Weekend Confirmed Episode 34

I posted this in the AC Brotherhood Review Page, but I thought I'd share it here to.

Got the game yesterday. Only a couple hours into the story mode, but it seems safe to say that if you like AC2, you'll like Brotherhood (and I LOOOOVED AC2).

The main reason for my comment is regarding the multiplayer: IT IS INCREDIBLE.

Ubisoft has created a wonderfully subtle and intense game of cat and mouse with Brotherhood's multiplayer. It took me a few games to get used to the controls and to learn all the rules, but once I got familiar with everything, the game opened up. I've never played a game that keeps me on the edge of my seat purely through the suspense of being hunted. The constant balance of Risk vs Reward is handled beautifully.

The tension that builds when you spot your target across a courtyard, and spend the next 90 seconds slowly circling around him so you can approach undetected... it's so freaking fun! The best part is that at no time can you be certain of what will happen next. You might lose your patience as you approach your target and burst into a run, only to be pounced on by the player stalking you. You might get within reach and have the kill stolen by another player who has been hunting the same target as you all along. You might not have been following the right target at all, and kill a civilian instead, prompting the game to put a giant arrow over the head of the player you were supposed to kill, just to rub salt in your wound. And of course, there are the times when everything goes right, and you nail your target without them even realizing you were there.

Truly awsome stuff.... I encourage everyone to check it out!

The autolog feature in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is INSANE.

It totally brings a social network mentality to the game without actually using any of the established networks. Instead of spamming your Facebook or Twitter accounts with status updates, you get to choose whether or not to publish your performance in a race to your wall. Only your friends see the wall, and there's a constant rivalry to see who can top the most races.

And I mean CONSTANT. Autolog is one of those features that completely changes how you even approach playing the game. Like, on the level of how achievements changed the way we play games. Same principle, but even better, because instead of intangible and largely worthless space-points you get bragging points among your friends. So when you're just cruising along, progressing through the game, and then that message comes up on your wall saying so-and-so beat your time by four seconds, you can immediately jump back to that race and try to take the record back.

I've put 8 hours into the game and barely unlocked half the events, simply because of the pull of those wall announcements and the constant competitive between friends. Even when you're playing single-player, the game feels like a competitive multiplayer experience.

EVERY racing game needs this feature. Hell, add it to shooters, action games, anything.


Oh, and btw, the racing is actually really fun too. :D

Enslaved is an amazing title that I hope you'll pick up if you are on the fence or looking for a game after the 4th quarter deluge. The game play reminds me a great deal of Uncharted with the traversal, storyline, and incredible mo-cap cutscenes. Try to play the demo and not care about Monkey and Trip's forced partnership. It will be a travesty if this game is denied a sequel to poor sales.

And regarding WC's concerns about the visible handholds, it makes narrative sense once you play it and you'd throw your controller through the window if you had complete freedom in these environments. There is enough challenge and survival is not certain in each chapter.

As good as I found codblops there is still something very wrong with this version that wasn't with others. It's hard to put a finger on it. The most disturbing thing for me was killing sas soldiers in the ship. being British this really made me sit up and take notice. I know this may be a biased view but it did feel wrong. I know this may be a callback to the taliban argument from Moh but I feel it needs looking at. I felt Jeff was completely wrong with his criticism of the game always being at eleven especially after his three hour game idea, but he was dead right about this series losing its moral compass.

Great show boys!

On the topic of shorter "2-3" hour games, I felt the discussion was a bit off this week in how it related to Jeff's original comment last week. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Jeff's initial point was that developers should stop usuing filler to make their game take longer for a single playthrough, and should rather make their games super tight, polished, and fun to replay over and over. I would rather spend $60 on a 3 hour game that I replay 10 times than $60 on a 9 hour game that I play once.

The issue of replayability has been burning in my mind a lot this week. I have always replayed games, if it was a game I enjoyed. Same with all my friends growing up. The concept of playing a game to the end once, then setting aside forever was completely alien to me growing up.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it is tied directly to difficulty level. We all know games used to be harder. Completing a game even once used to require a certain mastery of the game's controls and mechanics. Today, how many players out there will choose to play a game on a harder difficulty? Not many.

To me, this short changes most games. It amazes me how many people will choose a difficulty level that poses no challenge for them, breaze through the game, then turn around and complain about how quickly they beat the game, and how little depth or strategy it required.

