Maybe you're sick of all the Harlem Shake videos (they almost never have the real Harlem Shake, dang it!) This take on the dance by SanchoWest knows your pain, knows it well enough to take matters into its own hands and destroy the jerks that are running the meme into the ground.
Boom. Gone. If only it were that easy!
Harlem Shake: Black Ops 2 HARDEN EDITION! [SanchoWest ]
Even the massive money-making game publisher Activision lays off people from time to time, as the company confirmed today that they've cut about 30 jobs from their global work force. Kotaku first heard that the cuts were affecting Treyarch, the studio behind Call of Duty: Black Ops II, but a spokesperson for Activision said that a good number of the cuts were from outside of Treyarch, from the parts of the company involved with licensed games.
Here's the company's statement:
"Like any successful business, Activision Publishing consistently works to align its costs with its revenues—this is an ongoing process. In 2013, we expect to release fewer games based on license properties and as a result are realigning our structure to better reflect the market opportunities and our slate. Approximately, 30 full-time employees have been impacted globally, which represents approximately one half of one percent of Activision Blizzard's employee population. We are offering those employees who are impacted outplacement counseling services."
Fewer licensed games?
Activision's licensed games line-up has included annual or semi-annual entries in the James Bond, Transformers, Cabela (hunting) and Spider-Man. The company is adding a Walking Dead game and a Deadpool game to its roster this year and is also making a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They also put a Family Guy game out last year. So how does Activision wind up with fewer licensed games this year? It seems that some of those licenses will be taking a rest. The smart money is on Bond being done. Could there be more? Activision's not talking about that status of any of its licenses, James Bond or otherwise.
As for the cuts at Treyarch that are part of those 30-or-so layoffs, Activision notes that: "Now that we have launched Black Op II, we are taking a minimal reduction in staff to better align our development talent against the needs of DLC development. The release of the DLC will not be impacted by this move."
Barring timed underwater escort missions, snow levels, with all their slippery ice and falling rocks (not to mention the fog), are probably the deadliest.
Yet it's easy to find enjoyable—or at least memorable—ones, even if we disregard games where the entire setting is snowy (We're looking at you, Skyrim).
source: Halo Wiki
source: Mario Wiki
source: glennplant's LP
source: Sonic Wiki
source: CoD Wiki
source: MasterLL's LP
source: cloudfangLP
source: WoWWiki
source: official screenshots
source: Metroid Wiki
In your opinion, which are the most amazing snow levels? Show us with visual support in the comments.
Whether it's the news, television or the movies, Arabs have become synonymously linked with the word "terrorist." And thanks to video games, we've become the target—literally.
Both my job and my personal experience give me a unique perspective on the situation. I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and moved to the Beirut, Lebanon about 8 years ago. I've been playing games for as long as I can remember and competing in tournaments for the last 3-4 years. Now I work for the leading gaming community in the Middle East, At7addak.com.
The thing is, we're not alone as targets: the Russians, Chinese, Vietnamese and Germans all join us, but Arabs have been in the limelight for the last few years.
In the limelight, but not as the heroes. We've all played as the U.S or any other paramilitary force and seen a game's story try to humanize these characters with catchy nicknames or background histories. Think Ghost or Soap from Modern Warfare 2. This where the differences begin to take place. Americans will relate to the hero defending his country from the terrorists threatening your freedom. As an Arab, you're "relating" to the guy who is going to destroy your city....and that's all.
Let me describe a typical scene. Suddenly, an emotionally-detached bearded A.I armed with an AK-47, raggedy clothes and bare feet comes running out of nowhere and stands mindlessly still in the middle of the courtyard, shooting and yelling in "Arabic." In most modern games like Call of Duty or Battlefield, the Arabic is actually Arabic. On the other hand, some games don't even try. Check out the this image from Splinter Cell: Conviction.
The street sign on the right is actually written in proper Arabic. The sign on the left, however, is just a bunch of squiggly lines. I can't understand why only one sign got the proper treatment.
Other games use proper Arabic but space each letter apart like a separate word. Call of Duty correctly uses Arabic in the game's audio but somehow messes up the written text. Arabic is read from right to left and almost all of the letters connect. For some odd reason, Infinity Ward decided to arrange the letters from left to right which I'm assuming caused the letters to space out.
Developers just don't seem to go that extra mile for the enemy like they will for the heroes or even the guns in their games. Sure, details like getting the Arabic language right might only actually benefit Arab players. Maybe that's why it's not a priority.
