It’s only 5 days till the biggest expo of the year is under way! Okay maybe not the biggest or best or even most exciting but trust me when I say, its happening. Here’s a full list of what is playable on the show floor come Thursday 22nd to Sunday 25th September.
We will be there covering the event and will try and cover everything we can.. but mostly the stuff we want to cover. I mean come on, I ain’t going near World of Tanks when Uncharted 3 is sitting there calling my name all seductively. We will bring back videos, previews and other goodies for you to read and feast your eyes on.
In the heat of the moment in modern first-person shooters, being able to distinguish red from green can mean the difference between a game-winning kill and an unfortunate team frag. This usually simple distinction can be a frustrating muddle for about 9% to 12% of the population — the percentage born with colour vision deficiency or, more commonly, colour blindness.
While colour-blind gamers have always used personal workarounds to recognize the colour differences in their video games, it makes for a serious roadblock against the enjoyment of more fast-paced and unforgiving play styles. Apparently, the co-developers of the upcoming sure-to-be blockbuster Modern Warfare 3 have recognized this and are taking steps to rectify a situation perhaps more widespread than previously acknowledged the most recent Question of the Week on the Sledgehammer Games website, COO Michael Condrey states that Modern Warfare 3 will feature options that will allow players to tailor colour sets according to their visual needs. Answering the question of a colour-blind gamer, Condrey writes:
" I am happy to report that we are working on a colour blind assist option for Modern Warfare 3"
While Condrey does not share any details of what these Assist options will entail, his enthusiasm for the subject (even in a short blog post) is palpable. One gets the idea that it will be a more refined version of Call Of Duty: Black Ops basic colour change options, geared directly toward players with vision deficiency. Says Condrey (almost gleefully, one imagines)
"You won't be able to blame your red-green deficiency for all that friendly-fire come November 8th"
The announcement comes as an interesting side-chapter in Modern Warfare 3′s twisty development. Sledgehammer Games is one of three co-developers of the game, along with Infinity Ward (sporting an almost completely different staff roster than previous Call Of Duty iterations) and Raven Software.
Sledgehammer is said to be focusing largely on the multiplayer wing of the game (in addition to addressing Modern Warfare 3's competition),so it’s unknown whether the Colour Blind Assist option will be available for the single-player campaign. Then again, it’s not like people will really be signing on for the single-player Modern Warfare experience at this point, eh?
Do you have colour vision deficiency? If so, does this announcement affect your decision to purchase Modern Warfare 3? Share your thoughts on the matter — as well as any workarounds you’ve used in the past — in the comments!
Modern Warfare 3 will release for PC, PlayStation3, and Xbox 360 on November 9, 2011.
Think you will be buying Modern Warfare 3 and keep the same online strategy you've been using for the last four iterations of Call Of Duty? Think again. MW3 will be getting a complete re-vamp of there killstreak system according to Creative Strategist Robert Bowling:
"We changed the entire way the killstreak system works. I can't go into detail yet, but I will share when I can"
Thousands of COD fan boys will now be hitting F5 constantly on Bowling Twitter to see just what Infinity Ward have in store for there next blockbuster.
What else would you like changed in Modern Warfare 3's Multiplayer?
When Dead Island was announced, I doubt anyone really cared that much at all. Another Zombie game? Well we got Left for Dead, Call Of Duty: Zombies and so on. Then came the now infamous trailer. Zooming out from the eye of a dead Zombie girl? Can't go wrong with that.
A hands on article of Dead Island's Multiplayer was released earlier from the boys over at The Sixth Axis giving the views on what to expect. Its a great read and sounds promising, so check it out.
All eyes have been on Dead Island ever since that one trailer was released. Could the game actually be that good? Based on the various screenshots I’ve seen, I was beginning to worry. To me, it seemed like it was being over hyped. After all, we were getting excited over a CG trailer with no gameplay footage whatsoever. Having played the multiplayer component for decent amount of time, I can easily say that many of my concerns have been put to rest. There’s just so much fun to be had.
The demo started off inside of a church. This is where you can accept quests, buy weapons, and make upgrades or repairs. We were given a ridiculous amount of money to buy whatever we desired. I purchased and upgraded several types of blades, a mace, a rifle, and even coated one weapon in fire. You can carry pretty much anything you buy, but you can only equip 9 items to your weapon wheel at a time.
Once a quest has been activated, a clear path to your destination is shown on your mini-map. We all left the church cautiously, not knowing what to expect. The first thing you’ll notice is that the environment is completely open to the player. You can go pretty much anywhere you want. And that’s exactly what I did.
The church serves as the central hub. Very little praying will be done.
