Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 enlists Hollywood talent to bring its story to life

This Tuesday Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will be released. Although the series is famous for its multiplayer, developer Treyarch and publisher Activision have put a huge emphasis on the campaign, hiring well-known actors to fill roles, and bringing Hollywood scribe David Goyer on board to write the plot.

The Santa Monica-based Treyarch is once again taking advantage of its Hollywood backyard to bring the new campaign in Call of Duty: Black Ops II to life. The game developer, backed by Activision’s huge coffers, enlisted The Dark Knight Rises scribe David S. Goyer to write the game’s story and dialogue.

Actor James C. Burns (Criminal Minds, Make It or Break It), who returns as Sergeant Frank Woods, said having Goyer on board shows how far the art form of interactive entertainment has come in a relatively short period of time.

“The writing of a narrative for a game is important, and it’s also an avenue for writers like Goyer to really tell a story in a different way, in a much broader way, than in film,” said Burns. “In a game like this you have multiple opportunities to change the story. You can follow storylines to different places. It’s more like doing a mini-series with a lot of characters, but it’s all done in one big swoop. For a writer it’s an opportunity to really stretch the legs and do a very multiple tasked story.”

Activision also brought actor Sam Worthington (Wrath of the Titans, Man on A Ledge) back as Alex Mason and enlisted a huge cast of notable talent to breathe life into the game’s many virtual characters, including Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead, Slither). In a first for the franchise, Goyer, who came on late in the development of the first Black Ops, decided to focus the story on the villain, Raul Menendez.

“The most important thing is to create someone that the player can empathize with,” said Kamar de los Reyes (Read Between the Lines, Salt), who plays Menendez. “You can play a one-dimensional villain, that’s easy. But you want to create someone that the player will at one moment might love and empathize with, and another moment he will hate and not understand or relate to at all. That’s where it becomes really difficult, and fun, fun as the actor.”

In another move towards a Hollywood scale production, Black Ops II features full performance capture. The actors donned the increasingly familiar skintight motion-capture suits and read their dialogue while acting on set at the House of Moves in Los Angeles.

“This is the first game where actors like myself, James Burns and Rich McDonald are actually actors playing the roles,” said de los Reyes. “We are the guys in the video game. In the past, you always had stuntmen playing the roles and doing the motion capture and then having someone come in the voice like Keifer Sutherland or Gary Oldman to do the voice. It’s a lot of fun for the actors. I personally thought it was a hell of a lot more fun doing it all, and I think that’s what sets this game apart from all the others.”

Tony Todd (Chuck, Candy Man), who plays Admiral Tommy Briggs, believes Black Ops II is going to be the most narrative game that gamers have ever encountered.

“Between the ‘80s flashbacks, the future setting, the holograms, and the current situation on the Battleship Barack Obama; it’s just going to be mind-bending,” said Todd in a previous interview for Digital Trends, who had over 50 pages of script to perform in the game.

Getting actors to come back for more Call of Duty isn’t that much of a chore for Treyarch. Everyone involved had nothing but accolades for director Dave Anthony, who helmed the game’s epic story once again.

“I loved working on Black Ops I,” said Burns. “Treyarch is a dream job and Woods is a fun character to play. Come on, I play army for a living for God sakes. And the story progression is phenomenal. I’m a big fan of the game itself, and Black Ops II is such a great, inventive idea of how to take it to the next level. I’m very proud to be part of it.”

With the sequel being set in 2025, the returning characters are a lot older in this game – although the story does jump back in time to the ‘80s for some missions. Burns said Woods has evolved from a “badass weapon” into an “elder oracle” in the new game.

“Woods is the guy that has all this information and his function in the game is to illuminate the player as to the nature of the events, why things happened, and what’s happening,” said Burns. “He’s evolved into this still highly wired, pretty powerful – even though he’s in a wheelchair – character. He has his mental acuity is there. He’s smart. He’s incisive. He’s a smartass. He’s just that old guy in a chair that knows sh*t before you even think that you need to know it. He’s already got you pegged before you walk in the room. He’s evolved from this warrior with a knife to a warrior with an intellect. He’s this rugged badass in a wheelchair.”

