]

PUBG has been updated to version 39.2 on PC today, with consoles getting the update on January 15th, and this update has intensified the environmental conditions that were first introduced as part of Erangel: Subzero. In addition, there is a new danger from the skies with the introduction of a new Satellite Crash Special Zone. Additionally, there is some new gear including the frost zone bomb and the thermal protection suit to help survive the plunging temperatures. You can read the full patch notes below.

PUBG Update 39.2 Patch Notes

Erangel: Subzero

Erangel’s harsh cold intensifies, ushering in a range of changes.

Special Zone: Satellite Crash

• The Special Zone spawns four times per match, primarily within the Safe Zone.
• When a Satellite crash is detected, a warning message appears on screen.
• Upcoming Special Zone locations are displayed on the World Map and Minimap.
• After a short delay, Satellites crash down along with multiple modules that generate Blue Zone spheres.
  • Blue Zone spheres deal 10 damage per second.
  • The freezing effect is applied to the Blue Zone spheres.
• Various items can be looted from the crashed Satellites.
• Crashing Satellites deal impact damage.

New Weapon: Frost Zone Bomb

※ Not available in Team Deathmatch.

• Inventory slot: Throwables
• Weight: 40
• Can be deployed using the left mouse button.
  • Deployment can be canceled midway.
  • Deployment may be canceled by damage, collisions, or movement.
  • Can be placed on flat surfaces, with restrictions on certain terrain and objects.
  • Can be deployed on most vehicles, with a few exceptions. It attaches to the exterior upon deployment.
• Cannot be destroyed or defused once deployment is complete.
• A warning sound plays for a short duration before detonation.
• Creates a Blue Zone sphere with a maximum radius of 20 m upon detonation.
  • Deals 14 damage per second.
  • The freezing effect is applied.

• Spawns only from Satellites.

New Item: Thermal Protection Suit

• When worn, it blocks a certain amount of Blue Zone damage.

  • Blocking Blue Zone damage also prevents the freezing effect.

• The suit’s appearance changes with durability, reflecting its damage state.
• When worn together with the Jammer Pack, anti-Blue Zone protection is cumulative.

• • Item durability is consumed in the following order: Jammer Pack → Thermal Protection Suit.

• Spawns only from Satellites.

Weather

• As blizzards sweep across the map and Erangel is blanketed in white, the climate grows increasingly unforgiving.
• Applies to Normal Match, Ranked, and Custom Match.

World: Rondo

Following the recent changes to Rondo, we’ve rebalanced item spawns across the map to ensure a smoother and more consistent looting experience.

Spawn Changes

• To provide a looting experience comparable to other 8×8 km maps, spawn rates for various world spawn items have been adjusted.
• Weapon, attachment, and Throwable spawns inside Secret Rooms have been increased.
• Fixed spawn spots and the total spawn quantity for the Inflatable Boat have been reduced.

(PC) New Feature: Secondary Password

※ The following updates apply to all PC platforms.

Setup & Usage Guide

• The secondary password must be a 6-8 digit number, and SMS authentication is required for both initial setup and resets.

  • Even if you have previously completed SMS authentication for Ranked play, reauthentication is required to set up the secondary password.
  • You can set up the secondary password by clicking “Set Secondary Password” from the Career – Overview page or the Ranked menu.
  • The same digit cannot be used 3 times in a row.

• Accounts with a secondary password enabled will be prompted to verify the password every 24 hours when entering the lobby.

  • If you log in from a different PC, secondary password authentication will be required regardless of the time.
  • You must complete secondary password authentication to access the lobby.
• The secondary password can be reset by clicking “Reset Secondary Password” from the Career – Overview page or the secondary password authentication popup.
• After five or more incorrect attempts, you will be directed to the secondary password reset process.

Important Notes

• Secondary password authentication is required to play Ranked matches.

  • Accounts without a secondary password can still access all other content except Ranked mode.

• The existing SMS authentication requirement for Ranked mode has been removed and replaced with the secondary password setup.
• If any member of a party does not have a secondary password enabled, the party will not be able to play Ranked matches.
• If you forget your secondary password, you can reset it. However, disabling the secondary password requires contacting Customer Support.
• If SMS authentication is attempted more than 10 times, sending pin codes will be restricted for 24 hours.

Arcade

Team Deathmatch

※ The following updates apply to Custom Match as well.

• Adjusted the images, display duration, and size of on-screen notifications based on player feedback.

Workshop

New item sets have been added to the Hunter’s Chest and Archivist’s Chest.

• Minx and Maven
• Survivor Pass: Spirit Squad

Survivor Pass

• A brand new Survivor Pass is prepared for Update 39.2.

Hideout

• The maximum number of weapon skins that can be salvaged at once has been increased from 24 to 60.

UX/UI

• (Console) Adjusted visual effects that displayed differently on Xbox.

Bug Fixes

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where the sound effect for the Adrenaline Syringe would intermittently cut off during use.
• Fixed an issue where, under specific circumstances, seat priority became locked when boarding the Motor Glider, preventing players from boarding correctly.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where sprint did not resume after using Bandages when sprint toggle was enabled.
• (Console) Fixed an issue on Xbox where in-game audio did not work properly when Dolby Access was enabled.

World

• Fixed an issue on the Rondo map where Safe Zones spawned in unintended locations.

UX/UI

• Fixed an issue where part of the BP icon was cut off on the End of Match screen.
• Fixed an issue where notification indicators on Special Vehicle skin customization items were displayed incorrectly in the Edit Skin screen.
• Fixed an issue where Korean particles following nicknames ending in a lowercase “n” or “m” were displayed incorrectly in the Match Log and other areas in the Korean language settings.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where a system message appeared twice when pressing the assigned hotkey without a Throwable equipped.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where the spacing between the character status panel and the HP bar appeared abnormal while spectating.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where Player 1’s markers were not displayed while the “Show Team Markers” setting was enabled in Observer Mode.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where parts of Player 1’s waypoints were still displayed while the “Hide Team Markers” setting was enabled in Observer Mode.
• (PC) Fixed an issue where the DirectX Version shown in the Settings – Graphics – Advanced tab did not match the version actually applied on first launch.

Items & Skins

※ Clipping issue: Graphics that are shown outside the visible part of an image/object.

• Fixed an issue where the Mirado vehicle skins were not displayed correctly after returning from the System menu on the Customize – Vehicles page.
• Fixed a clipping issue when wearing the Balenciaga 360 Mask Sunglasses or Balenciaga Venice Beach Mask with certain hats.
• Fixed a clipping issue when wearing the PGC 2024 Light Top or Cerberus’ Jacket with a vest.
• Fixed an issue where the tire wheel textures of the “Panamera Turbo S” Sedan skin were displayed incorrectly at certain distances.
• Fixed a clipping issue around the shoulders when the female character wore the PNC 2023 Trailblazer Top with the Happy Hibernation Hoodie (Sand).
• Fixed a clipping issue around the pelvic area when the female character wore certain skirts.
• Fixed an issue where the XingHun’s Tiger Starfire Mask and earrings could be worn together.
• Fixed an issue where the left rear door frame of the “Panamera Turbo S” Sedan skin was not displayed correctly.
• Fixed an issue where the ankles became transparent when the female character wore the Shiba Jogger Leggings with Mad Nurse’s Boots.

Source:  NEWS – PUBG: BATTLEGROUND

Oh sure, it’s only been a week since City of Heroes Homecoming’s issue 28, page 3, went live with a big ol’ revamp for Masterminds and the new sonic set for melee toons, but in case that update wasn’t your vibe, you can gear up for the game’s winter events instead. “The snow has started […]

With the revival of Ubisoft-shuttered The Crew earlier this fall with a rogue server called The Crew Unlimited, it really felt like the scoreboard was Players 1, Heartless Gaming Corp 0. But that score could’ve changed drastically in a few years due to a game-ending bug that was tied to the year 2029. In the […]

The hammering out of dents and refinement of the experience in airship survivalbox Lost Skies continues yet again this week, as Bossa Studios has put forth another major stability patch that it says has finally crushed some pretty resilient bugs for multiplayer and airships, both of which we contend are pretty important to this game’s […]

Tribute Games has released the first big patch for Marvel Cosmic Invasion, with the main focus by the team being removing bugs from the game. Some of the fixes in this patch for Marvel Cosmic Invasion include addressing an issue causing the game to crash when joining multiplayer sessions, an issue where Super Heroes stats would not upgrade, and also making sure Master Mold is no longer invulnerable. You can read the full list of fixes below.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion patch notes

Fixes!

