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As a continuation of the Black Ops subseries, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 both benefits from and is limited by its past. Its standard multiplayer mode feels only tangentially related to what came before, rather than explicitly building upon it, and the bigger changes lose impact as a result. Zombies, too, mixes old and new; it’s overflowing with content at launch, offering a brand-new story and a continuation of the existing one.

While Black Ops 4 doesn’t have a traditional single-player campaign, it does have a training mode with story cutscenes based on the characters from multiplayer. Because I played Black Ops 4 at a pre-launch event for these early review impressions, I haven’t yet had a chance to try it. Of course, the most intriguing of the three main modes is Black Ops 4’s take on the battle royale genre. Blackout is a big step forward for Call of Duty, and while it undoubtedly captures what makes battle royale so popular, I still need to play a lot more (and on live servers post-launch) before finalizing my review early next week.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is the most straightforward of the modes, and Black Ops 4 attempts to be more tactical than previous entries. The wall-running and thrust-jumping of Black Ops 3 is gone, replaced with a weighty, grounded feel that forces you to be a bit more thoughtful about positioning. Healing is now manual, too, and on a cooldown timer, adding another layer of consideration as you approach a firefight. Matches overall have a slightly slower, more cautious pace, but time-to-kill is still low and respawning still near-instant. Maps follow the familiar three-lane structure and are longer and narrower than those in Black Ops 3, with a mix of open areas and tighter spaces that provide opportunities for both long-range and close-quarters firefights.

Black Ops 3’s Specialists return with some tweaks; there are 10 total at launch, some new and some imported from the previous game. Each still has a unique weapon and ability, but instead of choosing one or the other, you now go into a match with both. The weapon is tied to a longer cooldown and functions as a superpowered attack, while the ability is a piece of equipment, like a grenade or a trap, with a more strategic purpose. More so than in Black Ops 3, the Specialists are clearly geared toward certain roles; Battery, for example, keeps her War Machine grenade launcher from 3 and trades her old defensive ability for a Cluster Grenade, making her an obvious offensive choice. Other Specialists fill defensive and supporting roles, and having the opportunity to take a step back from just shooting is a welcome one.

There are two new game types, Heist and Control, that join the core roster. Heist has you competing against another team to grab a bag of money and extract it, and each player has only one life. Killstreaks that can take out an entire team at once, like the Hellstorm missile, feel overpowered and out of place in Heist. The low time-to-kill coupled with no respawn makes it hard to implement any real strategy, too, since most rounds are over in a few short minutes.

Control, on the other hand, is an objective-based mode that is far better suited to and actively encourages you to use Specialist tactics. Each team, one attacking and one defending, shares 25 lives; you win by either exhausting all of the enemy team’s lives or maintaining control of the two objectives. A defensive Specialist like Torque, who has Razor Wire perfect for placement under windows and a Barricade “weapon” for extra cover, is a great option if you’re trying to hold an objective, for example, while offensive Specialists can aim to wipe out the enemy team.

But most of Black Ops 4’s multiplayer game types–the typical Call of Duty suite, including Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, and Domination–don’t require you to follow a Specialist strategy too closely. This isn’t a hero shooter, and your success is more dependent on the gun you choose and how good you are at shooting it than your skill with a particular Specialist or your team’s composition. As a result, the more tactical aspects feel robbed of their impact, and committing to them isn’t any more rewarding than a normal kill.

Zombies

Black Ops 4’s Zombies is as broad as it is deep, with two separate storylines across three maps–four if you have the Black Ops pass included in the game’s special editions. The first two, IX and Voyage of Despair, are part of the brand-new Chaos story; the third, Blood of the Dead, and the optional Classified make up the returning Aether story. It’s a lot to take in at once, and I still need to really dive into each map. I’m most intrigued by Voyage of Despair, though–partially because of its Titanic setting, but also because its small spaces pose a greater challenge than IX’s more open arenas.

Over in the Aether storyline, the Ultimus crew hasn’t aged particularly well, even considering that each of them is stereotyped to the extreme. The jokes just don’t land anymore, especially Takeo’s overdone Japanese accent where Ls are replaced with Rs at every opportunity. Aside from that, slowly uncovering the secrets of the homage maps is a tantalizing prospect.

The new Rush mode is a much faster-paced version of Zombies where you don’t have to do any thinking or puzzle-solving; you’re just there to kill the undead, horde-style. There’s no money, so you don’t need to save up to unlock a door or buy a weapon. You’re instead told which area will have the next rush wave, and you’re directed from room to room as you go. It’s too intense to be a tutorial, per se, but it’s a great way to familiarize yourself with the map, test weapons, and maybe figure out which rooms you should aim to reach first in Classic mode.

