In the News

Some random stuff, put in bullets for your convenience:

• The new iPhone operating system, iOS4, is available for download. It took like 20 minutes to everything the way I wanted, but I now have all but 10 apps (including the bottom bar) in folders and no longer have pages. I also grabbed a sweet Metroid wallpaper for my homepage. I'm currently listening to Pandora in the fuckin' background. Other than the aforementioned application, multitasking is largely worthless at this stage.
  
• I downloaded iBooks as well. It automatically downloads Whinnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne, but I got rid of it because it doesn't interest me. My digital library currently consists of Alice's Adeventures in Wonderland, On the Origin of Species, The Communist Manifesto, Metamorphosis, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, The Art of War, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The United States Constitution, and The King James Bible. I wouldn't suggest trying to decipher my political and/or religious beliefs from that set. Anyway, there's a good amount of literary classics available for free, all of which I assume are public domain at this point. Now we'll see if I'll actually read any of them (spoiler: probably not).
  
• One last iPhone tidbit--and this one's games related--EA is having a massive $0.99 sale on over a dozen of their games. I think I'm gonna pick up Red Alert, SimCity, and maybe a racing game. I don't remember if Spore Origins (Sporigins?) was listed, but as someone who already has it, I can say that it's probably not even worth $1. Also, you'd think they'd offer Scrabble for $1 to try to compete with Words with Friends, but it's not so.
• The Medal of Honor beta for PC and PS3 has already begun, I believe. It's not available for 360 yet, but it will be "soon." I've already got a key, so I'll be sure to give my impressions.
• Onslaught for Bad Company 2 (it's like Horde, Firefight, or Nazi Zombies) is currently available for PS3 and will be available for 360 tomorrow. It's 800 Microsoft Points, which is a reasonable price; especially considering the success of Modern Warfare 2's 1200 point Stimulus Package.
• Speaking of BC2, I've officially gone platinum (1000 kills) with the M24 sniper rifle. I did it in almost exactly 20 hrs of use (no, it's not as long as it sounds). Want proof (By the way, that's a good site to use if you wanna find out how many Destruction 2.0 kills you have, or if you want to compare all of your stats with a friend)?
  
• Apparently, there's a way to get your BC2 games to stop lagging. I haven't tried it myself, but I have it on good authority that it works.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron has been getting some pretty positive reviews. I played the game at E3 and thought it was basically Call of Duty but uglier. However, that statement is quite a compliment to the gameplay mechanics. They were smooth, the control was tight, and the class system seemed surprisingly deep at first glance. In today's crowded market I doubt I'll ever give it the time it deserves, but if you've ever wanted to battle as a space robot that is also a vehicle, this looks like your golden opportunity.
• David Hale is moving on. We've both enjoyed reading him and wish him the best of luck; the Bulldog Nation will miss him.
  

--Chilly P

E3 Day 1

I'm gonna try to be quick, so please excuse any typos.

First off, the new locomotion system in Madden 11 feels incredible. They've been long overdue in that department, and I think they;ve finally gotten it right. I'm not at the point yet where I can implicitly trust their newfangled Gameflow system, but I did give it a try. They have a nice addition where you can choose a basic fourth down play on the fly, so no more having to search through plays when you want to fake it. Not having a sprint will take getting used to, but I think it's better in the long run.

Crackdown 2 feels a lot like the first one, and that means it feels good. I probably spent more time with that demo than any other today. It just speaks volumes about how fun the basic game mechanics of that series are.

I gave Dead Rising 2 a little bit of playtime today. It, too, feels exactly like its predecessor, but in this case it feels a little clunky. I was also disappointed with the seemingly small number of zombie character models. It's particularly noticeable when you kill identical twin zombies standing next to each other, especially when they're dressed the same. Sonic the Hedgehog 4 felt terrible during my playtime. It takes a full 2 seconds to get up to speed, what's that about? The new Tron game felt surprisingly fresh. I only played cycle racing, but it was pretty intense. I played Medal of Honor a little bit. Felt exactly like Bad Company 2. I'll wait for the beta to make a call on that one.

Metroid: Other M is an interesting game. Metroid Prime is my all-time favorite game, and Other M feels nowhere near as good as that game. That new Zelda game uses Motion Plus for more accurate sword mapping, and I can confirm that they did a pretty good job with it. Unfortunately, the graphical style is disagreeable. It's like a cross between Twilight Princess and Wind Waker. It needs to commit to one.

I saw Cliffy B and Shaun White.

I'm on a personal mission to snag as much swag (stuff. we. all. GET!) as possible. I've kinda been sucking it up on that part so far, but I'm going to work harder at it tomorrow. I missed out on Bulletproof-themed free burgers with T-shirt give-aways. I feel like a real sucker for that. I also feel like a sucker for not getting a business card from the Activision exec who checked out Vision by Proxy. Tomorrow will surely be more successful. I gotta go, it's eatin' timez.

--Chilly P

Abandon Ship

Holy crap, have you seen this? Infinity Ward employees are jumping ship like it's the Titanic. What the hell is going on here? They were setting the world on fire just this past November. Man, I hope this comes back to bite Activision in the ass. I'm trying not to jump on the evil empire band wagons anymore, but it's hard not hate Activision at this point. As you can see from the above image, peoples don't much care for Bobby Kotick. He deserves it, too.