I mindlessly ran around because I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t even know what the quest was. I kept trying to punch and kick random NPCs, but to no avail. They can’t be harmed. Apparently, we were putting up a bunch of posters for a missing person. The idea doesn’t really make any sense. Everyone is either dead, a zombie, or at the church. I highly doubt that any survivor would stop and look at one of the posters. Regardless of the mission, I just wanted to kill as many zombies as possible.
Not seeing the point of having a bunch of knives as a weapon, I opted to use my rifle first. I learned the hard way that guns need to be used sparingly. You won’t find ammo just laying on the ground, and it certainly won’t materialize after killing an enemy. There’s a bit of a survival horror element to weapon usage, so you actually need to think about what you’re doing at all times.
The enemies themselves are quite ferocious. As fun as it is to kill them, you actually need to put some effort into each enemy you take down. The combat is surprisingly more melee intensive than anything else. If you want to take down the undead, you need to go up to them and punch them in the face. Having three teammates certainly helped with that task. We fended off as many zombies as possible, all while our guide gave us insights to the gameplay.
There are four different characters in the game. Each of which have their own attributes and special abilities. Sam is the Tank class and is good with heavy weapons. Xian Mei is the Assassin and specializes with blades, Logan is the well rounded “jack of all trades”, and Purna is the Leader. I used Logan during the demo. His unique ability is being able to throw a barrage of knives at anything standing in his way. This required use of the Rage meter.
Building up your rage is as simple as killing zombies. You’ll also gain experience points in the process. That XP can then be used to upgrade your character’s skill tree. Even if your teammates were all the same character, they could be leveled up differently, ultimately making them more or less effective in various ways. For the purposes of the demo we were already leveled up quite a bit.
Whether you’re cutting a zombies arm off or chopping off their head, you’re going to have a lot of fun torturing enemies. There were many moments were we just beat on a zombie that was long dead. The most brutal attack was definitely the curb stomp. Despite the horrific setting and circumstances, the game was just hilarious to play. Coming up with different ways to incapacitate your enemies is disturbing, yet very satisfying. And it’s always fun blowing up your teammates by shooting gas tanks. It’s possible to revive fallen friends, but it’s not exactly a good idea to just waste all of your health items unless you need to. If you aren’t healed in time you can respawn nearby but you’ll also lose some XP in the process.
There was a nice variety of enemies always in our way. Some zombies were on fire, some were covered in poison mist, while others served as mini-bosses. One in particular, appropriately named The Ram, was wearing a straight jacket and would charge at us with full force. He has quite a bit of health, but he’s relatively easy to deal with. You just need to side step at the right moment to avoid getting hit. Even the common zombies were no joke. Unlike Resident Evil 5, they don’t just stand there waiting for you to attack them. They will run and you and eat your face at every chance they get. You’re not always alone either. Sometimes you’ll see random survivors out in the streets fighting for their lives.
As all of this is going on, you need to keep track of your various meters. In addition to your health bar, you have to pay attention to your stamina. If you swing your weapon too frequently, your stamina will decrease and your attacks will become less effective. There’s also a meter attached to the weapons themselves. If it depletes, the weapon becomes less effective. You either need to repair it or toss it away. I opted to throw many of my knives at unsuspecting zombies. What’s neat is that you can actually recover them from their dead bodies.
Situations like this happen quite often.
The environment was relatively expansive. Even though this was only one small portion of the game, but there were so many paths one could take. You could even drop down to the sewers if you wanted. If the main quest isn’t enough for you, there’s also a bunch of sidequests to go on. There’s also tons of precious loot to be found, which can then be used to modify weapons. For a game like this, there’s a surprising amount of freedom given to the player.
Perhaps the best part about the multiplayer mode is just how seamless it is. You can easily drop in and out of games whenever you want. Unlike some co-op based games, Dead Island’s entire campaign mode is at your disposal and anything you earned offline or online will carry on to both modes.
Even if you’re not into first person shooters, you’ll definitely want to keep Dead Island on your radar. Imagine a zombie game with elements from Borderlands, Dead Rising, and Left 4 Dead. It certainly has the potential to be a great game. We’ll see how it goes once it hits store shelves in September.
As if there were enough problems between EA and Activision, news has come out that at least 40 Infinity Ward employees have defected from the grip of Bobby Koticks hot fiery hands, To EA owned studio Respawn Entertainment to join up with former IW heads Vincent Zampella and Jason West.
