PC Gamer
mlg winter championship


Ah, it’s that time of year again. The birds are chirping, the squirrels are frolicking, and the best StarCraft II, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and League of Legends players are warming up their clicking fingers for the 2013 MLG Spring Championship.

The clash of champions starts today at 5 pm on the Major League Gaming website (or in Anaheim, CA if you’ve snagged tickets), and lasts until the sun sets on Sunday, June 30. MLG’s streaming the tournament for free, so don’t fret if you didn’t have the time, money, or patience to reach the Anaheim Convention Center.

You might think it’s a little strange seeing StarCraft II on that list considering Blizzard and MLG parted ways just a few days ago, but that seems to only apply to the World Championship Series Blizzard has been touting.

So sit back, relax, and try not to think about how the 2013 MLG Spring Championship is happening during the summer.

Image via majorleaguegaming.com
Call of Duty®: Black Ops II
Blops2 thumb


Is this a poster for the next Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 DLC? Maybe. That's certainly the impression it wants to give you, with its hexagonal map thumbnails and vaguely aggressive sounding name. If it's to be believed, the follow-on map-pack to Revolution and Uprising will be titled Vengeance, and will include four multiplayer maps, one zombie map, and a bonus Mark II Ray Gun.



The poster first surfaced as a German YouTube video containing a series of static images. It teases new maps Detour, Uplink, Rush, and Cove, and zombie map Buried.

Of course, it could just be complete bobbins. Either way, it'll be a long road before Vengeance - or whatever the next pack might be called - makes its way to PC, first having to run the gauntlet of an Xbox 360 exclusivity period.

Thanks, MP1st.
Call of Duty®: Black Ops II
What we want from Call of Duty: Ghosts
Call of Duty®: Black Ops II
Uprising thumb


Not to be outdone by GlobOff's free trial, BlOps 2 is starting a double weapon XP weekend to run alongside the launch of the Uprising map pack. During the event, your weapons will rank up at twice the speed, and... I'll be honest, I was about to mock the idea of weapons gaining XP. But thinking about it, this is almost definitely the sort of thing the military will be looking into.

"In celebration of Black Ops 2: Uprising’s impending launch on the PlayStation 3 and PC this Thursday, everyone will be getting double weapon XP starting Friday, May 17 at 10am PDT," the Black Ops Blog informs us. "The Black Ops 2 double weapon XP weekend will come to an end Monday, May 20."

As for Uprising? Treyarch previously released this trailer that explains what it's all about.

Call of Duty®: Black Ops II
Black Ops 2 - MP


Clearly Activision have been made aware of a small pocket of the population that are yet to have a Strong Opinion on their unstoppable FPS franchise. In which case, there's only one thing for it: deploy a free Steam weekend in the hope of tempting the last remaining vestiges of Call of Duty innocents to invite Black Ops 2 through their bandwidth.

It's good news for veterans, too: this influx of new recruits handily coincides with a Double XP weekend, which will be running from now until Monday.

For any trial players who manage to avoid the XP-hungry knives and bullets of the CoD hardcore long enough to glean some enjoyment from the game, there's also a 33%-off sale to take advantage of, bringing the game down to a still rather-pricey £26.79.

To participate in the free weekend, head here and follow the installation link. To participate in the Double XP weekend, head into the game and just start doing stuff.
Call of Duty®: Black Ops II
Blops Uprising


Maybe I'm too much of a pacifist to understand but, even in the most urgent combat situation, I think I'd abandon my post pretty quickly if a goddamn volcano erupted in the combat zone. It's fortunate for fans of fast-paced FPS multiplayer that the soldiers of Blops 2 are calm professionals/committed psychopaths, because that's exactly the situation you'll face in the Magma map of the upcoming Uprising DLC pack, now dated for a May 16th release on PC.

The pack also includes Encore, set in a deserted London music festival; Vertigo, a futuristic sky scraper with perilous jumps and long drops; and Studio, a Hollywood back lot, featuring medieval castles and Western saloons. Then there's the previously trailered Mob of the Dead, the Alcatraz set zombie map featuring Chazz Palminteri, Joe Pantoliano, Michael Madsen and Ray "was in Revolver yet is still given work for some reason" Liotta.