The characters in the game are now old enough to have sons that become involved in the plot. Rich McDonald (Heart of Dixie, God Bless America) plays Commander David Mason, son of Alex Mason. He commands an elite team of Navy SEALs, which ends up going after Menendez. The actor loves the futuristic setting, which introduces new weapons, drones and vehicles to the story and gameplay.

“That’s a very intelligent choice to make as far as a time period to pick; not going too far into the future, but just far enough to where they can bring in certain aspects that are being explored right now in the technology fields,” said McDonald. “It’s all too realistic in that time frame. You also have elements from the present that are still going to be applicable in that timeframe, as well.”

Thanks to Goyer, the game’s script challenged actors to cope with major plot twists, as well as serious choices.

“My character is Javier Salazar, who is a military man whose spirit is torn between a way of life that he’s been taught and trained to do, and then something that moves him in a very internal level,” said actor Celestin Cornielle (The Finder, The Mentalist). “He’s forced to choose between two roads. One leads to light, one leads to darkness. To him, it truly leads to an awakening, a new consciousness, and a revelation that we all must be aware of. That’s all I can tell you without killing you.”

The campaign mode in Black Ops II is about much more than killing, although there’s plenty of that. With the success of the Call of Duty game franchises, developers have been able to work with larger budgets. And the growing fan base of gamers includes many Hollywood “names” both in front of, and behind, the camera. Goyer’s involvement has helped assemble a great cast of actors, who in turn deliver performances that Treyarch hopes will connect with gamers.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Aliens—Colonial Marines preview: Structurally imperfect after 5 years

Gearbox Software and Sega will release Aliens: Colonial Marines in February 2013, exactly five years after it was first announced to the public. The game's campaign looks promising but its multiplayer lacks magic.

It takes around ten months to release a game to the public. The press and hardcore video game hobbyists usually follow a game from a game’s initial announcement up until it’s release, usually around two years, but for the general public it’s ten months of television, print, and public marketing. Eight prior to the release, when the heaviest early previewing in the press takes place, and then two months following. That’s how good game business is done.

By that metric, Aliens—a collaboration between 20^th Century Fox, Sega, and Gearbox Software—has been terrible business. The game was announced via a cover feature in Game Informer magazine in February 2008. It will finally be released in February 2013. That’s not exactly within the proper business cycle. Based on a preview of a beta build of the game at the New York Comic Con last week, it’s hard to say one way or another if the game was worth the wait.

Sega and Gearbox had two samples of the game on hand, a playable version of its xenomorphs versus Marines competitive multiplayer mode and a guided, unplayable look at the early campaign. Of the two, the campaign looked the most promising. Take note: The next passage includes some story spoilers for both the movies and the game, so if you’ve never experienced the Alien series, skip it.

Picking up just weeks after James Cameron’s Aliens, Gearbox’s canonical sequel sees a full battalion of 400 Colonial Marines sent to the ill-fated planet LV 426 to investigate the disappearance of Ellen Ripley and the crew of the Sulacco. Weyland Yutani, the sinister corporation vying to get their hands on the vicious alien species hidden in a derelict spacecraft on the planet’s surface, has covered up the destruction of the LV 426 colony and the deaths of the series’ protagonists, so the Marines are just doing due diligence to find out what happened to the crew. When they arrive at LV 426 though, Weyland Yutani’s private military is already there cleaning up, and they assault the marines looking to keep things quiet. The first level of the game—played second, strangely, during the demo—puts you in control of Marines fighting humans and trying to evacuate from the derelict Sulacco.

Gearbox’s president Randy Pitchford was explaining during the demo that his team decided that the game needed more complex, thoughtful enemies than just the berserker aliens in their game, and the WY forces (seen briefly at the end of Alien 3) were a perfect choice. In the demo shown, they didn’t seem particularly threatening though. While they certainly had mean firepower—the demo player almost died—they didn’t have very cunning AI, they just burst into the room and blasted away in the open. There were moments when both human forces were fending off aliens, but it was very brief, so it’s impossible to tell if those dynamics will be more seriously explored.

The following level demoed was a concentrated dose of fan service, with a fairly steady, atmospheric tour of LV 426’s surface, revisiting many scenes from the film. The Marines’ ground vehicle Ripley crashed outside, the post-meltdown atmospheric reactor, and the medical bay where Ripley and Newt were attacked by larval alien face huggers were all stops on the Old School Express. It was only at the end of the demo that the action picked back up with aliens popping out and trying to snack on the player character.