I am not making some sort of macho "if you don't play games on hard, you're a pussy" statement. I'm saying that I believe many gamers today don't want games to challenge them. Have we forgotten the feeling of satisfaction that comes from mastering a difficult game, and using the culmination of our in-game skills to complete it? Have we forgotten how much fun it is to replay games with the goal of truly perfecting them?

You guys asked what will finally cause franchise fatigue with COD? Giantbomb asked this same question and bought up an interesting point. When COD first came out not one of them saw this success and quality coming. Infinity Wards first two games were good but nothing special or even of real note. Remember Activision even trying to prevent them from making COD 4 MW? Well what happened when it launched was sort of shocking. Everyone wanted it and it started a trend. GoldenEye had a similar success story. That game had no business being as good as it was. Great campaign, better than the movie, and awesome multiplayer. My overall point is that something is going to come out that will topple COD. Some well funded and talented design team is going to take a couple of risks and make something so good that it will start a new trend in the games industry. Gran Turismo did this, Tony Hawk did this, and Halo did this and GTA did this.

I've noticed something recently. I haven't finished any single player campaign fps with ironsight. Might be something psychological, or that iron sight blocks out most of the action or something.

I'm perfectly fine with it in mp. But single player...

I could easily play through goldeneye sp many times back then, but the new one, I'm having a hard time playing through it once.

Anyone else not really digging iron sights in single player campaign or is it just me?

Speaking of BLOPS, a little controversy over video games and advertising from NBA talking heads no less. The league has players doing more offensive things than being in ads so I'll be interested to see if the Commish even makes a comment over the ad.

Is it really offensive to 'outsiders' ? Do I get the ad because I play multiplayer FPS and understand what the ad was conveying having a bunch of everyday people running around with guns and grenade launchers and so I'm not offended? I gotta figure the core audience of ESPN is buying BLOPS and other FPS games and they get it too, only a few old farts out of the loop don't get it.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=5817181

I am 100% behind shelving the universal design talk until either you guys get a developer on that can thoughtfully comment on it, or GDC. I would love for you to have some people like Dyack or Molyneux. Some of my favorite podcasts have featured developers- especially the one with the guy from FASA!!

PS- I was a huge fan of Operation Flashpoint 2! That game needed some more polishing, but there were more interesting things tried by that team than in either CiD:BO or Medal of Honor!

Will players grow tired of the Call of Duty franchise and eventually move away from the series? No question about it. If it can happen to Medal of Honor then it'll happen to COD.

It's the way it is with everything in the world. In the 80's movie theaters were ruled by Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Tom Cruise et al, NBC used to be number one in the ratings, and everybody had Pac-Man fever. How much of that still holds true? None of it.

If people can get tired of Frank Sinatra, the Beatles and Elvis they'll get tired of Call of Duty and maybe even FPS's as we know them. Tastes change, something new comes along and all old kings eventually lay down and die.

In a way it shouldn't be too surprising to see how this will happen. What do we have in the FPS genre? Variations of Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Thingamajig, King of the Hill, etc...We basically played these games on the playground in elementary school. Death Match equals dodge ball, Capture the Flag equals uh, Capture the Flag, blah, blah, blah. The point is as we got older we grew tired of those games and moved on. If we extrapolate the comparison it's reasonable to imagine that we'll grow tired of FPS's in their current and also move on.

Maybe I would have enjoyed "A Very Special Episode of Weekend Confirmed: COD:BlOps" if I was interested in the title, and while the commentary and opinions were great, I hope in the future you won't spend so much time on one title. Granted, it's the largest release in video game history at this time, but it would be great to see the podcast devote more time to smaller titles with less buzz like Assassin's Creed:Brotherhood, RDR's zombie DLC, or other new releases or upcoming titles.

I was disappointed that Jeff finally finished Fable 3 and the result was a minute or two discussion and you moved on. I'd have loved to hear Jeff's opinion on the unusual design for the end game and if he was prepared for what was coming since I think regardless of the politics, it was the most unusual ending of a video game in recent memory.

Finally, I feel like you guys dance around this week after week, but can we just concede at the start of every discussion that Brian is a results or skill-based gamer and Jeff is narrative-driven. We get that Brian loves to replay multiplayer titles to rise in the ranks, improve his skills, and enjoys competition while Jeff prefers a good narrative with accompanying solid game play over playing online. There is nothing wrong with either approach but I feel that so much of the disagreement on the show comes from having to rediscover and rehash this on a weekly basis.