• Heteropteron Blocker – We’ve fixed an issue where having camera shake effects OFF would stop the cinematic from triggering, keeping Super Heroes trapped in Stage 13
• Multiplayer Crashing – We’ve fixed an issue where joining a multi-player game session and resetting story progress would trigger a crash
• Enemy Cheating! – We’ve fixed an issue where Master Mold would become invulnerable and non-targetable, which if anything was just rude
• Venom Issues – We’ve fixed issues where Venom could become frozen after being parried during Symbiote Pounce or immediately lose armor during Venom Bite
• Upgrade Blocking – We’ve fixed an issue that would mean Super Heroes’ stats did not upgrade after levelling up unless players returned to the main menu.
• Enemy Superpowers – We’ve fixed an issue where enemies would deal abnormally high damage on their first hit during a grab
• Annihilus Invulnerability – We’ve fixed an issue (and related issues) where Annihilus wouldn’t re-enter the staggered/vulnerable state and players couldn’t deal damage
• Where’s Hela?! – Fixed an issue where Hela could de-synchronise while teleporting
• Annihilus Forever! – We fixed an issue where Annihilus wouldn’t stop attacking after his shield breaks
• Multiplayer Connections – Fixed an issue which could cause problems when the host disconnects while Super Heroes are joining a lobby (this should now simply return you to the multiplayer menu)
• Reigning in She-Hulk – Option now added to have controller shake only for players controlling the character (meaning that She-Hulk’s controller vibration only happens for the player controlling her)
• Cosmic Hold On What?! – We’ve fixed an issue where Super Heroes would sometimes be swapped when respawning
• At Least Credit Me – The character who threw the enemy will now be considered the instigator when determining who gets credit for knocking down an assembly line bomb
• Cosmic Stability – We’ve deployed some additional protection for lobby stability when players reach Game Over in Arcade Mode
• Interrogating the Vampire – We’ve fixed an issue which prevented Super Heroes from using the Vampire modifier in Arcade Mode
• Choose your character! – We’ve fixed the issue with the characters’ order in character select for Steam Deck and Linux. That should fix the online desync/crashs between Steam Deck and other versions

Smaller Fixes

• Fixed an issue where intro music was used instead of main stage music where players joined later in Stage 2 (Genosha)
• Fixed MODOK’s movement and behaviours (quite a lot of fixes here, actually)
• Tweaked Beta Ray Bill’s no-hammer attack to ensure it doesn’t register as a multi attack
• Fixed an issue where some enemies would do multiple hits instead of the expected one hit attack
• Fixed an issue where enemies would walk without actually moving
• Tweaked visuals to stop the OK / Back popup appearing while fading out.
• Negative Blast now automatically faces the center of the screen
• Worm enemies will now animate properly when turning to face their enemies
• The Mission Select timer should now count down correctly in Arcade Mode
• We’ve fixed an issue where players could immediately spawn in a pit when joining a mid-session lobby
• Cancelling character selection will not reset the selected skin
• Fixed visual glitching during tally and post-boss cutscenes
• Fixed Super Heroes appearing multiple times when confronting Annihilus
• Fixed an issue where Annihilus would play an incorrect animation following the Negative Wave attack
• Fixed an issue where egg spawners would not always appear in the correct state
• Fixed an issue where Bug Barricade dealt multiple attacks and a huge amount of damage
• Fixed online synchronisation issues related to Sentry Laser and Statue
• Fixed small graphical shadow errors
• Fixed a challenge completion issue related to multi-hit tasks

Marvel Cosmic Invasion Review

In our Marvel Cosmic Invasion review, Ade said, “Having found Tribute Games’ previous release, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, to be one of the best scrolling beat ‘em ups I’d ever played, I had high expectations for Marvel Cosmic Invasion. How could Shredder’s Revenge with Marvel characters go wrong? Sadly, Marvel Cosmic Invasion is entirely OK but fails to be anything more than that.”

Source: Steam

Helldivers 2 is about to get much, much smaller on PC, as Arrowhead (with some help from PlayStation’s Nixxes) have worked hard to squish the game’s install down by a staggering 85%! That’s huge news for PC players… and those that just have the game installed, but haven’t actually played it in a while.

Available now as a beta update, this reduces the PC installation size from ~154GB to just ~23GB, a completely ridiculous reduction in size. You’ll still be on the same build of the game, just without taking up so much space. Neat!

How is this possible? Well, in a blog post recently, Arrowhead addressed the issue of the game’s installation on PC and how much bigger it was than the PS5 version of the game. The reason for the difference was that, while the PS5 is guaranteed to have an SSD, Arrowhead thought that they needed to duplicate files to keep loading times down for PC gamer playing from a traditional mechanical HDD. After the reduction in size, Arrowhead believe that mission loading times for HDD players will be increased by just a few seconds in the worst cases.

All of this is because Arrowhead had relied on industry data for this assumption on data duplication – a practice that has been common to aid in random read times for any kind of spinning disc media. After exploring this in tandem with Nixxes and gathering real data specific to this game (such as that only 11% of players were playing from HDD), they discovered that the majority of loading times are actually from level generation as opposed to asset loading, meaning they could safely de-duplicate game assets, as asset loading happens in parallel.

While testing has been very positive internally, Arrowhead is still being cautious and hosting this as a beta alongside the main version, before reversing the roles and putting the huge version of Helldivers 2 as a legacy version to help with troubleshooting. However, given the minor differences, they won’t maintain this forever.

Source: Steam

Nintendo has released an update for their wheelchair basketball multiplayer game, Drag x Drive. Patch 1.2.0 adds a new game mode for the full game, while also revamping the Global Jam beta test into a regular demo for all to try.

The new game mode is Survival Tag, which is basically exactly what it sounds like. Survival Tag can be played throughout the park lobby with friends, local wireless and LAN, and needs to be started by the lobby host from the X menu.

Elsewhere there’s just some general bug fixed and improvements to the game, which are outlined in the patch notes below.

As for the demo, this allows you to check out the game offline, playing the tutorial, challenging bots in 3v3 matches, and exploring the park. You’ll generally be able to get used to the Joy-Con 2 mouse mode controls and how they work to play the game.

It’s nice to see the game getting some support still, but will it entice any new players to really dive into the game? Looking back on our review of Drag x Drive, I said, “Drag x Drive makes good use of the Joy-Con 2 mouse controls for a simple game of wheelchair basketball, but it lacks the charm and personality you’d expect from a Nintendo game.”

Here’s the full Drag x Drive 1.2.0 patch notes:

General Updates

• Added the chasing game Survival Tag to friend parks, local wireless parks, and LAN parks.
  • Note: To play Survival Tag when in the parks listed above, the player who created the park opens the X Menu, then selects Start Survival Tag on the Players tab.
  • Depending on the wireless environment, there may be times where player positioning does not perfectly match between users. For that reason, there may be cases where, even if it appears to one player as if contact was made, from the other player’s perspective no contact occurred. In order to limit unpleasant experiences in situations like these as much as possible, in basketball games this may be determined as no contact.
  • On the other hand, in Survival Tag, the question of contact is the whole crux of the game and is particularly important to game progression. Therefore, it has been designed such that a tag is considered successful if there was contact from either perspective (the tagging player, or the one who was tagged).
• Corrected the calculation of Iso Wins on the Game Stats tab under Stats. Previously, it counted the total number of Isos, not just wins.
• Added Rope Jumps to Other Stats tab under Stats.
• Changed the target of the Focus Cam when near the sumo ring to the sumo ring itself.
• Made some adjustments to bots in friend parks, local wireless parks, and LAN parks.
  • Note: We slightly lowered the strength level of the Easy and Standard bots that the player who created the park can add under the Players tab of the X Menu.
• Added a feature to enable players to delete their own records.
  • On the screen that displays players’ records before starting time trials or shooting contests, simultaneously press and hold the ZL Button, left directional button, and right directional button on the Joy-Con 2 (L) for 10 seconds to delete the record.
  • Once deleted, records cannot be restored.
  • Obtained trophies will remain, even if records are deleted.

Fixed Issues

• Fixed a very rare issue where, due to unintended behavior, the displays for level or total distance would reach the upper limit.
• Fixed a rare issue in Circuit Sprint where players sometimes passed through terrain.
• Fixed an issue where bunny hops made it possible to accelerate to and maintain speed that exceeded top speed.
  • The intended design is that it is only possible to accelerate beyond the normal top speed when driving down a slope or successfully pulling off a halfpipe or ramp trick. However, unintended behavior occurred, such as players accelerating beyond top speed when landing after rotating, or not decelerating while in midair even if they had exceeded top speed. We fixed this because this issue required players to control their character in unintuitive ways in order to achieve good results.
• Fixed various issues to create a smoother gaming experience.

Note: Version 1.1.1 for the Drag x Drive Demo (formerly Drag x Drive: Global Jam) was also released.

General Updates

• Changed software title from Drag x Drive: Global Jam to Drag x Drive Demo.
• Changed the software icon that displays in locations such as the HOME Menu.
• Made it possible to play the tutorial and certain bot games any time.
• Fixed various issues to create a smoother gaming experience.

Source: Nintendo

Nintendo has released Mario Kart World update 1.4.0, making a big bunch of changes and bug fixes to the Switch 2’s biggest game.

Amongst the changes are a new custom items rule setting, which lets you pick exactly which items appear in your game – this is really handy for anyone chasing the last few Kamek transformation character!

