Welcome to the last full week of October and boy is it going to be a busy week of new game releases. This week's AAA release is said to force you to go rogue on your tour of duty. Next you'll be starting your own tentacle cult, which if followed by being kicked out of hell for the second time, an inaccurate history lesson, being blown away by the wind and finally being turned into a blue hedgehog.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 / This week's AAA title / Friday 25 October
Developed by Treyarch and Raven, Black Ops 6 is a spy action thriller set in the early 90s, a period of transition and upheaval in global politics, characterized by the end of the Cold War and the rise of the United States as a single superpower. With a mind-bending narrative, and unbound by the rules of engagement, this is signature Black Ops. The Black Ops 6 Campaign provides dynamic moment-to-moment gameplay that includes a variety of play spaces with blockbuster set pieces and action-packed moments, high-stakes heists, and cloak-and-dagger spy activity. Steam link

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is fast approaching its October 25 launch date on the PC Microsoft Store, Battle.net and Steam. In partnership with Treyarch Studios, Call of Duty PC lead developer Beenox is developing a cutting-edge PC experience with 4K graphics and Ultrawide support plus a huge number of options across a variety of settings so players can dial in the best playing experience possible.

Get the Ultimate Performance Boost with AMD FSR 3.1
Some of the major features include:

• AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution
  • AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 transforms your gaming experience with faster, more responsive framerates in Black Ops 6 using super resolution temporal upscaling and advanced frame generation.
• Advanced Frame Generation Technologies
  • The FSR Frame Generation toggle found in your graphics settings allows you to enable Frame Generation, which significantly increases your framerate and works seamlessly with other upscaling solutions.
• AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS)
  • An overhead sharpening slider can help bring more details to edges of weapons, players, and environments.

AMD FSR 3.1 is compatible with a wide range of graphics cards from AMD and other vendors, delivering exceptional upscaling image quality and massive performance boosts when gaming at 4K or 1440p.

After almost two years, Microsoft has finally closed the $68.7 billion deal and acquired Activision Blizzard. Confirmed by Phil Spencer, head of gaming at Microsoft, the deal comes after the final approval from UK's Competition and Markets earlier today. The acquisition puts Activision Blizzard, developers Infinity Ward, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Treyarch, Toys for Bob, Beenox and High Moon Studios, as well as the mobile game maker King, which is known for its Candy Crush game, all under Xbox Game Studios.

In case you missed it, Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard back in January 2022, after which it started its battle with various regulators, including UK's CMA, the European Commission, the US Federal Trade Commission, and others. In its extensive statement, Phil Spencer, head of gaming at Microsoft, once again confirmed that they will continue to make more games available in more places, as it promised to the European Commission, and they can now start the work to bring all those franchises to Game Pass and other platforms. Earlier this week, Activision Blizzard confirmed it expected to start adding titles to Game Pass in 2024, if the aforementioned deal goes through.

Shortly after a Doritos-sourced leak on the next installment in the Call of Duty franchise, Activision has now officially confirmed the future of the Call of duty franchise. The next installment, Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War, is being hailed as inspired by historical events. And if the title is anything to go by, players can apparently expect to take part in a web of black ops hat are, at the very least, placed somewhere alongside the historical years between 1947 (the beginning of the Truman doctrine) and the USSR's dissolution in 1991 (quick historical fact: the USSR's ultimate dissolution occurred with as much pomp and circumstance as pen to paper, with the signing of the Commonwealth of Independent States at the Belovezhskaya Pushcha, in Belarus).

It remains to be seen what - if any - changes to the Call of Duty formula this title will bring. It's being developed by Treyarch, one of Activision's three development studios tasked with bringing the Call of Duty franchise to market yearly, with a three-year development cycle. Raven Software is collaborating with the studio, and we know the title will see integration with Call of Duty Warzone: it's likely Warzone will become a Battle Royale companion to all future Call of Duty titles, added to and updated with the latest installments. Watch the announcement video after the break.