Considering Brian and Jeff's different approaches, it's only logical that Brian won't see COD falling out of favor any time soon while Jeff would question its long-term narrative viability. And they'd both be right since yes, gamers will get bored with the single-player stories but still love the hell out of the best multiplayer on the system. How many people never played COD:MW2's single-player drawn in by their online friends invites?

I love a good narrative; I hate online multiplayer not because I suck but because I get bored raising transparent stats---I realize that single-player is based on raising less transparent stats against A.I.--- without any narrative benefit. However, I greatly admire the competitive Starcraft and Halo folks because of their incredible skill.

Gaming needs both of those types and every other type but I think we should just recognize their is no right way to game and move on.

I'd like to announce that my new favorite word is "bifurcated". Thanks, Jeff.

I ended up playing some COD BLOPS with some friends (locally) this weekend and got an interesting perspective on the franchise fatigue thing. My friends are the types who play one or two games a year and they thought MW2 was the best looking, best story, best multiplayer in a game ever. We played a little COD BLOPS and they all commented how it was the best looking, blah blah.... In my mind the game looked average, the gameplay was the same COD gameplay but I play a lot more games. They only know COD so to them it is the best game. I find a lot people fall into this category and won't be looking for something better because they are more than happy with what they get from COD. There's also a domino effect to this. If I lived in a bubble I wouldn't spend $60 on COD but since everyone else has the game I'll be picking it up sooner than later.

PS: liked the music break this week. nice pick.

Completely agree with Jeff. This game is all at one level there is no sense of importance at any time because it's all "11".

Treyarch's waves to create difficulty is ridiculous. MW2 was challenging but never seemed to be based on just sending waves of enemy unending until you moved forward.

I had way more fun playing MW2 and more fun playing MOH. I felt more drawn into the MOH story because of pseudo-realism as opposed to Black-Ops, which telegraphed the "twist" making me feel a step ahead of the story.

As for MP, a patch/dlc to MW2 would have sufficed.... No genuine co-op or even spec-ops, just this zombie crap.... no thanks... I pre-ordered Hardened, completed on Veteran, played some MP and returned it... Very average, not inline with what I like about the COD franchise....

Wow there were so many topics touched upon that I want to comment on and I have limited time right now (I'm typing this on a netbook in a gas station parking lot before I run in to get my donuts for breakfast on my way into work (I took an hour of leave this morning)). I literally should be leaving right now but I want to comment on some of the stuff (I'll comment more when I get home I think).

I agree with some of what Brian said about CoD:BLOPS multiplayer (I love that acronym...its perfecttion). I disagree about the run and gun aspects of the game though...and I think what it comes down to based on past discussions on here is that Brian and I just have different preferences in our multiplayer (and oddly...CoD is a sort of game that appeals to a lot of different people). I really view multiplayer FPS games through the prism of Quake (and really DOOM2 to some extent...as in many ways I felt that had the most sublime weapon set in any FPS game ever...though Quake's Rocket Launcher and Lightning Gun were amazing and there was something very nice about the Railgun in Q2 even though I was always torn over the impact of that weapon (I felt it made Q2 too defensive...whereas in QW being either really aggressive or really defensive were both applicable approaches)). Shit I told myself I wasn't going to get off on a tangent given limited time...so back on topic. I tend to see the abilitiy to react quickly and think quickly and run and gun as the pinnacle of multiplayer FPS games...hell deep down I still have it in my head that standing still gets you killed and that you should always be moving just as you should always be building units. I realize that this is more or less just something thats been ingrained in me and is driven by my preferences (and that in the past I always associated someone standing still to shoot with a lack of skill and experience because that was what people did in DOOM DM when they started out...so I have this weird gut reaction to that aspect of modern games that often punishes running and gunning that I've had to work to get over...I really have gotten over that, but I'll always prefer games of the oldschoole even though I've learned to appreciate and enjoy other styles of FPS games as I've grown older). Its actually hilarious in a way...because as I've lacked a decent internet connection in my home (I literally have to drive 15 minutes into town with my huge gaming laptop to play games online at either burger king or the local shooting range/sporting goods store) and have had less time I've lost a lot of the skills suited to the games I most enjoy (and in general actually)...so I completely suck now...and I sometimes feel like I'm basically wishing for games to punish me more.