There’s also an improved way to join up and play multiplayer with friends, as up to four players gathered together in a “Room” can all take part in Race, Knockout Tour and Battle, and you can also join people playing Knockout Tour when in 2P and Online as well.

Nintendo has also changed the course layout for eight of the Intermission style point-to-point races involving Koopa Troopa Beach. All the races heading there will now have two laps of Koopa Troopa Beach once you get there. We hope this is a sign of more changes to come!

Here’s the full patch notes for Mario Kart World update 1.4.0:

General

• Added “Custom Items” to the item rules.
  • This is a feature that lets you set which items appear.
  • This is supported in “VS Race”, “Balloon Battle”, “Coin Runners”, and “Room” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play”.
• Made it so that music track name and source title of the track that is playing will be displayed on the Pause Menu.
• Added “Music Volume” to “Settings/Controller”.
• Made it so players who gathered in a “Room” of “Online Play” can participate in “Race”, “Knockout Tour”, and “Battle”.
  • Up to 4 players can participate in “Race”, “Knockout Tour”, and “Battle”.
• Made it so you can join in with friends who are playing “Knockout Tour” from “Friends” in “2p”, “Online Play” as well.
• Added “Restart” and “Next Race” in the Pause Menu for “VS Race” in “Single Player”.
• Made it so you can select “Photo Mode” from the Pause Menu in “Race against Ghost” in “Time Trials”.
• Changed the course layout of below courses for “VS Race”, or “Race” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play”.
  • • Race that heads from “Koopa Troopa Beach” to “DK Spaceport”.
    • Race that heads from “Koopa Troopa Beach” to “Crown City”.
    • Race that heads from “Koopa Troopa Beach” to “Peach Stadium”.
    • Race that heads from “Whistlestop Summit” to “Koopa Troopa Beach”.
    • Race that heads from “Desert Hills” to “Koopa Troopa Beach”.
    • Race that heads from “DK Spaceport” to “Koopa Troopa Beach”.
    • Race that heads from “Crown City” to “Koopa Troopa Beach”.
    • Race that heads from “Peach Stadium” to “Koopa Troopa Beach”.

  *Changed it so that, in all races heading toward “Koopa Troopa Beach”, including the above courses, you will cross the finish line after two laps once you arrive at “Koopa Troopa Beach”.

• You will now dash when riding on Manta Ramp’s back.
• Made it so the player will not hit Dragoneel when transformed into Bullet Bill.
• Made it so the player cannot use a second Boo while already using a Boo, when holding two Boos.
• When Dash Food is taken by someone, shortened the time until that Dash Food reappears.
• When a coin placed on water is taken by someone, shortened the time until that coin reappears.

Fixed Issues

• Fixed an issue where the dash time was not correct after a Charge Jump.
• Fixed an issue where the player would slip through a wall when being stomped on from above by a vehicle driving on the road.
• Fixed an issue where a player would be squashed when touching a Thwomp that had landed.
• Fixed an issue where a Bullet Bill would not be displayed after using it.
• Fixed an issue where a character would be blurry even when making “Focus” “Character” when taking a photo in “Photo Mode” on the Pause Menu.
• Fixed an issue where the screen would look distorted if entering a pipe at the same time as joining a Free Roam in “Online Play”.
• Fixed an issue where player could not get in a UFO when multiple players tried to get in a UFO at the same time in Free Roam in “Online Play”.
• Fixed an issue where a friend’s information would not be updated when looking at the list of friends in “Friends” in “Online Play”.
• Fixed an issue where there would be a communication error when looking at a group ID in “View Room Info” when participating in a group in “Friends” in “Online Play”.
• Fixed an issue where a player’s place would go down if retiring during “Knockout Tour” in “Online Play”.
• Fixed an issue where a player that is seen when spectating looks like they are going off the course over and over during “Knockout Tour” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play”.
• Fixed an issue where the player’s own character or vehicle would change when starting “Online Play” or “Wireless Play” again after quitting a game after “Knockout Tour” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play”.
• Fixed an issue where a player would get stuck on a wall when using a Bullet Bill while falling off the course in “Sky-High Sundae”.
• Fixed an issue where a Bullet Bill would go outside the course when using it on the final curve in “Boo Cinema”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would slip through a bulldozer in “Toad’s Factory”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would get stuck on a spotlight in the race that heads from “Toad’s Factory” to “Bowser’s Castle” when transformed into Bullet Bill.
• Fixed an issue where if the player used a Bullet Bill or Spiny Shell in the first curve of “Desert Hills”, it would get stuck on a rock.
• Fixed an issue where the player would get stuck on a tree when using a Bullet Bill on “DK Pass”.
• Fixed an issue where, when the player was small because of Lightning, they would slip through the wall on the final curve of “DK Pass.
• Fixed an issue where the player would get stuck on a billboard when transforming into Bullet Bill in the race that heads from “Crown City” to “Desert Hills”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would slip through the ring of stone when using a Bullet Bill or Mega Mushroom while falling in “Great ? Block Ruins” right before the final curve.
• Fixed an issue where the player would get stuck on the ground on the meadows near “Big Donut”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would slip through the wall if rewinding after wall riding in the special room you can go to from a pipe in “Shy Guy Bazaar”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would still fall into the lava even though they have “Smart Steering” ON in “Dry Bones Burnout”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would go off the course when using a Bullet Bill while rail riding in “Wario Stadium”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would not be able to glide if getting on a glide panel while gliding in the race that heads from “Wario Stadium” to “Airship Fortress”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would get stuck on the ground while heading from “Wario Stadium” to “Airship Fortress”.
• Fixed an issue where the vehicle would float up from the rail when the player did a rail ride after a wall ride in a bike-type vehicle in “Wario Stadium”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would go off the course when using a Bullet Bill on the shortcut while heading from “Dandelion Depths” to “Cheep Cheep Falls” in the “Ice Rally” of “Knockout Tour”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would go off the course while gliding, while heading from “Dandelion Depths” to “Cheep Cheep Falls” in the “Moon Rally” of “Knockout Tour”.
• Fixed an issue where a green shell would get stuck on the ground while heading from “Airship Fortress” to “Dry Bones Burnout” in the “Heart Rally” of “Knockout Tour”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would go off the course when they transformed into Bullet Bill on top of a building in “Crown City” in the below races:
  • Race that heads from “DK Spaceport” to “Crown City”.
  • Race that heads from “Koopa Troopa Beach” to “Crown City”.
  • Race that heads from “Faraway Oasis” to “Crown City”.
• Several other issues have been addressed to improve the gameplay experience.

Source: Nintendo

Paradox Tinto has remained busy after the release of Europa Universalis V last month, pushing out a clutch of patches and with a testing regime for upcoming changes. The tail end of November was all about the 1.0.8 beta patches, and now those improvements have gone live for the main development path, bringing hundreds of bug fixes, and some nice new tweaks and features.

On a high level, the patch brings eight new advances for the Aztec formable country, six new advances for the Two Sicilies formables, one more Tenochtitlan advance, and two more Sicilian and Neapolitan advances that can also be unlocked.

If you don’t happen to be playing as or angling for any of those countries to be formed, then there’s still some save game optimisation, a new combat tooltip that might help newcomers, and over 320 bugs fixed.

Here’s the full patch notes:

New Features

• Added 8 new advances for the Aztec formable
• Added 6 new advances for the Two Sicilies formable

Gameplay

Government:

