Author: Game Infliction

Xbox has announced a new PC Game Pass referral program that lets existing members gift a free trial of the subscription service to a friend.

Every Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass holder will be able to send a total of five friend referrals by clicking the “Give PC Game Pass” button located on your Game Pass home screen menu. Each trial can be redeemed to grant access to a 14-day PC Game Pass trial, as long as the target of your generosity is new to the service.

Microsoft has launched the program to coincide with the release of Arkane’s first-person action horror shooter Redfall, which was released earlier today on Game Pass for Xbox consoles and PC.

Beyond Redfall the trial unlocks all of the content usually contained in the PC Game Pass service, including hundreds of games ranging from Rare’s pirate adventure title Sea of Thieves, to Playground Games’ high-octane offering in Forza Horizon 5. The trial also provides access to all the titles included in an EA Play membership, along with any new first party Xbox Studio games launching onto the service during the trial period.

The new program will be welcome news to gamers hoping to give Game Pass on PC a try, especially considering that Microsoft recently ended a long standing promotion that offered a one month trial of the subscription service for $1.

Xbox recently revealed some of the titles that will be coming to Game Pass in the the coming month, including the fairlytale action-adventure Ravenlok (May 4), the action RPG Weird West (May 8), the tactical cyberpunk-inspired Shadowrun Trilogy (May 9), and the turn-based title Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 (May 11).

While the new friend referral system is ideal for Redfall’s co-op nature, the shooter has had some significant problems out of the gate. Our review in progress highlights a number of display issues and bugs, which, combined with a degree of “vanilla” mission design and a “lifeless world”, left IGN’s Luke Reilly feeling underwhelmed at the state of the game.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

Apex Legends Season 17, or Arsenal, is coming May 9th and brings in a brand new Legend, major map changes to World’s Edge, new Firing Range, Weapon Mastery, and an overhauled Rank System. Every season, Respawn aims to improve and bring meaningful updates to Apex and Season 17 is looking to be an especially ambitious one. Here’s everything you need to know about everything coming to Apex Legends Arsenal on May 9th.

Let’s go over the new Legend, Ballistic, first. I have a separate lore video for him that you can watch on this channel. Ballistic is an Assault Legend so he gets the passive benefits of unlocking the class specific Assault bins throughout the maps and can additionally carry more ammo per stack in his inventory.

Here’s how Ballistic’s kit works:

• Passive: Sling
  • Ballistic can carry a third weapon in his inventory with no attachments.

• Tactical: Whistler
  • Ballistic shoots a smart ammo projectile at an enemy that will apply a weapon overheat debuff. An indicator on the affected enemy’s hud will show how many shots they can shoot before the gun will overheat, causing them to pause firing for a short cool-down animation. Whistler can be held to lock-on to an enemy but can be dodged if you break line of sight with the tactical.
  • If Whistler misses, it will remain on the floor or surface of the area (Like Ashe’s tactical) and if an enemy runs into it, it will deal 5 damage.
  • Whistler deals 20 damage on hit and will do an additional 30 damage if the enemy overheats their weapon.

• Ultimate: Tempest
  • Ballistic deploys an area of effect buff to him and his nearby teammates that grant them unlimited ammo, faster movement speed, and faster reloads. Tempest also temporarily set his third gun (the one with no attachments) to become a gold, fully-kitted weapon for the duration of the ultimate.
  • The charge time for Tempest is around 3 minutes and the duration of Tempest is 30 seconds.
  • Tempest’s ult time can be extended if you secure a kill while buffed, kind of like Bloodhound’s ultimate. This will extend the buff time for all teammates.

Ballistic is an incredibly strong Assault Legend that is certainly going to change the game. As an additional note, the weapon Ballistic puts into his Sling slot can be switched out with any weapon he has in his inventory but that weapon will lose all of its attachments and the previous Sling weapon’s attachments will still have to be looted unless the attachments on the swapped gun match the Sling weapon.

Weapon Mastery is a new way to level and get additional achievements in Apex in Season 17. Similar to how Call of Duty does Weapon Camo challenges, Apex’s Weapon Mastery will involve specific challenges to level the weapons to unlock new weapon trackers, banner frames, and Legendary skins for each weapon when you master them.

