Heya, Call of Duty, buddy, how are you doing? Breakups are hard, aren’t they? Ex-friends Respawn are off doing their own thing and that big bully Battlefield‘s still swanning about, making your life difficult. You wanna look cool and hip, so at Gamescom yesterday you showed off your hottest new clothes, spruced up versions of the last-season garbage those losers are wearing. Double-jumps and cloaking, maps that modify themselves over time – you’ve taken the best of them and mixed it in with your own feel. Plus, for some reason, Unreal Tournament dodging. That one’s a bit off the wall.

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Finally! A new Call of Duty game! What has it been? Five years? Ten years? One whole minute? Never mind the agonizing wait. All that matters now is this perfect moment, this sweet embrace. Activision were planning to take the wraps off Call of Duty: Ominous, Obvious, Or Utterly Meaningless Subtitle (aka, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare) this weekend, but a couple of leaks have prompted them to offer a few early details. Foremost, this one is being developed by series first-timer Sledgehammer as part of Activision’s plan to give each series entry a three year development cycle. Second, it’s about Private Military Companies (PMCs) deciding to STOP TAKING ORDERS and START TAKING OVER and there’s a brief SHOCK-YOU-MENTARY below. Third, there’s also now a trailer and this time the villain is Kevin Spacey.

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Call of Duty has long shared development duties between multiple studios. Most obviously, it’s operated under a two-year schedule, with series creators’ Infinity Ward and Treyarch taking it in turns to work out which national monuments to make fall over. You might be less aware of the other studios who pitch in each year, including Raven Software, Nerversoft and Sledgehammer Games.

As reported by IGN, an Activision investor call mentioned that Sledgehammer are now working on a Call of Duty all of their own. That was already known, but it makes it official that Call of Duty is switching to a three-year development cycle. … [visit site to read more]

Here’s the thing. The Call Of Duty modern campaigns really don’t need to be dreadful. I think, after so many ugly, stupid attempts, there’s a perception that it’s just the way it is, the limits of the genre, the best you can hope for. And this simply isn’t true. Sadly it isn’t the case for the latest release, and I think I know why. There’s a conflict that’s gone missing, and they need to get it back.>

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If you haven’t read my thoughts on the first three hours of Call Of Duty: Ghosts, it’s worth looking through those first. But now the single player campaign is finished, here’s wot I think:>

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Call of Duty: Black Ops. CODBLOPS. BLOPS. COD. Cod. Heh, that’s a fish.

This is the exact> process every human brain goes through upon trying to create an acronym for Activision’s record-obliterating mega-blockbuster, so it’s only natural that someone would eventually convert that lush, meaningful imagery back into a game. Thus, I bring you Cod of Duty. The basic premise? Evil fish terrorists are planning… something. It involves guns. And barrels. And being in barrels. Yes, this is a game in which you literally shoot fish in a barrel. The commentary, it is palpable. CODPALPS. Or something. I don’t know. Join me for some crunchy, lightly fish-flavored discussion after the break.

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Recently, I got the chance to play a few matches of upcoming browser-based F2P multiplayer shooter Offensive Combat, and all told, I had a nice enough time. I ran, I jumped, I beat a man to death with a hunk of ham. Everything – a basic array of weapons, modes, experience unlocks, etc – functioned pretty much exactly as it was supposed to. Problem is, that’s all> it did. Even the game’s “zany” sense of humor came across as relentlessly calculated, seeking refuge in the evergreen arms of “pwning” (an actual game mechanic in which you dance over an opponent’s body for extra points), mash-ups of tried-and-true game settings, and pop culture references. U4iA CEO and former Call of Duty co-founder Dusty Welch, meanwhile, has no qualms with admitting that his latest project is steeped in business trends and careful analysis first and foremost. But he also adamantly contends that this style of game development doesn’t compromise creativity.

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My weekend project. Hooray for transcription!

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…)

Call of Duty 9: Black Ops 2: Modern Warfare 4 was rumoured to exist but if you’re anything like me, you’ll be flabbergasted to hear that the series is indeed continuing and the website for the game is now live, although the trailer that takes centre stage doesn’t work just yet. It’s apparently due to be premiered (red carpet?) this evening during the NBA Playoffs. The website does reveal that the game takes place in the near future, during a 21st century cold war. I bet it’s a cold war that involves surfing on top of a stealth fighter while shooting down a space shuttle full of nukes. November 13th is when the CoD blops once more. One more pic below.

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