• Settle the Frontier will no longer empty low-pop provinces.
• Estate privileges are removed if the estate doesn’t exist in the country
• Cabinet actions remove old geography modifiers properly after being reassigned
• Hire Advisor will no longer create Crown Estate advisors
• Fixed new rulers’ attributes not applying to their country on ascending to the throne
• Centralization now reduces subject loyalty with up to 30
• Decentralization now increases subject loyalty with up to 30 (was 20).
• Remove the impact of maximum war exhaustion from centralization and decentralization.
• Maximum decentralization now recovers estate satisfaction by another 2%
• Rebalanced children’s education to have a more balanced improvement
• Matrilineal non-exclusive succession law does take character abilities into account when choosing an heir now
• The ruler’s diplomatic ability now also impacts subject loyalty.
• Scotland’s ‘authority over the clergy’ law now disappears if Scotland converts from catholicism.
  Economy:
• Each 20k pops instead of each 200k pops gives 1 extra free building level in a location.
• Implemented a system where prosperity decays down to 0 by default if no increases.
• Made a new formula for an economical base that has different scale values on tax, pop, and trade.
• Tweaked the sell location acceptance criteria
• Balanced pop growth values to compensate for lower prosperity levels
• Removed some demands for some goods for slaves & tribesmen, and made some thresholds for soldiers.
• Reduced the nobles’ demand for lacquerware to 10% of what it was before.
• Added trade profit and subject tax levels to be part of the economic base calculations
• Further rebalancing of the the economical base and taking building based countries into account.
  Production:
• Can no longer build or delete buildings in locations that are under siege
• Building automation no longer changes the employment system
  Society:
• Random characters are more likely to be of primary and accepted cultures.
• Females above the age of 40 will no longer get pregnant.
  Diplomacy:
• Fixed HRE election votes after long reigns of the previous leader accidentally pumped up the GP score weight
• Removed “Food access” diplomatic option if you’re fighting in a war with the other country
• Can no longer sell a location when at war
• Fixed static antagonism related to societal values
• Subject actions get cancelled after the subject is cancelled
• Lacking rivals will no longer make you conciliatory, but instead make you lose prestige.
• Conciliatory no longer increases subject loyalty, but instead increases diplomatic reputation.
• Removed the base diplomatic reputation for belligerent vs conciliatory
• Conciliatory vs belligerent now impacts how much of an impact the shared border has.
• Reworked a bit how subject loyalty is impacted by relative power, and made keeping subjects loyal a bit more fun
• Taking back a location from a revolter is now -95%, not +95% cost.
• Added the border percentage opinion mechanic from EU4, which will create a bit more conflict
• Each vassal and fiefdom gives a small drift to decentralization.
• Civil wars now automatically end when a union between a tag and its civil war opponent is about to happen. The Civil War is always the one getting annexed in this context
• Raised levies for the subject no longer impact subject loyalty.
• Adjusted the colonial nations’ loyalty values to take
• Reduced a lot of subject loyalty from advances
• If a country moves its capital, anyone who knew the old capital now discovers the new capital.
• Border feud CB works properly
• Enable the request of subject actions from the subject to the overlord
• Can’t leave a coalition mid-war
• Fixed immediate full war score vs tiny nations with no cores
• Conquistadors will now become a normal location-based country when they become a colonial nation.
• Shared border is now reduced if same culture or share a culture group
• Power relative to overlord can now add a positive bonus to loyalty as well.
• Halfed the default shared border opinion impact, but increased the scale from being belligerent.
  Military:
• Manually doing a shattered retreat is now a 10% loss to strength instead of 50%.
• Fixed being able to recruit to a boarded army from a location
• Fixed exiling armies in places you declare war on
• Levies now disband if the locations they come from are lost.
• Complete refactoring of several combat algorithms like damage dealing, initiative, and combat speed, and exposing themino to more helpful tooltips
• Patrol the seas objective works for the Hanseatic League
• Fixed an issue where military tactics had an impact on naval battles
• The cost of transporting levies now scales with the size of the levy, making them cost the same to transport as regulars.
• Reduced the Age penalty for levies in the Age of Revolutions to 10% instead of 20%.
• Removed the “takes less damage” from artillery and auxiliary regiments.
• Fixed prosperity decay bugs from looting and sieging
  Geopolitics:
• Allowed inland exploration
• The fishing village applies a small bonus to harbor capacity
• Can now colonize Iwo
  

Other:

• Pops will no longer lose lots of literacy instantly if the max literacy is reduced.
• Changed the bonus modifier of the “Renaissance” to be a cultural influencer percentage instead of flat, as originally intended.
• Navies will no longer keep army-based nations without armies alive

Content

Map:

• Added more lumber to Scotland (Badenoch, Cowal, Inverary, Ayr)
• Corrected the German dynamic name of ‘Poznań’, so now it’s the correct one, ‘Posen’.
  Setup:
• Removed some Mamluk alliances with beyliks that were too weak
• Hendrik van Reginar is not the heir of Brabant
• Changed the Aragonese localization of the locations of Aragon into medieval Aragonese
• Made all setup and content instances of the German name ‘Bernhard’ to use its dynamic instance (‘name_bernard’) instead.
• Removed a duplicate character instance of bishop Bernhard von Lippe, ruler of Paderborn.
• Corrected the death date of the Teutonic Order Hochmeister Werner von Orseln, so it’s now aligned with the ruler term one.
• Added the correct ‘Alès’ location to the cores of Toulouse.
  Situations:
• The Italian Wars Situation action “Plan Campaign in Italy” now requires the actor not to have any levies raised
• Fixed Western Schism getting loads of support for whoever had the most dip rep only
• Western Schism – The AI will now use the Declare Oboedientia Action more flexibly, depending on which candidate they like more
• Fixed an issue wherein the ‘Rise of the Turks’ situation displayed incorrect end requirements when the strongest beylik is not the Ottomans
• Fixed missing localized reasons for war declaration in the Nanbokucho situation
• Added background illustrations to two Rise of the Turks-related events
• Italian leagues can now be created 2 years after one of them was dissolved via war
• Fixed an issue that indefinitely prevented new Italian leagues from being created in the Italian Wars after one of the leagues was forcefully dissolved
• Becoming the revolutionary target will no longer spawn units every month
• Blocked Nanbokucho CB from being created against countries supporting the same side
• Rewrote the visible = { } of the Rise of the Turks situation to account for the strongest beylik not being the Ottomans
• While in the map mode of the Rise of the Turks, subjects of the strongest beyliks will now have striped instead of solid colors
• Reshuffled the end requirements of the Rise of the Turks for better readability
• The Rise of the Turks ending now correctly displays the appropriate ending event based on its end requirements
• The rise of the Turks situation no longer takes into account subjects as contenders
• Fixed Sengoku missing a clan and showing a blank one
  Disasters:
• Increased the % chance of the Castilian civil war disaster occurring and made sure the ruler during it cannot be Alfonso XI
• The event “Spread of Islam” during the “Death of Hayan Wuruk disaster now correctly spawns a Sufi lodge
• The disaster “Crisis of the <Chinese> Dynasty” now correctly resets its variables on completion
• Fixed an issue where a dead claimant would still be shown on the disaster UI instead of their successor
• The event “Death of a Claimant” (hook_and_cod_wars.1200) option d now ends the disaster if both claimants are dead and buried
• The ‘Court and Country’ disaster starting event now grants 2 new country modifiers based on whether the player wants to eventually become Liberal or Absolutist
• The ‘Court and Country’ disaster now reduces estate satisfaction by -10%
  International Organizations:
• Fixed Independence War Target
• Improved authorization for the expanding Shinto action
• Fixed the independence movement acceptance criteria
• Removed duplicate action for joining Autocephalous Patriarchates
• The AI will no longer constantly propose the “maintain federal status” policy for unions
• The estate satisfaction hit from votes in unions is now only applied if you actually vote. Refusing to make a choice will no longer punish you
• The “Lordship of Ireland” action “request planters” now correctly triggers migration
• Fixed an issue with a spammy “Lordship of Ireland” regency pop-up message
• Fixed an issue with the action message display after using invite planets in the Lordship of Ireland
• The protestant union and the catholic league will no longer be locked into a deadlock when either leader is in a union with another leader. Additionally, union members will now try to join the side that already contains one of their union partners
• The “unified external diplomacy” policy of unions now makes the AI less likely to declare wars as it adds -0.75 aggressiveness and +0.5 carefulness. Additionally, it now also gives -2+25% stability cost on no CBS wars and now also unlocks the “enforce peace” country interaction on junior partners
• Blocked the Shogun from being able to get claims from the Imperial Court
  Events:
• The Pavia event “Expulsion of the <Dynasty>” (flavor_pav.1) now requires Milan to have the same Government type as Pavia
• The French Event “The Jacquerie” will no longer fire while France is already in a civil war
• Margarete von Tirol will no longer immediately select a new husband upon divorcing her Bohemian spouse
• The English event “William Pitt the younger” (flavor_eng.35) will no longer target William Pitt the Elder
• The Florentine event “Consolidation of Power” (flavor_flo.49) will no longer fire while Florence already has a major reform
• The occurring child via the event “soirée” (dynastic.6) and “the consequences of our actions” (dynastic.6001) is now properly attributed the “bastard” modifier
• The father of the child born via the event “soirée” (dynastic.6) is no longer stuck in the shadow realm
• Event “soirée” (dynastic.6) now tries to pick an eligible character before creating one
• The Ottoman Dragoman feature now has proper tooltiping
• The Byzantine event for the Katholikon Mouseion now properly gives you research progress if you already have a library in Constantinople
• Annexing Rome as a catholic will now trigger an event to potentially return it to the Pope
• The Genoese event “Founding of the Merchant Republic” (flavor_gen.1) will remove excess major government reforms before assigning “Merchant Republic”
• The event “The Gallipoli Earthquake” will now fire instantly instead of having a delay
• The Byzantine event “Gemistos Plethon” now activates the Hellenic religion
• The ‘Holy League’ Crusade should now correctly have Constantinople as its war goal
• The ‘Holy League’ Crusade ending events no longer fire on a separate peace
• Fixed the second Byzantine event, “A hand for peace”, it can no longer attempt to marry a dead ruler to the Byzantine princess
• The Florentine event “Formation of the Medici bank” is now also available for Tuscany
• Many event texts that begin with a country name will capitalize that country name if it isn’t already capitalized
• Corrected the historical info description of the event “A Clash of Culteranismo and Conceptismo” (flavor_cas.94), so it now shows the correct one, instead of the one for “Ortographical Reform of de Herrera” (flavor_cas.90).
• Fixed a missing dynamic loc in the event “The Hussite Wars” (hussite_wars.10), now it will correctly use the ‘commoners’ estate name in the text.
• Correctly localized the first name of the character Zafar Muẓaffar, created by the event “The Governor of Gujarat” (flavor_dlh.4).
• The radical reforms event (mercantilism_events.6) can now only fire in and after the age of reformation
• Swapped the Commoners’ estate satisfaction change for the abolition of feast days (anglican_events.9) event to now
• The colony of <x> (colonial_charter.100) event will no longer turn cores back into integrated
• Limited effects of the Bountiful Harvest event (random_event.91) to locations owned by the country
  Government:
• Fixed broken localization in the Latin Empire formable description
• Implementation of the peasant republic reform for Dithmarschen now removes any other major reform
• Romania is now a level 3 formable, enabling Transylvania and Moldavia to form it
• Made the following reforms free by assigning a +1 reform slot to each one: “Daedongbeob”, “Sadae policy”, and “Powerful viziers”
• The government reform “Sovet Gospod” of Novgorod is no longer a “major” reform
• The “Elective Succession” and “Dynastic Elective Succession” now have an additional warning line in their description, which informs the player that these succession laws can break unions.
• Fixed missing trigger localization for the Devshirme policy
• New LIV ‘Llivonia’ formable created to reform the Livonian Order
• LVA ‘Livonia’ formable repurposed into a Baltic culture formable
• Made Moldavia a tier 1 formable, so it can later form Romania (which is tier 2); also reduced the number of required locations to be formed to 40, so it doesn’t need to conquer any land from the Golden Horde to have it formed, just unify the Moldavian minors.
• Fixed an error in the description of the ‘Tsardom’ government reform, now it should show ‘Russia’ correctly.
• Enabled the Ancient French Taxation reform to be removable if France reaches > 50% centralization and the birth of the permanent taxation system event hasn’t fired.
• The parliament issue sponsor a trade expedition will now construct a market village or a marketplace in the capital if no building like it exists already
• Change policy agenda can no longer target otherwise locked policies
• The Prikazi government reform now displays the cabinet actions that it unlocks
• Added failsafe to the ‘Communal Living’ marriage policy, so now it also requires being Hussite, on top of having the ‘Adamite Services’ aspect active.
  Economy and Production:
• The House of Parliament Building now employs 200 Nobles instead of 2000
• Great Madrasas now also promote tribesmen like normal Madrasas
• Rebalanced, where the Japanese clans are allowed to build their buildings
• Improved description of Beeswax
  Society:
• The Hellenic faith now correctly grants infantry combat ability instead of levy efficiency
• Changing religion will now always automatically remove any active excommunication against the country
• Baltic Germans added to the Baltic culture group
• Added ‘invite foreign cleric’ action. Christian countries can spend religious influence to spawn a new high-adm cleric with a foreign culture.
  Diplomacy:
• “Hanseatic member” special subject now pays much less manpower and sailors to the Hansa (assuming they have the capacity to do so)
• The “dubious claims on province” and the “parliament-approved claims on province” casus belli are no longer available to be fabricated via the spy network
• The “Negotiate Succession Law” country interaction now informs the player when the succession law cannot be adopted by the recipient
• The military sponsorship relationship now has a diplomatic capacity maintenance cost of a guarantee
• The opinion penalty from not fulfilling a promise of land does not decay by 1 each year
• The “demand unlawful territory” diplomatic action will now automatically release a completely new tag instead of granting that land directly to the emperor
• The diplomatic action “enforce peace” can no longer target wars where the actor is in the war with them on the same side already. It also can not target wars where the subject is the leading defender in the war, which means they can no longer be saved from any invading country
• Capped the minimum value of excommunication opinion hits to -200
• Papal action “Excommunication” is no longer possible, while curia actions are otherwise blocked
• The “negotiate succession law” diplomatic action now changes the heir religion law to a policy that is actually compatible with your religion. In other words, if you are orthodox and your junior partner is catholic, you would force them to take the “same religion group” policy instead of the “same religion” policy one
  Military:
• Fixed an issue with Renaissance Mamluks only having 50 men and tweaked their extra bonuses
  Advances:
• Expanded the plausible areas of spawning of the Renaissance to all of Northern Italy
• Unlocked the “warrior societies” advance from Tenochtitlan for the Aztecs formable
• Unlocked 2 advances from Sicily and Naples for the Two Sicilies formable as well
  

