Gaming News

The latest installment in the Call of Duty franchise has been announced for release later this year - Call of Duty Modern Warfare (haven't we already had one of those?) is scheduled to hit the streets at the end of October, just in time for the peak trading season.

To view a teaser video, check out the Call of Duty YouTube channel

Don't these weekends just fly by? Another great turnout from both ends of the country, and probably the earliest we've ever had 10 people present on the Thursday!

Tech-wise, not a massive amount of change. George swapped a graphics card and that was about it. No major rebuilds or breaches of change freeze, which was a first!

Game-wise, there was one newcomer which everyone loved:

• Wreckfest - wow, what a fun game. Think Grid but where you are encouraged to try to take each other out :) Wreckfest Bus Last Straight Crash
• Battlefield 1 - aside from some retarded tank driving and confused pigeons, this was fun but not as long-lived as last time.
• CS:GO - once again the go-to game during breaks from other games. Still a firm favourite, and now free to own.
• DiRT 3 - one game of Cat and Mouse only this time.
• Rocket League - just the one tournament, which probably took a lot longer than it should :)
• Titanfall 2 - still great fun.
• Unreal Tournament - a great game of deathmatch with rocket launchers - very QuakeWorldesque.
• DOOM - played for a short time, but UT is the winner of this genre.
• Day of Defeat - we had a few good games on the bomb/defuse map Colmar - nice to see it back.
• Board games - these seemed to replace Rockband for the late night fun.

Games we didn't play this time:

• Darwin Project - very brief go, didn't have the appeal of when we played it a year ago.
• GRID Autosport - ousted by Wreckfest this time.
• Rockband - the neighbours will have been happy that there was little or no Rockband this time!

See the full game schedule over on the BobLAN 2019.1 page

Finally, massive thanks to Bob and Lynda for all the preparation and cleanup for which we are all incredibly grateful! (reminder to all those who attended - make sure you have paid up!)

Yesterday was probably the best attended setup "night" yet, with around 12 people present. Setup included an eval of Wreckfest to see if it's worth the £15 asking price, and a go on the Danger Zone mode in CS:GO. Gaming included UT, Doom, CS:GO, Grid etc - a good start!

The first gathering of 2019 will commence this Thursday, with the customary extended setup afternoon/evening. For those unable to attend in person, you can follow events and join in via the BobLAN 2019.1 page. The schedule will auto-update, and we'll do our best to keep the tweets flowing as we switch from game to game.

Following a tense decider in the best-of-five final, Team Liquid took the title against a superb Fnatic team. If you didn't manage to catch it live, there will be reruns on the ESL Twitch feed

Pre-tournament favourites TeamLiquid overcame mibr in the first semi-final, and Fnatic continued their superb run with another hard fought win over NRG.

A Liquid Fnatic final tomorrow morning will be difficult to call. On paper it should go the way of Liquid, but with Fnatic in the form they are in, who can say?!

The semi finals of IEM Sydney 2019 will take place early tomorrow morning. TeamLiquid are taking on mibr, whilst NRG are up against Fnatic after their epic 115 round quarter final against NIP earlier today.

Tune into the ESL Twitch feed to watch what promises to be two great matches.

Epic Games have bought up Psyonix, the creators of Rocket League. Conflicting details have emerged from Epic, with the confusion over whether Rocket League will still be available via Steam once it has been made available on the Epic gaming platform. It looks like it will still be available for updates on Steam if you already have it, but not to new customers.

EuroGamer have had a go at interpreting the various press releases :)

The next IEM major of the year is at the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, over the weekend 3rd to 5th May.

View the schedule on the IEM site, and then follow events via the ESL Twitch feed

Here are a couple of interesting interviews with the original creator of the Counter-Strike mod for Half-Life, Minh Le. He talks about teamplay, what makes a good esports game, and the current popularity of battle royale games.

• Minh Le on Quake and Teamwork


• Minh Le on Battle Royale

The list of nominees for the 2019 BAFTA Games Awards have been announced, with the ceremony being held on 4th April, hosted by Dara O'Briain. I don't think any of them are BobLAN games, but you'll be familiar with some of the SP games in the list.

The BAFTA site itself is crap, so the best bet is to view the list on Shacknews

The Champions Stage final takes place at 18:00 today, between Astralis and ENCE, the surprise winners over Na'Vi. Follow the action on the ESL CSGO Twitch channel

One for CS:GO fans here - ESL are hosting the finals of the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2019 event this weekend. The first two quarter-finals took place yesterday, with Na'Vi and ENCE both winning 2-0 against FaZe and Liquid respectively.

Re-runs of yesterday's matches followed by live coverage of today's games (MIBR vs Renegades and Astralis vs NIP) are streaming on the ESL CSGO Twitch channel - well worth a watch as we hone our skills ahead of BobLAN 2019.1. There were well in excess of 250,000 live viewers of the first quarter finals!

Good Old Games, aka GOG, have reportedly laid off a number of staff. It would be a shame to see one of the few sellers of legacy games in financial trouble. I know a few of us have bought stuff from GOG in the past, however for me, prices are often an inhibiting factor for what are sometimes poor quality games by today's standards, especially if they don't support resolutions above HD.

You can read more on this on the Shacknews site.

I've finally got round to grabbing the photos from last November from Keith - thanks fella! You can view them on our Photo Gallery

The dates for the first BobLAN of 2019 have been agreed. We will be starting after lunch on Thursday 16th May, and finishing on the afternoon of Sunday 19th. That's 80 days to get yourselves ready :)

Respawn Entertainment, best known for Titanfall, have ventured into the somewhat crowded Battle Royal arena with Apex Legends. The game is a bit cartoonish in nature (Fortnite-like), is first person and set on an island (PUBG-like). There are also nods to Titanfall, for example the running slides. You play in teams of three, either of your choosing or randomly assigned.

It is a testament to the stature of Respawn and their marketing that they have already achieved 25 million players within a couple of weeks - quite an amazing start.

Read the required tech specs plus some news and guides, both courtesy of Shacknews. One to watch for BobLAN!

Fans of id's cult classic Rage will be happy to hear that the follow-up is due for release later this year. The story is set 30 years after the original, however a few of the characters will make an appearance. As before, the weight given to driving in the game remains high, and there are races available to earn upgrades and open up opportunities for NPC dialog.

You can read a great article about it all on Shacknews

Capcom have made the brave move of recreating a gaming classic, namely Resident Evil. Early reviews are looking favourable, so it could be one of interest to the 3rd person zombie shooter fans in the clan. The game is due for release at the end of the week, 25th Jan 2019.

Read a full review on Shacknews.

Our Twitch feed has been updated to switch to some other channels when ours is inactive (which is all but 8 days a year). The one that seems to be streaming all the time (both live and reruns) is the ESL CS:GO channel. This one covers CS:GO e-sports events and championships, and is really worth a watch - there are no beer runs, Gold bars or bowls of Bombay Mix in sight!

This feature doesn't work in the embedded player on our site, so you will need to go directly to twitch.tv/desertfoxclan