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The word ‘news’ gets thrown around a lot these days: from clichéd openers to consumer reports on the possible health benefits derived from spending money on products shown in consumer reports. Outfits for your beloved pets and the latest celebrity snatch showing have often been touted as subjects of importance. While lesser stories such as job security and economy have quite rightly been smothered from harming our sensitive inclinations of ego.
Oppression through fear mongering was once a lone stallion in the heresy of reporting, but it’s been such a stud that the paddock is now filled with illegitimate bullshit-offspring and the sheep who want to follow them around. The world of video games was basically founded on the principals of ‘buy this stuff’, but that is where a clear line is drawn. Everyday news can’t put in spoilers what tomorrow is going to hold, it can influence you, intimidate you, slightly molest you. But at the end of the day it does not explicitly show will happen to you as a person in the future.
Warning: This post contains Spoilers, continue at your own risk.
Here it is, the Modern Warfare 2 OUTRAGE has begun. The Daily Mail (who else) is reporting on that controversial level, claiming that “critics” have accused Activision of being irresponsible, despite the fact that the scenes have been shown in movies a thousand times. Keith Vaz, Labour MP said he was “Absolutely shocked by the level of violence in this game and am particularly concerned about how realistic the game itself looks”.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON, CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN PERIL.
With only a few days left until Activision releases the second game in its Modern Warfare series I’d like to take a moment and point a few reasons why you shouldn’t buy the upcoming shooter. The majority of gaming blogs over the next few weeks will be publishing hundreds of articles about all the intricate plot details and immersive gameplay, but in the spirit of Negative Gamer I’d like to suggest a few reasons why you should save your money invest your time into something more wholesome. Railroad Tycoon perhaps? No? OK, well here’s my list anyway.
Read more →
In what can only be described as a move of “genius” proportions, the 60ish denizens of Ziip Games are joining the cyber-squatting bandwagon and attempting to hold Modernwarfare4.com prisoner. Not to worry though as they do seem willing to part with the domain, for a price.
Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling has spoken with VideoGamer regarding co-op in Modern Warfare 2 and it’s not exactly exciting news for co-op fans. The campaign won’t support co-op. However, there will be a separate two-player co-op mode that the developer calls “Special Ops”; I call it disappointing.
Bowling explained that:
We don’t do co-op in our story because we’re crafting a very specific experience and we don’t want to ruin that by cramming co-op into it. We take the moments that work really well with co-op, we bring them out and we put them in Special Ops.
Huh? How would an extra player “ruin” the game’s “specific experience”? It looks identical to the original Modern Warfare, which seemed to be perfectly suited to a co-op campaign. It was a linear shooter and if I remember correctly you had friendly soldiers with you at all times. I don’t see how letting another player control one of the many other soldiers would ruin the game. Read more →
If PSU is to believed, then it’s looking like you will be able to unleash dogs on the enemy during a multiplayer match of CoD:WaW if you get a 7 kill streak, replacing the helicopter from CoD: Modern Warfare.
I found the Helicopter to be one of the most annoying aspects of CoD4’s multiplayer, but in light of these dogs, it seems like a welcome death. The dogs will allegedly be able to not only seek you out wherever you are trying to hide on the map, but also respawn if you kill them.
If this turns out to be true, then Treyarch have at least bettered Infinity Ward at something, making the most annoying game mechanic to date.
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Paying $60 for a game is something we have gotten used too. Paying (in the case of the Xbox) more to play the game online is still a sore issue with a few of us. But now Activision’s Publishing CEO, Mike Griffith, has said that “We … see strong opportunities to monetize online gameplay” with CoD5.
Talking at Activision Blizzard’s analysts day the company has shown they are willing to charge the gamer’s who love their games, even more.
The average Call of Duty player has spent nearly five full 24-hour days of their lives online since purchasing the game. Over time, we’ll qualify more opportunities to increase the monetization of these activities.
Griffith also spoke about other ways to “monetize” things by adding that CoD5 will have “3x the amount of content available for download and premium content called ‘Day One Advantage’.” Which lets you pay to get XP faster.
They could simply mean that they will be having more map packs to get this extra money out our pockets. Or, more worryingly, they could mean that they are considering a number of other, more dastardly, schemes to increase their already huge mountain of money.
Here are just a few things to wildly speculate about:
My favourite:
Now, this isn’t me telling you what they will rip you off for, this is just me speculating on what they could rip you off for. Activision Blizzard already know how to make an addictive, monthly subscription based game with WoW. We have now seen the introduction of grinding in CoD4 to unlock perks and gun. So will they put 2 and 2 together to find a way to pry even more money off gamers? As a frugal gamer with little money (and at least some idea of what a moral compass is), I sure hope not, but I’m not optimistic.
Why make a gamer pay a one-off $60 for a game when you can make them pay $60 and then a further $60 for things that used to be free?
I have no idea why, but earlier today I had a complete failure in common sense and thought it might be fun to try playing Call of Duty 4 again. Read more →
Spending all day on troll infested forums, many gamers become understandably polarised with how they perceive things. I have been guilty of it myself from time to time. Recently however I have been trying to be more well balanced, to not be so opinionated etc. Read more →
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