During the 1980s, Oliver North rocketed into the national spotlight with the Iran-Contra controversy. Decades later, North is still in the national spotlight, but this time it's not for selling arms for U.S. hostages. It's for selling a video game.
In the clips, North explained why black ops needs high-tech devices and how new tech is changing black ops. Much of the clips show clips of weaponry edited with interview footage. It's all a rather fear mongering affair.
According to North, a retired Marine, "I don't think the average American grasps how violent war is about to become." The clips play on the culture of fear with North stoking those flames. North talked about his "nightmare scenario" in which hackers are able to control U.S. weapon systems, and when North said "the enemy can be anyone", an image of an Anonymous Guy Fawkes mask flashed on the screen.
In the years following the Iran-Contra Affair, North became a popular political commentator and a best-selling author. During the scandal, however, North was accused of not only selling arms to help free U.S. hostages, but also funding anti-communists Contras in Nicaragua. There were also allegations of drug trafficking. North was later convicted for his role in the arms-for-hostages scandal, but later cleared on appeal. And now Oliver North is selling Call of Duty.
The multi-part documentary also features writer P.W. Singer, who penned Wired for War. The books asks what happens when sci-fi becomes a reality on the battlefield. Watch it in the above gallery.
During the 1980s, Oliver North rocketed into the national spotlight with the Iran-Contra controversy. Decades later, North is still in the national spotlight, but this time it's not for selling arms for U.S. hostages. It's for selling a video game.
In the clips, North explained why black ops needs high-tech devices and how new tech is changing black ops. Much of the clips show clips of weaponry edited with interview footage. It's all a rather fear mongering affair.
According to North, a retired Marine, "I don't think the average American grasps how violent war is about to become." The clips play on the culture of fear with North stoking those flames. North talked about his "nightmare scenario" in which hackers are able to control U.S. weapon systems, and when North said "the enemy can be anyone", an image of an Anonymous Guy Fawkes mask flashed on the screen.
In the years following the Iran-Contra Affair, North became a popular political commentator and a best-selling author. During the scandal, however, North was accused of not only selling arms to help free U.S. hostages, but also funding anti-communists Contras in Nicaragua. There were also allegations of drug trafficking. North was later convicted for his role in the arms-for-hostages scandal, but later cleared on appeal. And now Oliver North is selling Call of Duty.
The multi-part documentary also features writer P.W. Singer, who penned Wired for War. The books asks what happens when sci-fi becomes a reality on the battlefield. Watch it in the above gallery.
We've looked at Sega's pioneering role in the world of 3D gaming before here on Total Recall, but only briefly stopped on Time Traveler, one of the company's two and only attempts at holographic, 3D arcade gaming.
This antique video, from Time Traveler's 1991 debut, gives only a few hints as to how unsuccessful these machines would be. It all starts so promising! It's only towards the end, when people are actually playing it, that you realise, oh, this is nowhere near as cool as it sounds.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Activision and Treyarch will spend the next six months telling you this game is a sequel, but the fact the game's name starts with "Call of Duty" reminds us we're way past the point of using the number "II" when it comes to these shooters.
Unless it's XII. Or, more accurately, XXII.
The first Call of Duty game was released on PC in October 2003. The next one will be out in November 2012. In those nine years, we've seen the series make the jump from the PC to the - deep breath - Mac, PS2, Xbox, GameCube, PSP, DS, Wii, PS3, Xbox 360 and iPhone. There have even been Call of Duty games released on the N-Gage and BlackBerry.
Across all those years and all those platforms, there have been nine "core" games in the series. Four set in the Second World War, three Modern Warfare titles and two Black Ops games. When someone says "Call of Duty", that's normally what they mean.
But there have been plenty more. The first Call of Duty game on console, 2004's Finest Hour, was a spin-off from the PC original, not a re-release. Call of Duty 2: Big Red One did much the same for the second "core" game, taking the general setting of the PC sequel and turning it into a mostly-new game on console.
Later console adaptations, at least during the PS2 era, did much the same thing, as have the handheld ports of titles like Modern Warfare. Hell, the Blackberry version of Black Ops may be called Black Ops, but it looks like an Amiga game.
There's even been time for an expansion pack, United Offensive, which added more singleplayer missions to the original PC game's campaign.
All those games and all those platforms mean ten different studios have worked on the franchise, some like Infinity Ward and Treyarch as principal developers, others like Raven and Spark Unlimited on porting duties or helping out on things like multiplayer.