Blackout

Since it’s the brand-new mode, Blackout is obviously the most intriguing aspect of Black Ops 4. But because there was a limited number of people at the pre-launch event, I didn’t get to play many rounds or experience matchmaking on live, populated servers. My initial impression is that it’s similar to PUBG, but I need to spend a lot more time with the mode before I can fully evaluate it. That said, Blackout undoubtedly captures the intense, shaky excitement that makes battle royale so popular, with Call of Duty’s tight shooting and movement mechanics as a strong foundation. Areas with zombies add a PvE element that helps distinguish Blackout from the likes of PUBG, too, offering powerful loot at the risk of dying from an undead mob or attracting human players to your position. Perks and specialist equipment are present as items that can be looted during a match, providing another small but distinct Call of Duty twist (and one that I want to experiment with further).

Sure, there isn’t a traditional single-player campaign, but Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 isn’t short on content, and its three main modes are substantial. With standard multiplayer and Zombies, it struggles to fully commit to moving forward, and the mix of old content and new ideas doesn’t always gel. From what I’ve played so far, Blackout more successfully incorporates elements of Black Ops’ past while forming its own take on trends of the present. But because each mode is deep in its own right, I’ll be spending more time with Black Ops 4 post-launch before posting my final review.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection is coming up on its fourth anniversary following its launch in November 2014, and believe it or not, the Xbox One game continues to get exciting new updates.

The first of these is the previously teased “Match Composer,” which lets you have greater control over the games and modes you play beyond the existing game- and mode-specific playlists that currently populate the hopper. In the latest Halo Community Update, developer 343 shared an image of what the Match Composer looks like.

As you can see, this lets you select the game(s) you want to play, as well as the modes within those. After that, the magic of the Match Composer places you into matches. “This should be a great next step towards helping players tailor their matchmaking experience to their specific tastes,” 343 said.

Halo: MCC features multiplayer support for Halo 1, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4, so it’s exciting to think about making a tailor-made playlist for yourself instead of needing to select the playlists individually after every match.

It’s not the only new matchmaking feature 343 is working on for Halo: MCC. The studio is also building a “robust custom game browser” to the title. However, “that feature is going to take more time to implement,” 343 said.

Note that the new Match Composer will only ever place you into Social matches, not Ranked ones. 343 plans to test the Match Composer first with those who are in the MCC Insider program on Xbox One with the aim of gathering feedback before pushing the feature out to everyone.

The other big new feature for Halo: MCC is expanded controller customisation options. With a new update, players will be able to independently changed the horizontal and vertical look sensitivity, as well as look acceleration and look dead zone. 343 is adding this because it’s what some fans asked for.

“Some players have expressed that some games within MCC don’t ‘feel right’ compared to the Xbox 360 originals and while the code itself is identical between the OG and MCC versions of each title, the ‘feel’ of each game can vary based on a number of factors including TV latency, 60FPS frame rate, online latency, and the nuanced differences between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles and controllers,” 343 said. “The team hopes that by offering more refined controller settings options, players will be able to better find the sweet spot that feels right to them.”

The Match Composer and new controller settings are now being tested internally at 343, with the expectation that they’ll be available to MCC Insider testers potentially next week.

In other news, 343 said it will bring back the zombie-themed Infection mode next week to kick off the Halloween celebrations a little early.

Halo: MCC is in the Xbox Game Pass program, so it makes sense that 343 wants to continue to support the game to give players more reasons to play and keep coming back.

The next big Halo game is Halo: Infinite, which is coming to Xbox One and PC. We don’t know much about it, though 343 has confirmed it’ll run on a brand-new engine called Slipspace. We also know it will feature microtransactions in some form.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is already in the hands of some players at home, with a full release on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on October 12. A handful of players, on the other hand, got a unique gameplay experience instead. They got to try the game at the Black Ops House in London, inside “the world’s darkest room” for a totally immersive CoD experience.

Activision partnered with a company called Surrey NanoSystems to design the room, which is covered in Vantablack VBx2 coating, a material that absorbs nearly 100 percent of natural light in an area. The end result for the players was the ability to play the game with absolutely nothing being visible in the room except the screen and game in front of them. Get a look at their creation in the video above.

Black Ops 4 is the seventh Call of Duty game, and is the first to lack a traditional single-player campaign. In its place are story-driven individual missions that each focus on one of Black Ops 4’s multiplayer Specialists, similar to the Operator missions from Rainbow Six Siege. Black Ops 4 is the sequel to Black Ops 2, and the prequel to Black Ops 3, with missions taking place between 2025 and 2065.