The game looked good, albeit not as good as these Sega-provided screenshots make it look. Running on beefy PCs, Gearbox’s proprietary engine (a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 3 according to Pitchford) rendered a world as dark, wet, and mean as the one in Cameron’s movie. The character models, human and otherwise, looked nice with smooth animation, but at least in the campaign the aliens moved a bit too slowly in some moments. Gearbox stressed, though, that the game is in beta, meaning the content’s all in place but  still being polished. Janky-looking effects, like garish, solid-colored blood spatters from humans and aliens, certainly demonstrate that the game’s delay from fall 2012 was wise.

The competitive multiplayer  justified the delay as well. While the inclusion of competitive multiplayer is expected—not only as a modern necessity as a feature, but also as a tradition in Aliens video games like Aliens vs. Predator—my session made it seem like an after thought. Three types of alien were available for play, two swift soldier classes and a beefy bull-like alien that the player could upgrade to based on performance. Controlling the soldiers aliens was frustrating because it often simply didn’t work. Puling the controller’s trigger should make you stick to a wall to sneak up on unwitting marines, but it didn’t always work. The bull class, meanwhile, was too slow to be useful, lumbering around and only killing the most oblivious opponent. It was hard not to feel like Gearbox would have been better served not making the multiplayer component at all, instead focusing on the campaign. Another multiplayer mode was on hand but I didn’t get a chance to try it to see if it fared better.

Aliens looks like a solid piece of fiction in a rich, established sci-fi universe, but it did not look or feel like a game that’s been in production for five years. The campaign looks promising, but without getting actual hands on time with it, it’s still too early to say it looks good. Here’s hoping Gearbox makes the most of these next few months.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Madfinger releases Shadowgun: DeadZone beta

Madfinger has released the public beta of Shadowgun: DeadZone, a multiplayer version of the superb Shadowgun currently available on iOS and Android. Shadowgun: DeadZone is currently available for free (until the beta test lasts) and is only available on Android devices running NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset.

DeadZone is an exclusive, multi-player only version of the standard Shadowgun. You play in similar environments as Shadowgun but you now have multiple characters to choose from and instead of dumb AI enemies you will be against much tougher human ones.

Since the game is in beta, some of the features aren’t working and the performance may not be the best. The game is also operating on a limited number of servers right now. The purpose of this beta test is to try out the game and give feedback to Madfinger, so that they can improve the final version.

If you have a phone or a tablet running Tegra 3, hit the source link to download the game. If you find any issues, report them at deadzone@madfingergames.com.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

XCOM Enemy Unknown console version hands-on preview: We are most definitely not alone

We give the campaign and multiplayer modes in Firaxis Games' XCOM: Enemy Unknown a hands-on test drive.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown shouldn’t exist. It’s an enhanced remake of an almost 20 year old PC strategy game, spruced up by Civilization architects Firaxis Games, and releasing for consoles (and Windows as well) during a crowded holiday 2012 season. It’ll sell for a “budget” price of $49.99 when it hits stores on October 9, 2012, but arriving as it does amidst a flurry of big-name releases like Resident Evil 6, Dishonored, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter, the odds would seem to be stacked against it.  And they sort of are.

Fortunately for 2K Games, Enemy Unknown isn’t competing with the blockbuster shooters and other standard-fare action games that tend to punctuate holiday lineups. It offers something different, the rarest gem of all in fact: a strategy game that is actually fun to play on a console, using console-style gamepad controls. The PC faithful will no doubt quickly rise to defend the PC release of Enemy Unknown, and more power to them. But after spending an hour-plus with my hands wrapped around an Xbox 360 controller for some campaign and multiplayer action, I’m happy to report that this console-based strategy game is no unicorn, it’s the real deal.

Those of you who are familiar with UFO: Enemy Unknown won’t be in for too many surprises. The game that you remember from 1994 is largely intact here, though it’s looking a whole lot better in 2012. The story opens with extraterrestrial activity on Earth prompting an investigation by a crack squad of specially trained soldiers. This scouting operation plays out as a largely scripted tutorial mission that teaches you the basics of movement, combat, ability use, cover, and — as your four-strong squad is whittled down to just one — permadeath.