You can watch the DLC's developers tour the new maps in the video below:

Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 3 (2011)
Ghosts Cover


...Call of Duty: Ghosts. That's according to a mistakenly published (and now removed) listing posted by megaconglomoshop Tesco. The posting, showing the PS3 version of the game, stated a December release, and lists Infinity Ward as the developer. That's as expected, given the annual franchise swapsies between them and Treyarch.

With no official announcement from Activision, further details are light. According to rumours that surfaced last month, Ghosts is a Modern Warfare spin-off set in the future. It's suggested that a major plot event will force characters to use current-day weapons. Beyond that, if I were to wildly speculate:


Someone will be shot.
At some point, you'll be informed that you're "Oscar Mike".
The plot will be jingoistic and morally dubious bobbins, but no-one will care because hey, multiplayer.


I'd also like to nominate the Ghost Knifefish as the official mascot of CoD:Ghosts. Just look at that thing! If the final cutscene doesn't involve the protagonist being incapacitated by ultimate villain Gruffman McBadingtons, groping around in a just-in-reach puddle, pulling out a Knifefish and throwing it skull-first into your opponent, then it'll be a criminally missed opportunity.

While the PS3 listing suggests current-gen consoles, it's more than likely that Activision will be keen to release the game on every conceivable format, including next-gen consoles - hopefully meaning the PC version will get a long overdue graphical bump.

Here's that box art in full. Just pretend the PS3 logo isn't there. And that we still use boxes.



Thanks, OPM.
Call of Duty®: Black Ops II
blackops2_mobofthedead_thumb


If you've ever dreamed of playing a zombie survival shooter set on Alcatraz (and who hasn't!) then this Black Ops 2 DLC is probably going to appeal to you. 'Mob of the Dead' - which comes bundled with the forthcoming 'Uprising' DLC pack - places you in the shoes of one of four mobsters imprisoned on Alcatraz, and as you'll have guessed, you'll be shooting lots of zombies. Hordes of them. The mobsters boast the professional voice acting skills of four Hollywood talents: Ray Liotta, Chazz Palminteri, Joe Pantoliano and Michael Madsen.

The trailer above is promoting the Xbox 360 version, which is dropping this month, but PC gamers have to wait until June to play this. The 'Uprising' DLC also contains four new multiplayer maps in the form of Vertigo, Magma, Encore and Studio.
Call of Duty®: Black Ops II
Bacon Gun


Call of Duty: Black Ops 2's "Micro Items" - cosmetic item microtransactions - are due to be added into the game on April 12th, according to Activision blog One of Swords. The personalisation packs, already available for Xbox 360 players, let you apply a variety of gaudy skins to your weapons. Nine packs will be available, letting you slather your guns with everything from graffiti, to dollar bills, to bacon. Bacon? Surely the grease is just going to clog up the firing mechanism.

Also planned is an Extra Slots Pack, which increases the number of Create-a-Class slots, and "Flags of the World Calling Cards" packs - regional collections of national flags. Each pack currently costs between 80 and 160 Microsoft Nonsense Points. That's about £0.68 to £1.36, although its not yet been announced what that will translate to when run through Activision's currency converter.

Nuketown 2025 is also being released for free on the same date, with Treyarch planning to add the map into standard multiplayer rotation "eventually".

Thanks, Polygon.
Killing Floor
cod
Tripwire President John Gibson holds an M1 Garand inside the team's studio, one of the guns carried by the Americans in Rising Storm.

Earlier this month I visited Killing Floor and Red Orchestra 2 creator Tripwire Interactive to play Rising Storm, the upcoming standalone expansion to RO2 (look for a preview on Monday). After the demo, Tripwire President John Gibson and I got talking about the state of first-person shooters, and Gibson laid out a detailed criticism about the way Call of Duty "takes individual skill out of the equation." Gibson also expressed frustration over how difficult it had been trying to design a mode for Red Orchestra 2 that appealed to Call of Duty players.