So how many games in total does that leave us with? It's hard too say! There's a muddy line between many of the spin-offs as to whether they count as all-new titles or as elaborate ports, but by my reckoning - and this is taking each individual release that's not a direct port as a standalone game - there have been nineteen Call of Duty games released.
That's counting everything, from the PC to the consoles to the N-Gage to the Blackberry to the two iOS zombies titles. The only title I've left out is United Offensive, seeing as it was an expansion pack.
Which, if you want to get particular, would mean Black Ops II could really be called Call of Duty 20.
Greetings, Kotaku! Welcome to the Tuesday open-thread. It's been a busy day 'round Kotaku way, and I've been unable to amass the requisite amount of off-topic links for you to read and gab about.
So instead, I thought I'd improvise and share my favorite poem from a movie maybe ever.
I'm referring, of course, to Charlie Mackenzie's "Harriet" from So I Married an Axe Murderer.
Harriet.
Har-ee-et.
Hard-hearted harbinger of haggis.
Beautiful
bemused
belicose butcher.
Un trust-ing
Un know-ing
Un love... ed?
He wants you back he screams into the night air
like a fireman going to a window that has no fire
Except the passion of his heart.
I am lonely,
It's really hard.
This poem… sucks.
And there… you have it. If only it were actually possible to make a living in San Francisco writing that kind of dreck.
What's your favorite bad piece of poetry? Maybe something from David Brent? Something more obscure? Do you like any poetry at all?
Gearbox, the guys making Aliens Colonial Marines, have been working on the game since, oh, before you were born. In that time, they've racked up a ton of reference material from James Cameron's sci-fi classic, none as badass as this replica pulse rifle from the 1986 movie.
This isn't some toy, some commercial thing made out of plastic. It's metal, it's heavy and it's "functional". Which means, yes, according to Sega it can fire live ammunition (the models used in the films only ever fired blanks).
Gearbox made it for use as a reference aid with development on the game.
It even mimics the weapons used in the films by copying their use of real-world gun parts, including components of Thompson machine guns.
It goes without saying I would like one very much.
It has occasionally felt like a dirty secret that Mortal Kombat 9 was one of my favorite games of last year. But there it is. It hit just the right blend of punchy violence, imaginative special moves and accessibility, and it got me invested in the (silly) Mortal Kombat universe and its (ridiculous) characters all over again.
Today, the game will be re-released on Sony's handheld Vita. The Vita version is, essentially, a "game of the year" version of the 2011 console game—every single feature and piece of downloadable content that was made available for the console versions is included in the portable version, with some new features added for good measure. The transition has been nearly seamless—this game looks good, plays smoothly, and offers an almost ridiculous amount of content.
For some in-depth thoughts on the original game, check out Michael McWhertor's review from last year. I feel similarly to Mike in most respects. The Vita version has all of the DLC characters that have been released for consoles, with a grand total of 32 characters playable from the start. It also includes all of the outfits for each character and the original game's the crazy number of unlockables, which can be unlocked in the "Krypt" and viewed in the "Nekropolis."
(Allow me to say: As someone whose name begins and ends with a "K," I very much appreciate what the folks who made Mortal Kombat are doing with language.)
In addition to the 300-mission Challenge Tower from the 2011 game, the Vita version includes a "Bonus Challenge Tower" that contains another 150 challenges. There are a bunch of new Vita-specific challenges as well, including modes like the great Fruit Ninja riff that involves slicing severed heads with the touch-screen, or a challenge in which you use the Vita's gyroscope to tilt the battleground while fighting. It's all fun stuff.
The most pleasant surprise I found in the console version was the meaty single-player campaign. It takes players on a whirlwind tour of the plots of all of the past Mortal Kombat games, letting them hop into the boots (or high heels) of every main character from the game. Yet while doing this, it somehow manages to weave a (mostly) coherent story. The deliberately b-movie writing and cheesy voice-acting serve to make things more enjoyable, and the occasionally stiff tag-team challenges are fun and give you a real reason to learn each fighter's moves. All of that is included in the Vita version, and it runs just as smoothly as it did on consoles.
One of the joys of Mortal Kombat 9 was having a friend over, cracking some beers, and trading the controller off as we worked our way through the story or challenge tower. That isn't really possible in the Vita version, of course. That said, Mortal Kombat Vita does have multiplayer in the form of online matches just like its console counterpart, as well as ad-hoc wi-fi play for taking on other Vita-owners in the vicinity.
From a technical perspective, Mortal Kombat Vita performs quite respectably—the combat moves at a locked framerate (the promotional materials claim 60 FPS, which seems about right), and the animations still impart that great feel of weight and fluidity that the console version had. Developer NetherRealm has put some serious elbow-grease into ensuring that this version runs well on the not-quite-PS3-powered Vita as it did on a PS3.
