Apparently Infinity Ward is in quite a bit of trouble.

Vince Zampella and Jason West, the creative heads behind the Modern Warfare series were fired recently. Activision cites its reason as insubordination, due to the fact that Infinity Ward has had yet to receive royalties for Modern Warfare 2 and may have held meetings with other game publishers; a breach of their contract.

One of the things that has always bothered me is the fact that ever since Activision began pumping out quick CoD sequels there has been a distant stink to the series. Each of Infinity Ward’s games were exceptional, but after its heels came the Treyarch interpretations that seemed…stale. It always makes me angry when people refer to World at War as Call of Duty 5. It’s multiplayer is a WWII interpretation of the system Infinity Ward established with Modern Warfare, only instead of shooting with M16A4s you’re using Springfields.

The same people that claim it is Call of Duty 5 are from the same crop as the gamers who claim that Rock Band “copied” Guitar Hero. They are immensely ignorant to overall background of the things they play. I’m not asking you to lurk on Wikipedia, I just wish that you gather some intel before you voice an uneducated opinion like that.

In all aspects, I must dreadfully speculate that the Call of Duty series is dead. What will be shoveled into our faces will be pieces of what was once a great work. It will become a meat puppet, a husk marionette whose strings are pulled by fools who only desire money and have no passion for the work that they create.

When you remove the heart from something, Activision, don’t expect it to operate the same way that it did before. And don’t expect that fans won’t notice the gaping hole you left behind. I hope that Infinity Ward can pull it together, join up with someone else, and bury your mediocre rehashes under the superior might of a Work of Passion.

Locke

UPDATE: Vengeance is a swift angel! JUSTICE!

This should have been a Valentine’s Day post.

I’m starting to realize that the plot in most games today spend a lot of time focusing on impending doom, or an antagonist of incredible power that must be stopped. This is why games like Bioshock 2 are a breath of fresh air.

The first thing that struck me in my first trip to Rapture was the Father-Daughter relationship shared by the Big Daddies and Little Sisters. It wasn’t a creepy relationship at all. The doting father would protect this little one as it set about its morbid mission; collecting Adam. It would allow you close to the sister, but as soon as you got to a range where you could harm her, he steps in and gives you a warning. He is even lovingly pulled by the hand by the little sister. Hearing her cries whenever I defeated a Big Daddy often made me kind of guilty, despite her being brainwashed into being this monster.

Bioshock 2 places you into the shoes of the first Big Daddy searching for his Little Sister. The kind of fatherly devotion that was a curiosity in the first game is now placed center stage in the sequel. Its an interesting take. The last time I saw a game that had that kind of love portrayed was in Silent Hill. What a father would go through to reunite with his child is endearing, something that many older gamers can associate and appreciate.

There are many times when this theme of love in the center appeared in games like Ico. Final Fantasy 8 sets this theme in very high regard. Not only does love transcend death, it transcends the borders of reality itself. The game in itself begins with a promise of love that you don’t recognize as a relevant until the fourth disk of the game. The love in friendship appears in Kingdom Hearts and other games of the sort, mostly JRPGs.

What do you guys think? Do you think that we should have more of these themes in games? Or should we try to focus on different unexplored topics?

-Locke

With the advent of Penny-Arcade’s epic On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness, Episodic gaming has exploded onto the scene. I don’t mean that this one game caused all of it, that credit probably goes to Sam and Max, but it has been one of the few games to push it into the limelight. Tales of Monkey Island was the same, it brought snippets of gameplay to those who might otherwise not even bother. Five dollars is a small price to pay for a game to see if you like it or not.

Sonic 4 is the newest of games to be branched into this kind of marketing. Although it seems like a ploy for Sega to make us pay for the same thing four or five times, it ends up great for us because this time it seems that Sega has finally lived up to their word. Fanboys however have already begun screaming heresy at the game, even thought it is turning out to be exactly what they wanted.

I personally loved all the sonic games to some extent, even the 3D ones which I will admit were poor examples of the franchise. There were moments of win glimmering in the dust, however, that made the games fun and memorable to me. Yes they had bad cameras. Yes they introduced us to some annoying characters. Yes these games are plagued with annoying bugs. But when it boils down to it, Sonic Adventure, and every other game after that was fun for me.

Episodic gaming gives us the chance to try before we buy. I don’t think that someone out there will be conned into buying two episodes of one series only to be foiled and hate the third. There will be no raging fanboy screaming about how Episode 3 ruined the game. It’s all going to be the same quality if not better through-out the game. People will be able to complain about Episode One and give time for the developers to address these issues and improve it by Episode 2 or 3 without having to wait two or three years. I’m looking at you Valve.

So apparently the Australian Classification Board website was vandalized, as well as tons of affiliated websites and emails maimed by a group protesting a new censorship filter going up at a future date.

The censor is the end of a very long chain of bans that Australia has put up in the media. Video Games most of all have been modified so as not to “offend” the Australian public, most notably game cover art. Left 4 Dead’s Australian release was one of the most heavily modified gaming experiences. Zombies don’t bleed much, they never lose limbs, don’t catch on fire, and disappear as soon as they are killed. Does this sound fun to you?

The game has been censored in hopes to lower the amount of violence shown to the public, but ironically this game feels less about killing zombies and more about…shooting people. Hundreds of people. Many Australian gamers must try and get foreign copies of the game to get the real deal, and its kind of sad. I’m glad that a few good soldiers are fighting the good fight so that grown ADULTS can buy ADULT games.

What do you guys think about all this? Should Australia ease up on the game modifications? Does Australia have a good idea in keeping these games more tame?

I just recently bought Borderlands for the 360, and I must say that I’ve been quite taken with the game. It captures many of the things I like in RPGs and many of the things I like in FPS games. Unfortunately it also comes with the flaws I hate in both genres. With first person shooters, the fun is in the guns and the fights. The guns are solid, I love how many different guns there are. It would have been possible to just make a bunch of skins for each gun and add different colors to the shots but they went all out to make each gun unique. The unfortunate circumstance of this is that you need a party of players for the better loot to appear. Many players forget the fact that there are other people playing and each of them are searching for their gun upgrades. They also forget that there is a kick option should they get too greedy.

Diablo had a similar feel to it. If you saw a piece of equipment that you really wanted, you could let the rest of the party know, and hopefully they would allow you to have it. Unfortunately, this is not so in Borderlands. Many players will allow everyone in the party to die in order to come in, sweep the loot, and leave the game. Its infuriating to be sure. WoW has the whole Need/Greed thing going on to prevent this, and even if someone takes all the instance items, theres always a good chance that theres a equal or better item on the auction house. Borderlands doesn’t have that. They have shops that rotate their inventory, and to be honest, their weapons upgrades aren’t as great as some of the stuff you find out fighting. One great thing about Borderlands though, is if you get in a beef with someone, you can always have a duel with them, anytime, anywhere. You can prove to them that they suck by overwhelming their superior firepower with raw SKILL.

-Locke