Thank the powers that be! Games these days have had a severe lack of the C96 Mauser. Oh, and the rest of the game looks great as well. Between the crazy floating city, warring factions, ability-altering vigors and nostrums, and tears in the space-time continuum, Bioshock Infinite looks to be a rip-roaring good time when it finally comes out next year. The wait is almost unbearable (for the C96 clone, that is).

I covered GunSmith already from its appearance at the E3 Microsoft conference, but a quick reminder paired with the official announcement video couldn’t hurt. GunSmith still gives you total control over customizing every aspect of the weapons in your arsenal from the furniture to the internals using voice and movement commands. Various keywords act as shortcuts that allow you to skip directly to certain attachment options or even auto-create a firearm based on what your mission requirements are. There’s also an in-mode firing range where you can test your newly-constructed weapon, all controlled using the Kinect sensor. Although there’s no announcement on whether the Kinect sensor will have a purpose in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier outside GunSmith, this is a nice exclusive bonus for those with Xbox 360s.

In a surprising but completely pleasant turn of events, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is one of the few games I’ve seen so far that really makes good use of Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral for Xbox 360. To be specific, Future Soldier has a Gunsmith feature that fully interacts with Kinect, through both movement and voice commands. It allows you to completely customize any weapon in your arsenal from optics to the furniture to the internals to suit your in-game needs. Besides this, you can also actively test you combinations via a virtual firing range, using motion controls to move your character and fire your weapon. Come Future Soldier’s release, it looks like my Kinect sensor will finally have a purpose besides collecting dust.