We recently received some new information from SuperData regarding  Fortnite’s increasing success in the gaming industry. Now, SuperData have revealed their report for June, and it looks like Fortnite continues rising in popularity. The game has topped the console sales charts, and it is in the top 10 of the PC sales charts as well.

For the consoles, Fortnite is followed by FIFA 18 and Call of Duty: WWII. On PC, the game is in sixth position on the charts, which is a few positions behind PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which is at third position. The recent sale for the latter is probably what helped it get into the lead. On the PC, first place is held by the very popular and evergreen League of Legends. In a different report published by SuperData, the data suggests that the growing popularity of Fortnite may be cutting into the popularity of other online games such as Overwatch, League of Legends, and others. We’ll just have to wait until the end of the year to see which games come out on top as the most popular over a longer period.

You can check out the entire charts for the month of June below.

PC

1. League of Legends
2. Dungeons Fighter Online
3. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
4. Crossfire
5. Fantasy Westward Journey Online II
6. Fortnite Battle Royale
7. World of Warcraft
8. World of Tanks
9. DOTA 2
10. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Consoles

1. Fortnite Battle Royale
2. FIFA 18
3. Call of Duty: WWII
4. The Crew 2
5. Grand Theft Auto V
6. Rainbow Six Siege
7. NBA 2K18
8. God of War
9. Far Cry 5
10. Overwatch

Mobile

1. Honor of Kings
2. QQ Speed
3. Pokemon Go
4. Knives Out
5. Fantasy Westward Journey
6. Clash Royale
7. Monster Strike
8. Fate/Grand Order
9. Candy Crush Saga
10. Clash of Clans

While Call of Duty: WWII might not be the talk of the town anymore, having launched late last year, if you skipped out on the latest entry in the Call of Duty series and have a weekend to knock out the campaign and maybe squeeze in some multiplayer for old time sakes, Steam has you covered.

Beginning immediately and lasting until; Sunday, May 6, 1PM PST, players can download the full game and check out everything it has to offer, including single player campaign, online fragfests, and zombies. 

Should you enjoy the game enough to want to continue, or maybe you just got that addicted to the multiplayer, it’s available on discount until Monday, May 7 at 1PM PST. The standard edition will be available for $38.99 USD, while the Digital Deluxe Edition will hit for $74.99. Are you going to check the game out? Let us know in the comments below.

If there’s anything that certain subcultures of gaming like speed-running shows, it’s that there’s gamers out there who will challenge themselves in some truly unique ways. A Youtuber by the name of TheseKnivesOnly is one of these gamers which we simultaneously want to congratulate, while also wondering “why?”.

If his name didn’t give it away, TheseKnivesOnly earned over 32,000 kills to reach the rank of Prestige Master in Call of Duty: WWII using only melee related tools such as throwing knives. You can check out him reaching the highest level in the game using only knives through the videi below.

Sledgehammer Games themselves have confirmed that TheseKnivesOnly has become the first in the world to hit the top rank in their online shooting game without actually shooting a single round. Perhaps we’ll hear from TheseKnivesOnly again with the rumoured Call of Duty Black Ops 4 later this year.

Sledgehammer Games have dropped a couple of pretty important updates on Call of Duty: WW2. They recently took to their official Twitter account to give some details on how they’ve fixed connectivity issues, as well as some updates on the Playlists within the game.

First off, Sledgehammer confirmed in a tweet that they’ve fixed a disconnect issue Xbox One users may have been facing, which is good news, obviously. More importantly, though, in another tweet, they went on to give details on the Playlists. There’s going to be double XP reward in the Gun Game on all maps, including Winter Carentan, from now till December 22.

In addition to that, Sledgeammer also confirmed that the map Winter Carentan will remain in map rotation for both Standard and Hardcore. Meanwhile, it’s been confirmed that Standard Moshpit is back in, and so is Carentan for Season Pass holders.

Call of Duty: WW2 is out now for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for continued coverage on the game.

We pushed through a fix that has appeared to resolve the disconnect issue on XBOX. Thank you for your patience, everyone! Please let us know if you continue to experience issues with this.

— Sledgehammer Games (@SHGames) December 14, 2017

#CODWWII PLAYLIST UPDATE

2XP Wintery Gun Game on all maps, including Winter Carentan, from now 'til December 22.

Winter Carentan remains in the map rotation for both Standard and Hardcore.

