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

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Modern Warfare 2: Resurgence Pack

Generation Killstreak.

It's a great map, but also one that newcomers will want to be wary of; a quick game of Search and Destroy will deposit the young and innocent to a camera-view within seconds.

Strike, meanwhile, is a Middle Eastern affair, not a million miles away from the feel of Invasion. It's a network of streets, with various shop fronts and buildings surrounding a central square where a proud dictator raises an AK47 to the skies and those around him defuse and refuse bombs while the bullets fly.

Personally, I'm not a fan of Strike, but the map's presence in Resurgence proves it has fans, even if for some reason it rarely seems to pop up in MW2's frequently infuriating playlist roster. It certainly allows for some madcap building-to-building dashes, as well as many and varied longer-range viewpoints for the sniping fraternity, yet has markedly less character than the maps it rubs shoulders with.

And so we beat on, away from the past and into the new. Fuel is a rather interesting map, essentially coming over as a less lonesome version of Derail. It's a large map split in two, where those who enjoy polishing their scopes can settle down and camp in the distance with their sandwiches and a flask of weak lemon drink. Elsewhere, in a network of oil-refining buildings, all the young duelling ruffians can duke it out at closer quarters, although not quite at the shotgun-friendly level of an indoor-focussed map like Vacant. At the end of the day though: everyone is happy.

Strike: a returning hero from the long-gone days of Modern Warfare?

You can tell that Fuel is a well-designed map because your deaths rarely feel unfair or the result of a recent enemy spawn. Meanwhile, for what's a large map, you also rarely seem to stray too far away from the action, as can often happen in Derail, its colder counterpart. Take the lightweight and marathon perks into battle here, or a top-end sniper rifle, and you've certainly got a contender for one of the best maps yet released for Modern Warfare 2.

In my games so far, various pre-pubescent voices could be heard moaning about Trailer Park over the headset, but personally I adored it. It's a collection of narrow winding paths between mobile homes, barbecues and beer barrels that fizz when they got shot - ostensibly adjacent to the airplane boneyard you fight through in the single player campaign.

What with its tight, messy interiors and wider spaces surrounded by static caravan windows to poke your gun barrel through, it's great for game modes like Headquarters. The death count is notably high (only the very best will start racking up killstreaks from the word go) but you never have to run far to hit an exciting engagement at a chokepoint or a bombsite that needs your attention. Until they learn its intricacies, the hardcore long-range obsessives may well moan about it, but Trailer Park certainly provides for some condensed, and suitably intense, bouts of gunplay.