There is also a brand new Blackout mode (which inspired the above blackout experience, no doubt). It closely resembles other battle royale games in many ways; up to 100 players drop onto a map and battle until only one player or team remains. Players collect weapons, equipment, and vehicles from their environment, and of course, the area in which players can survive shrinks over time, pushing you into closer quarters with your enemies.

The co-op Zombies mode is also returning in Black Ops 4. You can play two separate storylines in the mode, one called Aether that follows the Zombies storylines from past Black Ops games and a second, called Chaos, which features new characters Scarlett, Stanton, Diego, and Bruno. For more game details, including info on how to pre-order, check out everything we know about Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.

The Netflix Marvel superhero universe has had its ups and downs, and nothing can really make up for how bad Iron Fist Season 1 was, and what it did to The Defenders. But sometimes when you hit rock bottom, there’s a silver lining: There’s no direction to go but up. The Punisher was pretty good, Luke Cage Season 2 was a step in the right direction, and even Iron Fist Season 2 was watchable. Now that we’ve mostly forgotten about Jessica Jones Season 2, it’s time to return to where it all started: Daredevil. And you know what? It’s good to be back.

Daredevil Season 3 has a lot preceding it, but except where it’s relevant to Matt Murdock’s story, it mostly ignores what’s come before. In the first six episodes, which were sent to press ahead of time, there’s no mention of Jessica, Luke, Danny, or The Hand. Even Elektra is just a memory, albeit one that haunts Matt still.

Daredevil Season 3 is about rebuilding. Matt (Charlie Cox) suffered his most emotionally and physically devastating defeat yet when an entire building fell on him at the end of Defenders, and he’s forced to find the time and will to heal on multiple fronts. Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) has a scheme to get out of prison, but he puts himself at great risk to pull it off. Foggy (Elden Henson) and Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) are still dealing with the fact that Matt is gone, trying to put the pieces of their lives together without their best friend. Naturally, his eventual return in Season 3 will only complicate things further.

To fans, it’s no secret that Matt survived the events of Defenders. He spends much of Daredevil Season 3’s first half recuperating in the basement of the Catholic orphanage where he was raised, tended to by a nun who may or may not be his mother (in the comics she is; it hasn’t yet been made clear in the show). At the season’s start, his hearing has suffered, and without it his “sight” has also waned. An early season boxing match puts Daredevil’s brutality, the actors’ impressive physicality, and Matt’s threshold for punishment all on display. Daredevil spends plenty of time wallowing in Matt’s well earned nihilism, but even then it can be a joy to watch.

Fisk, meanwhile, proves to be the manipulative villain we remember him as from Daredevil Season 1. He flips and turns FBI informant, snitching on New York’s Albanian mob and almost getting himself offed in the process. That triggers a transfer out of prison and into a cushy high-rise, “for his own safety,” of course. He claims to be doing it all for Vanessa–played by Ayelet Zurer in Season 1, though she’s yet to reappear in Season 3–but with the Kingpin, there’s always the sense that there’s more going on than we’re ever made aware of. No doubt that shoe will drop before Season 3 is over.

Fisk’s recruitment of crack shot FBI agent Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter–who we know from the comics as Bullseye–only begins to see its full payoff by the time Season 3 is halfway through. But Dex gradually proves himself to be a dangerous presence, an obsessive sociopath with perfect aim who was taught as a child to blend in with society. When the cracks in his “normal” life start to shake his foundations, Fisk knows exactly how to dig his fingers in deep.

The news of Fisk’s “release” doesn’t go over well in Hell’s Kitchen, and protesters keep vigil outside his suite, adding to the feeling that this is all leading somewhere topical. Foggy and Karen fight back in their own ways–still working at the Bulletin, Karen starts investigating what Fisk is really up to, while Foggy attempts to get at him through legal means.

That’s all to say that Daredevil Season 3 puts the focus where it belongs: on Matt, Fisk, Foggy, and Karen, the core characters that we originally grew to love or hate back in Season 1. With that re-anchoring comes some really cool stylistic choices; there’s an entire sequence that plays out in black and white, half flashbacks, half imaginings, with one character walking back through another’s life as he strives to learn everything he might use to his advantage. And there’s a single-shot fight scene in these first half dozen episodes that’s unbelievably impressive, easily rivaling any action that’s come before in the whole Netflix Marvel universe.

So yeah, Daredevil is back. And thanks to its much needed laser focus on the characters and stories fans actually care about, you don’t even need to be caught up; If you watched Daredevil Season 1 and then stopped, you could pick up again right at the start of Season 3. That definitely says something about how forgettable much of what came in the interim was. But regardless of where you’ve been all this time, Daredevil Season 3 is worth returning for.

Daredevil Season 3 hits Netflix October 19.