We're never actually properly introduced to the enemy, and so his appearance and overall character portray the stereotypical substitutes. Like in Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The brown and dusty gown, dark skin, thick beard, AK-47 and bare feet all come into play.
Obviously, this isn't really the case. We've got our stoners, jocks, rockers, preppies—just like anywhere else. But we don't get to see anything but the stereotypes, and perhaps it has to do with the conflict in the Middle East.
Even so, I notice small things. It's not uncommon to see the A.I. in shooters do stupid things like stand in the middle of the fight, fire blindly, refuse to run away from grenades, and not take cover just long enough for the player to deliver justice in the form of a lead bullet—like in the video to the left. It's strange for me to watch something like this. Granted, crappy AI in first person shooters isn't anything new. But when we're talking about terrorists that somehow run the world's most dangerous organization who seem oblivious to modern combat strategies, it's a littler harder to swallow.
And of course, we never ever hear about an Arab's story in these games, nor their families or background. If we did, that would actually humanize them—and that probably wouldn't be as fun. The less you can relate to guy at the other end of your rifle, the easier it is to shoot his head clean off.
These dissimilarities—including the poor Arabic I mentioned earlier—add to the disconnect between me and my digital counterpart. And they reinforce stereotypes about Arabs.
How does that personally make me feel? Indifferent, which is unsettling. If I were to theorize, all the negative portrayals in media have just numbed me out. The fact that I've grown so accustomed to the typical stereotypes like the beard and brown gown (whether it's a movie, book, TV show or video game) worries me.
I've got friends who voice their concern, and refuse to play certain titles like Medal of Honor: Warfighter and Call of Duty because of the stereotypes. I think they feel like we have little or no control of how we are perceived in the real world, that it's out of our hands. Think about it, though: In fictional worlds in video games, somebody scripts these stereotypes and xenophobic for the pure sake of entertainment. I think that makes it even worse.
Take Medal of Honor: Warfighter for example: a game whose slogan is "We hunt terror." The game was actually sold in the Middle East—stacked front and center at retailers on release date. It sold well, even. My guess is that most people have grown numb to the negative portrayals too, or they just don't care. Despite the controversy, military shooters are always resting on top of the charts in the Middle East.
Normally, some games get banned and don't make it across the pond. In Dubai for example, the censorship bureau plays every game before it hits the store and decides whether or not it can be sold. They tend to ban games that deal with controversial religious issues, excessive sexually explicit scenes to name a few—especially in games like, say, Saints Row The Third. It was probably the big purple dildo.
Despite the efforts, these banned games still make it to the grey market, where release dates are broken and you don't have to wait as long for your favorite titles—including banned ones. Gamers know exactly where to find banned games, though a downside of the grey market is that pre-order bonus content and DLC's are tough to come by.
It's not all bad. In the past year we've seen some big steps forward in localization. For the first time we saw titles dubbed fully in Arabic, like Need For Speed: Most Wanted and Epic Mickey 2. Although I personally still chose to play to play them in English, the mere fact that I can switch it back to Arabic is more than enough. Xbox Live has now officially recognized a few of the countries in the Middle East. Hideo Kojima has visited Dubai and Ubisoft now has an Abu Dhabi branch. It's progress. All I can hope for is a future with games that shine us in a better light.
I don't expect our portrayals in certain games to get better anytime soon though. As long as it's happening in the real world, Arabs can expect similar treatment in shooters. There is always a target, I guess it's just our turn now.
Hussein is 22 years old. He was born in Detroit, Michigan and he lives in Beirut, Lebanon. He is currently the eSports & Community Director at At7addak.com.
Call of Duty. Or, CoD. It's an abbreviation so ubiquitous it's kind of weird that nobody thought to do this sooner.
Indie dev Ryan Evans has made Cod of Duty, a short, simple game where you... shoot fish. You know. Cod. They're even (mostly) in a barrel, just to complete the whole Call of Duty experience.
Download it below on PC, Mac and Linux.
CoD of Duty: The Premier First Person Shooting Fish in a Barrel Simulator [Ryan Makes Stuff, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
This emblem tutorial brings together two dewchuggin' classics—football and Call of Duty, enough to make any bro-gamer stand up straight and armpit fart Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA.
The gang at FPSGeneral put together this tutorial if you want tomorrow's Super Bowl combatants in today's Call of Duty. The 49ers logo lacks the stylized, serifed SF, but it's still plainly recognizable. The Ravens emblem is an alternate logo, not the helmet decal. I've never been any good at layer-editing, so all of this gets an ooo-rah and a beer belch from me.
