The best Rocket League players
Rocket League has had hundreds of tournaments with top players earning a nice chunk of change. Here are some of the best players to ever take to the field.
Real VR Fishing Multiplayer Livestream: Relaxing In Quest 2
For today’s livestream we’re playing Real VR Fishing on Oculus Quest; I’ll be joined by Ian Hamilton! If you’re curious about how we livestream the way we do then look no further than this handy guide for general tips and this guide specific to our Oculus Quest setup.
Today, we’re playing Real VR Fishing on Oculus Quest 2, one of the most visually impressive games on the platform with a relaxing tone and wonderfully simple co-op multiplayer. Ian Hamilton from Upload will join me on our impromptu fishing trip around the world as we chat about the latest trends and games in VR and probably a bunch of random stuff too.
We’re going live with our Real VR Fishing livestream at about 12:45 PM PT today and will last for around an hour or so, give or take. We’ll be hitting just our YouTube and we’ll be streaming from an Oculus Quest 2 while we try and check chat often.
Livestream: Relaxing in Real VR Fishing on Quest 2
You can see lots of our past archived streams over in our YouTube playlist or even all livestreams here on UploadVR and various other gameplay highlights. There’s lots of good stuff there so make sure and subscribe to us on YouTube to stay up-to-date on gameplay videos, video reviews, live talk shows, interviews, and more original content!
And please let us know which games or discussions you want us to livestream next! We have lots of VR games in the queue that we would love to show off more completely. Let’s get ready to go!
Back 4 Blood is even more like Left 4 Dead than you may think — and that’s good
Back 4 Blood perfectly copies Left 4 Dead's asymmetrical formula, while building on top of it with new mechanics to bring it into the modern era of shooters.
Everything You Need To Know About Medal Of Honor: Above And Beyond Multiplayer
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is finally releasing this week for PC VR on the Oculus Home store and Steam. I’ve spent most of the past five or so days digging into the campaign and playing multiplayer. I can’t render a verdict just yet, but I can tell you everything you need to know about multiplayer in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond.
If you’re just interested in knowing what I think of the multiplayer and reading my hands-on impressions, you can read that here. The rest of this article is intended to round up all the details about the mode and give you the information you need to know.
Below we’ve rounded up all the info on Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond’s game modes, weapons, loadouts, character skins, progression system, multiplayer maps, bot functionality, how servers work, and whether or not to expect any post-launch support.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond Game Modes
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond has five different game modes for multiplayer. When queuing up for a game you can either pick a specific mode to try and match for, or pick Quick Play to load into whatever is most readily available at the time. All modes hold up to 12 players with team games offering 6v6 matches.
Deathmatch:
This is exactly what it sounds like. Twelve players are plopped into a map with infinite respawns to try and get the most kills before the timer runs out. Default match length is five minutes.
Team Deathmatch:
This is exactly like Deathmatch but it’s two teams of six instead. Everything else is identical. A basic game mode, but it’s usually the most popular choice in any online shooter for good reason.
Mad Bomber:
This one is pretty unique. On the surface it’s more or less just Deathmatch, however there is an interesting twist on the idea. Rather than just getting points for kills, every person in the match also has a timed explosive they can place on literally any surface. Once placed it starts a 30-second countdown. If you get any kills with your bomb (they have a huge explosion — if you can hear the timer ticking that means you’re in the blast zone) then you get lots of bonus points. You get bonus points for disarming other bombs as well.
Domination:
This one works just like you’d expect if you’ve ever played Call of Duty before. There are three capture points across the map (A, B, and C) and you’re split into two teams of six. You need to capture and hold a position to gain points and the longer you hold it the more points you get. Holding multiple positions grants more points over time. You also get points for kills. This is the most tactical of the game modes and teams that actually work together well tend to have the most success.
Blast Radius:
Of all the game modes in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, this one is by far my favorite. It’s basically just Deathmatch with everyone fighting for themselves, but the big twist is that there is a ring that will appear periodically for you to stand inside. If you get a kill while inside that ring it’s worth 5x as many points. Since you’re typically a sitting duck in the circle, each time someone dies in the ring a single-shot rocket launcher spawns on their body to aid whoever is in the circle. Pardon the pun, but this mode is truly a blast.
