Another year, another Call of Duty. So Jesus told Moses, and so Moses told Gandalf, and so we all now know it. The obvious money’s been on this year’s slice of shooting man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man after man being a new entry in the Modern Warfare series, but UK supermarket Tesco briefly put up a packshot for something called Call of Duty: Ghosts earlier today. It’s gone now, but not before I assembled the following high-res pic out of its weird image zoom thing.

(That sounds like it’s a setup for a trick. It isn’t, promise). (more…)

I do hear mutterings from some of my similarly jaded contemporaries that, actually, Black Ops 2 doesn’t look as hateful as the last COD, Modern Warfare 3. Given I did find CODBLOPS 1′s singleplayer to be comfortably the least obnoxious of the post-COD4 games, I’m inclined to believe them, no matter how sure I am that this is a not a game I’ll ever care about. Good to hear that the PC version appears to be doing the work, though – devs Treyarch have revealed that they’ve update the engine to include DirectX11 support and extra shinies, as well as “more “quality vs performance” options than ever before”. The cost of this is no more Windows XP support, which will be bad news for the approximate 14% of Steam users who doggedly remain with Microsoft’s most deathless OS. Ditching XP support is not at all uncommon for new games these days, but – good or ill – I suppose it should be taken as a sign of the times when essentially the biggest game in the world decides that OS’s time has come and gone. (more…)

Amazingly, ‘Call of Duty Online’ didn’t actually exist before now. They’re surely the most inevitable word-sequence in the world, after all. Even so, “free to play micro transaction first person action game” CODO isn’t for us. It’s one of those bally China-only games that exist to cater towards a community that is even more steeped in internetiness than Western gamers are, and more to the point is also steeped in rampant piracy. A multiplayer shooter that only exists online is, then, a logical step towards capturing the sprinting money-goliath that is China’s immense population. I guess it’s not impossible it’ll walk this way eventually, though for now I believe CoD: Elite is the spearhead of Activision’s Western fortune-hunting interests. (more…)

While knee-jerk analysts (the same ones who incorrectly declared Facebook gaming was a gold rush for all and sundry) at micro-conferences attended only by a minute echo chamber fragment of the games industry ritually declare that free to play is the only possible future of videogames, any number of other business models arrive, persist and grow. Free to play will expand, of that I have no doubt, but that’s not going to prevent a plurality of ways to acquire games. Bundles and crowdsourcing are the two most notable of the last year, while Sony’s shock purchase of Gaikai for $380m today suggests we’re about to see a whole lot more cloud-streamed (i.e. rented) gaming doing the mainstream rounds. Another latter-day content-flogging technique is subscriptions for multiplayer games – not MMOs, but the ‘games as service’ mentality that sees new content regularly generated for popular titles. (more…)

It’s 1:06 AM in the UK. Why in the sacred name of Galvatron aren’t I in bed yet? Why am I posting the trailer for Black Ops 2 instead? These and more secrets will be revealed in Call of Meer’s Bedtime: Groggy Morning 2 tomorrow. In the meantime, just watch the damn trailer, which has all manner of future death-machines and a level of outright absurdity that even my great cynicism didn’t predict, and let me go brush my teeth. YES AMERICANS, BRITISH PEOPLE DO TAKE CARE OF THEIR TEETH, ACTUALLY.> (more…)

My digi-sighing about the initial marketing tease for the latest Call of Dudebro reminds me of a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (Somerset, at least) when I was still conjuring genuine excitement about what a new CoD might entail. Before they were cranked out anually, when the series’ creators still had full creative control, when Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s singleplayer turned out to be an ambitious, spectacular and occasionally surprising epic and not an unsmiling, absurdist, arrogant snack alongside DLC-crazed multiplayer. When the series was relaxed and playful enough to include an unlockable ragtime mode. (more…)

WELCOME again to CALL OF DUTY CENTRAL! Yeeeeehaaaaw! As you know RPS is the number one CALL OF DUTY fansite on the internet, because CALL OF DUTY is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Today for you guys we have a TIMER counting down to when the world will discover the name of the next amazing CALL OF DUTY game and hopefully some surprises like what guns are in it. If I know CALL OF DUTY like I know CALL OF DUTY, the next game is going to be a REVOLUTION and UNLIKE ANYTHING WE’VE EVER SEEN BEFORE. EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it’s going to be so viscerally visceral!

Oh man I just can’t wait forever until MAY 1 for this timer to finish and tell me that the next game is Black Ops 2. Whoops I guess I shouldn’t say that like it’s a fact haha. In the meantime I’m going to check the COD site EVERY SECOND to see if another picture has been unlocked. Only one has so far, and it’s AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!! (more…)

I’m still waiting for per-platform breakdowns that will confirm the PC version of Skyrim is as number oney as the all-formats result is, but this we do know: Skyrim is officially the number one videogame in the Christmas UK chart, outselling every other game over the last seven days. That means eight years of Activision and EA Chrimbo-list dominance comes to end in one fell, dragon-based swoop. (more…)

Last Wednesday Kotaku republished (with permission, of course) my review of Modern Warfare 3′s single player campaign. A review in which I described it as an “un-game with a core of nastiness”. This caught the attention of Kill Screen’s Brendan Keogh, who wrote a riposte to my piece on the Australian K, in which he called me, in the nicest possible way, an “un-player”, and detailed why he believed my article was incorrect. He perhaps slightly misunderstood, so here is my reply.>

Dear Brendan,

Indeed, I don’t think we’ve talked, but I’m sure you’re super-lovely. High five! Also, I agree that I’m endlessly awesome! But let’s not get distracted. To the matter in hand. I’m not sure you really noticed what I wrote in my review, and thus have missed why I am criticising Modern Warfare 3. Let me explain again exactly what is wrong with the un-game.

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Yes, this is a touch late. As you’ll know, Activision aren’t really ones for providing review code ahead of launch to the likes of us, and then by the time we had it to play, Skyrim was out. You’ll understand. But I’ve persisted, and now finished the campaign for the third of Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare games, and thus shall tell you wot I think.>

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