Standard Moshpit is back in, as is Carentan for Season Pass holders.

Happy Friday! pic.twitter.com/fikPsP4dS2

— Sledgehammer Games (@SHGames) December 15, 2017

If you’ve been enjoying Call of Duty: WWII since it launched earlier this month, hopefully you’ve made the most of your time online. Early players received a huge head start when Sledgehammer games launched the titles without realizing 2XP bonuses were already on.

When the developers put on a double XP weekend for the past couple of days, players noticed that the numbers weren’t quite adding up to what they had seen before. Sledgehammer Games Co-Founder Micheal Condrey took to Twitter and later Reddit to explain the situation. They hadn’t noticed it since launch, and the weekend was technically providing 3XP.

Condrey announced over Reddit that today, gains would return to the originally intended level. Fans didn’t have the greatest response, with concerns that the game would become more grind heavy due to the change, among the many other issues they have with the state of the game.

Two weeks out from launch, while it’s shattered records for the series, the latest entry in the Call of Duty series isn’t pleasing everybody thanks to numerous online issues plaguing the game.

Just last week the studio released the first patch for Call of Duty: WWII, aiming at managing the rampant connection issues, UI and leaderboard improvements. There’s still more to do however, and Sledgehammer outlined it all for the fans today in a blog post.

Acknowledging the cries of the fans dealing with ongoing connection issues, they revealed that the update had some adverse effects that forced them to move to a Peer to Peer solution, which carries its own problems of host migration and lag. The team is committing to return to the dedicated servers very soon, and is already testing solutions on console. PC players aren’t being left behind, they’re just going to get everything right on console first, before deploying the PC patch.

Having been available to the world for awhile now, Activision and Sledgehammer Games have been pushing for bug fixes and optimizations to Call of Duty: WWII’s user experience.

The game has been suffering from connection issues since launch that should now be fixed. Players should notice a variety of UI and leaderboard improvements, faster loading times and infinite Flamethrower bug fix. A handful of weapons have been buffed or nerfed to help balance the multiplayer experience.

Nazi Zombies players aren’t left out in the cold either. Among those fixes, you can’t get out of the map in The Final Reich anymore, and Klaus’s pathing is fixed. All these fixes should please the many players enjoying the game. Call of Duty: WWII has been the most successful Call of Duty in years for Activision, making $500 million dollars over the launch weekend. You can find the patch notes below.

COD: WWII MULTIPLAYER UPDATES

• Connectivity improvements and optimizations
• Fixed de-ranking issues
• Addressed an issue where players encountered an infinite load screen
• Leaderboard stability improvements and bug fixes
• General UI improvements
• Loading optimizations
• Splitscreen functionality improvements
• Added new unlock inventory stars to indicate when new items are added
• Adjusted hit marker audio to be higher default level (note: can be adjusted in settings)
• Fixed out of world exploits on Gustav Cannon and Sainte Marie du Mont
• Espionage Basic Training – Reduced painted time from 10 to 6 seconds. Made it so only bullet damage paints you.
• Weapon tuning to allow for one shot kills outside of hardcore mode, enabling challenge completion.
• Fixed infinite flamethrower bug
• XP Earn rate tuned in Operation Neptune
• Fix issue of shotgun variants not appearing
• Emblem Editor and visualization improvements
• GameBattles Improvements
• Fixed Gridiron Ball exploits

COD: WWII MULTIPLAYER WEAPON TUNING UPDATES
BUFFs

• Walther Toggle Action Shotgun – Damage increased at extremely close range
• Bren LMG – Increased damage per shot
• LMG Bipod – Sped up ADS time when in Bipod stance

NERFs

• BAR Rifle – decreased fire rate and widened hip fire spread
• STG44 Rifle – widened hip fire spread
• FG42 Rifle – increased recoil and widened hip fire spread
• Machine Pistol – decreased damage ranges

SNIPER CLASS – Fixed a bug with all Sniper Rifles zooming to exact center when aiming down the sights

COD: WWII NAZI ZOMBIES UPDATES

• Zombie Map Exploit Fix – clipping into a zombie spawn closet using revive mechanic in Laboratory
• Fixed Klaus pathing
• Fixed out of world exploit – The Final Reich

While it was flagging for the last several years, it seems the trick to bringing Call of Duty back to prominence was to retrace its steps. Call of Duty: WWII has been shattering entertainment numbers over the short 3 days since it launched, much to Activision’s delight.