Weapons and Loadouts
There aren’t many guns to pick from in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond multiplayer — only eight in fact — but luckily they all really and truly do feel different. As of this time each loadout only has that single primary weapon — there are no sidearms or pistols in multiplayer.
Guns:
M1A1 SMG – Short range, high rate-of-fire. Very small and quick choice.
MP40 SMG – Submachine gun with slightly more reliable accuracy compared to the M1A1 but a slower rate of fire.
StG 44 – Automatic rifle with longer range but the rate of fire is slower than the comparable SMGs. A bit larger in terms of size by comparison.
Combat Shotgun – Pump-action shotgun with shells automatically loaded into the bottom once empty, but you must manually pump in between every shot. Great for close range with very high-damage.
Lever-Action Repeater – This rifle has excellent stopping power but reloading is a bit wonky with the way the lever works. Takes a bit of practice.
M1 Garand Rifle – Semi-auto rifle with an iconic ping chime as magazine ejects. Easy to reload quickly.
Gewehr 43 – Semi-auto rifle with reliable accuracy, it’s similar to the other semi-auto rifles on offer.
Gewehr 43 Scoped – This is the same as the previous gun, but it has a scope. In Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, scopes just take up your entire vision like a full-screen black screen and a scope circle in the middle — they’re not real VR scopes.
Secondary Loadout Choices:
When you choose a primary weapon during multiplayer you also get to choose secondary loadout options. This includes either three healthy syringes, a special contact-explosive Gammon Bomb grenade, or a standard frag grenade and a single healthy syringe.
Mid-Match Weapons:
Additionally, there are alternative weapons spread around every map. This includes different types of grenades, the occasional grenade launcher for instant-kills, and a few other goodies. You won’t be collecting power-ups or anything game-changing this way, but you should keep your eyes peeled for things that could grant a slight advantage in the moment.
Progressions and Character Skins
Unfortunately there is no real progression system at all in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond’s multiplayer. There are no levels, or ranks, or anything to unlock by playing games. All guns are available from the very beginning without any option to tweak them.
At the time of this writing, the only unlockable contents are character skins which you earn by playing through the single-player campaign. Hopefully they consider at least adding weapon skins, if not more, later on.
Multiplayer Maps
There are ten total maps in Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond and they legitimately are all extremely well-designed. In many VR shooters you’ll find a lack of map variety, lack of verticality, and nothing feels organic or natural. Respawn did a great job here. I was particularly fond of the church and the overturned train on the snow level. Everything has a very distinct feel and they function well for each of the game modes.
Bots for Multiplayer
Thankfully Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond includes full bot support. This means if no one is online when you’re trying to play you can still play multiplayer matches because the game will auto-fill lobbies with bots. Alternatively, you can go into a private lobby and customize how many bots or players exist on each side. You could even set it up so you and a friend are playing against just bots and make it like a series of unofficial co-op missions.
However, it does not seem like there are any customization options for bots in terms of difficulty, what their loadouts are, their skins, etc. Perhaps that may be added in the future.
Dedicated Servers, Parties, and Private Matches
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond utilizes dedicated servers so you shouldn’t have to worry about errors getting disconnected from hosts while playing. When you first join multiplayer matchmaking the game will automatically be set to “default” which will naturally result in whatever has the lowest ping. Beyond that you’ll see a list of specific dedicated server options for Asia, Australia, Europe, US East, and US West.
In the Multiplayer lobby you can also create a party by inviting people from your friends list. From there you can launch into a public game together, as a group, or into a private match. When arranging a private match you get a few options for tweaking game settings and of course you get to pick the map and mode.
Post-Launch Support
So far there has been no indication of post-launch support plans for Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond for neither single player nor multiplayer. However, given Respawn’s history it’s entirely possible we could at least see new weapons or skins added, if not maps and game modes. Fingers crossed!
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond releases on December 11th as a PC VR-exclusive on both the Oculus Home store and SteamVR with support officially listed for Rift, Vive, and Index.
Check out more of our Medal of Honor coverage here.
The best multiplayer games on the PS5
Multiplayer was a major component of the PS4 -- and that continues with the PS5. These are the best multiplayer games available to play on Sony's newest system.