PCG: How do you feel about the state of FPSes?

John Gibson, President: I think that single-player shooters are getting better. I think they’re finally coming out from under the shadow of the Hollywood movie, overblown “I’m on a rail” linear shooter. I’m talking about Call of Duty-style shooters. In the late ‘90s, you had the original Deus Ex, which was an RPG-shooter. And those kind of games almost took an eight year hiatus. And I’m so excited to see them coming back with interesting gameplay. Like the Fallout games, even though their shooting mechanics could really use some improvement, just mixing a really cool story, but not a linear story, one that you create yourself. The melding of RPG elements and shooter elements has been great. I’ve seen this reflected in a lot of the reviews, it’s like, “Okay guys, we’re tired of this on-rails experience.”

On the flip side, I’m really discouraged by the current state of multiplayer shooters. I think that, and I hate to mention names, because it sounds like ‘I’m just jealous of their success,’ but I’m really, I feel like Call of Duty has almost ruined a generation of FPS players. I know that’s a bold statement, but I won’t just throw stones without backing it up. When I was developing Action Mode , I got a group of people that I know that are pretty hardcore Call of Duty players. And my goal was to create something that was accessible enough for them to enjoy the game—not turn it into Call of Duty, but try to make something that I thought was casual enough but with the Red Orchestra gameplay style that they would enjoy. And we iterated on it a lot. And just listening to all the niggling, pedantic things that they would complain about, that made them not want to play the game, I just thought, “I give up. Call of Duty has ruined this whole generation of gamers.”

Red Orchestra 2. Gibson says he's "discouraged" by the state of multiplayer shooters on PC.

What did they complain about?

Gibson: It’s the gameplay mechanics that they become used to. The way that players instantly accelerate when they move, they don’t build up speed. “The weapons really don’t have a lot of power” . They’re all very weak. The way they handle... They’re like: “I hate Red Orchestra, I can’t play it.” Well, why? “Because the guy doesn’t move like he does in Call of Duty. Call of Duty has great movement.” Why is it great? “Because it just is, I just like the way it works.” So you don’t like the momentum system in Red Orchestra? “Yeah, it sucks, it’s clunky, it’s terrible.” Well, why? “It’s just because I’m used to this.”

I make it sound like there was a combative conversation, probably because I get a little emotional when I think about it. But it was really a calm discussion of, “What don’t you like?” and “It doesn’t feel like Call of Duty.” Almost every element boiled down to “it doesn’t feel like Call of Duty.” And really, watching some of these guys play... one of the things that Call of Duty does, and it’s smart business, to a degree, is they compress the skill gap. And the way you compress the skill gap as a designer is you add a whole bunch of randomness. A whole bunch of weaponry that doesn’t require any skill to get kills. Random spawns, massive cone fire on your weapons. Lots of devices that can get kills with zero skill at all, and you know, it’s kind of smart to compress your skill gap to a degree. You don’t want the elite players to destroy the new players so bad that new players can never get into the game and enjoy it. I’m looking at you, Dota. Sorry.

"If there’s no fear, there’s no tension, the victory is shallow. We want there to be some fear."

But the skill gap is so compressed, that it’s like a slot machine. You might as well just sit down at a slot machine and have a thing that pops up an says “I got a kill!” They’ve taken individual skill out of the equation so much. So you see these guys—I see it all the time, they come in to play Red Orchestra, and they’re like “This game’s just too hardcore. I’m awesome at Call of Duty, so there’s something wrong with your game. Because I’m not successful at playing this game, so it must suck. I’m not the problem, it’s your game.” And sometimes as designers, it is our game. Sometimes we screw up, sometimes we design something that’s not accesible enough, they can’t figure it out, we didn’t give them enough information to figure out where to go... but more often than not, it’s because Call of Duty compressed their skill gap so much that these guys never needed to get good at a shooter. They never needed to get good at their twitch skills with a mouse.

