Month: April 2022

If you like playing online games, Vainglory is a multiplayer battle arena game where two teams compete to destroy an enemy base. Now Super Evil Megacorp, the company behind Vainglory, is about to release Catalyst Black – a new triple-A-level battleground game for iOS and Android.

Catalyst Black has been in development for some time. In fact, if you watched the iPhone 13 keynote in September last year, there was a brief demo of the game during the A15 Bionic chip and ProMotion display segment.

According to the developers, Catalyst Black’s premise is to create a new world with epic battles, powerful guns and multiple custom abilities.

In Catalyst Black, players will ascend to the skies as they embark on an expedition to acquire rich caches of power discoverable across the exotic Welkin Islands. Floating high above Kyria, the Welkins offer near limitless access to the mystical resource catalyte, but also hold within them the great mysteries of Catalyst Black itself.

With a free-to-play business model, Catalyst Black lets players collect, upgrade, and customize items to improve their game. There will be over 30 different guns and 12 abilities at launch, with more to come in future updates. You will improve your hunting and long-range shooting abilities the more you play.

Catalyst Black includes multiple game modes. Hydra mode allows players to battle other players or a boss. In Slayer mode, you have to defeat enemies to earn points until you win. There’s also an Eventide mode to dispute the control of an ancient fortress. Users can join teams of 5v5 up to 12v12 players.

Although the game is designed for touch screens, it can also be used with controllers. Players will also find options to reduce graphics quality to save battery life if they want, and they can even enable a 120 FPS mode – available exclusively on supported iOS devices at first.

Catalyst Black will be released for both iOS and Android on May 25. Interested users can now pre-register on the game’s website to be notified of the release.

Check out some more screenshots of the game below:

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Stories discussed in this episode:

• EU set to announce new anticompetitive charges against Apple, targeting dominance of Apple Pay in iPhone
• iOS 16 could expand iCloud Private Relay to hide even more data
• iOS 15. 5 blocks ‘Sensitive Locations’ for Photo Memories

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As we’ve covered a number of times already, expectations for the iPhone 14 lineup are pretty clear. Apple is likely to unveil four different iPhone 14 models across two screen sizes at 6. 1-inches and 6.7-inches.

While Apple (usually) does a great job at keeping marketing names under wraps until a product is announced, it’s fun to speculate ahead of time. Something I’ve been pondering recently is whether the iPhone 14 lineup could mark the return of the “Plus” branding…

The iPhone 14 lineup is likely to consist of two 6. 1-inch iPhone models, one of which will be branded as a “Pro” model and the other one being the “entry-level” model. This is unsurprising and is the exact strategy Apple used with the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13.

But where things are expected to differ is with the 6. 7-inch iPhone models. At the high-end of the lineup will be the iPhone 14 Pro Max, again repeating the strategy used with the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13. For the first time, however, Apple is also expected to introduce an iPhone with a 6. 7-inch display that is not branded as a “Pro” model.

What this means is that the iPhone 14 will be available in two different screen sizes across four different price points. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has suggested that the non-Pro version of the 6. 7-inch iPhone 14 could be priced at around $900, making it the most affordable 6. 7-inch iPhone ever released by Apple.

Loosely looking at current iPhone prices, that means the iPhone 14 lineup could look like this:

• $799 iPhone 14
• $899 iPhone 14 Max
• $999 iPhone 14 Pro
• $1099 iPhone 14 Pro Max

iPhone 14 Plus?

But my proposal and idea for Apple’s crack marketing team is this. Instead of using the “iPhone 14 Max” name, let’s bring back the “Plus” and call it the iPhone 14 Plus.

• iPhone 14
• iPhone 14 Plus
• iPhone 14 Pro
• iPhone 14 Pro Max

Having two versions of the iPhone 14 with “Max” tacked on the end could prove to be confusing for consumers. Apple’s “Plus” branding was also very popular in the past. The iPhone 6 Plus, for instance, is one of the best selling iPhones of all-time.

