Annual Call of Duty installments are as predictable as bad food being served at my birthday parties. It’s a tradition.
We’ve known for a few days that this year’s game was going to be titled Call of Duty: Ghosts, but we have official confirmation that the game will be shown at the next-gen Xbox reveal event on May 21st. Hey, you can already preorder it! You know, just in case you were scared that your local retailer might run out of the game that typically gets printed in runs of a jillion at a time.
No other details have been confirmed except that the game has masks and guns. I’ll predict that it will also feature some gameplay that involves shooting people.
As we all know, asymmetry makes all game designs better. Which is one of the reasons chess isn’t very good. The only asymmetry they had invented back when they made chess was which side goes first. Weak. If I made chess, only white would get bishops and only black would get rooks. The white queen would be able to take two turns in a row once per game. The black queen could resurrect the king once. Also, I would include more than one map with the game.
If the developers at Pocketwatch had invented chess, I would strive to be a Bobby Fisher.
But after the jump, they didn’t make chess. They made Monaco.Continue reading →
Edelson LLC on behalf of their client Damion Perrine has filed a lawsuit against Gearbox and Sega in California. Polygon reports that the suit contends that Gearbox and Sega falsely advertised Aliens: Colonial Marines by showing demo footage that differed, sometimes in vast ways, from the final game.
“Each of the ‘actual gameplay’ demonstrations purported to show consumers exactly what they would be buying: a cutting edge video game with very specific features and qualities,” the claim reads. “Unfortunately for their fans, Defendants never told anyone – consumers, industry critics, reviewers, or reporters – that their ‘actual gameplay’ demonstration advertising campaign bore little resemblance to the retail product that would eventually be sold to a large community of unwitting purchasers.”
The suit also accuses Sega of using the press review embargo to surpress the information that consumers needed to make an informed purchasing decision. The filing seeks damages for people that bought the game on the release day, or as a preorder.
Sega Europe added a disclaimer to video footage of the game on April 3rd after a customer filed a complaint with the UK’s Advertising Standards Agency.
“Sega Europe acknowledged your objection that the trailers did not accurately reflect the final content of the game. They agreed to add a disclaimer, both on their website and in all relevant YouTube videos, which explains that the trailers depict footage of the demo versions of the game.”
Eclipse is out today for the iPad. It’s the port of a streamlined boardgame of epic sci-fi strategy. Or, to put it in videogame terms, a full game of Master of Orion 2 or Stardrive or GalCiv II played in an hour. Look how boring (pictured) it looks.
Adam Foster has posted a director’s cut version of his Half-life 2 mod Minerva to Steam for everyone to easily enjoy. No more fumbling with separate pack downloads! It’s still free but Foster has tweaked puzzles, fixed bugs, and given the whole thing a nice coat of polish. The mod made waves when it was first released for being one of the best (and first) user-made singleplayer add-ons for Half-Life 2 that followed Valve’s design sensibilities. In fact, it’s so good, the mod got Foster a job at Valve!
You’ll need to own Half-Life 2: Episode One on Steam to play Minerva. You can find the mod here.
“Maaaaaarrrrriiiia!” Variety reports that Scott Stuber, of Bluegrass Films, has agreed to produce the Gears of War movie. He will develop a script in cooperation with Epic Games. Stuber most recently produced Ted and Battleship. Hopefully, these will be inspirational to Stuber so that the Gears movie will be hilariously crude and explosively dumb.
New Line originally had the movie rights, but after failures to get production started, they let the property revert to Epic who has since been courting filmmakers to commit.
Respawn Entertainment, the studio started by ex-Call of Duty bosses at EA after they split from Activision, will release a game exclusively for the next-gen Xbox according to sources speaking to Kotaku. The game, currently known by the working project title Titan, will be a futuristic shooter that features multiplayer battles with giant mechs and infantry.
While the details of the game came to us from one source – a source who is in a good position to know what the deal is with Respawn’s game – their assertion that the game is destined only for Microsoft console hardware was consistent with information another source gave us earlier this month. That other source had also told us that Respawn’s game would only be for the Xbox brand. It is possible that the game could be a timed exclusive, but neither source indicated that was the case.
Respawn Entertainment’s founders, Vince Zampella and Jason West, had reportedly wanted to make a shooter set in the future when they were in charge of Infinity Ward, but Activision demanded they make more Call of Duty games set in modern times.
Is this modestly budget character-driven thriller Michael Bay’s Fargo, his Once Upon a Time in America, or his Love Guru? Listen to the Pain & Gain podcast to find out. At the 34-minute mark, this week’s 3×3 points out the best fingers in movies.
IllumiRoom is as close as we’ll get to Ray Bradbury’s The Veldt in my lifetime. It’s one of those wacky proof-of-concept things from Microsoft Research that makes you instantly want it when you see it regardless of the practicality.
