The social network, matchmaking and stat-tracking service, Call of Duty Elite will not arrive alongisde Modern Warfare 3 on PC next week as originally planned. VG247 have spotted a blog post from community manager Dan Amirch explaining that the service has been delayed due to security issues.

"We’re as committed as ever to the PC, but the need to ensure a safe PC environment is greater than ever," said Beachhead Studio head Chacko Sonny. "It’s really extensive. We need more time to get there, so Elite on PC will not launch on Day 1. We’re working our butts off to make it happen, but we won’t release it until we know that PC gamers can enjoy Elite as it’s meant to be." It doesn't sound like a small delay either. "It is not going to come out until we've done a lot more work" say Beachhead.

The devs cite the insecurity of dedicated servers as the reason for the delay. It also means that there won't be a Call of Duty Elite subscription option on PC. The subscription service gives members access to Call of Duty web TV series, competition tournaments and monthly DLC packs. The DLC updates will still be available to PC players as separate downloads, as with previous Call of Duty map packs.

"Not being able to trust stats is a big problem for our design. Because of this, we had to re-imagine Elite for PC. Elite for PC will be about access to your own stats, or those of your friends. Basically establishing a circle of trust. And because it will have some reduced functionality, it will be free for everyone," said Beachhead.

We won't see a PC version of Call of Duty Elite for a while, then, and when it does arrive, it will be a different animal to the console versions. It's the latest example of a familiar trend in the lead up to Modern Warfare 3's release next week. Throughout the entire multi-million dollar PR and advertising campaign, the PC version of Modern Warfare 3 has been conspicuously absent. At press and preview events, and at the Call of Duty XP conference every instance of Modern Warfare 3 was running on consoles.

All of the videos and screenshots released seem to have come from console versions of the game, too. We only know that the PC versions is coming because Activision announced it, but we won't know it even exists for sure until we hold it in our hands next Friday. If the devs are "as committed as ever to the PC," why aren't they showing it?

 
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is out next week. In terms of the sheer mass of copies flying off shelves and raw marketing hype it's likely to be the biggest launch of the year. It's surprising, then that we've heard so little about the multiplayer changes that Infinity Ward are planning for the multi-quadrazillion dollar sequel. As well as some very promising tweaks to perks and kill streak rewards, new game modes hope to add more variety to CoD's obscenely popular arena-based man shoots.

Firstly, there's a capture the flag mode that asks you to hold on to the flag as long as possible to rack up points, dashing round the maps and finding hold up points that will let your team mates defend you. Kill Confirmed, meanwhile, won't give you any points until you snatch the dog tag of a downed enemy, forcing players to fight at close quarters. Will that finally remove CoD's devastating snipers from the equation? Find out more about the new changes in our Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 preview.

This article originally appeared in PC Gamer UK issue 232.

I poked around the Scrapyard paintball arena and scanned the ground while dangling from a zipwire, but there wasn’t a single PC to be found at the recent Call of Duty XP event in LA.

When asked about our platform, Infinity Ward employees only offered happy patter about their return to dedicated servers. Compared to Battlefield 3’s grandstanding, MW3 is short on PC love or technical boasting, and instead refreshingly open about design specifics.

The Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer that Call of Duty’s baying fans had travelled to LA to see isn’t a revolution – it’s the series putting its house in order. Anything that unbalanced the game back in the days of Modern Warfare 2 – and there was a lot – has been changed or removed.

Among the notable absentees announced to a rapturous crowd (yes, they cheered the removal of mechanics) were the One Man Army perk with its sneaky midspawn class change, the Stretch Armstrong arm-reach provided by Commando, the game-ending nuke and the prevailing threat of secondary shotguns. As fun for the individual as they might have been, they were ruining the game at large.



Killstreaks have undergone the greatest transformation, emerging Brundleflylike from a pod in their new form as Pointstreaks. In Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops, newer players could barely dream of access to the higher realms of Killstreak rewards, and success in more exotic objective-based game modes didn’t always involve chains of enemy death.

