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Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare preview: can laser rifles and stealth mines refresh the CoD formula?Jun 11, 2014 - PC Gamer Call of Duty has a laser gun. And a jetpack (okay, okay: jump-pack. Semantics.). And grenades that you don t have to throw. And a cloaking device. And a landmine that cancels sound? Activision toured me through this new futuretech after inviting me to watch more than 30 minutes of Advanced Warfare that wasn t shown at Microsoft s E3 press conference earlier this week. First: a recap on Advanced Warfare if you haven t been following along. It s developed by Sledgehammer Games, a relatively new Activision studio that contributed to Modern Warfare 3. It has the distinction, among Call of Duty games, of being developed over a three-year period. It s set in 2085 in America and other parts of the world, with a focus on (you guessed it) warfare with hovertanks, drones, and high-technology based on Sledgehammer s real-world research and imagination. Its campaign has a single protagonist, it ll be out in November, and Activision is saying absolutely nothing about multiplayer yet. At E3 this week I was shown two campaign levels nearly in their entirety. I walked away impressed by the quality of art, animations, and sound shown in these sections, which represent a significant leap over Modern Warfare 3 that laser rifle I mentioned feels like a Wolfenstein weapon, piercing your ears with an inexplicably fitting, metallic thunk every time you fire. Outside of that, though, what I saw it simply felt like an echo of every other Call of Duty campaign I ve played. The first level Sledgehammer showed me began as a stealth-focused escape mission in the vein of other Call of Duty levels where you and a AI partner slink through an environment undetected, silently executing sentries along the way. Mitchell, the campaign s player character, is sprinting through a Bulgarian forest. There s a helicopter tailing him and his partner, shining a searchlight after them as they bound through high grass and over rocky forest. Eventually they re free to activate the cloaking systems on their exosuits, but cloaking didn t break the rhythm of stealth killing and evasion. I noticed one distracting visual discrepancy, too: the feet of my cloaked teammate didn t bend any grass or shrubbery as he moved through it. Each moment of this introductory section felt like Simon-Says, with the partner character vocalizing each maneuver (at one point, a cloak-cancelling searchlight appears: Seeker. Cloak s useless against it, avoid the beam. Wait for the patrol to pass. ), and you obediently executing. I didn t get to play, so I can t say for sure how much room for experimentation or error this section includes, but nothing indicated that it was much. Sneaking up behind a transport truck at one point, a mine-shaped light flashes on the ground, inviting the player to place a mine there. Why hold the player s hand that much? The gadget itself was interesting: a disc with a handle attached that dampened all sound temporarily in a small radius essentially cloaking all sound in the location and mu...Call of Duty: Ghosts Devastation pack includes alien kraken and The PredatorMar 31, 2014 - PC Gamer The Devastation map pack for Call of Duty: Ghosts will include four multiplayer maps and part two of the increasingly mad Extinction mode. The co-op players vs. NPC aliens aside is set on a "high-tech ghost ship" besieged by a "skyscraper-sized" sea monster and infested with dog-like alien creatures. The trailer also teases the inclusion of the Predator. The actual Predator, from the films. I haven't paid attention to Call of Duty in a while, so it feels like returning to a familiar old house I thought I knew, to find it full of dinosaurs. The shooting will be familiar enough, I'm sure, even with the addition of the "Ripper 2-in-1 SMG/AR", pronounced "Ripper two-in-one Smgaargh". Multiplayer maps include Behemoth, set on the walkways of a vast mining machine, Ruins, set in a Mexican jungle near an erupting volcano, Unearthed, a map "inspired by" Modern Warfare 3's Dome, and Collision, set on a cargo ship that's crashed into a New York bridge. The Predator's a tease. Is he playable in a new mode? Is there a map-specific killstreak that sends him after the enemy team? XBox live players will find out on April 3. PC players will probably get it a month later. It'll cost $15 / 10. Find out more on the Call of Duty site, and get a look at the new maps, and the famous monster, in this trailer. Reinstall: Call of Duty 4: Modern WarfareMar 12, 2014 - PC Gamer Reinstall invites you to join us in revisiting classics of PC gaming days gone by. This week, editor Sam Roberts returns to the fury of Call of Duty 4's singleplayer campaign. With Titanfall jettisoning the idea of a traditional single-player mode and Battlefield 4 s campaign inducing widespread sighs, this has become a disposable bolt on to most of today s big shooters. Titanfall is able to create much of the drama of a single-player game in the midst of its impressive systems, but it s worth remembering that the old Infinity Ward were really good at making campaigns, too. But it might be that Titanfall s lack of a true single-player mode is a sign of the times: COD s rigid campaign formula has been exhausted. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was its peak. The single-player is, in levels without a significant story beat, a slog to get through today. Perhaps this is because its ideas have been mercilessly recycled in the last seven years by both copycat action developers and Call Of Duty s own teams not really successfully expanding on that formula (full disclosure: I haven t played Ghosts doggy campaign, though I ve completed all of them prior to that). How many times have we seen that moment when your character gets knocked to his feet by a blast and his vision blurred, before you re picked up by an NPC and finally handed back control of the game? It s in the first mission of COD4 as the tanker is bombarded by MiGs. Every variation of this and many other scripted set pieces borrowed from Modern Warfare, and it s not COD4 s fault that people ripped that off. It just turned out to be pervasively influential. I think the lack of self-expression offered by its linear structure is a bit too cloying by today s standards. There is some extraordinary visual design in Modern Warfare s real-world environments, but wander too far out of the intended path and you always find dead spots in detail or convenient fences and barbed wire. I forgot you don t have the power to open doors in Call Of Duty you have to wait for the NPCs to do it for you. The lack of interactivity reduces the value of replaying a COD campaign, admittedly, which is probably part of the reason it s become a disposable aside in multiplayer-heavy FPSs generally. COD4 s success hinges on the quality of replaying those scripted moments, and they are still pretty decent even when you know Infinity Ward s tricks. The storyline isn t particularly entertaining, but it s a lot sharper than the increasingly ludicrous sequels are, and benefits from not overdosing on silly. Individual moments still excel and highlight the developers narrative chops. You know the ones I mean. When the pilot rescue goes awry during Shock and Awe and your player character is consumed by a surprise nuclear blast, you crawl through the rubble for a minute before your character dies alone in a horrific blast zone. Having played that twice before, I thought the impact would wear off. It doesn t. Yes, you re basically just ...Call of Duty: Ghosts system requirements released officially, 64 bit OS requiredOct 24, 2013 - PC Gamer Nvidia put out some unofficial Call of Duty: Ghosts system specs a couple of weeks back suggesting that Infinity Ward's peppy manshooter would require a 64 bit OS, and they were right. The Call Of Duty site now has the official specs, which adjusts the 50GB install to a 40GB one (lets face it, 30GB of that is hi-res dog), but retains the 6GB RAM requirement. Watch Dogs, another game designed to span the gap between current and 'next-gen' console hardware, needs similar tech. We can expect system requirements to quickly jump up when we start seeing ports of games that target the PS4 and Xbone exclusively next year. Will the similarity of the new console hardware to PC architecture make for smoother ports? I can only hope. Meanwhile, get yer Call of Duty: Ghosts system requirements right here. OS: Windows 7 64-Bit / Windows 8 64-Bit CPU: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8200 2.66 GHZ / AMD Phenom™ X3 8750 2.4 GHZ or better Memory: 6 GB RAM Hard Disk Space: 40 GB Video: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTS 450 / ATI® Radeon™ HD 5870 or better Sound: DirectX compatible sound card DirectX®: DirectX® 11 Internet: Broadband Internet connection for Steam and Online Multiplayer.Call of Duty: Ghosts screenshot analysis: special forces, jungles, random armchairs and frightened fishMay 22, 2013 - PC Gamer Call of Duty “has almost ruined a generation of shooter players,” says Tripwire InteractiveMar 13, 2013 - PC Gamer Tripwire President John Gibson holds an M1 Garand inside the team's studio, one of the guns carried by the Americans in Rising Storm. Earlier this month I visited Killing Floor and Red Orchestra 2 creator Tripwire Interactive to play Rising Storm, the upcoming standalone expansion to RO2 (look for a preview on Monday). After the demo, Tripwire President John Gibson and I got talking about the state of first-person shooters, and Gibson laid out a detailed criticism about the way Call of Duty "takes individual skill out of the equation." Gibson also expressed frustration over how difficult it had been trying to design a mode for Red Orchestra 2 that appealed to Call of Duty players. PCG: How do you feel about the state of FPSes? John