Most Accurate Review of 'Call of Duty: Black Ops'

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PC Games - E3 2011 - Call of Duty: Black Ops

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DS Games - E3 2011 - Call of Duty: Black Ops

Armed Robbers Snatch 100 Copies Of Black Ops In GameStop Heist

Two guys with semiautomatic firearms were hellbent on breaking street for Call of Duty: Black Ops, sticking up a Baltimore-area GameStop and looting it of 100 copies of the game, due out Tuesday.

The Harford County, Md. sheriff's office said the heist happened Saturday evening, and the robbers waited until closing time to hold up the GameStop in the Festival at Bel Air shopping center in Bel Air, about 30 miles northeast of Baltimore.

Deputies said two customers stopped by the store mid-robbery and were forced at gunpoint into a storage area. Neither they nor employees were hurt. The robbers might also be behind an Oct. 21 holdup at GameStop's nearby Aberdeen, Md. location.

A sheriff's office spokesman asked locals to call them if they're offered a copy of the game before Tuesday's release date. A quick scour of Craigslist in that area turned up no such offers.

Harford robbers steal more than 100 ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops' video games [Baltimore Sun via Hot Blooded Gaming

Activision adding a third Call of Duty studio, hinting at CoD MMO

courtesy of gamepro

According to an L.A. Times article published yesterday, Activision Blizzard has opened a new development studio devoted to the Call of Duy franchise. Though the mysterious new team has not announced any projects yet, an anonymous source within Activision suggests that future Call of Duty titles might include a large-scale persistent multiplayer world.

Serious fans of the series will be familiar with the Call of Duty twin-studio approach, as Infinity Ward (developer of Modern Warfare 2) and Treyarch (the team that built Call of Duty: World at War) take turns developing new titles to ensure that there's a Call of Duty game released every November. The third studio might be assigned to jump into the core game rotation, develop all future tertiary titles (like the mobile port jobs done by outside developers Amaze and n-Space that brought the series to the PSP and DS, respectively) or even to the much-rumored Call of Duty MMO.

The Times cites insider information in their story, but top Activision officials have regularly expressed their eagerness to adopt a subscription-based payment system for future Call of Duty titles. Speaking at a financial conference last week, Activision Blizzard CFO Thomas Tippl commented on the possibility of bringing World of Warcraft's business plan to other popular franchises.

"It's definitely an aspiration that we see potential in, particularly as we look at different business models to monetize the online gameplay," said Tippl. "you should expect us to test and ultimately launch additional online monetization models of some of some of our biggest franchises like Call of Duty."

GameStop breaks Modern Warfare 2 street date in 'select markets,' Activision disapproves

courtesy of GameSpot

As is often the case, the street date of a major game was broken a few days before its official release. Over the weekend, game blog Kotaku received word that several retailers in the Northeast and Midwest United States had begun selling Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

GameStop is jumping the gun on the Modern Warfare 2 street-date in "select markets."

However, unlike most preemptive sales, which typically happen at non-specialty stores, apparently the game was being sold under a corporate directive by the country's top game-only retailer--GameStop. When contacted by GameSpot on Monday, GameStop's vice president of corporate communicates Chris Olviera offered the following statement:

"This past weekend, GameStop made the decision to sell reserved copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in select markets where other retailers had broken street date. Our decision followed many conversations with Activision and was an effort to protect our customer base. Today we are focusing on the launch of the title in 4,200 of our US locations and the New York City launch celebration that we are co-hosting with Activision [and] Microsoft."

There may be some behind-the-scenes awkwardness at Modern Warfare 2's New York City launch, since Activision apparently ended those conversations by voicing its disapproval. "Activision has not given any retailer permission to sell Modern Warfare 2 prior to the Nov. 10 street date," a spokesperson told GameSpot. "The company fully supports the November 10 street date."

Check back later in the week for GameSpot's full review of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The M for Mature-rated game is being released for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, with the latter version also coming bundled with a 250GB limited-edition console from Microsoft. GameSpot's Modern Warfare 2 launch center has more information on the military shooter.

'Batman: Arkham Asylum' Game of the Year?

Batman: Arkham Asylum is scheduled to come out Tuesday, August 25, 2009, and some early reviews are already proclaiming it to be 2009's Game of the Year (GotY)! Strong words for a title that has for the most part flown under the radar this year.

I've already mentioned the game in a previous post, but personally I think this GotY distinction is a bit premature considering so many strong titles coming out later in the year (Halo: ODST, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, etc), but I'm not saying that the game won't be good. I'm sure it's a Batman title that we've been waiting for since the old, great 8-bit NES Sunsoft Batman from many years ago.

New WOW Expansion Name and Races Revealed

courtesy of gamespot

Source: World of Warcraft enthusiast blog WoW.com (formerly known as "WoW Insider").

What we heard: The site cites "multiple sources close to the situation" who claim two new races will be added to WOW as part of a rumored new expansion called "Cataclysm." For the Alliance faction, the upcoming race will purportedly be the lupine Worgen. Meanwhile, the Horde will reportedly receive the once-neutral Goblin race.

