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It's not too much different here. We have a small section in a corner for accessories like headphones, section for Anime, big section of BluRays / Boxsets, a section for CD's but much smaller now and a fairly decent range of vinyl along with the various merch you can buy dotted all around the store, also a wall lined with expensive t-shirts.. I might pop in every so often to check out if anything is decent but still not willing to shop there at those prices.

It's your standard pay to win model. I don't last on COD games in recent years but come season 3+, some people are literally kitted out with one hit kill AR's. If they ain't baiting people with the battlepass, it's to drive people to modes to bolster wider engagement even if they aren't overly interested in playing them. Activision have their playbook at hand and they also have concept patents and algorithms in play to maximise income, retention and player numbers. They know exactly what they are doing and which buttons to press. Pre-season was pure bait really.

Tried season one and I don't see any improvements or differences aside from the introduction of a shoothouse playlist Prestige. Unless they are hidden, no challenges, combat record or anything. The interface is actually more bloated than ever plus I so love reinstalling shaders that are supposed to be hard-cached....

So Monday I had to look after my young son for the day while my wife did her return to work day (hence having to get back early) and I thought as it's his first day without his mom properly I would just go out with him and see where we end up. Decided to go to Merry Hill which is our local shopping centre and ended up in HMV at one point. So the reason for this post is that HMV is not anything like I remember, when I last went in (it was in a different location for a start) but it was just cd based, the store was a bit of a mess and seemed to be struggling to find it's place in the world today. The HMV I visited Monday was a far cry from that, music had been pushed to the back of the store and probably only took up about 20% (30% if you include gadgets to play them on) of the floor space, the rest now seems to be much more pop culture focused and to be honest I really liked it! They also had some little arcade machines (not cheap by any means), Japanese style plus teddies, funko pops, model figurines of various films / tv shows etc. Just wondered if anyone had been in one similar, is this a trial run or just a new direction for the company?

Sounds like more of a decent place to shop around Christmas for ideas for different people. I kind of like they have evolved in some way away from pretty much just music, however I really do miss browsing new music like that as it would help me look through genres I enjoyed and find similar types of CDs and playlists that would be worthwhile buying. I don't really listen to much new music because of the new digital rental services like Spotify and Apple Music. I keep a lookout for the Coventry store when we get chance to go into the city centre soon.

20 slottable spells sounds good to me. I do think it looks like a cracking game and one of very few single player games i'll make time for next year.

Funny thing is that a lot of people are saying that Taraq is a remake of he Neuville map from COD1. I looked at the basics and they may have a point. Don't know what people were saying when they first played that map but its kind of funny that a map that is that old gets these kind of comments I play a lot of DOM on Taraq. I find that Fortress and Asilo are way worse for that game mode.

The VEL 46 is done. On the the MX9 now.

Khastov AR is probably the easiest and quickest Gold i've done so far. Just the Gold challenges now for the VEL-46 SMG and then i'll move on to another AR and SMG. Battle Rifle wise, I'm actually struggling more than others with SPR208. Don't really know what attachments help with this? Just feel like i'm a sitting duck most of the time with it and just get hit markers rather than one hit kills.

100% I've said all along the main reason these games are ass is because of shit map design first, everything else is secondary to map design.

I'm officially disgusted, a new low for Activision. So as you will read in this article. A new Assault Rifle, one with low recoil and high fire rate. Sounds OP already. I've taken a few screenies to pinpoint my main points of disappointment. Fuck you Activision!!! Activision is locking new Call of Duty weapons behind its other game modes WWW.EUROGAMER.NET Fans have already started combing through all the new content coming to Call of Duty...

