Gaming News

What a great weekend, and quite a changing of the guard when it comes to the games we play. This time, we played very little CS:GO or L4D2. Instead, the bulk of the gaming time went to newcomers Titanfall and GRID Autosport. Titanfall was particularly impressive because most of us paid nothing for it - we took advantage of Origin's Game Time offer, where you could play the game free of charge for 48 hours - perfect for a BobLAN!

Unfortunately, Game Time proved less successful for Battlefield 4, so we stuck to BF3 which we played last time round. It was quite good once everyone had got the hang of deploying with squad-mates already in the field (rather than walking miles, only to get shot again)

For a full list of the games played, have a look at the LAN Party page for this weekend.

Finally, huge thanks to our host once again - it's as much fun now as it was ten years ago! The next LAN has been penciled in for 1st-4th October 2015.

In a bid to clamp down on spamming and phishing via Steam accounts, Valve have revealed plans to limit account functionality until at least $5 has either been spent on the Steam Store, or added to the Steam Wallet. Limitations include being unable to invite friends.

Read more on Steam News and Shacknews

With BobLAN 2015.1 less than a week away, all those coming need to make sure their PCs are updated with the latest version of all their Steam, Origin and Uplay games.

It's also worth installing (but NOT running yet!) Battlefield 4 via Origin's Game Time offer. This allows you to install the game and play it for free for a given period of time. It is important to note that your time starts when you first launch the game, not when you install it!

For all you Deus Ex fans, the next instalment has been announced. Titled Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Adam Jensen returns in a time where augmented humans are despised and cast out. No release date has been given as yet.

A cinematic trailer and further details of the game can be viewed on the Steam site: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Trailer

The dates for the first BobLAN of 2015 have been announced. The LAN will take place from Thursday 23rd until Sunday 26th April. The usual LAN Party page and Forums Topic are up and available for use.

The Steam Holiday Sale starts today, and will continue for the next 15 days. If previous years are anything to go by, there will be some bargains to be had.

Visit Steam to find out more, or sign up for the RSS Feed to get daily alerts.

Valve have been working on an overhaul of one of our old favourite maps - de_train. The visuals have been improved, and the layout updated to promote better teamplay and balance.

For a full description and plenty of screenshots, visit CounterStrike.net

Far Cry 4, the latest game in the Far Cry franchise, hit the shelves at midnight last night. ShackNews has a trailer of what the Season Pass has to offer, and don't forget you can buy one of the many PC versions from GAME :)

The developers behind Goat Simulator are bringing out a patch later this week that sees the game enter the world of MMO, with player classes, quests and levelling up.

Read more about this bonkers but entertaining game and the patch on ShackNews

A new game in Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6 franchise was announced at E3 recently. A trailer featuring some in-game footage is available, and it looks very impressive. Thankfully, Ubisoft have retained the first person gameplay (unlike the latest dumbed-down Ghost Recon which went third person) but the key innovations will be around the destructive scenery.

Take a look at the Rainbow Six: Siege Trailer on ShackNews. The game isn't due for release until 2015.

A Steam client update last week claims to have fixed some problems with game crashes related to the Steam overlay. Several games suffer issues with overlays (Steam, Xfire etc) and the workaround has always been to disable overlays. Hopefully this fix will remove the need to do this for Steam at least.

See the full update details on Steampowered.com

What a fantastic weekend that was! It was the first full weekend LAN party in over 18 months, and everyone was up for some serious gaming. Numbers were great, particularly on the Friday when we managed 7-a-side at one point. It was really pleasing to see some proper team play going on too, eg the CounterStrike games on de_vertigo.

There was a huge variety to the games we played too:

• CS:GO
• L4D2
• Day of Defeat
• Battlefield 3
• Battlefield 1942
• HalfLife 2 DM
• QuakeWorld CTF
• GRID
• Rockband

As always, big thanks to Bob for hosting all of us again (if you haven't paid up yet, please do so). It was great to see so many people there, particularly those who travelled a long way to attend. It just shows how much everyone loves coming :)

The first full BobLAN in a while started yesterday, and for a setup night, there was plenty of decent gaming. Once we'd made sure all the servers were working (and had some tea), we settled down to some quality CS:GO.

Given that today is the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, we plan to play all the various flavours of the Omaha Beach map on the different FPS games that have featured it over the years.

Here's a reminder to all members that BobLAN 2014.1 starts tomorrow evening, running through to Sunday. Please make sure you have updated your gaming PCs before coming, to avoid overloading the internet connection as you catch up on the several GB of Steam game updates.

As always, you can follow the action on our dedicated BobLAN Page including constantly updating schedule and live webcam.

Still on the topic of franchise extensions, Ubisoft have unveiled details of the next iteration in the Far Cry series. Far Cry 4 will take place in the fictional Himalayan region of Kryat. Due for release in November 2014, you can keep up with information on Shacknews or preorder the PC Limited Edition at GAME

Following on from the announcement of a new Wolfenstein game, Shacknews have put together a retrospective covering the whole Wolfenstein history, starting right back in 1981 with the 2D top-down shooter. It's come a long way :)

View the article on Shacknews

As reported recently, an updated version of Age of Mythology has been in the pipeline. The game became available on the Steam Store yesterday for the princely sum of £22.99 (or £67.99 for a 4-pack). That does appear to be quite expensive for a makeover to a game from a decade ago.

Activision have released details of the next instalment in the Call of Duty franchise. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is being developed by Sledgehammer Games (the developers behind MW3), and is due to hit the streets on 4th November 2014. Further details of the game, plus the reveal about Kevin Spacey's involvement, can be found on Shacknews

The game that started it all 22 years ago, Wolfenstein, is back again courtesy of Bethesda. This time the story is set in the 1960's with the Nazis having won WWII. You can find plenty of videos, screenshots and articles covering BJ Blazkowicz's latest exploits on Shacknews

After a gap of nearly 2 years, the dates for the next BobLAN have been announced. The LAN will take place from Thursday 5th June until Sunday 8th June. The usual LAN Party page and Forums Topic are up and available for use.