Players like Elliot and I, back in the Quake and Unreal days, you know, we had to get good at aiming. These guys don’t have to anymore. The skill gap is so compressed that like, “The game makes me feel that I’m awesome.” These guys, when I actually watch them play, they’re actually very poor FPS players. And I don’t think it’s because they’re incapable of getting good, I think it’s because they never had to get good. They get enough kills in Call of Duty to feel like they’re awesome, but they never really had to develop their FPS skills beyond that.

And it’s a shame because when you do that, when you create a shooter like that, you’re very limited on the amount of depth that you can give the game. It’s all gotta be very surface level, like I’m sitting there eating cotton candy and I never get any meat and potatoes. And it’s frustrating for me as a designer to see players come in and they’re literally like “In Call of Duty it takes 0.15 seconds to go into ironsights. In RO2 it takes 0.17 seconds to go into ironsights. I hate this.”

Gibson fires an MP40 during an audio recording session for Red Orchestra 2 in the Nevada desert. Gibson is frustrated by the way that Call of Duty has "taken individual skill out of the equation" for many modern FPS players.

Do you think it’s a matter of patience? Have these players lost their sense of patience?

Gibson:I think that’s part of it. The game is kind of spoonfeeding them, and making them feel great when they’re not. And like I said, that’s smart business, and I don’t blame Infinity Ward for wanting to do that. They’re selling millions of games and they have lots of people enjoying it, but I think there’s a depth of enjoyment there that a lot of these players are missing out on. And when you try to get them to branch out, their knee-jerk reaction is “The training wheels have come off, I’m gonna fall!” And I hate to see that.

It’s this weird dichotomy between, you know, single-player is getting much more depth, and players are just eating it up. They’re loving that. They’re buying these FPS-RPG single-player games like crazy. But multiplayer, “Ooh, don’t take my training wheels off.” I hate that. So we’re trying... we’re giving a little bit of training wheels, but we’re going to take them off occasionally in the shooters that we’re making, and hopefully we’ll get some of those people to branch out. I think for me though, I wouldn’t say I’ve completely given up on all of those players, but I’m not gonna try to make a game that tries to be Call of Duty at the expense of having fun gameplay that actually has depth.

Elliot Cannon, Rising Storm Lead Designer: Or creating a game that feels like you might be in a war, and you might die?

"One of the things that Call of Duty does, and it’s smart business, to a degree, is they compress the skill gap."

Gibson: Yeah. That’s one of the things that we do in our games, and it’s fear. When you play... I know there are modes in Left 4 Dead that are more hardcore, but when you play Left 4 Dead, and I’m really friends with Valve, so I hope they don’t get mad at me, but you do get spikes of adrenaline. But eventually that wears off because you figure out, well, as long as we stick together we’re never gonna die. In Killing Floor, when the Fleshpound shows up, you could be screwed. Half your team is probably gonna die. Your heart rate goes up, you’re freaking out, like “I can actually lose this shooter.” And if there’s no fear, there’s no tension, the victory is shallow. We want there to be some fear.

What do you consider your tools for expressing fear?

Gibson: Vulnerability is a big part of it, lethality. The ability to lose. There has to be... it’s kind of like, you know, if you’re gambling. If you go to the penny slots, you’re like, “Okay, yeah, whatever, I lost a penny.” But you go to the Roulette table, you throw down a thousand bucks, and you spin the wheel—you’re nervous at that point.

So, having the players have to take risks. Risk versus reward. They risk more, but the reward is greater. There’s more depth, there’s a bit more of a learning curve, but when you get that kill at long range with that bolt-action rifle, while the artillery’s flying around your head, and mortar shells are falling and guys are Banzai-charging you in the face, and your guy’s shaking, but you still kill him anyway. That’s an experience. You had some risk there, but you got a bigger reward. The kill wasn’t just handed to you. It wasn’t like “I called in the helicopter and it flew into the level and mowed down half the enemy team while I wasn’t even doing anything.”

Check back on Monday for an exclusive hands-on with Rising Storm.
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