Anyway, there is going to have to be some backlash after all of this. I kind of feel bad for Treyarch because they might get stuck fending for themselves with the Call of Duty franchise, and I doubt they hack it for too long. You know who's lickin' their chops right now? Bungie. The Reach beta comes out soon, and it's right on the heels of an overpriced map pack and a colossal falling-out at their biggest rival. This is also setting EA up pretty nicely. Medal of Honor, which is straight-ripping Call of Duty, comes out this summer, and the two IW execs who are in a epic lawsuit of he-said-she-said with Activision have formed their own studio which is working with EA Partners (which puts them under the same roof as Valve). Hell, even Epic has decided that now is the time to announce Gears of War 3 (which has an April 2011 release date; making room for a beta test, this time?). This is going to be interesting to watch unfold.

--Chilly P

p.s. Just for the record, I've been saying this for a while now.

p.p.s. Some background info on Infinity Ward that sheds some more light on the situation.

Who's the Current FPS King?

So Joystiq just posted some early impressions on the next Medal of Honor game, and I came away with basically thinking that EA has scrapped everything from the shit storm that was Medal of Honor: Airborne and is just straight ripping Call of Duty 4. Hell, the article even says its campaign seems like a truer sequel to CoD4 than CoD:Mod2 was. It also says that DICE is developing the multiplayer (EA Los Angeles is doing the campaign), and given how much I'm loving Bad Company 2, I might actually have to keep an eye on this one. But then I got to thinking...

The new Halo: Reach trailer mentions having loadouts, and even Bioshock 2's multiplayer aped CoD4. So here's the question: is Call of Duty the new king of the shooters? I guess the answer would have to be, "yes." I mean, Modern Warfare 2 was the fastest selling-game of all time, beating a mark once held by Halo 3 and then broken by GTA IV. Now, it's not exactly a fair fight because both GTA IV and Modern Warfare 2 are multi-platform games, but still. It says something that all these new FPSs are trying to mimic the Call of Duty formula when for so long everyone was chasing Halo. Have we already seen that fabled Halo-killer?

Just think about that. I remember a few years ago thinking that the idea that a Halo-killer could possibly come out before Bungie was done with the series was just preposterous. Killzone and Killzone 2 were both hyped as Halo-killers and I think we all know how that turned out. I can't believe that I'm about to type this, but Halo: Reach is playing catch-up to Call of Duty. Halo is no longer the leading innovator in the genre. How did this happen?

Well, way back in 2007, Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare were released. I still consider the former to be the premier shooter on the console, but I'd say I'm in the minority. I think where they lost their audience--not to imply that Halo 3 is struggling to find an audience, they're just not way out in first place anymore--is that they spent too much time innovating in the wrong areas. More on that in a bit, but first a little background: Halo 3 was the first game to eclipse Halo 2 in online activity, and this was after the first Gears of War and three Call of Duty games had come and gone. While Call of Duty 4 was a much-hyped contender (Game Informer named it, not Halo 3, as its most anticipated game of 2007), there was little reason to believe that it could actually top Master Chief.

So where did Halo 3 misstep? While I know Sweet Clyde has some considerable distaste for the game, I would probably say it's my favorite game of the series. It's a lot like Halo 2 but with more dressings. That's the problem, though. While Forge and the ability to save replays are awesome, they're not features that will draw in more people than a fresh experience. The problem was that Halo 3 felt like Halo 2 in HD with more features but the same gameplay. While I loved that, I'm not playing it anymore. I feel like I've been playing it since 2004. Sure, Grifball was enough to bring me back for a while, but they won't offer it to me on a consistent basis, and the gametype doesn't yet have the staying power I'm looking for. The fact of the matter is: Halo 3 didn't innovate gameplay and Call of Duty 4 did.

So, back to the question I proposed in the title: who's the current FPS king? Honestly, I don't know. Is it Call of Duty 4 still or Modern Warfare 2? With Activision pumping out a "new" CoD game every November, how long before that series becomes stale? Maybe Halo: Reach will take back the crown in a year when the CoD torch has been passed to Treyarch. Hell, maybe even Bad Company 2 or Medal of Honor can come in and take the reigns. There certainly seems to be room because if nothing else, Modern Warfare 2 was cocky as hell. It's actually very easy to draw a parallel between Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3. They were both sequels to what was the most popular FPS on the market, and neither felt particularly fresh.

If there's a recipe for success when creating a sequel to the most popular game on the market, I think it's following the footsteps of Halo 2. Sure, there are still people who are waiting for a "real" sequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, but if Halo 2 had just been more of the same, the proverbial Halo-killer may have arrived years earlier. You can't just follow the "If it ain't broke don't fix it" philosophy because otherwise people will get bored. I know Sweet Clyde saw jet packs in the Reach trailer and groaned, but that tells me that they're trying to create a fresh experience (Yes, I know Tribes had jet packs, shut up. No one else is allowed to do jet packs because Tribes did it? Did you consider Halo: CE a Doom-clone, you narrow-minded prick?).

I know I've rambled on about this for a while now, but if you take one thing away from it it's this: the state of the current FPS market is in flux and we may never again have one series that is the golden standard for the genre.

--Chilly P