Other:

• Corrected many instances of this_opinion_of_prev wherever it was applied incorrectly for AI weights
• Fixed the Aztec tag not having a name
• Hungarian, Croatian, Czech, and Slovak regnal numbers appear as “ii.” with the dot, as in German

2D Art

Icons:

• Adjusted colors and values of some privileges to match the style of the other privileges
  Illustrations:
• Polished 3 Disasters illustrations
  Flags:
• Flags for Baltic formable
  Other:
• Added icons for tws_capable_vicars,tws_ensure_loyal_families, sun_must_rise, new_fire_ceremonies advances

AI

Government:

• Fixed an issue where AI would incorrectly think that crown power would influence absolutism_vs_liberalism before the available age
• Ottomans will no longer switch their religion away from Sunnism when playing with historical AI
• Fixed an issue causing AI to incorrectly use culture assimilation cabinet action in locations with -100% assimilation speed
• Added AI score for research speed modifier
• Increased AI score to unlock deus vult advance to enable religious CBS
  Diplomacy:
• Fixed additional issues where AI Ottomans would pay gold to get CBS against targets that had a stronger alliance than they
• Fixed issues where large cities would be too desirable for AI to take in peace deals, causing border gore
• Fixed an issue where AI applied scripted rules from war goals for taking things in peace deals, even when defending
• Fixed issues where AI would improve relations with nearby countries and then immediately cancel them
• AI Ottomans will now prefer to create a claim province CB against provinces that are not Constantinople, as it often causes them to lose the war against Byzantium
• AI Ottomans will no longer create cbs against countries they are planning to diplomatically subjugate via their special situation actions
• AI Ottomans will no longer create more claims when in debt or while below 0 stability via their special actions
• Greatly increased AI desire to attack a country if they already have a good CB available, compared to fabricating one from scratch
  Economy:
• Fixed an issue where the player automation gold limit was being applied to AI countries
• Fixed an issue where AI would not want to build a building if the location had a maximum of 0 of the required pop type
• Added AI logic for minting threshold modifier
• Fixed an issue where AI was overvaluing roads due to not factoring in the tax rate from the propagated tax base
  Production:
• Gold to save automation slider now works for RGOS, roads, and ranks too
  Military:
• Fixed an issue where AI would use cbs even with a negative ai_selection_desire

Interface

Map Modes:

