After announcing a definite release date and the all-new hero Junker Queen, Overwatch 2 is ready for a second beta. According to its official Twitter page, Overwatch 2 is coming back to consoles and PC for an extended beta test on June 28 that will feature a new map and playable character.
#Overwatch2 Beta begins June 28
🎮 PC & Console
👑 Junker Queen & a New Map
✋ Sign-Ups & more details coming June 16 pic.twitter.com/XPJOhfeVjE
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) June 14, 2022
Overwatch 2 first beta came and went in April and gained its fair share of praise and criticism. We at Digital Trends saw it as a return to glory, but one without any true new additions. At the time, we noted that it felt more like “Overwatch 1.5.”
It’s unlikely that Blizzard will offer anything big enough in the follow-up to change the initial takeaway from the first beta. However, with a new hero and map, it’ll be hard to resist for fans of the hero shooter.
Like the previous beta, those that want to participate have to sign up earlier and hope that they find an invite code to the festivities in their inbox before the beta begins. No specifics about signing up have been announced as of yet, but it’s expected to mirror the first beta’s prerequisites.
The second Overwatch 2 beta begins on June 28. Players hoping to sign up will be waiting until Thursday, June 16 to find out how they can get in on the early action.
Those that don’t make it in this time shouldn’t fret too much. Overwatch 2‘s free-to-play player-vs-player mode is set to launch on October 4. That isn’t too much waiting time for anyone that gets left out.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.