To help reward players more fairly, and encourage less antisocial play styles, the new system rewards not just kills, but flagcaps, objective grabs and basic teamwork.

What’s more, the streak rewards you choose are now split into Strike Packages. The first, Assault, will provide the explosive delights that are familiar to all, but the Support package is now home to all of the rewards that help your team. UAV scans, SAM turrets, drops of ballistic vests to divvy out among the troops, Recon drones and even a suit of Juggernaut armour can be called in.

Vitally, your ascendance to these team-helping goodies doesn’t reset when you take a bullet to the head, but instead keeps on ticking upwards throughout the round.



Meanwhile, the Specialist Strike Package rewards talented lone wolves with an extra perk for every two points collected. However, dying at the hands of another still sets them back to the foot of the ladder.

Maps are international affairs. There’s an American interpretation of a London tube station, complete with a ‘Porter Potty’, and a mythical underground map containing delights such as Wrong Shoes Street and Big Beard Tower Station.

There are the streets lying in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and a foliage-packed African village surrounded by caves and waterfalls. All of them are fairer and better designed than most of those locations found in MW2, whose settings provided dozens of angles of attack via unnecessary doors, windows and rooftops in every conceivable direction.

In recent CoD games there’s also been a tendency to make the player feel guilty for specialising in one weapon. Modern Warfare 3 instead positively rewards you for remaining faithful to your chosen piece of hot, sexy metal. Guns now level up as you do, enabling you to strap different scopes and reticules to its body, and even letting you improve intricate details such as its kick, stability and the number of attachments it can handle.



These are all good, solid and intelligent changes to a multiplayer framework that, while loved, has long had rough edges in need of smoothing. Infinity Ward have risked angering the community in order to experiment, albeit with experiments that Quake III and Unreal Tournament modders first toyed with a decade ago. Firstly, there are user-tweaked game modes in private matches that work like UT’s mutators. Secondly, there’s a new mode called Kill Confirm. Here the deceased drop dogtags: collect an enemy’s tag and you gain 50 points; collect an ally’s and you deny the opposition their prize. It’s a simple concept, but it brings a new edge of teamwork to Team Deathmatch.

After running through the biggest changes to the game’s multiplayer offering, Activision announced the price for Call of Duty’s new premium service, Elite. The Facebook-enabled social network is £35 a year for 20 drops of map DLC, high-end clan features, prize competitions, in-depth tactical guides and twice-weekly, Hollywood-sponsored video content.

This is clearly the year that Call of Duty aims to go from gaming stranglehold to world domination. On PC, though? The day we actually see the thing running on a desktop, we’ll let you know.

 
Even your weapons will have experience bars in Modern Warfare 3. The unlock system has been revamped, and will work differently depending on which of the three classes you play as, but the perks and point-streak rewards will be separate from the weapon unlocks. You'll be able to earn new attachments by fighting and killing with a weapon. See the devs explain the system in the new trailer above, spotted on Evil Avatar. Infinity Ward say that the unlocks will be geared towards giving players more options in combat, though some, like the weapon stabilising upgrade, will probably just make you better.

If guns can level up, it feels as though they're starting to become RPG characters in their own right. We're hoping for loyalty side quests and proper story arcs come Modern Warfare 4.

 
The Modern Warfare 3 "launch trailer" has been released three weeks ahead of the game's actual launch. That's odd, but you have to remember that this is "the most anticipated game in history." And a Battlefield 3 launch trailer was released a day ago and could not go unanswered. There's plenty of explosions, of course, and tanks, and talk of Modern Warfare's great villain, the mysterious Makarov. Will we finally get to finish him off? And where is Captain Price's magnificent beard?

Whoa. When did PC gaming become so damn... award-winning?

PC has cleaned up at the Golden Joystick awards with a wealth of exclusives. And the non PC exclusive games that took an award? We get to play most of those too, only more anti aliased, and in a better resolution.

The best bit? Gamers voted for these. Real-life gamers with strong opinons. A record-breaking 2.06 million of them in fact. Well done PC gaming community - you rose to the challenge and pwned.