Yes, most of the team that was responsible for arguably two of the biggest games ever to be released are now with Activisions arch rivals. EA have made it perfectly clear that they are gunning for the big dogs and this can only be good news for them, What an acquisition they have obtained. There is no news as to how Bobby Kotick has taken the news, but knowing Bobby, he is probably too busy playing poker with the devil and Hitler to care.
1.It would be embarrassing if she were better at video games than you. Here you envisioned long co-op jaunts crusading against alien invasions, teaching her to play Portal by romantically holding her hands over the controller, and getting cozy while sniping from a bunker in Call of Duty, but here she is, curb-stomping your face over and over in Gears of War multiplayer. You don't even have to wait to wear that pink sweater she bought you for your birthday to be emasculated.
2. If you are better at video games than her, you will fight every time you give in to her pleas to play together. There are plenty of girls out there that play games. But playing does not imply winning. Ever. Even girls that identify themselves as gamers can be totally inept at video games. She may love playing the easy level campaigns at a nice slow pace, but when you catch her at every spawn point on the multiplayer board and snipe her before she even moves, she'll start to cry. For some reason.
3. You will never, ever get to play single player campaign again. It'll always be "oh, we never get to do anything together, let's play co-op" and then she'll insist on using Convenant weapons because "they are purple and pretty."
4. She will always be misled by beginner's luck on beat-em-ups. Girls don't understand the relationship of button-mashing with beat-em-ups; that is, if you do it, you win. A few button-mash wins will cause them to think they're skilled players, but once she starts trying to learn the moves, you'll crush her every time, and she'll cry again (see #2).
5. She does it for the dudes. Maybe this girl actually likes to play video games. And maybe someday I'll live in a bouncy castle and eat hamburgers for every meal. But she does it mainly because guys think it's cool, and is actually terrible at video games (see #2 and #4). This girl probably also "likes" football, baseball, basketball, paintball, beer, violent movies involving zombies, and firearms, but knows absolutely nothing about them.
6. She says she's a gamer, but what she means is about ten years ago, she used to make a Sim of herself WooHoo with a Sim of her crush, and then set his Sim house on fire. This girl is not actually a gamer, and is, in all likelihood, insane.
7. She says she's a gamer, but the only games she plays are on PopCap and other websites.Not only will she waste your time by getting you addicted to some niblet of a game like Kitten Cannon, she actually thinks this is gaming, which means she's just a terribly confused human being.
8. She'll really put the RPG in MMORPG. Running around as a naked night elf damsel-in-distress who's had her armor stolen and getting attention from the Stormwind sausagefest will be all well and good in the game, but ask her to do it in the bedroom and then there's just something WRONG with you.
9. If your girlfriend is playing video games with you, there is no one to bring you sandwiches and energy drinks. And if she stays the night and you both are awake until 3 AM playing Call of Duty, there is no one to wake up and make pancakes. Already you're out two meals. Do you want to starve to death?
10. If your girl gamer fits none of these descriptions, that means she is probably also a supermodel and a rocket scientist, and is therefore a perfect human being. You do not deserve her and will eventually break up, but video games and sex will be inextricably linked in your mind forever after all those games of Strip TF2, and you won't be able to turn on your console without getting a boner. Happy gaming!
Its hard to see anyone toppling Call Of Duty and World of Warcraft at the moment. With such an incredibly large fan base with loyal users, this just doesn't seem possible. Which is why I am shocked of all the talk coming out of Electronic Arts at the moment. Its been a funny couple of years for EA. Yearly franchises generate a yearly income which they can rely on but they also tested the waters with several new IP's, Some very good ones at that.
Games such as Dead Space were fantastic to play and were very critically acclaimed but not when it came to sales figures. Maybe this has driven EA in a different direction. I fear that they have taken a wrong turn this time. With EA so publicly gunning for Activision within the gaming market and off it, They are sailing a risky ship.
There's no denying that Battlefield 3 looks gorgeous and the new Frostbite 2 engine gives it that depth and fluidity that Call Of Duty just doesn't have. Battlefield 3 will sell nicely but with the incredible amount of money they have spent developing this new engine to achieve the game they want to challenge and the vast amount of money spent on marketing to force COD fans to pick there game instead, If this venture fails then where does it leave them? Not only are they going after the biggest game in history but also the game with the most loyal fanbase, World of Warcraft.
Star Wars The Old Republic is Bioware and EA's big challenger to the MMORPG crown. Its not official but if reports are thought to be true then EA have spent a staggering amount of money on developing this game. Announced some time ago, That figure is only getting larger by the day. SWTOR and Battlefield 3 won't lose EA any money. Lets not be stupid now, These are huge games that will sell, but EA's reputation could take a real beating in all this.
What do you guys think? Will Battlefield and SWTOR sell better than Activisions Giants?
