CODBLOPS First Strike's Last Strike
While you lot have made absolutely no secret of your contempt for latter-day Call of Duty games, as I understand it they're pretty big business on PC nonetheless. Despite others' best, sneery comment-based efforts, people still buy them. So there will be a large and enthuastic audience for the news that DLC map pack First Strike has been given a PC release date, having already been available on 360 for some time. You may well not be that enthusiastic audience, but I'm going to tell you anyway - knowing what the biggest, most aloof publisher is up to in terms of PC gaming is always useful.
March 26 is the day that First Strike pops onto a Steam order page near you. That'll be this Saturday, then. It's $15/£11.50, which is a frankly absurd asking price for five new multiplayer maps. A captive audience is a publisher's perfect dream, I suppose. If it is your sort of thing and you don't sensibly balk at the horror-price, you can pre-order now for a 10% saving. I rather imagine it'll sell frighteningly well despite the price, and despite the performance complaints levelled at CODBLOPS multiplayer on release.
The late release date isn't a matter of Activision considering the PC an afterthought (they may not always treat it well, but they're well aware that it can mean enormo-revenues), but of a Microsoft-enforced delay. First Strike was originally bound up in an Xbox 360 exclusive, so the PS3 has been similarly made to wait.
Four new standard multiplayer maps and one new zombie map: these are the contents. Here's what they look like (on console, at least).
You'd have thought they'd have found a way to make player run animations not look like puppets with their legs sewn on back to front by now, wouldn't you? The jet-powered death-platform in the zombie map looks like a good time, though.
Oh, 'Meh' Squadron? Look, I understand you don't care, but if you could for once resist the urge to tell everyone else just how hard you don't care, that would be super.