Mortal Kombat Vita makes two technical concessions—first, there are loading screens between each of the menus that, while never long enough to really feel like a nuisance, still detract a bit. The other concession is larger—the textures on the characters in matches have had a significant downgrade from the console version. Some characters like Liu Kang and Skorpion look damned ugly up close—but when viewed from the side while fighting, they move so smoothly that I didn't really notice. (For example: The character models don't look nearly as good as they do in the launch trailer embedded here.)
But really, if that's what it took for NeatherRealm to get the game playing as smoothly as it does, then so be it. The graphical downgrade is mostly noticeable during the story mode, when the end of a fight smoothly transitions to your character saying a pithy one-liner before hopping into another cutscene. It's long enough for you to think "Ew!" before you forget about it. That said, the story mode still plays out without a single loading screen.
While the brutal X-ray attacks and bracing, snuff-film-like fatalities are all still in the game and intact, the lower-resolution graphics do take some of the "I can't believe I'm seeing this" factor away. The fatalities are the most iconic element of Mortal Kombat (a fact celebrated in the group-review I contributed to last year), and it's weirdly anticlimactic to see versions of them that can only be described as "portable-quality."
But neither the reduced graphics nor the diminished fatalities can detract all that much from Mortal Kombat Vita. The gameplay is all but identical to its console predecessor. It's a fleshed-out, feature-complete port of last year's game, made even more substantial additional game modes, challenges and unlockables. It contains hours upon hours of single-player gameplay alone, and I find myself wondering if I'll ever be able to see all of it.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Mortal Kombat on the Game Gear. The Vita rendition feels like a homecoming of sorts, the ultimate portable iteration of a fighting game franchise that's been in and out of all our lives with an unexpected frequency for more than ten years now.
If my childhood self could see this version of the game, his head would probably explode in great gouts of blood and bone fragments. Which would be too bad, because he'd probably like this game a lot.
The next time your neighbor tells you there's a zombie on your lawn, you can finally reply, "Thanks! Isn't it cute?" And ideally, your neighbor will have meant the cute little toy zombie from Plants vs. Zombies and will agree with you. (Either that, or you'll be eaten by horrible, slavering zombies. As happens.)
PopCap announced yesterday that they'd be breaking out of screens and into the physical world with a line of Plants vs. Zombies swag, their first-ever physical merch. They've signed licenses with several companies, to bring forth a wide array of products. There are T-shirts, hats, pajamas, and other wearables. There are wallets and wristbands. There are wall decals and vinyl figurines. And (featured above) there are stuffed plushie plants.
While I have to admit to harboring a dorky, covetous love for the stuffed sunflower, it seems that PopCap missed an obvious opportunity for outdoor products. An outdoor set of zombie-styled lawn gnomes could make for a great live-action game... in my neighbor's backyard.
Here it is, folks—the first trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops II.
As you can see, the game will take place in the future. And in the past! The military has come to rely on a huge force of unarmed drones and tanks, and some nefarious so-and-so has hacked them and turned them against us.
Black Ops regular Frank Woods returns as an old man to tell the story, which begins with Los Angeles under drone attack. Stick around for a whirlwind tour of airplane cockpits, horseback riding, and a sweet Michael Bay glory-shot of a helicopter flipping over some cars on a highway.
This sure does tick all the Call of Duty checkboxes. Check back at midnight tonight, when we'll have a bunch more details about the game.
Press play on this video. For around 40 seconds you may think it's actually the debut trailer for upcoming blockbuster Black Ops II. Then you get to 41 seconds and, sadly, you realise that as wonderful as this is, it is not the debut trailer for Black Ops II.
For reference, the actual trailer goes live in 20 minutes time (8pm Eastern). You'll be able to watch it right here on Kotaku.
UPDATE - You can catch the actual debut trailer right here.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Activision and Treyarch will spend the next six months telling you this game is a sequel, but the fact the game's name starts with "Call of Duty" reminds us we're way past the point of using the number "II" when it comes to these shooters.
Greetings, Kotaku! Welcome to the Tuesday open-thread. It's been a busy day 'round Kotaku way, and I've been unable to amass the requisite amount of off-topic links for you to read and gab about.
The next time your neighbor tells you there's a zombie on your lawn, you can finally reply, "Thanks! Isn't it cute?" And ideally, your neighbor will have meant the cute little toy zombie from Plants vs. Zombies and will agree with you. (Either that, or you'll be eaten by horrible, slavering zombies. As happens.)