Brian mentioned preferring a slower paced and perhaps more defensive FPS game and that really makes things sort of make sense. I've never been particularly fond of Halo and Brian loves it and I think it comes down to the sort of differences in preference. I like that CoD:BLOPS allows for run and gunning (and I think that at a high level players may not be blindly running around...they may simply be very aware while moving at a high rate of speed...plus I like the sort of wasp and spider in a jar matches that allowing very different approaches encourages). I do think that CoD4 probably struck a slightly better balance wrt this...I could run and gun with my AK and steady aim or whatever in hardcore mode...or I could use a more careful approach with a G3 battle rifle and nail guys at a distance. I generally play Hardcore Domination (lol) though...and I've found that you can get temporary fronts set up at times (at least in CoD4...I need to play more BLOPS to get a better idea of the general play patterns there).

As to CoD2...its weird as I was never a big CoD2 fan...I always felt that I was very obviously being pushed to always move forward...I think I once described the game as being like the old SMB3 levels where the screen scrolls in a direction and you need to keep moving to keep up. I felt that its best moments were when you'd get to a point where you'd have to clear the house or something and it didn't have the very rinse and repeat formula of "take cover...pop out and kill...rush forward...repeat" that the CoD games have always specialized in. BLOPS has a lot of that too...but for some reason it doesn't bother me as much. It may be that they're mixing it up so far (I've not finished it yet) well enough not to annoy me or it may be that I've just grown to expect that from a CoD game. I will say that its not as infuriating as MW2...at times I felt like it was this shooting gallery where the enemies would spray random fire at me and I just had to power through it...I remember literally dying and reloading my check point to die again and again and I'd see the same patterns again the only difference being where the random spread bullets went...I had to play that game in a really weird way at times that seemed counterintuitive and more like I was trying to break the thing to proceed. BLOPS hasn't been as bad that way (and the story isn't the single most stupid thing ever...whereas MW2 was just horrible story-wise...I mean Uwe Boll)...but I haven't finished it so it may take a wrong turn.

It may be that I inadvertently got in a horrible situation with MW2's checkpoint system once where I got myself in the wrong place at the wrong time when it saved because I was playing around trying to get myself killed...and then I played through the same 4-5 minutes of gameplay about 40 times over (maybe more...I would literally spawn and die immediately about 60 percent of the time so it may have been in the triple digits the number of times I reloaded over a couple days)...I realize that perhaps I should have realized the game was more fragile than I iniitally thought and I shouldn't have been treating it as a playground at that point...but it made me see the game as broken and it really gave me a close up view of the systems in MW2 and how predictable that game could be (I saw guys 4 minutes in literally do the EXACT SAME THINGS even when I took different approaches defending that building) and if I wasn't so damned OCD I wouldn't have powered through that part. So I'm probably going to be more forgiving of BLOPS in comparison than a lot of people unless it breaks down like that (I did enjoy MW2...I just don't see it as being the amazing game its made out to be).

Jeff, you never answered Garnett's question about "How would you implement urgency in a game without a time limit?"

I understand it feels cheap, but urgency means having a set amount of time to complete a goal. Otherwise, it's not urgent. Though people might hate them, I think time limits in games need to be more prevalent, not just for urgency but for bringing about real human emotions.

IE. Look what Alpha Protocol did with their dialog system. (It was timed)

Some time ago there was discussion with regards to difficulty level. It got me thinking that perhaps the next 'frontier' isn't so much the immersion factor of games, the inventiveness of controls, or the graphical overhaul within the system. I feel that graphically we've reached a point where everything is already really impressive, engine and aesthetics. I feel the next frontier should be the AI.

At present, I feel that L4D and Halo:Reach have come extremely close with regards to this. The limitations though are that the L4D companions can't seem to throw projectiles, and seem to be much too happy healing you, and for Halo:Reach, the AI companions not being able to drive properly, but nonetheless are the creme of the crop with regards to AI; in terms of companion AI anyway. Then we have the complete opposite, seen in RE5, or most AI used for escort missions.

I feel that for the most part, enemy AI is sorted, though some still fall into the trap of following scripts in response, or being made more tough through damage and resistance, rather than truly learning player behavior. I think it would be fascinating to have an AI that adjusts accordingly to your play style. Sort of like how Battle.net organizes the appropriate league you belong in for online Starcraft 2.

Especially for companion AI, I think an improvement on this will absolutely put the game on a level above most others, and with the evolving enemy AI, would make your games feel more dynamic.

Thoughts?