Beat Saber BTS Music Pack DLC Available Today, Tracklist Revealed
The BTS music pack for Beat Saber is available from today for all platforms.
This latest set of DLC for the ever-popular rhythm game was initially announced back at Facebook Connect in September. The news came alongside a release date for the much anticipated multiplayer update, which then launched on October 13. All of the songs in the BTS music pack will be compatible with multiplayer too.
The pack features 12 of the band’s songs, making it the biggest Beat Saber music pack so far. The tracklist is as follows:
- Blood Sweat & Tears
- Boy With Luv (Feat. Halsey)
- Burning Up (FIRE)
- Dionysus
- DNA
- DOPE
- Dynamite
- FAKE LOVE
- IDOL
- MIC Drop (Steve Aoki Remix)
- Not Today
- UGH!
The BTS pack will also feature ‘TinyTan characters’, which are little animated characters representing each of the members of the band. As players run through the music pack, they will encounter the TinyTan character, which Oculus says will “bring comfort and inspire appreciation of the little things in life.”
In 2019, Facebook acquired developer Beat Games, and the rate of release (and prestige) of the DLC music packs has increased quite significantly ever since. The BTS music pack is one just many recent high-profile releases, including the Panic! At The Disco pack, the Green Day pack, the Imagine Dragons pack, the Linkin Park pack, the Timbaland pack.
If you’re new to Beat Saber and want to know which music packs are the best, we’ve ranked our the top five best ones here. While we haven’t had a chance to try the BTS pack yet, the list will give you a good idea of the best packs released so far.
The BTS Beat Saber music pack is available from today across all platforms.
Beat Saber Multiplayer For Quest & PC VR Available Now, PSVR Delayed
The multiplayer update for Beat Saber is finally available for PC VR and Oculus Quest players! Sadly, PSVR players will have to wait a bit longer, as the update has been delayed on that platform.
It’s been years in the making, but now up to five Beat Saber players will be able to compete in tracks together thanks to multiplayer support. Multiplayer functionality was promised by Beat Games many years ago, but we had heard nothing new until last month.
As part of Facebook Connect, Beat Games announced that multiplayer support would release on October 13, to coincide with the launch of Facebook’s new standalone headset, Oculus Quest 2.
Shortly after the announcement, Beat Games said there was a chance that the multiplayer update might be delayed on PSVR, which has now been confirmed in a reply to a user on Twitter yesterday:
Unfortunately, the PS4 version will be delayed, but we’re working hard on it! Please bear with us as we will be sharing more updates from the development regularly. Thank you for your understanding guys!
Multiplayer functionality was not the only Beat Saber announcement at Facebook Connect — a BTS music pack was also announced, which will release later this year. The South Korean boy band is the latest in a bunch of Beat Saber DLC releases, including Linkin Park, Green Day and Imagine Dragons packs. There’s been so many lately that we’ve even ranked the best ones!
The Beat Saber Multiplayer update is available now for PC VR and Oculus Quest, to coincide with the launch of the Oculus Quest 2. You can read our review of the new headset here.
EA Has ‘No Plans’ For Star Wars: Squadrons DLC, New Modes, Or Oculus Quest Port
Star Wars: Squadrons is here and it’s pretty great. We’ve been having a blast playing it in VR with a HOTAS setup since EA chose not to support VR motion controllers. During an interview last week, we also spoke about future plans for the game and whether it could ever come to the Oculus Quest.
Check out some multiplayer VR gameplay using HOTAS here:
Star Wars: Squadrons Post-Launch Support
One major point in favor of Star Wars: Squadrons in the hearts of gamers is that EA has promised to never have any microtransactions at all, which is great to hear after the loot box fiasco in Battlefront 2. But what does that mean for the game’s future support post-launch with new game modes, DLC, and so on?
Well, as it stands, there are no plans for any of that stuff:
“Never say never, so to speak, but as far as our philosophy goes we’re not trying to treat the game as a live service,” says Ian Frazier, Creative Director on Star Wars: Squadrons. “We don’t want to say, ‘It’s almost done!’ and then dribble out more of it over time, which to be honest is how most games work these days. So we’ve tried to treat it in kind of an old-school approach saying, ‘You’ve paid the $40, this is the game and it’s entirely self-contained. We’re not planning to add more content, this is the game, and we hope you understand the value proposition.'”
