Category: Video Games

EA is currently the most popular games publisher across PlayStation and Xbox by monthly active users (MAUs), according to new data from Ampere Analysis. But Xbox stands to surpass it if the Activision Blizzard acquisition goes through.

According to Ampere Analysis, EA has consistently been the top publisher across PlayStation and Xbox based on share of MAUs since September, which is when Ampere Analysis started tracking. Speaking to IGN, analyst Piers Harding-Rolls says he suspects EA’s dominance has gone on “for some time” prior.

There are around a million games about the Second World War for every one about the First, and The Great War: Western Front serves as a pretty good illustration of some of the reasons for that. The brutal, grinding, attritional conflict spanning from 1914 to 1918, as interesting as it is from a military history standpoint, is difficult to turn into a fun video game with any sort of authenticity. This RTS adaptation tries to find a satisfying balance point between historical reality and enjoyable gameplay. And while I think it did about as well as anyone could have hoped, it can’t fully smooth out the challenges of gamifying these shell-pocked battlefields.

The Western Front, with its teeming trenches and relentless artillery bombardments was an excruciating stalemate that took years to resolve, only breaking with the advent of new technologies and tactics much later. And The Great War: Western Front doesn’t do much to sugar-coat that, both for better and for worse.

The first big adjustment I had to make was to the sheer deadliness of even a modest defensive position. One regiment of standard infantry stationed in a trench can hold off three times as many attackers, and maybe double that number again if they have the support of a machine gun nest. This is certainly historically accurate, as so much of the early war was spent with commanders on both sides fooling around and finding out why you shouldn’t do things like this. And of the ways Western Front errs on the side of history, this one didn’t bother me so much.

If you want to play a bit more offensively, artillery can be used to suppress enemy trenches, rolling barrages can kick up smoke and earth to give your advancing troops concealment, and if you have enough supplies, you can casually shell the living daylights out of an enemy position from complete safety until there’s no one left to defend it. This latter strategy could sometimes feel a bit cheesy, since the AI will keep trickling men in to replace the ones blown sky high. But again, it’s not necessarily inaccurate to how this war played out.

Put together, this encourages thinking about each battle as a very precise concert, which I came to mostly enjoy. Coordinating my advances to minimize casualties felt great when it worked. It can be very frustrating when it doesn’t, though, as even a small mistake in timing or routing can lead to entire regiments evaporating before your eyes. And it’s not helped by sometimes wonky unit behavior. Especially when entering and exiting trenches, it’s not uncommon for your doomed soldiers to stall or shuffle around a bit before going where they need to go, with deadly consequences.

Green Fields of France

The First World War certainly wasn’t a pretty affair, and Western Front isn’t always visually stunning, either. In particular, the infantry models are fairly low in detail, and you can’t really zoom in enough to get a sense of what they’re feeling down there in those muddy, bloody trenches. At times it’s more like you’re watching a bombastic ant farm rather than dealing with the lives of real young men, as the well-narrated cutscenes are quick to remind you.

That isn’t at all to say that these battlefields aren’t eye-catching and effective in other ways, though. They’re very readable, which is a huge plus in the heat of a complex engagement. Vibrant colors and high contrast between units and terrain make it easy to keep track of troop movements. The sound and visual effects for different shell types are distinct and easy to spot. And the devastation left across the battlefield, with smoldering craters and charred forests, effectively tells the story of a conflict that tore the world apart in more ways than one.

The interface also does a good job, both in battles and the campaign, showing me the information I really need without ever feeling too busy or cluttered. So it’s a shame that the controls don’t do you any favors. Even going through and rebinding all of the keyboard shortcuts, which I found to be absolutely terrible by default, I could only do so much. To give one representative example, you can’t bind Pause and Unpause to a single toggle key. I ended up having to assign each of them to one of my mouse thumb buttons.

March of War

The Great War: Western Front features an in-depth dynamic campaign that begins in December 1914, and here more than anywhere the realities of gamifying this particular part of this war become obvious. The basic idea is that each space on the map has a number of stars that must be depleted to capture it, and only an overwhelming tactical victory can remove a star. Practically, this means that the front lines don’t move very often. The object of many battles simply becomes to bleed your opponent more than they bleed you, as losses subtract from each side’s National Will. It’s a clever and historically resonant set-up: you can win without ever getting near the enemy capital simply by depleting their side’s fighting spirit. All the while you have to manage cash reserves and supplies, making difficult and meaningful decisions about where to reinforce the line and how many shells it’s worth using to break a dug-in position.

At least, in theory. In practice, since even modest victories can top up the other side’s National Will, it often feels like your gains in one area are undone by setbacks in another. This is a pretty accurate portrayal of what the war was like on the Western Front, and to a large degree, I can respect that. But as I mentioned before, it’s not especially rewarding from a gameplay standpoint. It’s hard to feel accomplished or triumphant when you’re fighting a war of inches. The more you make The Western Front feel like, well, the Western Front, the more it turns into a total drag.