On the subject of the possible Sci-Fi Call of Duty, any of you guys see that Star Wars mod to Modern Warfare 1? http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-mod-galactic-warfare

Remember how that Star Wars Battlefield 1942 mod ended up inspiring Battlefront? Yeah. I wanna see Call of Duty: Galactic Warfare.

My other idea, seeing as Activision and Blizzard are technically one group... is a Call of Duty StarCraft game. You could re-experience all the great battles of StarCraft and StarCraft II on ground level with the Terrans.

That's just me though.

I'm curious about the f2p battlefield. It seems to be running on bf2 engine which was notorious for doing the funky crop instead of native widescreen. That's probably why bfh is still not native widescreen support. Another modern example is bioshock 1 and 2 (which they patched up later).

I see no excuse not to get widescreen right in 2010.

Well, it seems that the fight to combat used games is, for some companies, taking an interesting twist.

Rather than trying to cut deal with consumers to license games such that they do not include a resale right, THQ is going to attempt to undercut the retailers by selling a $40 base game, and then allowing add-ons where "You can wind up paying more than $60 or less than $60." [from IGN interview]

I suppose that then, the base game could be sold used for $35 or something, but all of the content will be digitally owned, and certainly attached to a non-saleable account.

My reaction? I don't like it. This will put a big incentive on companies doing this to price the *really good stuff* so that you'll have to spend a lot more than $60 to get a full game. I've seen this in things like collectible card games and such... "sure, you can play, but if you want to WIN, then give us another $200 for this quarter's new overpowered cards".

I would prefer to get a full game, that cannot be resold, for $60... I guess that is too much to ask these days!

The problem of length vs value comes up more to do with re-playability. For a very narrative focused experience, once you have experienced it once you likely won't go back to it again. This is not unique to games, my oldest brother chastised me at one point because I was buying DVDs, he said "You rent movies, you don't buy them". He is not right in every situation, but most movies on my shelf sit there and never get touched after the first viewing. The same is true of many games I have purchased. Its not a question of having a 3 hour experience or not having it. It is a question of do you want to rent that game and spend $12 for 3 hours or buy it and spend $60 for 3 hours with the ability to relive that game at any point. For some people they know they will be onto the next game so they decide to save themselves some money, experience the game and move on.

I'm in favour of variable pricing, but why does length have to be the only compensating variable on the development side? I wouldn't mind equally long, or longer, games with much lower production values. There are some games that greatly benefit from their amazing production, especially story heavy games, but a lot of games that you play only for the gameplay would be just as fun even if they only spent 20% of their art budget.

It sounds like Jeff is ready to be able to appreciate some of the more open ended PC FPS.

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I was thinking about the disscussion on zombies and i started looking back on older games and it got me wondering when a developer puts zombies in a game is it because they think its fun or do they just need something to take up time? i have never played world at wars zombie mode on a console, but i have tried the version for ipod touch and iphone and i thought it was pretty darn fun but also extremly easy considering all zombies are one shot headshot kills, they move really slow and you can get the ray gun for 750 points. so are zombies really necessary or are they just a mode thats easy to produce so they are put into games as filler (the flood was just filler in my opinion)?

I will totally agree with Jeff in how Call of Duty's singleplayer has moved away from the "You are part of a team in a war" type of setting.

The games since COD2 have convinced me that the COD teams aren't very good at writing stories or scenarios but are skilled with plot, pacing, and flow. COD2 felt like an intense experience not just because you were one cog within a unit within a huge war, but because all the storytelling was focused on you and some buddies just surviving.

Story-wise I think the Modern Warfare games were at their best when you were playing as the Americans just trying to survive, not worrying about the conspiracy or plot twists or whatever. My favorite COD campaign is still Modern Warfare 1. Even though the overarching story was crap, I cared about what was happening moment-to-moment with Price, Gaz, Griggs, Velasquez, etc. Even COD2 Big Red One (probably an underrated game) did a good job just focusing on the squad chemistry. MW2 and Black Ops put too much focus on the overarching 24-esque plot, which is not Infinity Wards nor Treyarch's strong suit.

After playing MOH, I actually wish Modern Warfare HAD been about the current Afghanistan war - if for no other reason than to put the narrative focus back on where it probably matters most - the soldiers themselves.

Bit boring of an episode for me, with all the talk of Black Ops... just not my preference these new realistic multi-player shooters.

I do agree with Brian that it is a sport to many people. Also, that while there may not be as much an emphasis on FPS games as the AAA title set in the future, I'd suspect there to be one AAA entry a year on into the future. They will be other AAA titles in other genres also, which is a kind of lowering of the emphasis on these shooters.