The suspected leak comes after previous speculation that the Goblins and Worgen would be added to the 11-million-strong massively multiplayer online role-playing game's roster. On July 17, the fan site MMO Champion said it was convinced the two races would be playable after Blizzard revealed Goblin and Worgen novelty masks for its in-game Halloween-themed festival. Previously, only playable races were granted such distinction.

The reported name of the supposed upcoming expansion, Cataclysm, was trademarked by Blizzard on June 26 for everything from computer games to greeting cards. When GameSpot inquired to the developer on the trademark filings, the company declined to give any further details on the title, including whether the cataclysm label would be applied toward other game series or a new one altogether.

Although the latest WOW expansion--Wrath of the Lich King--did not add any new races, its predecessor, The Burning Crusade, added the Blood Elves and Draenei when it was released in January 2007. The latter had been known about since December 2005, when an advance edition of Computer Games Magazine revealed the new Alliance race.

The rumor comes 10 days before BlizzCon 2009, which runs from August 21-22. The developer has traditionally used the convention to officially announce new titles, including both games and expansions. The Burning Crusade was unveiled at BlizzCon 2005, and Wrath of the Lich King was unveiled at the event two years later.

The official story: "We haven't made any announcements in regard to any new races for World of Warcraft and don't comment on rumors or speculation." -- Blizzard rep

Bogus or not bogus?: WoW.com accurately predicted the previous two add-on races, the Blood Elves and Draenei, well before their official revelation by Blizzard. However, WoW.com had reported based off disclosed sources and cited concrete game data to back up its claims, such as screenshots, audio files, and video clips. The site's new blog post, on the other hand, only goes off anonymous sources and dubious novelty-mask image files. But with BlizzCon right around the corner, the veracity of WoW.com's sources will soon become clear.

'Wolfenstein' Remake to Release August 18

A new Wolfenstein game has been in development for quite a while now, but it wasn't until recently that I realized how close it was to completion and also how much it was going to be like one of my favorite games of all time - Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Wolfenstein 3D was the first first person shooter (FPS) ever released by id Software. People were impressed by it's 3D engine but it wasn't until id Software released Doom that people truly took notice and the FPS genre began to take the world by storm. Well, fast forward a few years through the various Dooms and Quakes and then you will see id Software going back to the Wolfenstein series by releasing another game. They updated the graphics, created a new storyline, and gave it the name Return to Castle Wolfenstein (RtCW).

It was a success and the public's interest in the Wolfenstein brand was renewed, but what truly placed RtCW apart from the other FPS's of the time was it's innovative multiplayer. When playing online, the maps were not just battlefields where the side with the most bodycounts at the end of the match won. Instead there were objectives to each map and your team had a "mission" to perform. Also, players could choose between 4 different roles that had different impacts on the game. A medic could heal other players, a lieutenant could drop ammo supplies and call in air strikes, an engineer could set explosives, and a soldier could use a rocket launcher. It was only made better on Xbox Live with voice communication.

In RtCW, one of the favorites of players (and my favorite) was the beach map *picture below* where the objective was for the Allied players to assault the Nazi fortification (ala Normandy Beach style) and steal some documents then run to the radio room to transmit them. The Nazi's of course were there to do everything they could to stop them. The strategy of having multiple routes to enter the fortification as well as the multiple classes the multiplayer mode offered meant many, many hours of online gaming was enjoyed by this blogger and his friends.



This is not all good news though. Since RtCW, a lot of FPS's have tried to incorporate a "class system" within their game and all have been met with limited success. The Wolfenstein series itself released a follow up to RtCW called Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (W:ET) for free but only on the PC. It was praised by the gaming community but it was not really known about outside of the PC market. So, then id Software decided to develop a true multiplayer-only experience following in the steps of RtCW and W:ET by releasing Quake Wars: Enemy Territories. This was also praised by gaming critics everywhere, but it didn't appear to take the online world by storm the way that I remember RtCW doing so. (I'm sure this may have had something to do with the game being released around the same time as Halo 3.) Looks like the new Wolfenstein game is going to be their next attempt to recapture the RtCW audience.

The bottom line... I think that everyone will enjoy having another Wolfenstein multiplayer game for the current generation of consoles. The problem is that the videogame industry is a different world now. There are already many games out there that offer a RtCW "feel" and unless they find a way to balance the classes (which many current games appear to be incapable of), then the new Wolfenstein will just be another game that failed to live up to the nostalgic expectations of RtCW. Most "class based" online FPS games find themselves with one class that is over powered and everyone ends up playing that particular class (ala rifleman in Battlefield 1943). All the support classes sort of "fall to the wayside". Then again, you never know. Maybe the new Wolfenstein can fix the problems that plague the current crop of RtCW games. Either way, we will soon find out.

Wolfenstein is scheduled to be released August 18, 2009.

Videos for the new Wolfenstein can be found here.

Modern Warfare 2 announced!

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has a sequel in the works. Activision announced a couple days ago at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) that due to C.o.D. 4 selling over 12 million copies worldwide, and as stated "-Modern Warfare has taken on such a life of its own...".

The first one was highly entertaining with a short campaign. Hopefully they can continue the success with the sequel.