• Added stripes to the non-endemic disease map mode to show where there are some individual pops infected
• Added a trade range map mode that allows selecting and showing trade range for specific markets (defaults to showing all markets within the player trade range).
• The tactical map mode now shows province capitals also for unfortified locations.
  Alerts:
• Fixed naval levies number
• Add estate marriage checks to the unmarried children alert
• The alert for parliament now conveys both current support and time left at a glance
• Make the member leaving the union alert red
  Panels:
• Renamed mapmode searcher to mapmode Legend and unified the Legend button with the Active Mapmode button
• Replaced a separation bar with a proper texture in the Society panel
• Fixed a bug in the War panel where the ticking warscore icon wasn’t showing for the defender
• Religious actions now need a confirm click
• Fixed the Parliament pie chart appearing twice
• Fixed Diplomatic Range not working as intended in diplomatic selection panels.
• The IO panel now shows potential votes on tooltips for laws
• Fixed the war panel having mixed information between sides. Now everything is properly positioned on its attacker/defender side.
• Organized the order of diplomatic relations on panels
• Fixed selected options not having a visual distinction
• Multiunit actions now refresh constantly, so you can merge them as soon as two units are in the same location.
• Fixed an issue where two war goals were shown (one for the attacker and one for the defender) when there is only one wargoal per war. It’s now only displayed on the attacker’s side, since the decision is made by the attacker.
• Fix the parliament agenda’s actions, not updating the description text
• Filter out marriage candidates and countries not eligible due to the Celtic marriage ban from the marriage finder
• Estate tax sliders now update the game state immediately when moved, fixing a broken extrapolation of estate satisfaction equilibrium.
• Upgrade building button: added Ctrl and Shift functionalities to upgrade buildings.
• Upgrade building button: made not impossible to build more levels of the upgraded building type than the current levels of the obsolete building.
• Improved visual info of levels being upgraded in a building.
• Fixed diplomatic macrobuilder to create a casus belli to show a tick on every country on which you can start creating a casus belli.
• Fixed the truce’s remaining time icon being covered by the truce icon.
• Additional coat of arms for historical characters and various starting dynasties
• Fix the inconsistency between the number of affected locations and their tooltips
• Fix the Government reforms cards’ icons not being clickable when instituting a new reform
• Fixed the sort order of trade capacity in the economy -> markets -> countries panel, and made the player country always show at the top.
• Fixed a bug where the discipline icon was showing for naval battles
• Generals in battles now look properly greyed out if they still haven’t arrived at the army
• The war widget in the current relation now shows the current warscore with a number instead of a pie chart
• Fixed the army strength amount displayed in the subject manager
• Fixed text format in the formables panel and ledger
• Corrected the order of columns in the ledger’s dynasty tab
• Improved responsiveness and data shown in the estate’s top bar and its tooltips
• Added a shortcut in the top left corner’s country rank to go to known countries
• Added heir icon for children’s heirs in character panel
• Added ages to rulers in government and foreign panels, and in education alert children entries.
• Fixed reorganize units not working. Now it will open the single unit panel of one of them and show the other one in the right menu.
• Improved readability and layout for research view
• Made so that ruler history shows recent rulers at the top by default
• Government reform cards are clickable again
  Outliner:
• Correct progress for “Settle frontier” cabinet action
• Stalled constructions in the short outline version
  Tooltips:
• Cleaned up some disease tooltips to be a bit more informative
• Fixed inconsistent usage of Artillery Barrage and artillery bonus concepts
• The tooltip for pinning things to the Outliner or to Context menus now says which is which
• Fixed typo in the Promotion game concept
• Navy strength tooltip fix
• Stalled buildings on production tooltip fix
• Fixed the breakdown for the max building amount tooltip
• Improve tooltip logic for language power when the language is #1 worldwide.
• Clarify attrition tooltips between location-specific attrition and external sources of attrition
• Fix attrition tooltips showing information it shouldn’t
• Fix the IO policies tooltips containing blank spaces
• The tooltip for societal values includes tips to push it further for both sides (they used to show only for the dominant value)
• You can now hover the number of max buildings/RGO levels in the production tab to see the reasons for the max levels
• Construction tooltips display if construction is stalled
• Harmonized tooltip columns for improved readability in market tooltips
• Declaring bankruptcy now shows all effects.
• Improved the player sync tooltip over the date in multiplayer to be more readable and have a scrollbar if you have lots of players.
• Add information about the highest great power in the great power rank tooltip
• Added concepts for war attacker and defender, to separate them from battle attacker and defender
• Added subheaders and fixes to market tooltips.
• Fixed missing localization trigger in the “Grant Elector” status action
• Include more information on the possible consequences of removing locations from IOs, such as the emperor’s opinion penalty.
• Tooltip for artists now explains that the max number only limits the amount you can manually hire, but you can have more through events
• Fixed the truce tooltip and circular widgets in the relations container
• Improved estates tooltips in the top bar
• Grouped estate gold together with income and expenses, and now shows a total balance.
• Fixed the antagonism tooltip to show all countries listed in a scroll list
• Fixes to tooltip showing missing goods when nothing was missing.
• The Retreat blocked tooltip now says the correct number of hours, not just 5.
  

Other:

• Fixed the in-game paused border shadow appearing when the menu was open and the back shortcut or control groups shortcut was pressed.
• Explain the cost of breaking a truce in a war pop up
• Updated the declare war prediction banner with a new layout and colors, and changed margins on the header sides art
• Fixed the diplomatic action to “Ask to join the IO“on its macrobuilder without a specific target
• Fixed the credits background dimensions for vertical resolutions
• Improve suggested trades by making the suggestions less prone to failing when activated
• Correct the ruler title on the country rank change
• Include rival removal cost in confirmation pop-up
• Call into war action in diplo macrobuilder now works
• Fixed loading screen game concepts, trying to show icons when not loaded yet.
• Added a relation about to be broken alert
• Fix the administration-infiltrated message showing the wrong country being infiltrated
• Button for imperial actions on the HRE panel for the Emperor
• Parliament title out of bounds fix
• Show the IO treasury on the subheader
• Marriage finder entry displays heir or line of succession icon
• Renamed 2 of the 3 modifiers that were currently named “institution growth” into “local institution growth” and “global institution growth.”
• Add a new tooltip in the market view to show all profits made by trades grouped by goods for each country

Portraits:

• Added new historical characters visuals (eng_hobbes, erasmus, mos_ivan_i_danilovich_kalita_rurik).
• Added new historical characters visuals (fra_rene_descartes, mei_johann_wolfgang_goethe, dan_brahe).
• Added new historical characters visuals (ned_michiel_de_ruyter, gbr_adam_smith, pap_bernini_script, boh_jiri_z_podebrad, ara_vincent_ferrer).
• Added new historical characters visuals (fra_jean_jacques_rousseau, spa_ignatius_of_loyola, spa_blas_de_lezo, spa_velazquez_script, hab_ludwig_van_beethoven, por_magellan).
• Fixed transparent characters when wearing Deccan’s veil.
• Portrait long hair clipping issue fixed
• Added new historical characters visuals (jap_kusunoki_masashige, azt_tlacaelel, azt_tenoch, chi_zheng_he, maj_hayam_wuruk, swe_birger_jarl, corfitz_ulfeldt_script, fra_robespierre, swe_axel_oxenstierna).
  

Other:

• Fixed the reformation units’ colors

Audio

Sound:

• Fix ambient sound playing army effects instead of navy ones in the unit overview panel

Modding

Script:

• Added the on_country_rank_change on_action
• Fixed an issue which prevented the on_rescinded_effect effect from special_status to have the scope: source available, which scopes to the special_status itself
• any_primary_or_accepted_tolerated_culture’ and associated script lists renamed to ‘any_primary_or_accepted_or_tolerated_culture’
  Triggers:
• Added a trigger for ‘province_population’.
• Added the average_estate_satisfaction trigger
• Fixed faulty documentation for the years_in_international_organization trigger
• Fixed an issue with is_available_for/is_visible_for/is_allowed_for, which made these triggers return false for any object that does not require an advance
• Add local_estate_power and local_relative_estate_power triggers

Multiplayer

• Fixed desynch caused by revolt wars not being persisted
• Fixed desynch caused by religion focus progress not being persisted if it was not active
• Fixed desynch caused by generating different names for new subunits

Translation

Polish: 

• A total of 24 bugs have been corrected related to the Polish language

Spanish:

• A total of 12 bugs have been corrected related to the Spanish language
• Fixed incorrect $mapmode variables.
• Fixed incorrect $rank_kingdom_horde_ruler_male$ variables
• Fixed incorrect Genghis Khan variables
• Fixed incorrect capitalization in $bengali$ variables
• Fixed grammar issue with $basque$ variables

French:

• A total of 409 bugs have been corrected related to the French language
• Fixed multiple incorrect variable issues
• Fixed incorrect translation bugs
• Fixed missing translation bugs
• Fixed wrong language bugs

Brazilian Portuguese:

• A total of 1243 bugs have been corrected related to the Brazilian Portuguese language
• Corrected capitalization of some terms in mission titles. 
• Standardized capitalization of important terms in game texts. 
• Corrected placeholders that were not displaying character names correctly. 
• Retranslated some game texts that were incorrect. 

Chinese:

• A total of 380 bugs have been corrected

Korean:

• A total of 194 bugs has been corrected related to the Korean language.
• Corrected incorrect transliterations to more accurate pronunciations.
• Modified some texts to better convey their meaning.
• Corrected the display of numerical values in texts.

Japanese:

• A total of  34 bugs has been corrected related to the Japanese language
• Changed the spelling of Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese location/character names that had been in katakana into kanji in many cases.
• Fixed placeholders in instances where an incorrect or outdated placeholder was in use.
• Checked spelling/made consistent some historical terms.
• Fixed typos caused by kanji conversion errors in certain segments.

Turkish:

• A total of 64 bugs have been corrected related to the Turkish language
• A number of fixes in the source text were applied to the localized text.
• Certain strings, including culture name placeholder,s were corrected according to how culture names are displayed
• Improvements were made to the text based on the in-game context.
• A small number of linguistic issues were fixed

German:

• A total of 30 bugs have been corrected related to the German language
• checking of eliminated English contractions and their applicability in German
• streamlining of the form of address
• further standardization and streamlining of the general game vocabulary

Russian:

• A total of 195 bugs have been corrected related to the Russian language

Miscellaneous

Settings:

• Exiting using Alt+F4 in Ironman will now save the game.
• Fixed Ironman not being autosaved monthly

Other:

• Binary savegame optimizations by avoiding writing unnecessary whitespaces.
• Enabling texture streaming for more icon types, which saves around 200mb vram.
• optimized recalculation of cache data by delaying the name generation

bugfixes:

• Fixed the continue button in the main menu when the last save is on the cloud
• When saving to the cloud should always use the binary and zipped format
• Prevented units from moving if no one was looking at them, stopping
• Reviewed most event titles and options that were incorrectly showing hyperlinked texts
• Union event “Ruler Ignores Country” now uses proper pronouns in its text
• Fixed countries starting with zero diplomatic capacity used
• Fix road construction, building outdated roads over more modern ones
• Fixes some issues with levy cooldowns in provinces.
• Fixed so the take on debt message now works for non-player actions
• Removed some unused files
• Fix the western schism situation panel not updating at the end of the first council

Source: Steam

Embark Studio has pushed ARC Raiders update 1.4.0 live, this smaller update focussed on content and bug fixes after the last two updates.

