[GameRatty] tag: cod4

Gears 2's reign short lived, Halo 3 tops Xbox Live list

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:15:00 +0000

Filed under: News, Halo 3, Gears of War 2

Well, that didn't take long. After a short stint, Gears of War 2 is no longer the king of Xbox Live (there goes our three month guess'timate), being taken over by none other than teh Haloz.

According to the oh so informative Major Nelson, Halo 3 topped Gears of War 2 as the most played Xbox Live game last week which was also a Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Gears 2 did hold the number two position with CoD:WaW, CoD4 and GTAIV rounding out the top five. We find it surprising that Gears 2 lost its Live multiplayer dominance so quickly post-release even with the release of last week's matchmaking fixing patch. Somewhere there's a Cliff Bleszinski hunched in a dark corner shedding a tear and cursing at a Master Chief action figure. Guaranteed.

Gears 2's reign short lived, Halo 3 tops Xbox Live list originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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'Unusual' World at War DLC scheduled for early '09

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:30:00 +0000

Filed under: News, Call of Duty: World at War

Call of Duty: World at War fans have a reason to be excited for New Years, because Activision has some "unusual" downloadable content in the works and has plans to release 2-3 DLC packs during World at War's lifespan.

Talking with MTV Multiplayer, WaW executive producer Daniel Suarez mentioned that their upcoming DLC is "not going to be what we've done traditionally" and will exceed what CoD4 offered in terms of new content. No specific release plans were given and the unusual DLC will remain a mystery. New maps, new modes, new weapons, more single player? We're not sure, but "unusual" DLC is much more exciting than "traditional" DLC.

'Unusual' World at War DLC scheduled for early '09 originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Are Games Becoming Over-Produced?

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:30:13 +0000

I finished Resistance 2 single player (on hard): There is tons of amazing tech here (particularly the mo-cap animation), the environments are loaded with gorgeous visual variety, and the weapons and action mechanics are tight. But, one big negative really stuck out: it felt too scripted and and forced.

They completely removed the health bar and the ammo/weapon management. There are no maze elements to navigating the levels and the game purposefully doesn’t let you back-track so that players don’t get lost and frustrated. They loaded the game with tons of auto-checkpoints that neatly separate the action into distinct battles so there is almost never any forced replay. They also loaded the game with variety (the visuals, enemies, weapons, and combat change quite a bit throughout the game) to eliminate complaints of repetition.

All of these changes were made very purposefully and probably came from extensive user feedback studies and focus group testing. The problem is that all of these changes really dumbed down the experience. I felt more like I was passively moving through a scripted semi-interactive tech demo than actually playing a game.

Resistance 2 was still a lot of fun, the giant fire fights didn’t have this overly scripted feel to them (they’re still linear, but they felt very interactive), and this game isn’t the only one with this problem. Call of Duty 4 (single player), for example, was worse. It felt every bit as blatantly scripted and forced and linear, but lacked many of the cool highlights of Resistance 2. (BTW, I feel more comfortable criticizing Insomniac’s games, because I’ve been such a big fan, where CoD4, I didn’t want to rain on everyone else’s parade.)

Also, Uncharted, Bioshock, Ratchet & Clank, Dead Space, God of War, Manhunt (only mentioning PS2/PS3 titles): these are some of my favorite games from the past few years, but they all fall into this category: heavily scripted, produced, and completely linear experiences. Even as the developers are getting better and better of making this style of game, and as much as I love the mentioned games, and admire the work that went into them, I feel like the general structure and formula is really wearing thin.

So what else should games do? From the little I’ve played of Far Cry 2, that’s a good example of what I don’t want: the same linear game play with a repetitive quest/hub/navigation system thrown on top of it. Games need to develop new hooks: something that makes them fun and addicting beyond merely shooting/dodging and clearing gorgeous levels.

So what do you think? Are you fine with bigger and better versions of games like Uncharted and God Of War or are you getting a little tired of that formula (or a little of both)? Do you think this type of game has passed it’s peak?

Call of Duty: World at War Double XP Week for Collector's Edition Owners

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:35:20 +0000

Starting at 12 noon (PST) on Friday, December 5, Limited Collector’s Edition owners of Call of Duty: World at War on PC and 360 will be able to earn double experience points when playing multiplayer.

Access to the Double XP “Officer’s Club” playlists will require Xbox 360 Limited Collector’s Edition owners to have successfully activated their copies of Call of Duty: World at War. Owners will see the “Officer’s Club” show up in the player match playlists screen. For PC Limited Collector’s Edition owners, they can simply join any server during the Double XP week and be rewarded with twice the experience.

The Double XP week will end on 11:59 a.m PST. on Friday, December 12. For all the gory details and an FAQ, check out the official Call of Duty Headquarters here.

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Resistance 2 Community Features

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:10:36 +0000

OK, I’m just going to do a brief overview of how Resistance 2 stacks up compared to Resistance with it’s community options.

Resistance was the king of online games when it came to having a superb infrastructure for playing with your friends online. It had an excellent Party system, great stats pages for keeping up to date and comparing stats with your friends and rivals etc. It had an Ignore List too so you could avoid any of the scummy little spawn killers and LAARK whores that popped up in Resistance.

For the actual playing side it had an excellent system where you could choose squads so you could chat privately with your friends and clan mates, you could mute any individuals that annoyed you too and of course it was open mic so none of this PTT crap.