I've seen on JTV not only people playing these kill/die/kill/die/kill/kill/die games for hours upon hours, and also having as many as 1,000 people *watching* someone do this! Roman's watched gladitoral blood games, seems these are still popular today, and that is no surprise.

I also agree with Jeff that the realism of the horrors of war seems to be seeping out more and more, and war is being presented as more and more *fun*... this turns me off quite a bit, but again, I understand how many people would like this.

Finally, talking pretty obviously about bankers and such, a favorite cliche for leftwingers talking about pro-capitalist folks in general, the lyrics, "line them up, do the world a favor, line them up, fire" are hate speech: period.

I think this franchise fatigue is a result of console gaming still being stuck on the pure retail production model as hardware and software capabilities are moving towards something more akin to the PC.

How many times have we talked about Madden becoming a game you buy just once and then get a $30 expansion pack for every year? World of Warcraft has been going strong since 2004 partly because there have been expansions for it ever since.

I'm actually almost ready to see a Call of Duty subscription service just so I don't have to see another new full game come out every freaking year. Almost.

Maybe next generation the technology might support the one-full-game-supported-by-updates model. All that needs to happen is for one developer to take that risk, try it, and succeed.

I get what Jeff is saying about mental fatigue and being "always on 11". The same thing happened to me during Black Ops' single-player. After an hour or so of continuous play I feel my brain just turn off abruptly and realize I'm just going through the motions while wondering if I'm just bored by that those type of games now, instead of being immersed in the action. Basically at that point I need a break from the non-stop action, which Black Ops does not provide, so I have to stop playing the game for a while and come back to it later or the next day.

In that regards I think that's why Infinity Ward had those slower paced sneaking levels, like the one where you follow Price to get into position to snipe, followed by high intensity levels, like the escape directly following that sniping moment. It's not just traversal levels as Brian put it (i.e. from his tone of voice "boring"), as Infinity Ward proved they can also use those moments to establish character relationships (who didn't like Price after that flashback) and mood.

It's just realizing that people can't be at 11 all the time and giving the game better overall pacing so that players can go through the entire single-player without having to take breaks off the game feeling bored.

I think the word Garnett was searching for when he was trying to describe the difference between firing high-end, modern weapons and old-school Vietnam era weapons was 'analog'. That analog feeling is one of the major reasons I've been clamoring for a great Vietnam war game for so many years. It's also one of several reasons I really enjoy Black Ops and can't wait for Bad Company 2: Vietnam.

For me, it's analogous to how fans of hard rock or metal music (like me) can still appreciate and even seek out unplugged versions of their favorite songs. The underlying experience is the same, but its a slightly less refined version of it. A little more raw, less digital. There are rough edges and approximations, missed notes and missed shots. Everything is a little bit 'dirtier' and a little bit more raw.

Obviously, you could argue that WW2 weapons are the ultimate example of that lack of precision and refinement, but that era is almost TOO unrefined for me in terms of weapon capabilities. Vietnam era is this perfect middle-ground, when the weapons felt modern and lethal, but there was no fancy technology between the pull of the trigger and a kill. Just nerves of steel, and dead aim down the iron-sights.

``I listen to disco, disco is so popular, it's going to be popular forever and ever."

I gotta say that I agreed with Brian 100% about everything he said in the CoD BO discussion. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.

Garnett's comment about Black (a game that I really enjoyed esp. on the Xbox) reminded me of my initial reaction to Call of Duty:Black Ops. When I popped in CODBLOPS, I thought of Black. Both games are set up in a similar fashion- an interrogation of a secret operative with each "memory" being a level.

I'll go ahead and post the "FPS map design" picture, as it's rather appropriate: http://kotaku.com/5684349/the-evolution-of-the-first+person-shooter

Black Ops is based off of "IW4", which is the fourth iteration of the engine Infinity Ward used to power the Call of Duty series. The Call of Duty engine was based on Id Tech 3 (the Quake 3 engine), and then Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 followed after it.

That $20 for Bad Company 2 is looking like a permanent price drop. The PC version is $20 everywhere and it isn't listed as a sale.

That $20 for Bad Company 2 is looking like a permanent price drop. The PC version is $20 everywhere and it isn't listed as a sale.

To correct Jeff Cannata on the Somali pirate strike operation, that was actually in April 2009, way after the release of CoD4.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-14-2009/the-buc-stops-here