There are mechanics that kick in later to alleviate this, like gas attacks and air support – the latter of which I feel is a bit too effective, by the way, with the ability to wipe out entire infantry regiments with one biplane making strafing runs. These aren’t Stukas, for crying out loud. And, of course, tanks change things dramatically later on as head-on assaults suddenly become much more viable. Still, I never so much as brushed up against the enemy capital. It was a slow grind to sap their National Will, and I ended up fighting a lot of similar or nearly identical battles to do so.

You do get to see some neat dynamic elements as trenches you build and terrain you destroy between two hexes will persist every time you fight there. But defending Ypres for the tenth time can get tiring. There is an auto-resolve option, but I was usually nervous about using it unless the forecast showed my side with an overwhelming advantage, as there’s a pretty wide range of random results.

I also found the Allies faction to be significantly more fun to play than the Central Powers, as they need to balance morale penalties from the language barrier with the huge variety of interesting perks infantry of different nationalities can bring to the table. British troops are crack shots with a rifle, for instance, while the Americans are adept at advancing with armored support.

The Central Powers have two main advantages, the first being conscripts – weaker infantry with worse accuracy and morale who cost almost nothing. This allows for some very cost-effective strategies, but just isn’t as fun as the multinational menagerie the other side gets. They also have access to their iconic stormtroopers in the late game, but these guys don’t really fight like modern infantry, and I’m not sure the battle engine is really set up for them. At best, they’re specialists at trench fighting, lacking the ability to quickly take ground using cover and suppressing fire that historically made them so game-changing.

Activision Blizzard settled a lawsuit with the U.S. Department of Justice over allegations that the publisher imposed a limit on esports players’ salaries paid by the Overwatch and Call of Duty leagues.

The department filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. on Monday, saying that Activision Blizzard, which owns the Overwatch League and the Call of Duty League, and the independently owned teams agreed to impose the Competitive Balance Tax. As its name suggests, the tax was designed to limit competition between the teams by suppressing the wages of esports players and fined teams for paying players above a certain threshold set by Activision Blizzard, which the department said violated the Sherman Act.

The DOJ added that Activision Blizzard dropped its salary limit rules in October 2021 following its investigation into the Competitive Balance Tax.

“The tax was never levied, and the leagues voluntarily dropped it from our rules in 2021,” Activision said in a statement (per Reuters). “We have always believed, and still believe, that the Competitive Balance Tax was lawful, and it did not have an adverse impact on players.”

The complaint said that the tax affected every esports player since the inception of each league — the Overwatch League started in 2018, while the Call of Duty League began in 2020 — especially players with larger salaries. This is because, unlike other professional esports players who agreed to salary restrictions through the collective bargaining process, players in the Overwatch and Call of Duty leagues were not part of a union nor did they negotiate wage rules.

Per the settlement, Activision Blizzard agreed not to impose any salary limits on the esports players in its leagues nor fine the teams for paying high salaries to certain players. However, the settlement still needs to be approved by a federal judge for it to take effect.

The settlement is the latest in a series of legal issues facing Activision Blizzard. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against the publisher last Friday over allegations of illegal surveillance of employees and other labor law violations, including threatening to shut down communication channels.

Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. She has contributed her work to various publications, including Digital Trends, TheGamer, Twinfinite, Mega Visions, and The Escapist. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.

Pokémon Stadium is coming to Nintendo Switch Online next week but without arguably its biggest feature: the ability to transfer Pokémon from Game Boy titles Red, Blue, and Yellow.

Snuck into its reveal trailer (in tiny font for no more than five seconds) was the statement: “Please note you cannot transfer Pokémon from Game Boy titles in this version.” This means players will have to rent Pokémon instead, leading to what’s generally considered a less enjoyable experience.

“The first video game I’ve ever played,” said Zodyrus on Twitter. “One huge issue though. The question is will this be compatible with… anything? Cause you really cant get full enjoyment out of this game without using the Game Boy games alongside it.”

Other Pokémon Stadium fans are still optimistic though. “The lack of transfers is a massive shame but I feel like there’s still a bunch of stuff to tinker around and have fun with regardless,” said another user FizzaClips.

While fans didn’t expect their Nintendo Switch consoles to connect directly with a Game Boy, the issue has once again sparked debates around the lack of classic Pokémon games on modern consoles.

Following the 3DS eShop being shut down last week, the most recent console where players can enjoy the original Pokémon Game Boy games is 2001’s Game Boy Advance, and this is despite Nintendo releasing a collection of Game Boy games on Nintendo Switch Online in February.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.