Boasting in a press release about how the fanbase responded to get the squad back together, Activision’s Call of Duty: WWII has a number of achievements to be proud of over the course of a weekend. The game sold twice as many units in the opening weekend as the previous title, set the day one record for full game downloads on PlayStation 4 and earned Activision a tidy $500 million dollars. A feat they’re quick to point out tops the opening weekend for Disney’s Thor: Ragnarok and Warner Bros. Wonder Woman combined.

Clearly a return to form for the Call of Duty series in many ways, Call of Duty: WWII also enjoyed the highest total of concurrent players on current platforms and PC in the series’ history. Activision is committed to supporting the community with continuous updates and content as they go forward.

The series has traveled from the beaches of Normandy to the rivers of Vietnam and even into space. While the series started in World War II, there hasn’t been a game set in the conflict since Treyarch’s awesome Call of Duty: World at War, which was released in 2008. It’s been nearly a decade since a Call of Duty game explored the most costly armed conflict in human history, and Sledgehammer Games has never made a game set in the time period. The goal is here is twofold: to return the series to its boots-on-the-ground roots, which were lacking in the last two titles, and to the conflict that defined the series before its excursion to a technology-focused future for a change of pace.

"WWII wants to be both a game that works on a narrative level and a bombastic, big budget first-person shooter. As a result, you get a lot of scenes that alternate between the excellent and the outright laughable."

The core is the new campaign, which is intended to be a more serious, thoughtful meditation on the sacrifices of the Greatest Generation and the horrors of war. Unfortunately, while the game really tries, the bar for narratives that marry the elements of their gameplay with their stories has been raised significantly in recent years, and it doesn’t quite come together. WWII wants to be both a game that works on a narrative level and a bombastic, big budget first-person shooter. As a result, you get a lot of scenes that alternate between the excellent and the outright laughable.

Characters will have heartfelt conversations about the girls back home in one scene, and in the next, after a traumatic event, your lieutenant will pat your character on the shoulder and tell him things will be okay, only for your character to literally look down at the blood on his hands. Perhaps Sledgehammer is an accurate name for the studio behind WWII, because what’s here is about as subtle dropping an anvil into a swimming pool. And don’t even get me started on how stupid and absurd the train sequence is in a game that takes itself this seriously. When you see what happens there, you’ll probably only be able to laugh. None of this is “Press X to pay respects” bad, but it gets close.

Frankly, if you’ve ever played a video game set in World War II in the last two decades, or have ever seen any World War II film make since 1980, you’ve seen almost everything WWII has to offer in its campaign. You play Daniels, a farm boy from Texas and a private in the famed 1^st Division. Your squadmates are made up of well-worn tropes: the hard-as-nails Jewish kid with something to prove, the whiny, college-educated nerd, the kindly lieutenant who only has the best interest of his men in mind, the squad wise-mate with an Italian last name, and a sergeant with a tragic past.

"You have been here before, landed on these beaches before, cleared these streets before, and stormed these houses before, and despite how good many of these missions are, it is impossible to escape the constant feeling of déjà vu, or to avoid making comparisons to older games."

The game wants you to care about these characters, but the only ones who inspire any sort of complex emotion are Zussman, your aforementioned hard-as-nails best buddy, and Pierson, the sergeant. The former you get when you save Zussman’s life in one the game’s opening mission, and the latter you get from Pierson’s importance to the story. Everyone else is window dressing, designed solely to fill a purpose. It’s a shame, because war films and games ride on the relationships you build with their characters, how you come to appreciate their sacrifices, and the things they go through with one another. Without a strong cast, WWII lacks that emotional connection.

The story is a banal affair. Unlike many of the original Call of Duty games, you’ll largely stay with one squad, guiding Daniels and crew from the D-Day landing to the liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulge. World War II games have done these events to death, and it’s easy to feel like you’ve done all of this before, especially if you’ve played Call or Duty or Call of Duty 2, or even Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Other games in the series have gotten around this problem by being the first to tell these stories or by focusing on different aspects of the war, as World at War did with its emphasis on the Pacific Front. WWII doesn’t do that. You have been here before, landed on these beaches before, cleared these streets before, and stormed these houses before, and despite how good many of these missions are, it is impossible to escape the constant feeling of déjà vu, or to avoid making comparisons to older games.

