Players who pre-ordered either the Digital Deluxe or Legacy editions of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare on PlayStation 4 will get access to the Modern Warfare Remastered campaign Wednesday, October 5, a full month ahead of the games’ launch. We got a hold of the campaign just a wee bit early, so we’re going boot it up and take the game for a test drive today at 2 p.m. ET on Twitch. (Don’t worry, you can watch the stream right here, above.)
For those out there who haven’t heard about it, Modern Warfare Remastered is a modernization of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the game that popularized RPG-style progressions in first-person shooters and made Call of Duty a household name. The remake is a digital download, but is only available by purchasing one of the aforementioned collector’s editions of Infinite Warfare, which hit stores next month. (As we recently learned, players who purchase Infinite Warfare on disc will need it to play this game as well.)
As we found out in an interview with developer Raven Software last month, the “remaster” is not so much a remake as it is a modernization. As it turns out, the Call of Duty engine used to make Infinite Warfare is based on the same engine used to build the original Modern Warfare in 2007. Of course, the engine has been upgraded and modified, possibly past the point of recognition: According to the developer, making Modern Warfare feel right in the new Call of Duty engine took more than a little bit of work.
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“So starting with those layouts and starting with the gameplay and the timing, our engineers created a system that would record controller inputs,” Raven Software Studio Director David Pellas told Digital Trends. “And it did a comparison between how much time it took to move from start to run, how much time it took you from pushing the button to have an action actually take place on the (Xbox) 360, and compare that to what it was on the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.”
Was all that hard work worth it? We won’t know for certain until we get access to the full version of Modern Warfare Remastered when it launches November 4.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?