There’s some fixed lighting, a gun exploit that allowed it to be fixed more quickly by swapping to and fro, and they’ve ended an exploit that allowed all locked rooms to be opened.

Here’s the full ARC Raiders update 1.4.0 patch notes:

Content and Bug Fixes

• Exploit mitigation mechanisms have been added for all locked rooms across all maps.
• Fixed the gun exploit that allowed you to shoot quicker than intended by swapping to a quick use item and back.
• The exterior access to Spaceport’s Control Tower locked room has been blocked off.
• Fixed the issue that sometimes caused low resolution textures in the Main Menu.
• Fixed players being able to push each other by jumping on each other’s backs.
• Fixed lighting artifacts that would sometimes occur upon entering maps.
• Raider Voice now correctly respects the selected voice option after restarting the game.
  

Again, that’s much smaller than the last couple of updates, with 1.2.0 adding the Stella Montis map and a community challenge, while 1.3.0 brought some balance tweaks and had a more extensive set of bug fixes.

After a couple weeks as the hottest extraction shooter in town, we delivered our review of ARC Raiders a few days ago. Tuffcub said, “Arc Raiders reminds me of Destiny at launch; the core gameplay is excellent, and there’s a heartwarming sense of community, but there are many aspects that need refining and expanding. Managing your stash on consoles is a chore and there are not enough in-game events to spice up each run.”

Source: Steam

The full patch notes for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's Season 1 can be found here ahead of the official release.

The post Black Ops 7 Season 1 Patch Notes—New Maps, Weapons, Bug Fixes appeared first on Insider Gaming.

Tribute Games has released the first big patch for Marvel Cosmic Invasion, with the main focus by the team being removing bugs from the game. Some of the fixes in this patch for Marvel Cosmic Invasion include addressing an issue causing the game to crash when joining multiplayer sessions, an issue where Super Heroes stats would not upgrade, and also making sure Master Mold is no longer invulnerable. You can read the full list of fixes below.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion patch notes

Fixes!

• Heteropteron Blocker – We’ve fixed an issue where having camera shake effects OFF would stop the cinematic from triggering, keeping Super Heroes trapped in Stage 13
• Multiplayer Crashing – We’ve fixed an issue where joining a multi-player game session and resetting story progress would trigger a crash
• Enemy Cheating! – We’ve fixed an issue where Master Mold would become invulnerable and non-targetable, which if anything was just rude
• Venom Issues – We’ve fixed issues where Venom could become frozen after being parried during Symbiote Pounce or immediately lose armor during Venom Bite
• Upgrade Blocking – We’ve fixed an issue that would mean Super Heroes’ stats did not upgrade after levelling up unless players returned to the main menu.
• Enemy Superpowers – We’ve fixed an issue where enemies would deal abnormally high damage on their first hit during a grab
• Annihilus Invulnerability – We’ve fixed an issue (and related issues) where Annihilus wouldn’t re-enter the staggered/vulnerable state and players couldn’t deal damage
• Where’s Hela?! – Fixed an issue where Hela could de-synchronise while teleporting
• Annihilus Forever! – We fixed an issue where Annihilus wouldn’t stop attacking after his shield breaks
• Multiplayer Connections – Fixed an issue which could cause problems when the host disconnects while Super Heroes are joining a lobby (this should now simply return you to the multiplayer menu)
• Reigning in She-Hulk – Option now added to have controller shake only for players controlling the character (meaning that She-Hulk’s controller vibration only happens for the player controlling her)
• Cosmic Hold On What?! – We’ve fixed an issue where Super Heroes would sometimes be swapped when respawning
• At Least Credit Me – The character who threw the enemy will now be considered the instigator when determining who gets credit for knocking down an assembly line bomb
• Cosmic Stability – We’ve deployed some additional protection for lobby stability when players reach Game Over in Arcade Mode
• Interrogating the Vampire – We’ve fixed an issue which prevented Super Heroes from using the Vampire modifier in Arcade Mode
• Choose your character! – We’ve fixed the issue with the characters’ order in character select for Steam Deck and Linux. That should fix the online desync/crashs between Steam Deck and other versions

Smaller Fixes

• Fixed an issue where intro music was used instead of main stage music where players joined later in Stage 2 (Genosha)
• Fixed MODOK’s movement and behaviours (quite a lot of fixes here, actually)
• Tweaked Beta Ray Bill’s no-hammer attack to ensure it doesn’t register as a multi attack
• Fixed an issue where some enemies would do multiple hits instead of the expected one hit attack
• Fixed an issue where enemies would walk without actually moving
• Tweaked visuals to stop the OK / Back popup appearing while fading out.
• Negative Blast now automatically faces the center of the screen
• Worm enemies will now animate properly when turning to face their enemies
• The Mission Select timer should now count down correctly in Arcade Mode
• We’ve fixed an issue where players could immediately spawn in a pit when joining a mid-session lobby
• Cancelling character selection will not reset the selected skin
• Fixed visual glitching during tally and post-boss cutscenes
• Fixed Super Heroes appearing multiple times when confronting Annihilus
• Fixed an issue where Annihilus would play an incorrect animation following the Negative Wave attack
• Fixed an issue where egg spawners would not always appear in the correct state
• Fixed an issue where Bug Barricade dealt multiple attacks and a huge amount of damage
• Fixed online synchronisation issues related to Sentry Laser and Statue
• Fixed small graphical shadow errors
• Fixed a challenge completion issue related to multi-hit tasks

Marvel Cosmic Invasion Review

In our Marvel Cosmic Invasion review, Ade said, “Having found Tribute Games’ previous release, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, to be one of the best scrolling beat ‘em ups I’d ever played, I had high expectations for Marvel Cosmic Invasion. How could Shredder’s Revenge with Marvel characters go wrong? Sadly, Marvel Cosmic Invasion is entirely OK but fails to be anything more than that.”

Source: Steam

Helldivers 2 is about to get much, much smaller on PC, as Arrowhead (with some help from PlayStation’s Nixxes) have worked hard to squish the game’s install down by a staggering 85%! That’s huge news for PC players… and those that just have the game installed, but haven’t actually played it in a while.

Available now as a beta update, this reduces the PC installation size from ~154GB to just ~23GB, a completely ridiculous reduction in size. You’ll still be on the same build of the game, just without taking up so much space. Neat!

How is this possible? Well, in a blog post recently, Arrowhead addressed the issue of the game’s installation on PC and how much bigger it was than the PS5 version of the game. The reason for the difference was that, while the PS5 is guaranteed to have an SSD, Arrowhead thought that they needed to duplicate files to keep loading times down for PC gamer playing from a traditional mechanical HDD. After the reduction in size, Arrowhead believe that mission loading times for HDD players will be increased by just a few seconds in the worst cases.

All of this is because Arrowhead had relied on industry data for this assumption on data duplication – a practice that has been common to aid in random read times for any kind of spinning disc media. After exploring this in tandem with Nixxes and gathering real data specific to this game (such as that only 11% of players were playing from HDD), they discovered that the majority of loading times are actually from level generation as opposed to asset loading, meaning they could safely de-duplicate game assets, as asset loading happens in parallel.

While testing has been very positive internally, Arrowhead is still being cautious and hosting this as a beta alongside the main version, before reversing the roles and putting the huge version of Helldivers 2 as a legacy version to help with troubleshooting. However, given the minor differences, they won’t maintain this forever.

Source: Steam

Nintendo has released an update for their wheelchair basketball multiplayer game, Drag x Drive. Patch 1.2.0 adds a new game mode for the full game, while also revamping the Global Jam beta test into a regular demo for all to try.

The new game mode is Survival Tag, which is basically exactly what it sounds like. Survival Tag can be played throughout the park lobby with friends, local wireless and LAN, and needs to be started by the lobby host from the X menu.

Elsewhere there’s just some general bug fixed and improvements to the game, which are outlined in the patch notes below.

As for the demo, this allows you to check out the game offline, playing the tutorial, challenging bots in 3v3 matches, and exploring the park. You’ll generally be able to get used to the Joy-Con 2 mouse mode controls and how they work to play the game.

It’s nice to see the game getting some support still, but will it entice any new players to really dive into the game? Looking back on our review of Drag x Drive, I said, “Drag x Drive makes good use of the Joy-Con 2 mouse controls for a simple game of wheelchair basketball, but it lacks the charm and personality you’d expect from a Nintendo game.”