Gibson, President: I think that single-player shooters are getting better. I think they’re finally coming out from under the shadow of the Hollywood movie, overblown “I’m on a rail” linear shooter. I’m talking about Call of Duty-style shooters. In the late ‘90s, you had the original Deus Ex, which was an RPG-shooter. And those kind of games almost took an eight year hiatus. And I’m so excited to see them coming back with interesting gameplay. Like the Fallout games, even though their shooting mechanics could really use some improvement, just mixing a really cool story, but not a linear story, one that you create yourself. The melding of RPG elements and shooter elements has been great. I’ve seen this reflected in a lot of the reviews, it’s like, “Okay guys, we’re tired of this on-rails experience.” On the flip side, I’m really discouraged by the current state of multiplayer shooters. I think that, and I hate to mention names, because it sounds like ‘I’m just jealous of their success,’ but I’m really, I feel like Call of Duty has almost ruined a generation of FPS players. I know that’s a bold statement, but I won’t just throw stones without backing it up. When I was developing Action Mode , I got a group of people that I know that are pretty hardcore Call of Duty players. And my goal was to create something that was accessible enough for them to enjoy the game—not turn it into Call of Duty, but try to make something that I thought was casual enough but with the Red Orchestra gameplay style that they would enjoy. And we iterated on it a lot. And just listening to all the niggling, pedantic things that they would complain about, that made them not want to play the game, I just thought, “I give up. Call of Duty has ruined this whole generation of gamers.” Red Orchestra 2. Gibson says he's "discouraged" by the state of multiplayer shooters on PC. What did they complain about? Gibson: It’s the gameplay mechanics that they become used to. The way that players instantly accelerate when they move, they don’t build up speed. “The weapons really don’t have a lot of power” . They’re all very weak. The way they handle... They’re like: “I hate Red Orchestra, I can’t play it.” Well, why? “Because the guy doesn’t move like he does i...The sun rises, tides fall, babies cry, another Call of Duty game confirmedFeb 8, 2013 - PC Gamer Activision's efforts to forcibly insert Call of Duty releases into the yearly rhythm planet Earth continue today. There's some pretty dry biz news floating around this morning so let's enshrine key details in haiku form to keep things lively. More CoD is mentioned, In ActiBlizz earnings call, Bear shits in the woods. Shocking, I know. Gamespot report that Activision CFO Dennis Durkin's future-sense has become clouded by the onrushing next-gen apocalypse. "There is increased volatility this year due to the ongoing console transition, which makes predicting the future more challenging than during normal years in the cycle," he opined, clawed hand hovering over a glowing ball of demonic energy. "For Call of Duty, consistent with our past practices," he managed, gasping, "we are planning for the mainline release in Q4 to be down versus 2012." And with that he tore his hand away, and was spared the wrath of the artifact. It's Modern Warfare's turn this year, according to the bi-annual Modern Warfare/Black Ops one-two punch that Activision has favoured in recent times. I'm sure it will be a perfectly adequate arcade manshooter. What would you like to see them change about the series?TED talk outlines how action games help your brainNov 23, 2012 - PC Gamer How's your brain? Is it full of thoughts of the weekend and exciting upcoming things like DINNER and CHRISTMAS? Good, you might be pleased to know that thanks to action games like Call of Duty, your brain is probably better at juggling multiple thoughts of dinner and Christmas better than the average non-gamer brain. It's also good at tracking happy and sad children as they bounce around a circular playground, and is better at picking grey objects from a grey background. We can thank Gears of War for that. Cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier can do a much better job of explaining it all than I, so I'll give up the stage to her TED performance, which you'll find embedded below. You can find plenty more talks on all sorts of topics on the TED site. For a more amusing turn, TED has been perfectly parodied by The Onion as well.Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 video shows eight minutes of multiplayer blastingOct 3, 2012 - PC Gamer Black Ops 2's future setting moves its gruff warrior sorts into a world that's used to drone warfare, but hasn't invented awesome laser cannons yet. That lets Treyarch weave a pleasantly paranoid plot in the single player campaign without jeopardising the great golden goose that is CoD's multiplayer mode. I imagine Call of Duty devs are quietly terrified of messing around with that world-winning formula too much, which is why the eight minutes of multiplayer scooped by IGN look so darn familiar. The appearance of a little robot 5:44 in livens things up a little, though. What do you think? Has Black Ops 2's new setting, zombie campaign mode, polished up PC version and open character design system convinced you to give it a try when it comes out in November? Call of Duty: Black Ops zombie co-op campaign teased by trailerSep 27, 2012 - PC Gamer Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is getting an expanded co-op mode called "Tranzit" that'll send four survivors on a zombie road trip across the US. As one of those survivors you'll get to bus from place to place, mounting heroic stands against the zombie army at each location. IGN mention "buildables" that con be constructed to furnish you with new weapons, or open up extra areas, which are probably full of more zombies. The latest Black Ops 2 zombies trailer shows a fuel stop, a diner, a farmhouse reminiscent of Left 4 Dead's Blood Harvest finale, a power station and a town center blighted by lava pools. Zombies AND lava? It's the doompocalypse alright. You'll find the video stamped into the page below. Parts of the video show a tiny snippet of someone shooting zombies of the roof of the bus in first person, suggesting that we'll have to defend against legions of zombie marathon runners as the bust travels between locations. As well as "Tranzit" there will be a versus mode that will put two four-player teams into the zombie apocalypse and encourage them to compete for zombie kills without killing each other. There will be a more traditional survival zombie mode for fans of Treyarch's previous efforts. Treyarch could probably spin zombies into a separate release if they wanted to. It's been a fan favourite since its cheeky first appearance in World at War. Is the zombie mode your favourite part of Treyarch's CoD games, or just a fun distraction? Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 system requirements and enhanced PC features detailedSep 4, 2012 - PC Gamer Treyarch have upgraded the DirectX 9 Black Ops engine to a "leaner" DirectX 11 edition that promises "significant improvements" for us PC players. The updated engine should make more efficient use of GPU power, and will have "more quality vs. performance options than ever before." The upgrade means that it won't run on Windows XP, however. "Performance has been a top priority for Black Ops II PC from day one" say Treyarch in a post on the Black Ops 2 site, spotted by Eurogamer. "Black Ops II PC features enhanced lighting, shadows, antialiasing, bloom, depth of field, ambient occlusion, and other enhanced effects that are still in the works. And the game can run at higher resolutions and higher framerates on the PC." There's no frame rate limit either, so we'll be able to cram even more Call of Duty into our eyeballs every second than ever before. Treyarch also released some minimum system requirements so you can plan an upgrade if you need one: Black Ops 2 PC system requirements OS: Windows Vista SP2 or Windows 7 CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E8200 2.66 GHz or AMD Phenom X3 8750 2.4 GHz Memory: 2GB for 32-bit OS or 4GB for 64-bit OS Gnomes: Four hardened micro-gnomes with front line combat experience Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512 MB or ATI Radeon HD 3870 512 MB The extra polish should help to sell Black Ops 2's future setting a little better on PC but with Warface, Battlefield 3 and Planetside 2 kicking around, it'll be going up against some big engines this winter. If only there was a way to put them all in some sort of thunderdome and make them fight for our love.Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 trailer teases Content Collection 4Aug 31, 2012 - PC Gamer Content Collection 3 isn't out on PC yet, but Activision are already teasing the fourth "final assault" map pack. It's due to arrive on Xbox on September 6, which pegs it for somewhere around October 6 on PC. It'll add five new maps: Boardwalk, Off-shore, Decommission, Parish and Gulch. Men are murdered to a backing of clamorous gun-song in the new trailer showing off each map in turn. The noise acts like a mental battering ram, breaking down the superficial differences between each map and laying bare the very bones of what Call of Duty is, a grain of truth best expressed by a looping gif of a man running around the corner and shooting another man in the head for 100 points forever. HEADSHOT. Hopefully Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 can mix things up a bit when it arrives in November. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Hardened and Prestige editions detailedAug 28, 2012 - PC Gamer Are you already dead set on picking up Call of Duty: Black Ops 2? Then you might be the sort of player intrigued by a shinier special edition ultro-box version. MP1st have word of two offerings, a "hardened" edition with a "collectible steelbook" and a "prestige" box which comes with an MD-27 Dragonfire Drone. That's not an in-game item. That's a drone that you can fly around and use to scare dogs. Attach a gun to it and you have a pretty close facsimile of the futuristic doom-bots we'll get to mess around with in Black Ops 2 (please don't do this). Read on for a list explaining which extra bits come in which box, and a couple of pictures proving that they exist. No price announcement just yet. Black Ops 2 is due out on November 13. Hardened Bonus In-Game Content: Nuketown Zombies & Nuketown 2025 Exclusive Xbox Live CLAW Avatar Prop & Zombies Avatar Costume Limited Edition Challenge Coins Official Soundtrack by Jack Wall With Theme by Trent Reznor Collectible Steelbook Also Includes: Exclusive Weapon Camp & Exclusive Player Card Backgrounds Prestige Bonus In-Game Content: Nuketown Zombies & Nuketown 2025 Exclusive PlayStation 3 System Multiplayer Theme & Zombie Theme MD-27 Dragonfire Drone with Remote Control Limited Edition Challenge Coins Official Soundtrack by Jack Wall With Theme by Trent Reznor Collectible Steelbook Also Included: Exclusive Weapon Camp & Exclusive Player Card Backgrounds Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 screenshots show tight multiplayer scraps on futuristic mapsAug 15, 2012 - PC Gamer It's the future that's for sure. The riot shields all have lights on them, someone's finally realised that those quadrocopter toys could quite easily double as deadly recon drones, and humanity has become warped and warlike in its relentless quest to capture flags. The latest Black Ops 2 screenshots from Gamescom offer us a glimpse of this grim but probably quite fun dystopia. Absorb them below. It's impossible to tell from looking, but there's an interesting "pick 10" character builder behind the loadouts of these futuristic soldiers. Treyarch have been talking about the highly customisable system at Gamescom. The origin of Call of Duty’s most-heard soundAug 14, 2012 - PC Gamer When you shoot someone in Call of Duty, there’s a noise. It's positive feedback—a fwip-fwip-fwip to let you know that your bullet, knife, claymore, or phoned-in helicopter is hurting someone. While visiting Treyarch I asked the Black Ops 2 sound team about the creation of the simple-but-essential effect. PCG: Why does it sound the way it does when I shoot someone in Call of Duty? Brian Tuey, Audio Director: So... The sound has impact and it has meaning and it's useful and all that, but it's not a particularly pleasant sound, especially in isolation. There was a time recently where I was like, "You know? I'm gonna redo this with something else." So I kinda went a different direction, and it felt like this was going to be good. I checked it in, and within three hours, my email box was full of, like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY SOUND?" I'm like, "But it's so much better!" Chris Cowell, Audio Lead: The other thing that you might not actually know, it's different every game. Really? Cowell: It has to be. They're all very similar, and they serve the same purpose, but the actual content and the creation of it is redone every game, because our guns sound differently, you know? The music's different, the situation's different... Tuey: Our whole DSP chain in the engine is completely different. The same stuff doesn't sound the same anymore. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHs1sOdcuEE Cowell: Little things like that can be a really difficult sound to make. The last game, it took me weeks to get that little thing right, because you have to fire it, get the tick and hear it and know what it means. Tuey: But it has to cut through the guns, the explosions, and give you the same exact feeling you had when you heard it last game. Cowell: Yeah. It's the same experience. That experience needs to be consistent across all of them, but not the sound. Tuey: And that's what the problem was with the new one I dropped in, it sounded different. So the experience was different, so people who were playing the game didn't even know I'd changed it, right? It's not like we make a big production about, "Hey, I changed this sound!" Well, sometimes we do. But usually we just want to see what people's reactions are. What did it sound like when you changed it? Tuey: I made it sound more like a bullet hitting somebody, as opposed to a tick. But it's more important for us that the gameplay aspect of it is supported, versus "Hey, now it sounds more real." Shawn Jimmerson, Sound Designer: You want to know that your bullet has hit someone, especially in MP. You're firing and you want that immediate feedback that I am actually scoring hits. There's a lot of expectation, you know, even in films, when somebody punches somebody else, it's not a realistic sound... Cowell: Whpssh! Jimmerson: But people have that expectation. Within our community, there's that same sort of thing. There are certain things that you just don't want to mess with too much, because you just upset people who are playing...Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 MP to have Diablo 3 style unlock system, guns and perks revealedAug 14, 2012 - PC Gamer Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 details have been oozing out of Gamescom. VG247 have details of an updated "build a class" mode that will let us occupy ten gear slots with any combination of weapons, perks and killstreak rewards. Levelling up will mean choosing one of seven new pieces of kit to unlock. If you want to grab the six you missed, you'll have to prestige and reset your character. You're not restricted to having to occupy certain slots with weapons, and other slots with perks. You can forgo your primary gun in favour of an extra perk, or a "wild card" ability that changes the way your weapon behaves, adding an alternative fire mode or letting you slot an extra attachment onto your weapon. Treyarch refer to the system as "pick 10." It's not too far off Diablo 3's sideways levelling system that lets you slide any unlocked skill into a limited number of slots. Levelling grants you new tools with which to customise your loadout, which can then be swapped in for another skill whenever you fancy a change. It should introduce a significant element of choice to CoD's levelling system, and bring a bit of chin-stroking build pondering to the lull between Black Ops' frenzied fire fights. There are more than a hundred kit items and powers to choose from, and VG247 have grabbed a handy list to give us an advanced look at the range of abilities on offer. Given that you'll need to prestige to get hold of all of them, we'll have to shoot a lot of men before we get access to the full weapons locker. Guns Assault rifles Type 25 M8A1 SA-58 SIG556 SCAR-H AN-94 SMR Shotguns M1216 Saiga-12 R-870 MCS LMG LSAT QBB LSW Mk 48 Sniper Rifles DSR 50 SVU-AS Ballista SMG MP7 Chicom CQB PDW-57 Skorpio EVO III MSMC Specials Assault Shield (Metal riot shield that can be planted into the ground as makeshift cover) Secondary Launchers FHJ-18 AA (Vehicle lock-on, two rockets) RPG SMAW Pistols KAP-40 Tac-45 Executioner B23R Lethal Slot Grenade Semtex Combat axe Claymore C4 Bouncing Betty Attachments Reflex sight ACOG sight Target Finder (Paints red squares around hostiles) Hybrid Optic Suppressor Fast Mag Fore Grip Laser Sight Adjustable Stock Quickdraw Millimetre Scanner Grenade Launcher Select Fire Mode FMJ Rounds Extended Clip Tactical slot Black Hat PDA (Get close to enemy equipment and point this data pad at it to hack it and turn it against enemies. Takes ages to hack though!) Smoke grenade Sensor grenade Flashbang Concussion grenade Shock charge (a throwable stick that emits an electric shock across a surface, rooting targets to the spot) Tactical Insertion Wildcards Perk 1 Greed (Lets you choose a second perk from tier 1) Perk 2 Greed Perk 3 Greed Primary Gunfighter Secondary Gunfighter Overkill Danger Close Tactician Perks Tier 1 Ghost (Now only hides you from UAVs when you are moving) Lightweight Flak Jacket Blind Eye Hardline Lightweight Tier 2 Cold Blooded Hard Wired Sc...Modern Warfare 3 Collection 3 trailer shows Chaos Mode, spec ops missions, face off mapsAug 10, 2012 - PC Gamer The latest collection pack for Modern Warfare 3 has arrived on Xbox. We'll have to wait a while before the included face off maps and spec ops missions make their way to PC, but we're at least able to look at moving pictures of the pack right now. The trailer for collection 3 introduces Spec Ops CHAOS MODE, an educational exercise that teaches basic arithmetic through the medium of endless score modifiers. Here's a test. If you kill five men in 30 seconds for 50 points each and for each kill your score multiplier value increases by one, how many points do you have? Quickly, now, men are shooting at you. QUICKLY. The new pack adds four new missions for Modern Warfare 3's Spec Ops mode. Arctic Recon "tasks you with destroying a Russian battleship by planting beacons for an air strike." Vertigo puts you on top of a Dubai hotel with a bunch of laser-guided RPGs and has you fend off waves of incoming choppers. Light 'Em Up has you storm Makarov's castle to rescue a VIP before dawn breaks, and Special Delivery asks you to rescue a stranded flight crew. One player launches a ground assault while the other drops care packages from a helicopter above. Chaos Mode is included, and can be played on the Resistance, Village, Underground and Dome maps. It'll throw endless waves of enemies your way. Slaying them with bullets stacks up a humongous, limitless score modifier. The pack also includes three maps for the recently added Face Off mode, which pits tiny teams against one another on compact maps. See all of those maps and missions represented in this Modern Warfare 3: Collection 3 trailer. More details on the Modern Warfare 3 site. Modern Warfare 2 designer explains the thinking behind No Russian missionAug 9, 2012 - PC Gamer Modern Warfare 2's No Russian mission asked players to