The controls are surprisingly simple to get a handle on, with players guiding a command reticule around the map for each squad member’s turn. A border painted around the selected troop indicates the maximum movement range for the first half of their turn. Push the reticule outside that boundary and a more distant border appears, showing the max distance you can move when dashing, which consumes both halves of that unit’s two-action turn. 

Combat actions and unit skills can be triggered by going into tactical mode with a press of the right trigger. The camera zooms into an over-the-shoulder perspective and a new list of icons appears at the bottom of the screen, an indicator of which abilities you can call on. From this perspective you can see which targets are in view and what your chances to hit it are. It’s a surprisingly light flow of data, but in the act of playing you quickly realize that it’s all the information you need.

Over the course of three missions (two if you don’t count the tutorial), I was able to get a sense of Enemy Unknown‘s tactical flavor. Again, UFO fans won’t feel lost here at all. The controls offer all the flexibility you might need for advancing through each environment while maintaining tactical control of the battlefield. The alien aggressors enter the fray in scripted, and sometimes unexpected, locations, but the game doesn’t feel cheap. The few times my attackers got the drop on me, it quickly became clear that it was my own tactical planning that was at fault.

Wrapping tightly around the turn-based action is a larger meta-game focused on building up your alien-fighting arsenal. All of this plays out from your underground mission control, rendered in the game as a cross-section view of various facilities. Between missions, you can visit the barracks to assign skill points you’ve earned among your finite number of troops and mess with their loadouts. You can also visit the research or engineering departments, directing their respective teams to focus their efforts in one direction or another. Alien materials picked up at the end of each mission fuel your research team’s efforts, and their discoveries can then be produced as actual gear to outfit your troops with by engineering.

There’s also a situation room where you’re able to monitor the general state of the world as aliens descend. The panic level of each nation determines whether or not it’s helping you in your fight against the invaders. Let one nation’s panic level get too high, and you’ll lose any associated support from there. Throughout the game, players are presented with decisions to make. Even the location of your starting base is accompanied by a choice, since the different regions of the world offer different benefits, such as reduced prices and build/research time.

In terms of missions, you might be presented with a pair of reported E.T. sightings that need to be investigated, with the caveat that the panic level will rise in whichever of the locations you choose to not visit. There are also some missions that you’re simply locked into. One early task, for example, was assigned to me by the shadowy Council charged with waging war against the alien invaders. There was no choice to be made in that case; the Council handed down orders and I, faithful soldier that I am, responded.

The meta-game disappears completely in Enemy Unknown‘s 1v1 multiplayer matches. Instead, each player has a budget of points to work with and the ability to spend those points on forming a squad of up to six units, pulling from either/both the human and alien factions. The size of the budget varies according to the match settings, but the general idea is that both players are limited by the same resource constraints to come up with the most effective team that they can. There are a lot of variables at play, to the point that even just building your multiplayer match team can take quite a bit of time, but the game thankfully allows players to save lineups that they’re particularly fond of.

The flow of a multiplayer match is much faster than that of a campaign battle, largely because there’s a time limit on each player’s turn. The default right now is set at 90 seconds per side, which means you’ve got 90 seconds to issue orders to all six of your units. In practical terms, that window felt just a bit too short at the beginning of the match, though the time-per-turn is fortunately one of the many pre-match variables that players can adjust.

Beyond the 90 seconds, I blame part of the rushed feeling on a clunky interface. The actual controls are well-designed, but the preview build’s command reticle wasn’t as sticky as it could have been with cover points, which resulted in me sometimes moving a unit to an out-of-cover position. The D-pad-controls for cycling through the various combat options in tactical view wasn’t as responsive as it could have been either, to the point that I’d sometimes have to press left or right multiple times for the command to register. These issues were present in the campaign missions I played as well, though there are no time constraints to rush you along there, making the clunkiness much more manageable. This is all based on playing with a preview build of the game, of course, but it’ll be something to watch for in the final release.

