If you're looking for something new to play over the holidays, allow me to direct your attention to Striden, and more specifically the new round of playtesting that's now underway. The holiday playtest features a brand-new co-op PvE mode that sets teams of up to five players on a mission to fix their radio so they can get out of town, all while defending their base against waves of enemies.
Striden seemed like a fairly straightforward multiplayer shooter when we got our first look at it earlier in 2024 at the PC Gaming Show, but there were a couple notable twists. The bear with the glowing eyes is probably the most prominent bit of "what is going on here?"—the bear is actually an unlockable weapon controlled by players that seems to do a pretty good job of turning opponents into paste—but I also couldn't help but notice the moose-drawn turret.
The resolution's not great but that is 100% a moose pulling an artillery piece. You don't see that every day.
There are actually stories of attempts to develop "moose cavalry" in 17th-century Sweden, although there's no real historical foundation to it, but it is kind of a cute fit for the game's setting: Striden is set in an alt-history 1970s on the Scandinavian peninsula, which has been battered by a nuclear exchange in a war between East and West. That's why the weaponry in the trailer looks not exactly modern, and also how the radioactive bears come into play, among other things.
Striden was revealed as a mix of Battlefield-style large-scale shooter and extraction shooters: In its initial form, the game pits four teams of five players against one another in a battle against each other and the brutal environment to accrue points that will enable them to call for rescue and escape to a presumably safer locale. The mode in this playtest is being developed in response to player requests for PvE action, and while developer 5 Fortress warned that it's still "in a very early stage" and thus not a "finished PvE experience," it's fully functional and should give players "a vibe of what is to come in the future." The studio says that will include things like side missions, more varied enemies, and more to explore on the new map.
The Striden playtest is open to all—just head over to the Steam page and hit the "request access" button, and you're in. It's set to run until January 2.