Click through for the full results. Don't agree with some of the winners? It's time for a furious debate. See you in the comments.

PC dominated the Best Strategy category: Starcraft 2 took the number one spot, followed by Civilisation V and Shogun 2: Total War. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood was awarded Best Action game and Fallout: New Vegas took Best RPG.

World of Warcraft took Best Subscription MMO, beating Rift and Eve Online. One of PC Gamer's faves - Minecraft - was awarded Best Downloadable Game. We'll have Notch's acceptance speech on the site as soon as possible.

League of Legends scooped Best Free-To-Play Game - considering the numbers and constant updates, it's hard to disagree.

Portal 2 took Ultimate Game of the Year at the prestigious ceremony. Seeing as we have the ultimate version of Portal 2, we'll take that as ANOTHER win for PC gaming.

Skyrim took the One To Watch award. We've been keeping a close eye on that one. And yes, it is indeed one to watch.

Best Action
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Runner Up
Portal 2
Third place
L.A. Noire

Best Mobile
Angry Birds Rio
Runner up
Fruit Ninja
Third place
Infinity Blade

Best RPG
Fallout New Vegas
Runner up
The Witcher 2: Assassin's Of Kings
Third Place
Dragon Age II

Best subscription MMO
Winner
World of Warcraft
Runner up
Rift
Third place
Eve Online

Best Fighting
Mortal Kombat
Runner up
Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds
Third place
Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition

Best Racing
Gran Turismo 5
Runner up
DiRT 3
Third place
Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit

Best Sports
FIFA 11
Runner up
Pro Evolution Soccer 2011
Third place
NHL 2011

Best Strategy
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Second place
Civilization V
Third place
Total War: Shogun 2

Best Music
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
Second place
Rock Band 3
Third place
Child of Eden

Best Free-to-play
League of Legends
Second place
World Of Tanks
Third place
RuneScape

Best Downloadable
Minecraft
Second place
Limbo
Third place
Dead Nation

Best Shooter
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Second place
Halo: Reach
Third place
Crysis 2

One to Watch
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Second place
Battlefield 3
Third place
Guild Wars 2

Innovation of the Year
Nintendo 3DS

Outstanding Contribution
Sonic The Hedgehog

Ultimate Game of the Year
Portal 2
Second place
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
Third place
Call of Duty: Black Ops

 
Jut a few weeks before Modern Warfare 3 comes out, Infinity Ward reveal some major and encouraging changes to the way Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer works. In his opening comments executive producer Mark Rubins says that Infinity Ward took a hard look at Modern Warfare 2, and realised that they'd "made a game for one type of player, the high kill-count, low death," recognising that "that was really the only type of player that was getting rewarded."

Their solution for Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer includes a healthy reshuffle of the way that kill streak rewards are earned. Points, not kills, are the key to accessing Modern Warfare 3's most powerful abilities. The reliance on points instead of kills is an interesting switch, because they can be earned by capturing points and helping out team mates as well as lining up the perfect headshot.

There are also three different classes with different unlock patterns. The assault class unlocks new gear through traditional points streaks, the support class carries over points streaks between deaths and gradually unlocks powerful support tools like UAV drones and gun turrets, and the Recon class unlocks new perk every couple of kills, transforming himself into an incredibly powerful super-soldier as the fight wears on. Infinity Ward say they've spent time trying to ensure that the perks are well balanced this time round, and there's no sign of anything like the game-ending nuke of Modern Warfare 2.

Elsewhere, Infinity Ward have been making some good noises about the PC version of Modern Warfare 3. Eurogamer note an exchange on the Call of Duty forums in which community manager Robert Bowling tackles questions about dedicated servers, and the kind of graphics options we can expect from the gargantuan sequel.

"The big feature for MW3 we are supporting is Dedicated Servers, this includes a server browser, voting, RCON, and more", writes Bowling, adding "we are embracing the Steam platform by integrating fully with Steam including friends list, Steam achievements."