Overall, XCOM: Enemy Unknown seems to deliver on its promise of re-creating a classic PC game from 1994 for modern audiences. The basics of what made the original worth revisiting with a remake are still very much intact, and the console-specific control scheme works shockingly well. The overall presentation, particularly with the cutscenes, voice acting, and so forth, definitely speaks to the budget price tag, but the actual play — at least in the handful of early missions and one multiplayer match that I sampled — promises all of the tactical flexibility that fans of the original will go in expecting to find.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Halo 4 preview: Hands on with all three modes of the game you’ll be playing for a long time

We go hands on with Halo 4, and try out the campaign, competitive multiplayer, and the cooperative mode as well.

Things were still frantic at Microsoft’s 343 Industries studio in Kirkland, formerly home to Bungie. Although key members of the development team had set aside the day to give select media the first hands-on experience with campaign gameplay and new Spartan Ops and War Games missions and maps, the rest of the 200 developers were in crunch mode as the November 9 global launch loomed.

“It’s been a long haul,” said Kiki Wolfkill, executive producer of Halo 4. “It’s been three years since we started developing the project and we’re now in the final stretch. This is an amazing time for us. Crunch time is always an emotionally intense time. We’re trying to make hard trade-off decisions and letting the feet off the gas. There’s a lot of excitement and anxiety to finally get the game out there with campaign and multiplayer first hands-on.”

Wolfill and the rest of her team have nothing to worry about. Halo 4, at least from the two campaign missions, two Spartan Ops missions, and half-day of War Games combat I played, delivers the patented blockbuster sci-fi experience that gamers have been waiting for. Passing the baton from Bungie to 343 Industries has been seamless from a gameplay perspective. With their involvement in the development of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary along with Saber Interactive and Certain Affinity, the team is keeping what fans love about the Halo franchise and pushing into new territory with Halo 4.

Campaign

In Mission 1, “Dawn,” Master Chief is awakened by Cortana when a Covenant ship attacks. The action takes place in 2557, which is exactly 4 years, 7 months, and 10 days after Master Chief settled into cryo sleep at the end of Halo 3. Once awakened, the player needs to fight through the ship, which is being swarmed by Covenant soldiers. The big action set piece at the end of this level takes place outside in partial gravity with enemy ships coming in and Elites, Grunts, and Jackals engaging from every direction.

This level serves as an appetizer for Halo 4. In fact, the game’s logo doesn’t appear until after you’ve survived this exodus. It eases players back into the Halo gameplay and brings newbies up to speed on what’s going on in the Halo universe. Things are both familiar and fun.

The game’s third mission, “Forerunner,” introduces the Prometheans to the mix. It changes everything. Master Chief and Cortana are trapped on the planet Requium, and are tracking a signal that’s from the UNSC Infinity. This level introduces all-new gameplay mechanics for contending with the Premethean threats. And all three are formidable challenges. They’re as different from the Covenant enemies as you can get. And with the latter part of the mission, players will actually be taking on both Covenant and Promethean enemies at the same time. (Luckily, they also are fighting each other when not engaging with Master Chief.)

There are three major enemies that players will be fighting from this new alien race — Knights, Watchers, and Crawlers. Any combination of them requires a different strategy. Knights can phase in and out of time, Crawlers can walk on walls and ceilings and they can attack like a pack of feral dogs. Watchers are a support class. They can regenerate Knights and actually fit inside Knights to protect them. The Prometheans will coordinate their efforts, which makes battling them extremely challenging.

“We want the Prometheans to feel like the most advanced enemies in the world,” said Brad Welch, lead multiplayer designer, Halo 4. “The Prometheans introduce a half-dozen new weapons which are a cross between being human-designed and these crazy and futuristic designs. It was important to be able to identify that a shotgun is a shotgun. Each weapon comes together and forms in your hand when you pick it up, and there’s a glowing energy stream that runs through the barrel to give the weapons a sense of life.”

As challenging as the Prometheans are to fight, it’s imperative to find their discarded weapons in taking the battle back. Once you get a hold of these weapons you might not want to go back to UNSC or Covenant arms (unless you’re forced to). Each weapon has dual fire modes like the bolt pistol, which has a shotgun blast that when you hold and charge it up can perform a one-hit kill. I also like their grenades, which can be used strategically to take out a large number of enemies. These enemies are very smart.