All weapons will start at level one in Season 17 even if you’re a long-time player. You level your weapons through playing the game and the leveling will not reset over seasons. Every 20 levels, a weapon trial will unlock that will grant you a reward upon completion. Once you hit level 100 for a weapon, you’ll get a Legendary skin for that weapon.

World’s Edge is getting some massive reworks as a refresh for Season 17. The notorious Fragment East and West (the Point of Interests in the middle of the map) are getting a facelift with a new POI addition planted on site called the Monument, the Museum of Apex Legends. This museum has actual exhibits detailing the history of the Apex Games and features almost a bunker-like structure that has sniper nests accessible via ziplines inside the museum.

The Warehouse from Fragment has also been relocated to where Lava City once was, between Dome and Big Maude, and is called Stacks. Lava all across the map have been raised so you can now travel across it, so there are no more chasms. For example, the lava underneath Harvester has been raised so you can’t fall off into the middle anymore and it has a new center section with additional loot.

There’s also been a new vault added to Skyhook to improve the loot around World’s Edge and Trials has been changed to also improve loot health. The map rotations for Season 17 include World’s Edge, Kings Canyon, and Olympus. Additionally, Mirage’s party boat Mirage a Trois is now permanently only in World’s Edge.

There will be a new Survival Item called the Evac Tower. It’s a mobile redeploy that can be set anywhere on the map to raise a redeploy balloon for you and your team to use. Anyone in the area can see when the Evac Tower is raised since it will deploy with a rocket upward to place the Tower and anchor it.

This Tower is not permanent and will disappear after a certain amount of time and can also be destroyed if you or enemies shoot at the balloon so you’ll have to be careful when using the Tower to escape. Valkyrie’s ultimate is still the better choice but at least this option is available if you don’t have a Valk on your team.

The Firing Range went through a pretty decent change last season, with the customizable dummies and hitfire feedback, but now it’s been reworked to be even bigger. The entire Firing Range has been remade from the ground up as an actual map with multiple buildings and environments made to create a mock battleground for players to warm up and practice in.

There is now a dueling pit dedicated for 1v1s, a new Agility Course, and an entirely new town sized map. The loot layout has been adjusted so you can practice grabbing loot from deathboxes (which is great for shield swap practicing), and the Agility course lets you practice sliding, ziplining, jumping, climbing, wall bouncing, whatever you want in that arena.

The dummies are still customizable with the feedback on how your spray patterns look but the targets throughout the map have been improved. They’ll now light up different colors to give you feedback on where you hit them. You can keep track of all of your practicing through turning on Dynamic Stats that you can reset anytime you want.

New Ranked System

The Ranked System is getting an overhaul in how matchmaking and entry costs work. In Season 17 you will need to complete ten placement matches to get assigned a rank. From that rank, you can grind to get to the level you want. The placement doesn’t work based on wins or losses, like Overwatch’s placements, but instead will work off a hidden MMR.

The placement matches help figure out your base skill level then will put you in a rank that the system thinks you’ll enjoy ranking up from. Ranked Points are now being called Ladder Points since you’ll be climbing the ladder up the ranks. There will not be any more splits and each season will be a full ranked season.

No matter what your rank is, all LP costs will be the same to enter ranked matches. It will be a flat cost of 35 LP to enter a match and the Kill Points are still the same with individual and team KP.

Apex Legends Season 17 will be dropping May 9th with all of these changes. What are you looking forward to most? Let us know! Be sure to subscribe to IGN’s Apex Legends game category to stay up to date on all of Apex news.

Stella is a Video Producer, Host, and Editor at IGN. Her gameplay focus is on competitive FPS games and she’s previously reviewed Apex Legends, Hyper Scape, Halo Infinite Multiplayer, and Battlefield 2042. She regularly hosts and shoutcasts competitive Apex Legends and Halo Infinite tournaments when she isn’t streaming on her Twitch channel after work outs. You can follow her on Twitter @ParallaxStella.