Show Your Pride With Our Super Bowl XLVII Black Ops 2 Emblem Tutorial [FPSGeneral]
Perk-a-Cola—soda that grants you a much-needed perk—is a life-saver in zombie rounds of Call of Duty multiplayer. It's also not a real drink, so a pair of fans set about changing that.
Redditor Kjkemme and their zombie-handed sister have recreated all the sodas found in the game, right down to the nutrition labels.
Call of Duty Perk-a-Colas [Reddit]
Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan (via The Local) is reporting that over the weekend, a group of kids playing Call of Duty got a little more than they bargained for when they got all excited about the game.
When one of the teenagers was killed in a round, he jokingly fell to the ground and started screaming "HELP HELP HELP". Passers-by heard his screams, though, and thinking they were real called emergency services, who sent a police unit to the house.
Opening the front door to greet them, the kids were yelled at to put their hands on their heads, before the cops ordered them outside and had them lie down on the ground.
The kids were soon able to explain what had happened, though, after which they were allowed to go back inside and keep playing. Presumably a bit more sensibly this time.
Police raid flat to find war game-playing teens [The Local]
Few maps evoke as much of a reaction as Nuketown does. Some love it, some hate it, and some—like me—can't decide between these extremes.
The Gameological Society's Ryan Smith wrote a fascinating writeup on the divisive Nuketown, which delves into its history and explores the virtues and shortcomings of the map.
As some of you know, Nuketown is a small, compact map that recreates a slice of suburbia in Call of Duty. Overtly, the mannequin-populated map pulls from American history—a time when the Army wanted to test out how a typical town would stand against a nuclear explosion. (Not very well, it turns out.)
Though obviously based on a nuclear test town—it's in the name!—I didn't know that it was based on the infamous refrigerator scene in 2008's Indiana Jones until I read the writeup on Gamelogical. Specifically, it's the scene in the movie where Indy survives a nuclear blast on a test site by taking refuge in a fridge.
There's something eerie about Nuketown and its picture-perfect depiction of the American atomic family....and yet, something very appropriate about its existence as a multiplayer map on a popular shooter. It's like we've simply accepted that that reality, that conception of the American dream, is so unreal that it feels fitting as a campy stage used for our entertainment.
At the same time, we're complicit in something when we idolize the map. It's like we can't let go of this era, like there is still something about this time that haunts us. The fact that Black Ops II presents a technologically updated Nuketown supports this idea: we're dragging that past with us, even to the future. Granted, a more meaningful exploration of that all of this would probably be found on the Fallout games.
Regardless, it's clear that the mere image of Nuketown carries baggage and that alone makes a good case for why it's such a popular map.
...so far, all conceptual mumbo jumbo. This is a place we play in, so surely, there's something to be said about that too, yes?
Gameological poses that Nuketown is both "fairest battlegrounds in series history" and yet it's a place that can "devolve into chaos at times." I'm not sure both of these can be true at once, unless we're postulating that most Call of Duty maps are awful and broken.
If nothing else, the small map size allows the Call of Duty signature twitch style play to shine—it's almost entirely close-combat that requires fast reflexes. But that also means we're constantly experiencing the highs and lows of the Call of Duty experience. Shortly after a match starts, because of the lack of downtime, you'll feel either empowerment or rage depending on how you perform.
But ultimately, as Gameological puts it, most of that is all for naught:
The sadistic joke of Nuketown comes at the end of each match, when a bomb drops and obliterates everything in sight, making all of the desperate head-shooting and flag-capturing seem a bit futile. But that's all forgotten seconds later when the scoreboard pops up and the game asks you to vote once again for a new battlefield. Ninety percent of the time, the crowd votes for yet another skirmish on Treyarch's lark of death.
Damn.
Call Of Duty: Black Ops-"Nuketown" [Gameological]
Or, as they're now called, the K9 unit. Regardless of what you call them, dogs are no laughing matter in Call of Duty. As a scorestreak, they'll mess your shit up. But! There is a way to survive them. It involves an assault shield though, which not everyone carries around—here is a demonstration by YouTube user defendthehouse.
Previously you could kill dogs by breaking their necks if you got the timing down right. I'm not sure if that's an option anymore. Regardless, if you have an assault shield, dog attacks aren't something you need to worry about. When you have an assault shield, you can just marvel at how cute the dogs are instead.
It might just be this idyllic music playing in the background complimenting the snarling so well that's making me say that, though.
How to Survive a K9 Unit Attack! [defendthehouse]