Part of me hopes this mindset changes, or perhaps EA opens their wallet a little bit more to fund new content. I’d love to see more ships become available, more game modes, or more maps. Something near a planet’s surface would be a really cool change of pace, but that seems unlikely:
“From pretty early on we wanted to be a space combat game, emphasis on space,” says Frazier. “So even though we do go into the outer atmosphere of Yavin Prime, we never go anywhere truly terrestrial because we wanted to separate the game in that flavor from something like Battlefront, which we already have. “
Finally, I wanted to ask and get a concrete answers from Frazier directly, even though I already knew what he was going to say. Is there any chance of a Quest port?
“No plans at this time,” says Frazier. “Obviously if you have the Oculus Quest and Link with a PC that has sufficient requirements you can run a Quest off of your PC, but as a standalone thing, no plans at this time.”
Oh well, I had to ask! If you want to know more about Star Wars: Squadrons make sure and read our full review and check out our Everything You Need to Know info dump for more.
Let us know what you think of the game so far down in the comments below!
Battle Royale VR Shooter Population: One Lands This October For Quest And PC VR
Population: One finally has a release date set for October 22nd, less than a week after the launch of the Oculus Quest 2 on October 13th. Big Box VR is bringing their battle royale shooter to all PC VR headsets and Quest at launch with full crossplay support for $29.99.
Population: One – VR Battle Royale
Jamie, Ian, and I all got the chance to dive into Population: One last week together as a team and you can read my impressions from that hour-long play session right here or watch a bunch of gameplay in the video up above.
The comparisons to games like Fortnite are unavoidable and obvious. Not only is this a battle royale game in which players are tasked with being the last team standing as a toxic gas slowly encroaches on the map making it smaller and smaller over time, but it also features build-anywhere mechanics to spring up cover and quick structures on the fly.
What really sets Population: One apart though is that you can climb literally any surface. All you do is reach up and hold the grip button and you’re off climbing. You can also glide from any surface with an always-equipped glider so you never need to worry about fall damage. It complements the climbing system nicely.
Population: One will launch with a single map, several guns including assault rifles, SMGs, pistols, shotguns, and snipers, as well as grenades, and each match can hold up to 18 players across six 3-persopn squads. Your teammates can revive you if you go down, but if your team is wiped then you enter a spectator mode that lets you fly around the map in the sky to watch as things unfold.
“We’ve worked hard to bring POPULATION: ONE to as many platforms as possible by pushing the absolute limits of modern mobile VR chipsets,” said Gabe Brown, BigBox VR’s CTO and co-founder in a prepared statement. “We’re excited to see how players use the Vertical Combat System to compete and win starting on October 22nd!”
Population: One is slated to hit the Oculus Quest platform and all major PC VR headsets on October 22nd for $29.99. For more on Population: One, check out our hands-on impressions right here and keep an eye out on UploadVR for more coverage and a full review later this month.
Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
Community Download – Empire Or Republic In Star Wars: Squadrons?
Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused article series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today’s Community Download, we are focused on Star Wars: Squadrons Starfighters. We want to know what your preference is between the Empire (TIE Fighters, etc) and Republic (like the X-Wing) when it comes to Star Wars: Squadrons Starfighters. Which will you choose?
We’ve finally reached Star Wars: Squadrons launch week! There are only a few days left before we can strap on our VR headsets and be transported to the cockpit of iconic starfigthers like the X-Wing, TIE Fighter, A-Wing, TIE Interceptor, and more. Needless to say I, personally, am quite excited.
We’ve already published a detailed breakdown of all the details you need to know about before playing Star Wars: Squadrons, which has full VR support on both PC and PS4 (via PSVR), and we’ve also got details on the intricate customization options, ranking and progression, and the tactical power management. Not to mention the impressive-looking single player gameplay trailer.
There is a lot to take in here. You’ve got lots of ships to choose from, all of which have their pros and cons, so it can be overwhelming. We haven’t had a chance to check the game out just yet, but we’ll have a full review as soon as we can.
What do you think based on what you’ve seen so far? Do you think you’ll lean towards flying for the Republic or the Empire? Let us know down in the comments below!
Featured Image Source: Reviews.org