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Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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Modern Warfare 2: Resurgence Pack

Generation Killstreak.

Finally, Carnival: a Brazilian fun park where your first matches will invariably feature both a) mistakenly firing at wooden clowns and b) investigating said wooden clowns only to be knifed in the back of the head.

Initially it can feel slightly gimmicky, what with its shoot-outs in and around the park's funhouse, dodgems, magic castle and nearby rickety rollercoaster. On top of this, there are various incidental details such as a Call of Duty arcade machine that strangely has Mario on the side, and a Zoltan Fortune Telling machine (like the one in Big) whose bearded mannequin looks an awful lot like Modern Warfare chief baddie Zakhaev - and also looks great when fed a few bullets.

It is, however, easily the most visually alluring Modern Warfare 2 map so far, and great fun to scrap in. For a start, sniping platforms are fairly visible to each other, and allow for some Enemy at the Gates-style bullets to be exchanged in the air above the heads of most of the other combatants. Meanwhile, the subtly different rival spawn points in modes like CTF (one a concave entrance to the tighter confines of a magic fort, the other a wider area surrounded by a convex circular barrier) make for some unique and intriguing gameplay.

Use your body and your brain, if you wanna play this game!

The simple pleasure of holding out against the enemy in an area that looks a little bit like Pat Sharpe's Funhouse, meanwhile, cannot be understated. The only major issue with it is that trying to spot a sniper on the rollercoaster, especially from below and through its rickety boards, is an absolute pain. It really is an area best left well alone unless the game mode or a spawn demands it, or indeed if you are said sniper.

There's little doubt in my mind that Resurgence is of a higher quality than Stimulus, but the price clearly still niggles. For me, it's an automatic purchase; for those who have drifted away and quietly want to break things whenever they hear the phrase "Tango Sucker!" then a wait for a potential price drop might still be advised.

Until you return, though (and one day, when you've completed one game and have yet to buy another, you almost certainly will) I'll be waiting for you in the whitewashed walls of Carnival funhouse. I'll have a mile-long stare, and I'll still be getting cut to ribbons by players whose voices sound alarmingly like The Stotts, but I'll be happy in my own little world. And Activision will be happy with my money. In short, everyone will be happy.

The Resurgence Pack is exclusive to the Xbox 360 version of Modern Warfare 2 for the time being.

8 / 10