I’m going to have a quick look at the community features for Resistance 2 and will leave the actual competitive comparisons to a later date.

Under the Community settings you can view your Profile, Clan Options and Leader boards. I will mainly look at the Clan Options for now though.

CLAN OPTIONS

So far so good. You don’t need to play a certain number of hours to create a clan like you do in other shooters like CoD4 for example. There are also some very cool options for your clan.

Clan Config allows you to edit details about your Clan.

You can select between competitive or casual for your Clan Type. You can select which country your clan is from so if you’re from Taiwan or Germany or the UK you can select the actual country as opposed to the region. You can also select Europe if that takes your fancy too. You can also set the Invite Status to Recruiting, Open or Invite Only. You also have an option to change the announcement that will greet clan members or people viewing your clan. At the moment it is set to “Welcome to *Clan Name*”

There is a Roster where you can click on clan members and in there it has a boggling amount of stats. The stats detail information for Campaign (all difficulty levels too!), Co-operative and Competitive. They also cover stats for individual weapons, overall stats for kills, deaths, suicides etc, Ribbons and Medals earned and the number of Trophies you have collected.

This is also what you would see if you selected Profile in the initial Community page.

Invites allows you to see who has applied for your clan, who you have sent invites out to etc, both Personal and as a Clan.

There are also options to Search Clans and Disband Clan which does what it says on the proverbial tin.

Very impressive stuff. You can also go to MyResisistance.net for more options for your clan. I haven’t checked this out yet though.

Throughout all of this, a simple press of the triangle button brings up a list and by pressing R1 you can navigate a list of your Friends, Clan Options and Party Options. You can have up to 30 people in a Party too.

I’m not going to play online yet though. I’m going to play the Campaign mode first, then dabble in some online co-op with my friends before heading off into the competitive arena.

So far so good though. Resistance 2’s community features are a definite improvement over Resistance. I hope they have kept the squads and mute options from Resistance though. Can anybody confirm that you can choose between different squads and the option to mute other players in competitive games?

Tags: Sony, PS3, PLAYSTATION 3, Resistance 2

Rogue, The In-Game Browser

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:17:15 +0000

While I think we’d all be happier if games just alt-tab’d properly 100% of the time, there is now a way to browse the internet while still playing World of Warcraft, and at least a small number of other games. Rogue, the in-game browser, is here. I’ve had a bit of play with it this morning and found it to still be rather buggy. I couldn’t get it to disappear in Portal, which they claim it works okay with, and it seemed to cause a major performance hit in Eve, which they do not support. Worked fine with CoD4. Probably worth waiting a few months and seeing if the browser is still in development before taking the plunge. But then again, it is free…

A small flock of readers mailed us about this, thanks chaps.

Posted by rossignol. | One comment | Donate or subscribe to RPS | Post tags: rogue in game browser
This article is from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. If you're reading it on any other website, they're stealing it from us without permission.

COD: World at War - Nothing more than COD 4.5

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 04:47:25 +0000

MEGamers writes: "At the end of the day, what Treyarch did is take a perfectly blend recipe, add a little salt and pepper and release it as a full game. Call of Duty: World at War feels like it's nothing more than a mod to the acclaimed COD4 title. For now, we can't help but, agree that the flamethrower is the game's only poster child."

Jaffe: GTA IV too arty

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:10:33 +0000

Play-Mag:

"It turns out David Jaffe isn't a fan of GTA IV. In an exclusive interview with Play, the God of War guru said that he had lost interest in the GTA series now it's become "more artistic".

" I was enthused by games from Atari. I loved the old Atari 2600 games like Adventure. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Combat were also great and I the game boxes framed on my wall. Nowadays, I play MGS4, Bad Company, COD4, stuff like that. I've lost interest in GTA now it's become more artistic".

Jaffe also revealed to Play that the main reason he left Sony was because of money disputes. "God of War was a really successful game," he said. "And I felt the reward I recieved from having so much input just wasn't enough"."

Epic explains Gears 2's ranking system

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Culture, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action

Don't understand the Gears of War 2 rank system? Trust us, you are totally not alone. To alleviate some confusion, Gears 2 Community Manager SixOkay (guessing that's a pseudonym) has outlined how the game's ~~inane~~ touched ranking system works. The whole thing uses Microsoft's TrueSkill system, which itself is based on chess' Elo rating system.

The system doesn't just track wins/losses for rank, but also notes what team is favored to win the match. Horde Mode and private matches won't affect rank, but quitting games will lower it. Despite the system lacking the transparency and addictive nature of the CoD4 and Halo systems, at least now we get how it works ... sorta.

[Via X3F]

Epic explains Gears 2's ranking system originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gears 2 is the new king of Xbox Live

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:30:00 +0000

Filed under: News, Gears of War 2

After a much too intense (and admittedly repetitive) weekly brawl between Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, where each fought for Xbox Live supremacy, we are proud to bring you news that a new game has chainsawed its way to the top.

For the week of November 10th, Gears of War 2 has achieved the honor of being called the most played game on Xbox Live. Surprising, eh? Gears 2 kicked CoD4 to the second spot, Halo 3 to the third (how appropriate) and World at War to the fourth. Now we get to keep a weekly watch on the Live most played list to see how long Gears 2 can hold the number one honors. We're guessing four months and three days. What say you?

Gears 2 is the new king of Xbox Live originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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