When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. COD: BLOPS 7 is the first major release to get AMD's new graphics tech, starting with Machine Learning Ray Generation. "Redstone" is the code name for AMD's next-gen graphics software that leans heavily on frame generation via machine learning, and the first major game to get a taste of it is, a mouthful of a shooter that's launching today. According to promotional messages from AMD, Radeon 9000 users get "Ray Generation" at launch. Machine Learning Ray Generation (to give it its own mouthful of a name) is how a Radeon card learns patterns for an advanced lighting engine and then applies those patterns, in an approximate manner, in real time.

Call of Duty is back, and it's got a battle on its hands There are some things you can always rely on, and a new Call of Duty game coming out each year is one of them. As one of the best-known names in video games, it's a series that needs little introduction. According to publisher Activision, it's sold an estimated 500 million copies, a movie adaptation is on the way, and despite having launched in 2003 it still reliably appears at - or near - the top of the annual bestseller charts. But this year the world's top military shooter might have a fight on its hands. Battlefield 6, which has been a huge hit for rival gaming giant Electronic Arts, has been drawing attention away from its veteran competitor.

I t seems like an anachronism now, in this age of live service " forever games ", that the annual release of a new Call of Duty title is still considered a major event. But here is Black Ops 7, a year after its direct predecessor, and another breathless bombard of military shooting action. This time it is set in a dystopian 2035 where a global arms manufacturer named the Guild claims to be the only answer to an apocalyptic new terrorist threat - but are things as clearcut as they seem? The answer, of course, is a loudly yelled "noooo!" Black Ops is the paranoid, conspiracy-obsessed cousin to the Modern Warfare strand of Call of Duty games, a series inspired by 70s thrillers such as The Parallax View and The China Syndrome, and infused with'Nam era concerns about rogue CIA agents and bizarre psy-ops.

In early August, just days before a major Black Ops 7 preview event in Los Angeles, former Blizzard president and Microsoft executive Mike Ybarra called the Call of Duty franchise "lazy". Posting on X, the veteran exec wrote that EA's upcoming Battlefield 6 would "boot stomp" CoD this year and force the team to make "better FPS games". And with Splitgate 2 head Ian Proulx mocking Call of Duty in his Summer Game Fest presentation just two months ago, it seems the blockbuster series has become the butt of an industry joke about endless franchises. It's not the only flak the 20-year-old brand has drawn. Though it sells millions of copies with each new release (Black Ops 6 was the bestselling game of 2024), accusations of predatory monetisation, pay-to-win skins, swarms of in-game bugs, and the recent use of AI to create in-game, paid-for content have understandably irked many players.