I could attempt to explain this (and believe me I did) but Tom Ingham of CVG put it in better words than I ever could.
by Tom Ingham of CVG
"A Los Angeles Superior Court judge this week ruled that there were enough facts to support allegations from former Infinity Ward chiefs Jason West and Vincent Zampella that Activision Blizzard defrauded the duo to the tune of $125 million - meaning the path is now set for a full hearing later this year.
The pair are suing the US publisher, headed up by Bobby Kotick, for being fired before receiving what they claim were deserved royalty payments.
The duo claim that Activision promised them control of the Modern Warfare series - as well as increased royalties for Infinity ward on income over $50 million on future games. However, they say that they were removed in 2010 (forcibly, if you remember) before the due payment of over $125 million in royalties was to be made.
West and Zampella's attorneys will be able to question Activision Blizzard CEO Kotick directly as part of the case.
The news follows a ruling from back in March, when another L.A superior court judge ruled that Activision also had sufficient claims against Electronic Arts, for interfering with West and Zampella's contract.
Judge Berle sided with Activision to pursue its countersuit litigation against EA, West and Zampella.
Activision is seeking $400 million in damages for "tortious interference, unfair competition, and breaches of fiduciary duty".
It claims that EA executives made secret attempts to lure the Call of Duty creators as early as July 2009 - pointing the finger at EA CEO John Riccitiello in particular.
West and Zampella set up new studio Respawn Entertainment in April 2010. The US company is being funded by EA as part of the publisher's Partners programme.
No product has yet been revealed by Respawn. It is thought to have been creating a game since May 2010, whilst staff wearing the company's logo on their T-shirts were out en masse at E3.
Following West and Zampellla's removal from Infinity Ward, 46 staff left the Modern Warfare creator - 38 of whom have now declared that they have signed with Respawn.
In amongst a host of catty comments that have emerged on both sides of of the case, Activision has labelled the pair "self-serving schemers".
Activision in the dock: West and Zampella's claim for $125m unpaid royalties: First filed: March, 2010
- Activision defrauded the founders of Infinity Ward by not releasing "substantial royalty payments"
- Activision is also liable for for breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, wrong termination in violation of public policy, and declaratory relief
- West and Zampella's right to "control Modern Warfare-branded games" has been violated - and the duo want partial future control of the MW Brand
EA, West and Zampella in the dock. Activision's claim for $400m in damages: (First filed: April 2010. EA added to suit, December 2010)
- EA execs began a conspiracy with West and Zampella whilst the duo were still Activision employees
- Electronic Arts "intentionally interfered with contracts, engaged in unfair competition, and aiding and abetting breaches of fiduciary duty by West and Zampella"
- West and Zampella refused to sign standard exit documents that testified they had returned all Activision property, including game development code
- West and Zampella were "motivated by envy and personal greed" and intentionally released game trailers for Modern Warfare 2 on the same day that Treyarch posted promotion videos for Call of Duty: World at War DLC"
With news scattered all around the web about various types of gaming news, Its hard to keep track of all of it. Therefore, My handy little Daily Gaming News Blog shall keep all you gamers happy keeping up to date on the most important, shocking and weirdest news that the gaming world has to offer. Here we go...
Call Of Duty Elite
Call Of Duty Subscription!! We all knew this day was gonna come sooner or later. Call Of Duty have announced there venture into a subscription based service for the franchise which will give gamers the choice of giving Activision extra cash. The service will offer Stat Tracking, Access to DLC (Presumably early?) and thats just about it so far.. Activision haven't released much more information about the service. But you can be sure that with the millions and millions of Call Of Duty fanboys sitting at home behind there mics, cursing and swearing while there mums can't hear them, That this service will have plenty of people queueing up for an extra piece of COD pie.
Playstation Vita
This is the brand new name for the recently announced Playstation NGP (Next Generation Portable) It seems that the NGP wasn't sexy enough for Sony along with the rumoured PSP2. The Playstation Vita or PS Vita looks to be the lite, flowery choice which tickled the cold nipples of Sonys breasts. It will take time whether fans will take to the new name of the NGP but it can only be said that if Nintendo can get away with the "Wii" Then Sony can get away with calling it pretty much anything.
As it is late, This will be a short blog but stay tuned for plenty Daily Gaming News and lots of E3 2011 updates, Big week ahead!
This is a video of my Girlfriend playing one of my games, Call Of Duty to be precise. It was a spur of the moment thing and gave us both a lot of laughs as you can tell in the video, Enjoy.
The church serves as the central hub. Very little praying will be done.
Situations like this happen quite often.
