Back 4 Blood is the spiritual successor of Left 4 Dead, the beloved four-player FPS where players were tasked with surviving the zombie apocalypse while sprinting to safety across an infested America. Back 4 Blood continues that group-based tradition but with bonus modes for you and your friends to dive into. One such mode premiered at the Warner Bros. E3 Conference: a PVP-focused mode, called Swarm Mode, where cleaners (humans) and the ridden (infected) go head-to-head.

Swarm Mode is played in rounds and showcases all of the gory, ax-swinging, gun-toting, and grenade-lobbing combat that you watched the Game Informer crew experience months ago. To survive as a cleaner, you’ll likely need to stick together with your allies, conserve resources, get kills for upgrades, and keep an unbreakable line of communication as infected players start to pile in from every direction. On the other hand, the infected must overwhelm the cleaners using sheer numbers and a bevy of gory abilities. These rounds are timed and seem to be based on how quickly you can kill your opponents. Once a round ends, the sides switch, and the counter clock starts again.

Let’s be honest, playing as humans is pretty cool, but that’s been a mainstay in Turtlerock Studios’ gameography for decades. So, what makes the ridden so cool in Swarm Mode? A myriad of classes were shown during the conference: reeker, retch, exploder, stinger, hocker, stalker, tallboy, crusher, and bruiser. From flinging phlegm at cleaners or self-destructing on impact, there are many routes to bringing down the human race. You can see the action in all its gritty detail in the trailer above. 

Back 4 Blood releases for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 12. It’ll be accessible from the Game Pass catalog on launch day, and an open beta starts on August 5.

Are you more excited to play as a ridden or cleaner? Let us know in the comments below!

Coming out of the Xbox E3 showcase featured a look at the console versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator as well as a big new cross-over with the upcoming film Top Gun: Maverick.

Having released on PC last August, it can be easy to forget Flight Simulator hasn’t made its way to Xbox Series X and S yet, but the wait will be over on July 27, 2021. A new trailer was captured using a Series X hardware in 4K resolution according to Microsoft. Planes of all kinds are shown flying over oceans, plains, forests, and under bridges. The footage runs smoothly and gives an idea of what players can expect from the conversion from PC to console.

Just after announcing the Xbox release date, we see a shot of the ocean and an aircraft carrier floating stoically in the water. Triumphant music begins to swell as a fighter jet launches from the ship’s runway, emblazoned beneath the cockpit window is “CAPT PETE MITCHELL ‘MAVERICK.’” Top Gun is officially coming to Microsoft Flight Simulator later this year with a collaboration with Paramount Studios promoting the sequel to the popular Tom Cruise movie. The expansion is set to hit sometime in the fall of 2021.

Microsoft has been adding plenty of content to Flight Simulator since release. Most notably, VR support was added for PC as well as a visual expansion to the United States region. After not having a full new entry in the series since 2006, It was quite the hit at launch. In the first month alone the game had garnered over 1 million players who had flown more than 1.2 billion in-game miles.

Like all recent products coming out of various Microsoft Game Studios, Flight Simulator will be hitting Xbox Game Pass the day it releases. Once again, that release date is July 27, and will be coming to both Xbox Series X and Series S consoles.

Miss out on any of the huge announcements coming out of E3? You’ve been granted permission to give our expansive E3 hub a fly-by!

Good news space cadets, Obsidian Entertainment is working on a new The Outer Worlds. The original Outer Worlds released in 2019, and it was a special mix of Mass Effect and Fallout. We loved it, and have been hoping that Obsidian was working on a sequel. We got our wish. During Microsoft’s E3 2021 presentation the publisher announced that a new The Outer Worlds is headed to Xbox consoles and PC … sometime in the future. Look, there isn’t a date yet, and it doesn’t look like there is a lot of game yet either. This was just an announcement.

The original Outer Worlds was set in an alternate future in a solar system called Halcyon. You were a colonist who traveled to the system in cryofreeze on a ship called the Hope. You were looking to build a better life for yourself, but discovered that corporations were exploiting the local workforce. Obsidian packed that original title full of humorous moments and absurd world-building. The 2019 release was also fairly short for a modern RPG. We don’t know if the sequel will be more expansive, but if the revel trailer is any indication - then we can expect the new game to look better, as the reveal was very eye-catching.

 I’ll be honest with you, there really isn’t a lot of news here. We’d love to tell you more about the trailer, but it’s really best if you experience that for yourself. Do you like humor and things that poke fun at big reveals? Great! Go watch The Outer Worlds 2 reveal trailer for yourself.

You’re not leaving? Okay fine, the trailer features a narrator who pokes fun of other big reveal trailers, and he admits that the game is still in development so the developers don’t have much to show. Kind of like how this story could use more development.

The Outer Worlds 2 is headed to Xbox Series X/S and PC, but we don’t know when. No one told us.