Seems that season 1 is a total shit show. They've made changes for Warzone but because they're utterly fucking useless and can't keep normal MP and Warzone as separate entities then any changes for one affects the other. They've made footsteps LOUDER as it makes sense in Warzone but it also means they're super loud now in MP. Basically how they were at the start of the beta. Also the noise Dead Silence makes when you activate it is really loud again. Also Tier 1 isn't proper Hardcore. There is no HUD *at all*. No kill feed or anything. And apparently you can't even use streaks if they require your character to bring up a tablet. It's quite astounding just how utterly shite IW are at making things work properly.

nail in the coffin? The game had the best opening weekend and is the fastest cod to reach $1B. it's demise is highly exaggerated. I see a lot a people like myself enjoy it. My first cod was MW2 in 2009. I didn't play Vanguard, I didn't reach max level of the 3 before that because the sucked so much. So I think despite your dislikes, it will do quite fine

Shoothouse has its own moshpit right now Not too keen on the aesthetic but it's not too bad for short bursts of fun.

It's different because I've never played Destiny...... Also I shouldn't be forced to play a new gamemode if I don't want to. For years we unlock guns for free in Warzone, Multiplayer and whatever gamemode you prefer. The choice was yours, not anymore! Or BUY the bundle from the shop. Play our new gamemode or Buy. Not play what you like and earn it the way you like. It's manipulation and a dictatorship. We paid for the game, we should enjoy all aspects of the weaponry added for DLC without doing their hoop jumping or buying it. It's just wrong man.......

So how is this any different than trying to get the Gjallarhorn on destiny? Or a bunch of other things that were only available if you did raids?

I'm talking about the season one and Warzone download. What's the point of doing a pre-load if you're going to force users to burden themselves with the entire game file on the content release? Partial compressed installs on the back-end is the answer and how all live services should be ran when the onus is on the users to support all content they may not ever authenticate.

I wouldn't have played it back then so unfortunately dont have comparisons to fall back on. I think the challenge is any type of map design is always worth a try, but when it is a square map that is on the whole, wide open from most corners, it literally forces you to camp or play extremely slowly to move from flag to flag. It is literally suicide running through the middle as its wide open and you get picked off so quickly, so you resort to Plan B, which is run around the edge to capture flags far away...but 7-8 times out of 10, you find you run for 1-2 minutes to be shot quickly at the other end, which means a long ass run for your next death. Other maps like Border Crossing (starting to come round to this map abit more) have multiple ways to play it. Thats what maps need, just different angles and possibilities. The worse thing going for Taraq is like @TigerBurge said, is generally how CoD players usually play. They don't play like FG does of which 95% of us PTFO. That map is designed to help those campers that just want kills, whereas others you can flip spawns quickly and force the slow campy players that don't play objectives out of their holes more often.

The Pila is gold. Very easy challenge

I really can't get with this. This guy I know is putting it across in a way more damning way to get more views but its no way near that bad on this game than the previous 3-4 CoDs which goes to show this game is much better than expected. I think making maps to be able to re-use the areas for multiple gamemodes makes absolute sense - the file size of the game gets hurt even more if you just make bespoke 6v6 maps alone. We'll all agree that there are some maps that it just doesn't work out and feels lazy, such as Taraq, but in the main I think most do. He shows gameplay of the racetrack one and that by far has great lanes but also good interchanges between the middle and the side rooms imo. Taraq is the only one I feel like I am running across the map forever and get picked off so quickly and easily. The Border Crossing is my only other poor map but even then its trying to do something different with the maps rather than the standard box sized 3 lanes.

Looks like Warzone 2 is a forced install. I did everything to prevent it but got a 44gb installation this morning pop up. With the AppID being blended, you also can't determine if there is any season 1 stuff in there so stopping it is pointless. Season one content install has also been delayed to make way for Warzone 2 downloads so that's the ultimate middle finger from Cocktivision and the people that actually paid for the base game. The freeloaders get priority downloads basically. Also when Warzone 2 goes live, MWII owners wont be able to get playing that to make way for the delayed season one download. Complete balls-up as always. This should have been a staggered rollout over the course of a week.

