Category: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’m tempted to leave it at the headline and direct you to the comments – it’s after five, you know, I’m usually in the bath by now – but I’m supposed to be some kind of “professional writer”, so I guess I’ll waffle for a few paragraphs. Activision have put up a trailer for nu-Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3‘s multiplayer, ahead of a full live reveal at the Call of Duty: Next event on 5th October. I caught the news on a social feed somewhere, went hunting for the Youtube version and, much to my distress, managed to dig up the multiplayer premiere for the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, released in 2011 – almost 12 years ago.

Rather than just posting the correct video and going off to cry about my advancing seniority, I’m brazenly posting both so you can trace the evolution (or not) of this shootiest of first-person shooter franchises. It’s bizarre to think of any game series being this venerable, and changing so much while remaining the same.

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What are you doing later? Bit of a night out in a bleak post-Soviet city, maybe? Drink? Dance? Drugs? Pet giant rats? Chat with a back-alley cyborg tech? Catch a poetry reading? Have a blood pressure test? Contemplate your empty existence? Eat a kebab? All this and more awaits you with Neyasnoe, the new first-person explorer from the creators of It’s Winter. While It’s Winter had you so bored and lonely you might cook egg on toast only to flush it down the toilet, here you’re surrounded by life, and I’m not sure that’s much more comfort.

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I’m a fan of the modern Bethesda RPG, having spent nearly 100 hours with Fallout 4 – which, for me, is a lot more time than I’m usually willing to give up. My fondest memories lie with Oblivion, because I think it captured exploration beautifully. I liked emerging from a big cave as a big nobody and striking out along a cobbled path, excited to go for a summer’s walk. Skyrim abandoned Oblivion’s warmth for your average fantasyland, but kept the great outdoors.

If I don’t have an objective in Starfield, I sort of freeze over and don’t really know where to turn. And even if I do, I perform a deep sigh and open up my menus and curl myself into a pinball, ready to get pinged around the innards of whatever can lies beyond the airlock in front of me. So far, Starfield’s adventuring forces me indoors and it’s a shame.

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Larian have released a new Baldur’s Gate 3 update which – in news which will surely lead to V-Day-style mass celebrations throughout the forts and dungeons of Faerûn – removes the loathed shared stash system introduced by Patch 3, which caused companions to dump their entire inventories on you when dismissed. The new patch reverts companion behaviour to their pre-Patch 3 behaviour, for a less frustrating RPG experience. In even more momentous tidings, it re-shaves that cat everybody loves. Ah, videogames.

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Valve have released a small Counter-Strike 2 update that, amongst other things, stops mud slowing you down and stops incendiary grenades forming fiery rings in mid-air, like excitable kids with sparklers. There are also fixes for a shader compilation bug that may, nonetheless, still exist for AMD GPUs when playing this latest iteration of the developer’s free-to-play team and objective-based shooter. Many of the larger issues returning players have, such as the absence of Mac support, have yet to be addressed.

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Sergiy Galyonkin – aka Mr. SteamSpy himself – has left Epic Games after almost a decade at the Fortnite maker, including six years as its director of publishing strategy, saying that he is no longer “a good fit” for the publisher.

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Payday 3 makers Starbreeze have promised that the matchmaking woes of its launch are at an end following multiple rounds of maintenance to the co-op shooter’s servers.

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Ivar Hill and Slipgate’s Core Decay is a Deus Ex and System Shock-flavoured immersive sim that’s all about the ABCs. A, of course, stands for Attacking by means of things like energy rifles, electro-batons and shotguns. B is for back-stabbing, referring to the stealthy player who may stack objects so as to clamber into vents, and whack guards deftly in the noggin to escape detection.

And C is for Conversing, referring to the act of wooing civilians – who thus far seem miraculously unbothered by your menacing hooded appearance and sepulchral accent – so as to procure door codes and the location of keycards. You can see all these approaches in the game’s new trailer, below.

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Blackbird Interactive’s next big thing is Homeworld 3, out February 2024, but Homeworld 3 has a little cousin, Earthless, which tells approximately the same tale of a big colony ship fleeing across the galaxy, but takes the form of a deck-building roguelite cardgame. Never one to say no to a bout of space strategy, I fired up a preview key over the weekend, and while I wouldn’t say my pulse has jumped to hyperspace, I’m certainly enthused.

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Amazon Prime Big Deal Days is both too hard to say and weirdly close to the most recent Prime Day. And yet, as expected, it’s set to be stuffed senseless with computer kit; there are already dozens of offers on SSDs, gaming mice and keyboards, and laptops ahead of the main event on October 10th-11th. Also: loads more. This guide to the best early Prime Big Deal Days PC gaming deals (urgh, see?) will pick out the highlights for your consuming convenience.

The majorest of major disclaimers: these early deals aren’t yet subject to the defining rule of Prime Big Deal Days, specifically that its juciest savings will only be for Prime members. In other words, any deals on this list, right now, are available to everyone.

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