DayZ continues to develop, even now that creator Dean ‘Rocket’ Hall has departed from Bohemia Interactive as he said he would eventually. Bohemia have just released a DayZ patch that adds in new items, areas and features to the game.

Among the new items is the Chainsaw depicted in the image below. A traditional zombie killing weapon, and one that many find a favourite despite its noise being a zombie magnet. There’s also a medieval-style greatsword if more traditional fare is your preferred go-to (they can be found in castle ruins in case you’re wondering). Christmas trees are also now dotted around the bigger cities on the maps and will spawn plenty of loot beneath them for you, provided you get there before someone else and don’t fall foul of any other survivors who are also aiming to snag the same items as you.

Also added is the ability to dig plots for gardens anywhere you please now instead of waiting to find a greenhouse to plant your seeds and grow food to survive. Of course, it’ll require you to have the right tools to dig it and keep it fertile, but effort will reward you with a constant food source provided you want to make a camp in just one place.

The last ‘big’ thing added to the game in this update is slightly more sensitive. Apocalyptic situations are hard on survivors and not everyone is able to cope… so some choose to find a quick way out. Previously you could do this by walking up to another unknown survivor or jumping off a high building but now you have the option to use any weapons you pick up to end your own life. No animation for it right now though.

Earlier this year, development of the alien vs marines shooter game Natural Selection 2 was handed over to its community. Although developers Unknown Worlds Entertainment have not completely abandoned it, they did approve and vet a number of programmers and designers within the game’s community to safeguard its future.

There’ve been quite a few patches since then, and the latest one, Build 272, brings Christmas cheer to the game among other things. A number of maps have had a festive touch added for the season and a number of aspects of the game have been improved to make the game flow more fluidly. In fact, the patch was so large they had trouble getting it finished before the holidays.

“Build 272 has been a monster to get out, and it nearly didn’t happen. So as always special thanks to all the folks at UWE and our many programmers and playtesters on the CDT.” wrote WasabiOne in the patch update text, before noting that they had already begun work on the next Build hoping to get it out for New Year.

Obviously Build 273 will remove the festive aspects from the maps so if you’re interested in seeing them, you might need to be quick.

It was recently announced that Computerandvideogames.com, the homesite for the long-running CVG brand is due to close.

The announcement came from publisher Future, and is part of a general concentration of Future’s content into fewer locations. Some of CVG’s content will be added to the new location GamesRadar+ before the entire CVG audience is ‘folded’ into the site, along with the audiences of Edge, Official Playstation and Total Xbox. They will join the other publications that already have their home on GamesRadar+, Total Films and SFX.

Computer and Video Games began life in 1981 as a physical magazine before transferring online as the Internet gained momentum. Future have said that the new GamesRadar+ is hiring, but CVG’s former editor has said that so far none of the existing staff of the CVG site are due to make the leap over to working for GamesRadar+.

Obviously we wish those affected by the closure the best.

It was a little overshadowed by their release of Scrolls, but Mojang have managed to put out the first pre-release for 1.8.2 of Minecraft, just before the holidays. It isn’t a large update though, just one that gives us some performance tweaks and bug fixes.

The main bug fixes are to three reported issues. Firstly Spectator Mode players were still getting hostile mobs aggroing on them, following them about and trying to attack them; despite being incorporeal and invisible. That should no longer happen now. The second related to explosion forces being directionally biased, pushing harder in some directions than others. The third fixed some physic issues with explosions too, so certain TNT cannons should no longer be able to shoot ridiculously far.

As well as the update including the normal things, Mojang also says that it includes “cookies, milk and of course lots of hugs” and warns us not to open our gifts before Christmas before wishing us all a happy holidays.

I look forward to seeing how Minecraft develops in the new year, especially after Microsoft took ownership of Mojang. It should be interesting at least.

Mojang blog “Minecraft 1.8.2-pre1 – Christmas Gift Edition”: [x]

Evolve was very much one of the games that I saw in 2014 and thought to myself “Yes, I am interested in this game” and after playing a round at i51 with a friend and 3 other event-goers, I wanted it. The release date was pushed back to next year but there’s already been an alpha for Xbox owners and PC gamers.

Now Turtle Rock have released a new trailer to demonstrate their next ‘boss’ monster – Wraith. It’s an actual match played with the creature and its interactive in that you can switch between the viewpoints of all the players as you watch. Just make sure the annotations are on when you watch the video:

As a creature Wraith is more of a quick and deadly attacker, but suffers somewhat on armour and health. They can enter the shadows to evade the hunters or sneak up on them, deploy a decoy to confuse their foes, or even snatch up and abduct the hunters before killing them. Given that you’re much more likely to win a game of Evolve on the hunter side by sticking together, that’s quite the offensive ability to have.

Evolve will be coming early 2015, and pre-orders are available. You get an additional monster if you do so it might be worth it.