Love how you broke this down Kenny. 3Arc’s map design still is the golden standard in my eyes. When you stop and think about it the original MW2 maps were really pretty shitty. Tons of doors and windows and corners for people to hide in. Yes there were some great maps mixed in but as a whole their map design has always been multilevel with rooms to hide and windows to camp. Then the others were more open with a cluster fuck for the power position. First team to get to it and hold it wins. I think IW does a good job at map design when it comes to objective mode games but let’s be fair most of the CoD community doesn’t PTFO. I’ve always love domination but never play it because if you’re solo or a duo and your team sucks you get rolled. I have played more KC in this one since you can run score streaks and really rack up tags and streaks since teammates seem to avoid them.

AK-74U is the best gun in the game. Followed by the STB-556. Both are amazing.

I think most of the maps extracted from ground war were still hand-crafted from the ground up rather than simply cherrypicked as warzone locations deemed suitable for core multiplayer. These maps are definitely more detailed and refined when compared to how they appear on the full scale map. They are actually not too bad and whether it was a chicken or egg situation as to how it was executed, the developers have not done a good job of explaining their work, however I don't think they need to as the maps work pretty well in most cases. What the developers do have to answer to is what was going through their minds when they decided to produce to-scale real-world locations without permissions or copyright. This is an astonishing oversight really. I don't know how these maps were born - probably some of the devs got inspired by locations outside of the Warzone map and completely lost sight of common sense. Can't fault the detail and the way they are replicated but it's just bizarre inclusions all round especially with areas not even associated with the game. My real complaint is the lack of terrain variety with this method - we have no snow and the likes of the race track act as a bit of a blessing as it's something different when compared to the South American backdrop. On the whole though, I think most of the maps work well in the modes on offer irrespective of how they were designed but I am a bit miffed at the lack of content especially with season one.

So since last time, I've managed to do a couple more. Done 3 now. M4, Sakin MG38 LMG and the Kastov 762. The Pila is getting there as well. That Kastov 762 is an absolute monster. I only ran 1 attachment with it (sharkfin under grip). Didn't hold the gun back at all with the lack of attachments.

I agree with both of you here's why, are the MW2 maps bad not in my opinion. Are they better than MW19 maps hell yes. Everyone slags Vanguard. Now the maps on that game were ok, some good and some bad. They launched with 16 yes 16 6v6 maps. Cold War maps felt like the old school 3 Lane back in the day maps. Vanguard and Cold War didn't suffer from the curse of Warzone map design for MP. They didn't want Treyarchs goofy yet fun and colourful maps, nor did they want Sledgehammers WW2 stuff in their Warzone. The recent Modern Warfares suffered from this building a big map, and cutting bits down and scaling it down for MP. 6v6 map design is essentially a by product or leftovers if you would of Warzone. Now are MW2s maps as good as the OG MW2, BO1, BO2, MW3? Most definitely not. I don't think they are all that bad tho.

With the exception of a couple of maps the ones that launched haven’t been that bad. Honestly they really remind me of BF 3/4 maps if you played Dom or TDM without being able to blow them up. Multiple levels with doors and windows.

Alba FREE on Epic until the 17th https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/alba-a-wildlife-adventure-93736a

Why can't they give us a new map and an old map in the first season is beyond me. Shipment is one of them maps you'll either have a great game or a game where it's just spawn die spawn die.

Not going to lie. The fact that Shipment and Shoot House are the first two maps they are bringing back is shitty. I’m assuming with the Reloaded update they may be doing some more classic maps

Argentina played well and we looked slow as fuck and like we had no idea how to attack from open play. The game against Japan just got a lot more interesting for england, especially as we’ll probably lose to New Zealand and South Africa.

Well all I can say is getting lapped twice was well worth it.

Excellent races last night. I used to hate Brands Hatch but I've found you just need to be brave in a few corners and all good. Kiwi was hobbled by yours truly at the first corner as i was too slow to react when he came across me, I say too slow to react, I tried but had a little tap from behind...😁 Sorry @JBR-Kiwi Lee was the source of his own downfall but for most the tyre wear had a big impact. Was surprised to see Kiwi pit, for example. Despite a couple of errors the mighty Greboth won the race and Nick and Tom getting closer all the time. As for @slamminbones we're all pretty convinced he spent the night with someone paying attention to his gear stick 😅 All post up the latest table over the weekend. Week off next week!