Not that you’ll have much time to take in the scenery, but watching these Prometheans die is always a unique experience. That’s because an enemy will de-res from the location of your kill shot. Perform a headshot kill (which is really the only way to get these enemies efficiently), and watch their bodies slowly and colorfully evaporate. Fire off a ton of rounds at a Crawler and watch as that last leg shot serves as the origin for the final seconds of its life. It’s this type of cool little detail that shows how far 343 has gone in crafting a living, breathing world that you’ll want to lose yourself in.

Spartan Ops

“Spartan Ops is our new episodic cooperative gameplay that’s part of our Halo Infinity multiplayer experience,” said Wolfkill. “There’s War Games, which is our competitive multiplayer game experience and there’s Spartan Ops, which is our cooperative episodic experience. Every week you’ll get a story episode with five missions. We have an amazing story arc planned out. It’s like a TV show that you get to play with your friends featuring some characters from the campaign.”

I was able to team up with three others and play through a pair of new Spartan Ops missions — Land Grab and Sniper Alley. It was my first time playing this new four-player co-op. And I highly recommend that gamers enter Halo 4 through this cool new mode. Even replaying the missions was fun because of the open sandbox gameplay and the four unique players taking out Covenants in a desert landscape always played out differently. The ability to play with big toys like the new Gauss Warthog and Covenant vehicles in Land Grab adds another dimension to gameplay. While there was more on-foot action in Sniper Alley and a different feel to the pacing.

Before jumping into a mission, players are able to gear up their soldier from head to toe. The amount of customization is amazing. You can customize up to five load outs. There are primary weapons, secondary weapon, grenades, armor capabilities, tactical packages and upgrades. Everything will be unlockable in the game, including all of those cool new Promethean weapons. How you equip your Spartan will impact your success in a mission, as will how good your teammates are. Playing together is important. This mode is something I see people jumping back into and playing again and again just for fun.

War Games

343 unveiled a brand new Dominion mode for War Games and a new “Solace” map, inspired by a Promethean environment. Dominion is a six-on-six game that’s on two teams and three bases. And things get really crazy really fast.

“These three teams are fighting over these three bases and, as a team, you’re charged with capturing bases, fortifying them, and resupplying them,” said Welch. “That’s how your team gets points. When you capture a base — you can take it from either the beginning of the match or you can steal it from an enemy team — it becomes allegiant to you. It will drop weapons for you. The turrets will only shoot at your enemies. The shield doors come online. And that’s all through the fortification phase. Once it’s fortified, the base just gets larger and all sorts of weapons come up, shield doors, turrets. Vehicle pads start charging and then once the base starts resupplying, your team is going to earn more points and weapons will start dropping on the base. That’s how you get lots of power weapons — either by attacking the other bases or defending your own base.”

This mode changes the strategies involved in team-based play. And with teams constantly trying to arm and disarm bases – outside of the normal killing everything in an opposing colored uniform – there’s a constant ebb and flow in battles. It makes for a fast and fun experience that makes you want to keep coming back for more. There will be four maps at launch, and I was able to play two of them – “Longbow” and “Exile.”

“Longbow has three really well-defined bases that are entrenched in hills in very strategic locations,” said Welch. “There’s a base on the high ground that spawns flying vehicles and the low ground bases spawn the ground vehicles. That was our first prototype map for the mode and it’s really evolved.”

In “Exile” there’s a base inside a crashed ship that’s in the center of the map and the others are in the military encampments that are from the survivors of the crashed ship around the other side of the map. The turrets are positioned in a way that they defend the base if someone is coming at them, but they’re not so overpowering that you don’t just run and die when you run at them. They force you to take a different road towards the base or they help a player defend it.

I was also able to play other maps. There’s the new “Solace” map, which features two bases laid out in symmetrical fashion and has a Promethean environment. Welch said it’s best for five-on-five Capture the Flag, or four-on-four Team Slayer. It has similarities to “Narrows” from Halo 3, but it holds its own as a very unique map. 343 also showed off “Haven,” which is a small, really hyper-competitive Forerunner map, and “Adrift,” which is set up like an abandoned UNSC mining vessel.

