Call of Duty: Warzone - FEVER GONE BUT ITCHY

Wasn't expecting much from Call of Duty: Warzone's seasonal addition, Zombie Battle Royale, but this blink-and-you'll-miss-it mode is a salve for a world that never got as far as a Left 4 Dead 3. Being a modern warfare zombie is actually so much fun that, if you manage to gobble up enough purple serum, returning to human life leaves players acutely bereft - no longer able to hold down L2 to cue up an enormous, distance-munching, leap. 

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - BABYLON SOCIAL

A quick look at the Miami level in the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Alpha. This is the first game I really broke away from the pack and started going on decent streaks (well, the second - the PS4's Share feature is so fussy about how it's accessed, superseding inputs when you're, understandably, fretting about the eternity of vulnerability you're exposing yourself to just by calling it). So far, I'm really enjoying shotguns as secondary weapons - nothing beats cycling to a SPAS when you're much too close to a circling enemy.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - SCAVENGE

Still plugging away at Call of Duty: Warzone when I can. After a couple of weeks spent banging my head against the wall playing opposite PC players who, I'm sure, have acquired their tremor-free gunfire and impeccable situational skills through heavy lifting (rather than, say, running cheat scripts), I decided to limit matchmaking to PS4 only. Immediately seeing a lot less clairvoyance, it has to be said. Click the video above for a particularly hot post-Gulag drop.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - HEAVILY MEDICATED

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's basic multiplayer hasn't really clicked with me. Although it hasn't particularly stopped me playing, I haven't enjoyed that lobbies revolve around a matchmaking algorithm that seems to want players to feel like they're constantly underachieving. If, like me, you labour under delusions of adequacy, the constant fight to keep a neutral kill to death ratio saps the fun out of the game. Which is why I'm probably enjoying Warzone so much. Instead of three-lane maps stacked with nesting opportunities, the massive battle royale map allows players to move around in ways that pleasantly mix cautious creeping with explosive, momentary, daring.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - GULAG

Menu turnaround can be pretty brutal in battle royale games. One poorly judged landing spot and you can be bounced out of a game as quickly as you arrived. With this in mind, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's Warzone modes have introduced a nifty safety net feature - The Gulag. After your eliminated for the first time, rather than be dumped straight to a results menu, Warzone plays a short cutscene that sees your player character dragged off to a Soviet era prison (with an interior modelled after The Rock's shower room shoot-out) for a short, twitchy chance to battle your way back to the main game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - WARZONE

Out today is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's battle royale mode / free-to-play launcher, Warzone. Despite a truly titanic download - especially if you haven't forked out for the full game - I managed to squeeze a game in before bed, choking it up in the final circle. Like Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII's Blackout mode, Warzone manages (despite an absolutely enormous playing area) to retain the snappy, run-and-gun feel that made the franchise's name.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - SHOOTERS IN THE SHOOT HOUSE

It's been around for a week or so now, but here's my first game on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's freebie map Shoot House. Compared to the arenas that shipped with the game, Shoot House is snappy, barely allowing players the space or time to hunker down in some dark, foreboding corner and wait for foot traffic. While I'm very aware that the PS4's capture feature can never fully represent the actual calculations and results generated by this kind of online game, it's nice to know it can snatch footage of the general weirdness players encounter. 09:10 in this clip is a good example of the strange anti-auto aim I sometimes come across in Call of Duty games. Rather than allow you to track with an enemy character, you feel like you're constantly correcting an effort to force your aim off your target. 

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - THE META

Caution is the name of the game in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Ideally, you want to position your in-game character against a peekaboo surface with claymores at your back, guarding you from ambush. Even better if you can post up in a pitch black room, overlooking high traffic movement channels. Running about is discouraged - levels are a nightmare of distracting details and long, overlapping sight-lines; meaning the slightest movement could leave you hopelessly imperilled. Unfortunately, I don't have the patience for any of that shit, so I'm just loading up with whichever weapons are currently tanking the meta.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - 2 UP 2 DOWN

A slow start on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's new Gunfight mode but I get there in the end. The decision to preview Infinity Ward's big money reboot with this small, stop-start, cage match style mode is unusual. Rather than prowl around looking for backs to ventilate, players are immediately confronted with short but intense bouts where victory hinges on their ability to read their opponents then react accordingly. In this way it is somewhat similar to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's Blackout mode - death as a real, meaningful loss condition rather than just a minor setback on your path to scoring sky-filling killstreaks.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - SNAP-TO

Jackfrags with a snappy gameplay clip for Infinity Ward's upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Mr Frags' approach to games-casting is a little different in that he takes some time to focus on options browsing and mechanical interaction. For instance, if this video is indicative of final gameplay balance, then at least some gun recoil is superficial - animation traits and ostentation designed to evoke a sense of reality rather than offer a true representation of the path you can expect your in-game bullets to follow.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - TECH SPECS