Unsurprisingly, WWII is at its best when it deviates from the traditional Call of Duty formula. My favorite mission involved a stealth operation in Nazi-occupied Paris, in which you played as both Daniels and a female member of the French Resistance in disguise. This is true of the gameplay, too. The biggest change is the return of health packs. They’re the only way to restore your health, which means that you have to use them sparingly, and constantly search for more. This switch works really well, creating genuine tension in situations where you’re low on health and without a way to heal.

"Don’t get me wrong. WWII’s campaign isn’t outright bad, but its quality veers wildly, and it’s extraordinarily derivative."

The other new addition to the campaign is the addition of abilities for your squadmates. Kill enough Nazis, and you’ll fill up their respective meters. Zussman, for instance, tosses you health packs, while another will refill your ammo, replenish your grenade supply, and allow you to call in artillery. These abilities are meant to build your relationships with these characters, and to an extent, it works. You’ll have to keep track on who’s with you at any given point if you want to succeed, but the mechanic’s implementation often causes problems. Using someone’s ability requires being very close to them, which means you’ll spend some firefights sprinting across the battlefield, hoping to grab a health pack or some more ammo before you’re gunned down. That is, when you’re not stuck in an obnoxiously long scripted sequence or being forced to endure some of the worst Quick-Time Events in recent memory.

Don’t get me wrong. WWII’s campaign isn’t outright bad, but its quality veers wildly, and it’s extraordinarily derivative. Once you’re done with the campaign, which is little more than six hours long, you can hop into the multiplayer, which is where the real action is. WWII has slimmed Call of Duty down, opting to return the focus to the days of old. The biggest change here is the addition of Headquarters mode, which acts as a sort of social hub, much like the Tower in Destiny. You can walk around with other soldiers (when it works. The system has been such a disaster so far that Sledgehammer has temporarily made it single-player only it so that it will run properly), practice at a firing range, enter the one-on-one arena, or call down loot boxes. Yes, there are loot boxes. They don’t affect game balance yet, but you know they will down the road.

Headquarters is fine, if unnecessary. The multiplayer is more or less how Call of Duty used to be – some customization options built around period specific guns and modes. The main change here is Divisions. You choose one when your build your class, and each offers specific upgrades. The Infantry, for example, allows you to bayonet charge with your assault rifles, while joining the Airborne allows you to equip your SMGs with silencers. Naturally, leveling each one unlocks more perks. Other than that, Call of Duty is more or less the same as it’s been– gun attachments, perks, and killstreaks – just streamlined. The modes are similar too. War mode even returns from World at War, just with better series of objectives that are fought over huge maps and change should the attacking team make progress. One team, for instance, might be trying to storm a beach while the other defends it. It’s a fantastic mode and a welcome return that feels more like something out of Tribes or Overwatch than Call of Duty.

"Yes, it all looks gorgeous, and it’s largely well made, and if content and game hours per dollar is what you care about, then WWII delivers."

Oh, and Nazi Zombies returns, too. Like most other things revolving around Call of Duty’s multiplayer, it hasn’t changed much. You’re still B-list celebrities and you still fight Nazi zombies for cash to get better abilities – infinite ammo, lighting strikes – but this is still Nazi Zombies mode. It hasn’t changed too much since 2008 (it was introduced in World at War, funnily enough), and it seems unlikely to change much next year either.

Yes, it all looks gorgeous, and it’s largely well made, and if content and game hours per dollar is what you care about, then WWII delivers. But we have done all of this before, multiple time, and we’ll probably do it all again. Call of Duty WWII is a good game, and there are welcome changes, subtractions, and additions here. But that’s all it is. The more things change, the more things stay the same, and WWII sure is more Call of Duty.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

So without further ado, let’s get right into it.

HISTORIC BATTLES

What with WWII being the first game in the series to go back to the Second World War after such a long time, fans are obviously expecting developers Sledgehammer to go big with the campaign, and it looks like they aim to do just that. The campaign in Call of Duty: WWII will follow the story of a single squad in the 1st Infantry Division, and their battles in the Western Front in the European theatre of the war. And we’ll be seeing a lot of iconic and historic battles being portrayed in the campaign, including the Invasion of Normandy, the Battle of Aachen, the Battle of the Bulge, and many more.