choose to take an passive or active role in an airport civilian massacre. It caused quite an uproar back when it was released, but a lot of time has passed. A legal battle has been fought, a new studio has been formed, and many of the designers who worked on Modern Warfare 2 at Infinity Ward are now working for Respawn Entertainment. Mohammad Alavi is one of them. The designer responsible for one of Call of Duty 4's most memorable levels, All Ghillied Up, also had a hand in creating Call of Duty's most controversial moment. With the legal NDAs surrounding his attachment to Infinity Ward expired, he's spoken to Matthew S. Burns on Magical Wasteland about the intent behind No Russian. "We were trying to do three things" he explains, "sell why Russia would attack the US, make the player have an emotional connection to the bad guy Makarov, and do that in a memorable and engaging way. "In a first person shooter where you never leave the eyes of the hero, it's really hard to build up the villain and get the player invested in why he's 'bad'." Alavi describes early versions of the level in which the massacre takes place at the beginning of the level and quickly turns into a shoot out. He mentions that that version "felt cheap and gimmicky. It felt like we were touching on something raw and emotional and then shying away from it just as soon as it became uncomfortable. “I’ve read a few reviews that said we should have just shown the massacre in a movie or cast you in the role of a civilian running for his life. Although I completely respect anyone’s opinion that it didn’t sit well with them, I think either one of those other options would have been a cop out," he says. "atching the airport massacre wouldn’t have had the same impact as participating (or not participating) in it. Being a civilian doesn’t offer you a choice or make you feel anything other than the fear of dying in a video game, which is so normal it’s not even a feeling gamers feel anymore.” No Russian served a pragmatic storytelling purpose. The player's outrage would be the emotional leverage needed to make Makarov a more weighty villain. As heavy handed as that might seem, Alavi suggests that, from his perspective, getting a strong reaction of any kind from players is a victory. “It isn’t really relevant whether that makes you enjoy the entertainment experience even more because you’re being naughty (à la Grand Theft Auto) or it engrosses you further into the story and makes you resent your actions. What’s relevant is that the level managed to make the player feel anything at all,” he says. “In the sea of endless bullets you fire off at countless enemies without a moment’s hesitation or afterthought, the fact that I got the player to hesitate even for a split second and actually consider his actions before he pulled that trigger– that makes me feel very accomplished.”Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 trailer shows new bad guy, jetpack skydive attack, drone strikesJul 11, 2012 - PC Gamer Black Ops 2's far future setting feels like a good backdrop for Call of Duty's mad action movie plotlines. The latest trailer profiles Raul Menendez, the big baddie we'll be hunting down in the sequel. He's a widely loved, poplular sort, but beneath that charming exterior there lies "an insidious mastermind hell bent on global insurrection." He's a cat, basically. A cat with access to America's entire arsenal of automated drone weapons. Time to strap into a jetpack and divebomb out of the clouds through a storm of scorching flak. That's just one of the scenes that awaits you in the latest trailer below. Call of Duty DLC on sale for charityJul 4, 2012 - PC Gamer Hey, remember how we always say Call of Duty DLC is overpriced? Well VG247 are reporting that Activision have just launched a great big sale, offering 50% any Black Ops or Modern Warfare 3 Map Pack for the next week. That takes the price down from an exorbitant £11.49/$14.99 to a much more reasonable £5.74/$7.49. There's something else to, a portion all sales will go to the Call of Duty Endowment, a charity launched by Activision back in 2009 that helps veterans find jobs when their tours of duty are over. The full list of discounted DLC is as follows: Call of Duty: Black Ops First Strike Call of Duty: Black Ops Escalation Call of Duty: Black Ops Annihilation Call of Duty: Black Ops Rezurrection Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection 1 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 content collection 2 Activision have long been seen as the 'Evil Empire' by gamers, but this is a good thing. £5.74 is a much more sensible price for a map bundle than £11.49. And money going to charity is a nice thing. If you're thinking of picking one of these out you can check out our Black Ops: First Strike review, our Black Ops: Annihilation review and our Black Ops: Rezurrection review. We liked Rezurrection best. It has moon zombies.
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