Here’s the full Drag x Drive 1.2.0 patch notes:

General Updates

• Added the chasing game Survival Tag to friend parks, local wireless parks, and LAN parks.
  • Note: To play Survival Tag when in the parks listed above, the player who created the park opens the X Menu, then selects Start Survival Tag on the Players tab.
  • Depending on the wireless environment, there may be times where player positioning does not perfectly match between users. For that reason, there may be cases where, even if it appears to one player as if contact was made, from the other player’s perspective no contact occurred. In order to limit unpleasant experiences in situations like these as much as possible, in basketball games this may be determined as no contact.
  • On the other hand, in Survival Tag, the question of contact is the whole crux of the game and is particularly important to game progression. Therefore, it has been designed such that a tag is considered successful if there was contact from either perspective (the tagging player, or the one who was tagged).
• Corrected the calculation of Iso Wins on the Game Stats tab under Stats. Previously, it counted the total number of Isos, not just wins.
• Added Rope Jumps to Other Stats tab under Stats.
• Changed the target of the Focus Cam when near the sumo ring to the sumo ring itself.
• Made some adjustments to bots in friend parks, local wireless parks, and LAN parks.
  • Note: We slightly lowered the strength level of the Easy and Standard bots that the player who created the park can add under the Players tab of the X Menu.
• Added a feature to enable players to delete their own records.
  • On the screen that displays players’ records before starting time trials or shooting contests, simultaneously press and hold the ZL Button, left directional button, and right directional button on the Joy-Con 2 (L) for 10 seconds to delete the record.
  • Once deleted, records cannot be restored.
  • Obtained trophies will remain, even if records are deleted.

Fixed Issues

• Fixed a very rare issue where, due to unintended behavior, the displays for level or total distance would reach the upper limit.
• Fixed a rare issue in Circuit Sprint where players sometimes passed through terrain.
• Fixed an issue where bunny hops made it possible to accelerate to and maintain speed that exceeded top speed.
  • The intended design is that it is only possible to accelerate beyond the normal top speed when driving down a slope or successfully pulling off a halfpipe or ramp trick. However, unintended behavior occurred, such as players accelerating beyond top speed when landing after rotating, or not decelerating while in midair even if they had exceeded top speed. We fixed this because this issue required players to control their character in unintuitive ways in order to achieve good results.
• Fixed various issues to create a smoother gaming experience.

Note: Version 1.1.1 for the Drag x Drive Demo (formerly Drag x Drive: Global Jam) was also released.

General Updates

• Changed software title from Drag x Drive: Global Jam to Drag x Drive Demo.
• Changed the software icon that displays in locations such as the HOME Menu.
• Made it possible to play the tutorial and certain bot games any time.
• Fixed various issues to create a smoother gaming experience.

Source: Nintendo

Nintendo has released Mario Kart World update 1.4.0, making a big bunch of changes and bug fixes to the Switch 2’s biggest game.

Amongst the changes are a new custom items rule setting, which lets you pick exactly which items appear in your game – this is really handy for anyone chasing the last few Kamek transformation character!

There’s also an improved way to join up and play multiplayer with friends, as up to four players gathered together in a “Room” can all take part in Race, Knockout Tour and Battle, and you can also join people playing Knockout Tour when in 2P and Online as well.

Nintendo has also changed the course layout for eight of the Intermission style point-to-point races involving Koopa Troopa Beach. All the races heading there will now have two laps of Koopa Troopa Beach once you get there. We hope this is a sign of more changes to come!

Here’s the full patch notes for Mario Kart World update 1.4.0:

General

• Added “Custom Items” to the item rules.
  • This is a feature that lets you set which items appear.
  • This is supported in “VS Race”, “Balloon Battle”, “Coin Runners”, and “Room” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play”.
• Made it so that music track name and source title of the track that is playing will be displayed on the Pause Menu.
• Added “Music Volume” to “Settings/Controller”.
• Made it so players who gathered in a “Room” of “Online Play” can participate in “Race”, “Knockout Tour”, and “Battle”.
  • Up to 4 players can participate in “Race”, “Knockout Tour”, and “Battle”.
• Made it so you can join in with friends who are playing “Knockout Tour” from “Friends” in “2p”, “Online Play” as well.
• Added “Restart” and “Next Race” in the Pause Menu for “VS Race” in “Single Player”.
• Made it so you can select “Photo Mode” from the Pause Menu in “Race against Ghost” in “Time Trials”.
• Changed the course layout of below courses for “VS Race”, or “Race” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play”.
  • • Race that heads from “Koopa Troopa Beach” to “DK Spaceport”.
    • Race that heads from “Koopa Troopa Beach” to “Crown City”.
    • Race that heads from “Koopa Troopa Beach” to “Peach Stadium”.
    • Race that heads from “Whistlestop Summit” to “Koopa Troopa Beach”.
    • Race that heads from “Desert Hills” to “Koopa Troopa Beach”.
    • Race that heads from “DK Spaceport” to “Koopa Troopa Beach”.
    • Race that heads from “Crown City” to “Koopa Troopa Beach”.
    • Race that heads from “Peach Stadium” to “Koopa Troopa Beach”.

  *Changed it so that, in all races heading toward “Koopa Troopa Beach”, including the above courses, you will cross the finish line after two laps once you arrive at “Koopa Troopa Beach”.

• You will now dash when riding on Manta Ramp’s back.
• Made it so the player will not hit Dragoneel when transformed into Bullet Bill.
• Made it so the player cannot use a second Boo while already using a Boo, when holding two Boos.
• When Dash Food is taken by someone, shortened the time until that Dash Food reappears.
• When a coin placed on water is taken by someone, shortened the time until that coin reappears.

Fixed Issues

• Fixed an issue where the dash time was not correct after a Charge Jump.
• Fixed an issue where the player would slip through a wall when being stomped on from above by a vehicle driving on the road.
• Fixed an issue where a player would be squashed when touching a Thwomp that had landed.
• Fixed an issue where a Bullet Bill would not be displayed after using it.
• Fixed an issue where a character would be blurry even when making “Focus” “Character” when taking a photo in “Photo Mode” on the Pause Menu.
• Fixed an issue where the screen would look distorted if entering a pipe at the same time as joining a Free Roam in “Online Play”.
• Fixed an issue where player could not get in a UFO when multiple players tried to get in a UFO at the same time in Free Roam in “Online Play”.
• Fixed an issue where a friend’s information would not be updated when looking at the list of friends in “Friends” in “Online Play”.
• Fixed an issue where there would be a communication error when looking at a group ID in “View Room Info” when participating in a group in “Friends” in “Online Play”.
• Fixed an issue where a player’s place would go down if retiring during “Knockout Tour” in “Online Play”.
• Fixed an issue where a player that is seen when spectating looks like they are going off the course over and over during “Knockout Tour” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play”.
• Fixed an issue where the player’s own character or vehicle would change when starting “Online Play” or “Wireless Play” again after quitting a game after “Knockout Tour” in “Online Play” or “Wireless Play”.
• Fixed an issue where a player would get stuck on a wall when using a Bullet Bill while falling off the course in “Sky-High Sundae”.
• Fixed an issue where a Bullet Bill would go outside the course when using it on the final curve in “Boo Cinema”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would slip through a bulldozer in “Toad’s Factory”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would get stuck on a spotlight in the race that heads from “Toad’s Factory” to “Bowser’s Castle” when transformed into Bullet Bill.
• Fixed an issue where if the player used a Bullet Bill or Spiny Shell in the first curve of “Desert Hills”, it would get stuck on a rock.
• Fixed an issue where the player would get stuck on a tree when using a Bullet Bill on “DK Pass”.
• Fixed an issue where, when the player was small because of Lightning, they would slip through the wall on the final curve of “DK Pass.
• Fixed an issue where the player would get stuck on a billboard when transforming into Bullet Bill in the race that heads from “Crown City” to “Desert Hills”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would slip through the ring of stone when using a Bullet Bill or Mega Mushroom while falling in “Great ? Block Ruins” right before the final curve.
• Fixed an issue where the player would get stuck on the ground on the meadows near “Big Donut”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would slip through the wall if rewinding after wall riding in the special room you can go to from a pipe in “Shy Guy Bazaar”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would still fall into the lava even though they have “Smart Steering” ON in “Dry Bones Burnout”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would go off the course when using a Bullet Bill while rail riding in “Wario Stadium”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would not be able to glide if getting on a glide panel while gliding in the race that heads from “Wario Stadium” to “Airship Fortress”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would get stuck on the ground while heading from “Wario Stadium” to “Airship Fortress”.
• Fixed an issue where the vehicle would float up from the rail when the player did a rail ride after a wall ride in a bike-type vehicle in “Wario Stadium”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would go off the course when using a Bullet Bill on the shortcut while heading from “Dandelion Depths” to “Cheep Cheep Falls” in the “Ice Rally” of “Knockout Tour”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would go off the course while gliding, while heading from “Dandelion Depths” to “Cheep Cheep Falls” in the “Moon Rally” of “Knockout Tour”.
• Fixed an issue where a green shell would get stuck on the ground while heading from “Airship Fortress” to “Dry Bones Burnout” in the “Heart Rally” of “Knockout Tour”.
• Fixed an issue where the player would go off the course when they transformed into Bullet Bill on top of a building in “Crown City” in the below races:
  • Race that heads from “DK Spaceport” to “Crown City”.
  • Race that heads from “Koopa Troopa Beach” to “Crown City”.
  • Race that heads from “Faraway Oasis” to “Crown City”.
• Several other issues have been addressed to improve the gameplay experience.

Source: Nintendo