Ubisoft held another XDebrief for its Call of Duty-like competitive shooter XDefiant today, revealing that it will add a new faction based on Far Cry New Dawn, private matches, and more.
Each new XDefiant season will bring a new faction with it during its first year , and this time, that faction is the Highwaymen. The Highwaymen are based on the enemies from Far Cry: New Dawn, a postapocalyptic spinoff of the open-world shooter series released in 2019. Season 2’s launch map, Waterfront, is also based on that game. It’s the second Far Cry faction to come to XDefiant, as Libertad from Far Cry 6 was in the game at launch. As is the case with all factions, the Highwaymen offer up three unique abilities that players can use mid-match.
They have an M79 grenade launcher that fires explosive grenades at their enemies and an automatic Scrap Turret they can deploy on the battlefield. Their Ultra ability is Saw Launcher, which fires sawblade projectiles that bounce off walls. This all feeds back into a unique passive ability where their rate of fire and reload speeds increase the more kills players get. The Highwaymen seem like the most aggressive faction in XDefiant yet.
Outside of the new faction, the new season will bring a new battle pass and three new weapons. Those weapons are the high-powered PP-19 submachine gun, the lightweight L86 LSW light machine gun, and the semi-automatic SPAS-12 shotgun. XDefiant’s Bomb mode — a six-round mode similar to attack-and-defend shooters like Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, and Spectre Divide — will also enter casual playlists during this season. Ubisoft will take feedback from that and then add it into Ranked mode.
Season 2 of XDefiant adds private matches, although it will be a beta version of the concept. Private matches will let players set up custom games just for them and their friends. The map, mode, ranked or unranked status, lobby player count, and team size can all be customized. New maps called Signal and Air & Space will also come to XDefiant at some point during Season 2, bringing its map count to 20.
XDefiant is available for free across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. Season 2 begins on September 24, although PC players will be able to test out its new content for three hours on September 20.
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.