Valve's anti-cheat tech will be employed to thwart hacks, layered over a number of other anti-cheat programs with a view to "keeping online multiplayer fun, fair, and secure for all players without limiting the control they expect on PC."

On the graphics side we can expect SSAO rendering, anti-aliasing, depth of field options and texture resolution options.

"We value the PC player and have gone to great lengths in providing a more rich experience for our players," Bowling writes. "We keep our ear near the ground and try to deliver items most requested."

Still no dinosaurs, though.

Modern Warfare 3 is out on November 11.

Will Modern Warfare 3's single player campaign be as crazy as the globe trotting, paranoid, numbers-obsessed missions of Call of Duty: Black Ops? The latest screenshot of three men in gas masks running away from an exploding Eiffel tower says YES. Individual Modern Warfare 3 screenshots have been popping up at regular intervals over the last few weeks. See four of them bundled together below. As well as the full sized Paris explosion shot, there's one that looks to be from the Black Tuesday single player mission and a couple of aerial images that show aerial bombardments. It looks like the AC130 is back!


 

 

 

The third in the semi-regular procession of Call of Duty: Black Ops map packs is here. It consists of four multiplayer arenas, and a zombie survival map set in the made-up, booby-trapped temples of Shangri-La.

Best pack a portable stove and some marshmallows, because we’re going camping: the new maps are perfect for snipers and hidden bastards who like to find a corner and wait for prey to pass by.

The wide-open golf course of Hazard is the worst for this. Overlooked from both ends by marksmen, it’s virtually impossible to cross from one side to the other without a sniper adding an extra hole to the green, by way of your face. For a while the bright, undulating fairway and abandoned golf carts may fool you into thinking it’s an entirely fresh map. In fact, it’s a crafty re-hash of World at War’s Cliffside arena. This map pack costs £11, by the way.



Hazard’s bright and airy style at least provides a break from the dreary greys and browns of Black Ops. The same can’t be said for Drive In, or the military labs of Hangar 18. Drive In’s burnt-out arcades are suitably post-apocalyptic, and the enormous stealth bomber in the middle of Hangar 18 provides a striking centrepiece, but both maps suffer from the same problem. As Black Ops’ visuals become more interesting, the map layouts themselves become more and more remorselessly predictable.

Let me give you a guided tour. Here’s the big open middle bit overlooked by elevated hidey holes. I like to call it “doom alley.” Nobody goes there. Next up, the warren of rat-runs around the outside where the actual fighting happens. Let’s go take a look at – oh dear, we’re dead. Turns out there were men hiding in two of the nineteen corners of this room we wondered into.



The sprawling, monolithic Silo come closest to providing something new. Its maze-like geography and huge concrete installations funnel players into a series of small and difficult skirmishes, but until you learn its complex, fiddly floor plan, you’ll find yourself getting shot in the back by unseen opponents over and over and over again.

Which leaves Shangri-La, Black Ops’ latest zombie offering. The lush jungles and ancient stonework make this one of Black Ops’ best-looking zones, and the addition of spike traps, zombie-bothering golden gongs, infected monkeys and even a shrinking ray, help it to stand out from the game’s bizarre selection of zombie levels. It’s silly, funny and surprisingly nerve-wracking, but is it worth £11? No.

Black Ops’ competitive maps are becoming more and more like novelty paintball arenas. Visually fancy, geographically familiar, and as frustrating as ever for non-snipers. The ambitious zombie level doesn’t even come close to justifying the ludicrous price tag.

Here's a bit of footage of Modern Warfare 3's Spec Ops survival mode from the Call of Duty Elite event in LA, spotted on CVG. It shows a new map set in Paris. Judging by the suicidal nature of the enemies, it's a very early round, but it doesn't take long to get to unlock a sentry gun to take out a horde of pesky attack dogs. For an overview of the Spec Ops mode, check out this analysis of the official Spec Ops survival trailer. That shotgun seems satisfying, but it doesn't look quite as flash as the Parisian map currently in beta testing in that other shooter, does it?