Digital Foundry talk us through the new resolution and anti-aliasing tech powering Infinity Ward's latest, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Just in case that all sounds incredibly dry, stick around for an extended look at the multiplayer night-vision stage designed to place you in a Sicario set-piece, Azhir Cave. According to reports from the various press events, this optoelectronic level proposes a variety of limits on how players approach the level. Gun-sighting is restricted; hit-markers and point reports are gone, while paths through the area track towards confined. As with last year's Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's Blackout mode, creeping and the correct assessment of audio information will be your bread and butter.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III - BROKEN ARROW

Follow enough screeching YouTubers and you can immerse yourself in Call of Duty content all year round. The fallow, non-DLC months are the most interesting, with content starved vloggers digging into code minutiae or Agony Aunt-style personal experience in a desperate attempt to keep those views piling in. Not TheSandyRavage though, if the last couple of years are anything to go by we'll get about a dozen gameplay massacres before he gets bored and slouches off to something different. As if to prove my point, here's Sandals accidentally getting the highest denoted kill-streak bonus on Call of Duty: Black Ops III.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III - NUK3TOWN

Perennial pre-order bonus Nuketown is back! This time with an even fresher coat of textures! Not to mention a runny around bit on each flank just so you know the developers were sort-of, kind-of thinking about the new game's mechanics. Call of Duty: Black Ops III is out in about a week.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III - SLIDE

Call of Duty: Black Ops III is out in a couple of weeks so here's jackfrags sliding around on the PC version, winding everybody up by using a shotgun whilst also being extremely difficult to hit. As far as I'm concerned this is the ideal way to play a Call of Duty game. Beating the competition is one thing, but really what you want to do is make your opponents so angry that they send you incoherent, rambling hate mail.

SDCC Nostalgia Boner 1 - Transformers: Devastation

Since Konami have flushed KojiPro down the toilet, Transformers: Devastation might be as close as we get to a Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance sequel. The same basic shape looks to be in place, Devastation's purple energon barriers suggesting another ruthlessly segmented opportunity to juggle nobodies into the sky.

PlatinumGames offer a better class of generic too. Aside from the previously noted car mobs, we get a flyover from the Air Warriors, an extra team of seekers that filled out the meagre Decepticon ranks in the first few episodes of the Sunbow cartoon. At 0;46 Wheeljack runs into some hulking tank transformers that look like a mash-up of Rumble and one of Prowl's Ultimate Autobots. There's even a brief glimpse of a Shockwave clone coloured like a vintage knock-off. In terms of fan pleasing it's not just literate, it's encyclopaedic. If the devs can somehow work Hooligan in there, they've got my Game of the Year, easy.

E3 2015 - CHAPPIE

Did you think Destiny was far too colourful? Where you disappointed that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare didn't steal every single good idea Titanfall had? Have Treyarch got a game for you! In the interest of pure honesty, Call of Duty: Black Ops III actually struck me as reasonably appealing. Gun design once again favours pipes and barrels over PDW blocks, and Treyarch are right to plunder their stablemate Bungie for multiplayer special moves - remember, it's not unbalanced if everybody can do it. If Treyarch can match these best-in-field steals with the kind of map flow and spawn progression they had back in 2010, they might even rescue a franchise stuck in the doldrums.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III - GRIMDARK

Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops III is a dark, gritty futuristic shooter that follows on from Sledgehammer's dark, gritty futuristic shooter Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Infinity Ward's dark, gritty futuristic shooter Call of Duty: Ghosts. The series' three studio set-up is really paying dividends in terms of originality isn't it?

Call of Duty: Black Ops III - BACK IN BLACK

Call of Duty: Black Ops III gets a teaser blip demonstrating a series of wireframe ghosts that correspond to the key art for each of Treyarch's entries. We get schematics for the Call of Duty: Black Ops 'Nam guy followed by a blueprint for Call of Duty: Black Ops II's nondescript spy stabber. Judging by the golden info-dude that closes this nothing, looks like we can expect another round of exo-suited mayhem. Hooray.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - RESPAWN

Drift0r talking us through his thoughts on a potential remake for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. While there's no doubt in my mind that the early Modern Warfare games are the series peak, as with all nostalgia, there's a sense that we're trying to recapture something that doesn't exist anymore. Friends have grown up and moved on. Even if they're still up for it, do you both own the same console? No-one I know wants to spend every spare minute racing against spawn routes hoping to call in an AC-130. That was Friday night six years ago.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS

TheSyndicateProject takes a break from being super young and successful to bring us a 40 minute glimpse of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's Exo Zombies mode. Naturally, Syndicate has his routes and pick-ups down so consider this a useful primer on how to get yourself playing up to rounds with double digits.