When buildings are collapsing and jets are being all “newwwwwwwrhghghghggh”, it’s easy to forget that the Battlefield 3 engine does small things as well.

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The man in this video had ten different customised weapons waiting for him at any time, so remember that if you choose to mock his overly-dramatic presentation of Ghost Recon Future Soldier’s Gunsmith capabilities in the comments: he probably has a ‘snotty internet jerk’ config that’ll make the Windows key on your keyboard garotte you.

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WARFACE, I mean. But also: this CGI trailer – which signals the beta sign-ups commencing – is all a bit Battlefield 3 until the mech turns up. Wait- what? Warface is Crytek’s first AAA freemium shooter, developed on CryENGINE 3.

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The handsome writer clicks on the Steam Store and types the word “zombie” into the search bar. Too many. He reorganises them by game only. Still too many. They’re everywhere. Surrounding us. An outbreak.

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Here are my words on Firaxis’ X-COM remake, here are the lead developer’s words, and below, for the first time, is your own chance to eyeball it in glorious technicolour and living motion.

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If Sniper Elite V2?s Killcam of the Week is a thing now, then I’m all for it. Simple, effective delivery of bullets to the brain over distance has always been my favourite thing in games, even better when we get to join the bullet on their journey, to share the excitement of their life’s ambition of making a skull’s acquaintance. Rebellion’s WW2 sniper sim puts you in the pants of a an OSS agent, hunting his targets through the Battle of Berlin. Historically inaccurate video, below.

I hope the X-Ray effect isn’t just an affectation for the videos, but everything we’ve seen of it shows the innards of the targets leering for the camera in similar garish fashion.

Would you like to play Borderlands 2? You can do it on September 18 this year, on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. (September 21 for international audiences, Gearbox tells us, meaning those of you not in North America.)

You can even play it in splitscreen. Four-player co-op, too. With more guns and skills than ever, it looks like.

I was rather close to falling down a deep, dark Counter-Strike hole just after the Counter-Strike:Global Offensive launched in November, but a broken PC released me from a frightening future of constant de_dust2 battles and crying about how unfair it is. I’d actually forgotten I had it until Valve and Hidden Path updated it this week, switching from a stress test to a big-assed closed beta, with over 80 tweaks. The big changes are the addition of three reworked classic maps, de_inferno, de_train, and de_nuke, and new guns, the Nova shotgun, the Bizon and the MP7 SMGs. But there’s more.

Any changes made to Counter-Strike brings more eyes, more opinions, than any other game I can think of, and Valve are using this as a real beta, not a marketing exercise. Aside from adding extra content, they’ve already altered the recoil twice: first according to CS pro Salvatore “Volcano” Garozzo’s tip that the recoil was too much and too difficult to control, and then shortly after when it was clear their tweak wasn’t nearly enough to help out player. CS: GO is an actual work-in-progress.

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Counter-Strike co-creator Mihn Le left Valve a few years ago to work on his own interpretation of the CS formula, but he took something with him: he runs on Valve Time, that temporal twisting that people experience in the presence of all those Steam servers. For years and years I’ve been hearing about his free-to-play Terrorist vs Swat team game Tactical Intervention, and it finally looks like it’s breaking loose in 2012. The American launch of the game will be in Spring 2012, with closed beta testing in March. There’s even a new teaser trailer, showing rappelling!

I have a fair bit of interest: Valve’s treatment of CS has been very conservative, which is unsurprising given it’s their biggest game, and any changes are met with a terrifying amount of focus. But Tactical Intervention has rappelling, attack dogs and highway chases, and the sneaky beta footage looks entertainingly shonky. The hostage animation there cracked me up. When it arrives in Europe, I’ll be up for a few games.

Over five minutes of footage that is already being hurredly removed from YouTube. Probably because it shows that the latest iteration of Far Cry is less about firearms, more about fetch quests. You misison, should you chose to accept it, is to go and collect some fungus for a crazy old man. Oh, and while you’re doing it, you will be trippin’ balls.
BEST. FETCH QUEST. EVER.