The iPhone 14 lineup is actually looking like an extension of Apple’s iPhone 6 strategy of attempting to bring a large screen to as low of a price point as possible. If the iPhone 6 Plus success serves as any indication, the iPhone 14 Plus could be one of the most popular iPhone models in recent years.

Again, this is all just conjecture at this point and Apple does a great job at keeping iPhone branding under wraps until officially announcing the new devices. Apple’s marketing names are notoriously difficult to predict, so it is possible that Apple will do something surprising this year. Drop the numbers all together? Go with the “iPhone 13S” instead? It’s anyone’s guess.

What are your thoughts on marketing names for this year’s iPhone 14 lineup? Give us your best guesses down in the comments.

Read more 9to5Mac coverage of the iPhone 14:

• Exclusive: iPhone 14 coming in four models without ‘mini’ version, Pro models with taller screen, satellite features advancing
• Here’s everything we know so far about the iPhone 14
• Kuo: iPhone 14 Pro camera bump to be even larger thanks to new 48MP sensor
• Kuo: Apple’s new A16 chip only included with higher-end iPhone 14 Pro models, base model iPhone 14 uses same chip as iPhone 13

One of the Week 6 quests for Chapter 3 Season 2 in Fortnite‘s Battle Royale mode requires you to “deal 100 damage or more to an opponent with one bullet.” To do this, you’ll need some specific guns, as the majority of weapons are completely incapable of doing that much damage. Our Fortnite weekly quest guide explains how to deal 100 damage with one bullet easily.

The easiest way to accomplish the task is to use a sniper rifle or specific shotguns. Any of these :

can be used.

• Bolt-Action Sniper Rifle
• Heavy Sniper Rifle
• Hunter Bolt-Action Sniper Rifle
• Storm Scout (Exotic, purchased from The Foundation in Sanctuary)
• Ranger Shotgun
• Striker Pump Shotgun

For most of these, you’ll need to land a headshot to actually do 100 damage. But the higher the rarity, the more damage the gun does — so if you use a Legendary Bolt-Action Sniper Rifle, it will deal over 100 damage with one bullet, even if it’s a body shot.

We recommend using a Heavy Sniper Rifle or Ranger Shotgun (which both deal over 100 damage on their own, without the need for a headshot or high-rarity version). However, if you can’t find one, you can upgrade a Bolt-Action Sniper Rifle to Legendary status at a workbench.

If you’re going with the lower-rarity headshot method, IO Guards make for easy targets. We recommend hunting them down in Command Cavern or The Fortress.

Once you complete this quest, you’ll get 20,000 XP, which should help you boost up your battle pass level substantially.

Call of Duty returns to Modern Warfare in 2022, developer Infinity Ward and Activision confirmed Thursday in tweets that showed the logo and the title of the next game in the series, which appears to be, simply, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This year’s entry in the enduring shooter franchise is expected to arrive on consoles and PC sometime later this year.

On Twitter, the game’s official account teased “the new era of Call of Duty is coming,” and posted a brief teaser video. That video offers little more than an aesthetic tease, but very briefly shows the logo for Task Force 141, the international spec ops unit that served as the principal protagonists of the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 released in 2009.

(This year’s game may technically be titled Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, in an attempt to differentiate it from the other game that bears that name, based on the above logo. The Call of Duty: Black Ops games have used Roman numerals for sequels, including the unusual Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII. )

The next Call of Duty is a direct sequel to 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Infinity Ward’s reboot of the sub-brand that started in 2007 with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The 2019 Modern Warfare has been the most successful Call of Duty title to date, Activision has said.

Activision has reportedly shown the new Modern Warfare 2 privately this week to NFL draft prospects in Las Vegas, and is expected to show the game more widely soon.

A new premium Call of Duty game isn’t the only shooter Activision has planned for the property this year; a new Warzone game, a “built from the ground-up,” free-to-play shooter with battle royale elements, is also coming in 2022. The original Call of Duty: Warzone was released in March 2020, and was part of the previous Modern Warfare‘s season 2 content. Since then, Activision and developer Raven Software have updated Warzone with content from Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War and Call of Duty: Vanguard.