There’s an official document, but it’s filled with techncial stuff that makes my head spin. Spatial augmented reality? Radiometric compensation? I just want to shoot stuff and watch the explosions come out of my TV screen and onto my walls. How many souls do I need to sacrifice to make that happen?
Before today, I didn’t know that K-pop was a thing. I’d heard of J-pop. Japanese pop music. But there was Korean pop, pre-Psy? Who knew? Not only do I now know it’s a thing, but I’m dangerously close to actually considering the possibility of maybe looking into the option of perhaps buying Kara’s latest album, Step. Oh, look, it’s $12 on iTunes. Kara is a K-pop group that really took off in Japan, hence their inclusion in a Vita rhythm game called DJ Max Technika Tune, in which I am now level three (3!) at listening to them and watching them prance around glittery stages in cute little costumes. Well, trying to watch, but my finger keeps getting in the way as I poke at the gameplay bits.
There might be other musical artists in DJ Max Technika Tune, but I’m not sure.
Techland has announced Hellraid, a first-person hack & slash game with system generated online challenges. The game can be played in singleplayer, but it sounds like co-op with three other hellraiders may be more fulfilling. Techland has added a points-based rewards ladder to Dead Island style co-op gameplay, which could be exactly what the system needs to mix things up.
Fighting hordes of hellish monsters is far more exciting when you do it with friends. To make it even more satisfying we’ve added an element or coopetition between the players. Each action in the game, be it killing a monster or helping a dying companion, is rewarded with points. The best players will receive special rewards and climb up the leaderboards.
“Coopetition” is a term that I sincerely hope does not catch on. I’m still getting used to freemium and phablet.
Kotaku reports that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 15 is “not happening” for any platform and that the decision to cancel the title is part of the strategy implemented after the disasterous earnings results that ended with CEO John Riccitiello’s departure. The game was supposed to have been outsourced to give the in-house development team two years to work on Tiger Woods 16 for next-gen systems, but will instead be skipped entirely to save money.
Relic has announced a new mode to Company of Heroes 2 called Theater of War which consists of additional co-op and singleplayer challenges that will put your real-time abilities to the test. The pack launching with the game is called Theater of War 1941 and will feature nine unique missions each for the German and Soviet sides with units and abilities based on the time period.
Greg Wilson, Producer of Company of Heroes 2, commented, “We get a lot of requests from fans to showcase specific conflicts from the war and it isn’t always possible to fit these into the campaign. Theatre of War gives us the opportunity to deliver these new gameplay experiences to our fans.”
Quinn Duffy, Game Director commented, “Theatre of War acts as a perfect bridge between the game’s single and multiplayer content providing a high level of re-playability and helping to introduce traditionally solo players to the online elements of the game.”
Future packs are planned that will present challenges from later in the conflict.
…Eliza. From developer Lab Zero’s “playstyle speculation” section:
The ultimate attack-from-disadvantage character. Because of her kinship with her [skeletal] parasite, Eliza can control her own blood. Each time she is hit she bleeds, [Mortal Kombat] style, and the blood stays on the stage. Certain specials and supers can then use it.
Uh, eww? Wait, I meant, “Cool!” I think. Whatever’s going on with Eliza, she’s definitely not normal. See Lab Zero’s full-length concept art after the jump to check out assets that would make Portal’s Chell jealous. I can only imagine how she gets around with those!
The next round of voting to determine the fourth and final character in the upcoming Skullgirls DLC should begin shortly. Good luck, Annie and Sagan!
Remember Ubisoft’s April Fool’s Day announcement for Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon that turned out not to be a joke? The fifteen-dollar downloadable game out this week will presumably demonstrate that the Far Cry 3 engine is too good to be contained solely in Far Cry 3. It is apparently so good that it knocks itself back into a previous decade. This standalone release was inspired by the vision of the future realized on VHS tapes in the 80s. It therefore stars Michael Biehn. In other words, it came across time for me.
The add-on for Heroes of Might & Magic VI, Shades of Darkness, is apparently enough to merit its release as a standalone game, but like Blood Dragon, not enough to increment the Roman numeral. Ubisoft is at the forefront of numeric conservation.
Zeno Clash II — note the incremented Roman numeral! — is the latest installment in Chilean developer Ace Team’s first person puncher series, which began life over ten years ago as a Quake mod. You explore alien worlds and sometimes punch exotice creatures. Even if it’s awful, it will probably be better than anything you see on Syfy these days. Can you tell that I’m watching Defiance?
Deadly Premonitions will be re-released in the form of a “director’s cut”. Consider me surprised that the original release of this weird take on America and Twin Peaks wasn’t already its director’s cut. Did you know that you fight an axe-weilding jawa in that game?
Finally, if you have a Vita, it’s not dead yet. Soul Sacrifice is more than happy to drink up as much time as you want to give it.