Multiplayer, clearly a focus for the team at 343, is shaping up to be an experience that will evolve over time and keep things fresh for those who want to continue their immersion in this massive new saga. The gameplay stands out, much like the campaign levels, as being both familiar, yet new. That’s a tough balance to keep. But with so much anticipation and the bar raised so high for Halo 4, it’s looking like 343 will deliver on all levels.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Insomniac Games joins EA, is finished making single-player-only games

Like its publishing partner for multiplayer shooter Fuse, Insomniac Games is done with single-player-only games.

Earlier this month, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau proudly touted that he was finished greenlighting development on games that are only for solo players. The Insomniac-developed, EA-published Fuse, formerly OverStrike, certainly fits the bill. Like so many shooters these days, Fuse is playable solo but it’s built with four players in mind. Resistance 2 and Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One are Insomniac’s experiments in co-operative play that gave birth to Fuse, but the studio has a rich heritage in single-player games. Is it giving up the single player ghost?

Just like Electronic Arts, Insomniac is done developing single-player-only games.

Speaking with Gamespot, Insomniac CEO Ted Price said that the nature of the modern game industry means that the era of games like the original Ratchet & Clank is over. “I can’t imagine that any game we’d do from here on out will be single-player-only,” said Price, “The [industry] has changed. As gamers, we have always been social, but thanks to the way technology has evolved, it’s much easier for us to play together. And it’s much easier for developers to create experiences where you can play together. So we want to encourage that with all of our games because ultimately, in my opinion, it’s often more fun to play with a friend.”

To reiterate, solo campaigns aren’t disappearing from EA or Insomniac’s games. After Gibeau’s words circled the web last week, the executive was quick to say that EA would still make single-player content. “You can have a very deep single-player game but it has to have an ongoing content plan for keeping customers engaged beyond what’s on the initial disc,” Gibeau told Kotaku, “I’m not saying deathmatch must come to Mirror’s Edge.”

Price mirrored the sentiment. “We understand that a large portion of players are interested in that single-player experience. A lot of us gamers are interested in both. I love single-player games but I also love multiplayer games, and I think Fuse offers you the opportunity to do both without having to skimp on either side.”

Skimping on either side is definitely the concern when it comes to incorporating online and social elements into every game. EA’s SSX for example would have benefitted from a greater focus on how the game played by a single person rather than incorporating intrusive annoying social features and micro-transaction-based gear acquisitions. Insomniac games have often benefitted from that sort of focus. Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time is a crafted single-player-only game and it happens to be the finest thing the studio has ever made.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Call of Duty: Black Ops II offers a first look at its multiplayer

Treyarch and Activision have released the first look at the highly anticipated multiplayer for the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops

If you are one of the millions of rabid Call of Duty fans, then the multiplayer offering is what you are probably most anticipating when Black Ops 2 is released later this year. The single player campaign may prove to be the best gaming experience in the history of the human race, but even if it brings tears to your eyes from the beauty of it all, the majority of fans are still looking for Call of Duty’s next entry in order to jump online and pummel their fellow gamers by punching them to death with bullets and tomahawks.

As you might expect of a game set in the future, the multiplayer mode will feature futuristic tech and plenty of gadgets to help you along. Judging from the aerial assaults and numerous devices you can use, killstreaks will also be a huge part of the game. Not surprising of course, but the question of how they are earned is still a question mark. Will Treyarch return to the traditional killstreak method of consecutive kills to unlock the chosen option, or will it use the multiple killstreak types, like the support killstreaks that earn points by actions regardless of deaths, as were introduced in Modern Warfare 3.

The video also raises the question of how important equipment—both killstreaks earned via equipment and equipment chosen at the loadout—will be. Finding a balance between useful and cool gadgets, and gadgets that are toopowerful is important, and something that many have criticized the series for not fully attaining. It is fun to earn enough kills to unleash a barrage from above, but it can quickly be overwhelming. 

Beyond that, the game looks like standard Call of Duty gameplay, for both good and bad. The fans will likely love it, and are probably already putting in their requests for the day off work when it is released, while the haters shall continue to hate. Of course, that is just from the quick glimpse provided, there could be significant changes we haven’t seen yet.

We’ll find out more soon enough, when Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is released for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 on November 13, with a Wii U release likely coming soon after.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com