In April, Activision announced that Call of Duty would be returning their WWII roots. I wrote a brief piece on the announcement and outlined my hopes and fears that I have for their new game. After spending some time in the beta, I have found that some of them have come true. In my first multiplayer match, it quickly became obvious that Sledgehammer Games had brought back the classic Call of Duty experience. No gimmicky jet boosting or wall running in this game, just good old-fashioned boots on the ground shooting. This was the most important change I wanted and I am happy they delivered. Since boosting and wall running was introduced in the games, getting kills and being killed became increasingly more annoying. I had to continuously be alert to my surroundings from all sides, leaving little time to look at my map or figure out how to connect with my teammates. Sure, it was fast paced but I never felt that I had time to plan movements or work together with my team. It was ju...

 The holiday season is always chaotic and a mix of emotion for me as I am sure it is for many others. It’s the time where you either love to see your family or you pretend to, and you give them gifts accordingly. Looking back on it, as a child the holidays represented more than gifts and giving, it represented the one time of year where my sister and I bonded and understood each other and a large part of the reason for this is because of video games. Growing up my sister and I both loved playing video games. She had an original Game Boy with Super Mario, Tetris and Kirby. It was one of her most prized possessions and she loved it, secretly I did too. I would have to wait until she was gone to sneak into her room and play it or if I was lucky, she would let me play it when she was home. She was pretty good at sharing when she wanted to and we both had a good time playing, that is when we weren’t fighting. My sister and I were almost always at odds. We bickered and fought...

I recently wrote an article on the importance of remakes and why they are more than just a money grab. Since then then I have put more thought into the pitfalls that follow their success. Replaying the BioShock series and diving back into Call of Duty 4 is great but they do not add any new ideas. I fear that the growing amount of remakes is a sign that game publishers and studios are losing confidence in their own creativity. To explain this further I want to use Hollywood as an example. Movie studios have recently been criticized for regurgitating the same principal ideas into the movies they create. Every year a new super hero movie comes out and it is largely the same premise. Good guy with super powers fights bad guy with super powers to save the world, with some change ups in between. Super hero movies are fun and provide entertainment plus revenue for movie studios that desperately need it. But they do not add anything new and creative to the silver screen. A super hero ...

I have a problem with playing games and never finishing them. For me the conclusion of a game brings all of the fun and excitement I had while playing crashing down. It stops the story, the character development and all of the great experiences you had within the game. Simply it just ends. The game that defines this experience perfectly for me is Bully . For those that don’t know Bully is a game developed by Rockstar (The creators of Grand Theft Auto ). The game takes place at a school for delinquent children called Bullworth Academy. You play the role of bad boy Jimmy Hopkins who takes on missions for the various groups in the school (nerds, jocks, preps, etc.). The story plays out very much like Grand Theft Auto and you can customize Jimmy in a similar fashion to characters in GTA. The weird thing is Bully is one of my favorite games of all time and yet I have never beat it. It is hard for me to believe I haven’t beaten the game and I have been playing it since it was fir...

This past weekend Respawn Entertainment released their “ Multiplayer Tech Test ” for Titanfall 2 . The test is open for everyone to enjoy regardless of pre-orders. It showcases some of the new features players can expect to see when the new game is finally released in October. Two new maps are playable, as well as a new game variant called “Bounty Hunt”. There have been some tweaks for gameplay classes and Titans. Respawn Entertainment stresses that the test is a “pre-alpha” model of the game, meaning that the game is still in development there are known problems so it does not reflect the final product. Overall, my time playing this weekend was enjoyable but I did make notes of certain aspects of the game that may need some heavy tweaking. The two new maps, Boomtown and Homestead were fun to play on but large in scale. Homestead is a rural sprawl with a large circular tower (perfect for snipers) front and center in the middle of the map. Boomtown has a more urban setting, allowin...

It was recently reported that Blizzard is planning on releasing an HD version of Starcraft . Starcraft is a widely successful real time strategy game that was released in 1998 and helped make Blizzard a house hold name in the game industry. Its success spawned the sequel, Starcraft 2 in 2010. Similarly, Nintendo released an HD remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the 3DS , and Microsoft gave the go ahead for the entire Halo series to be updated and released for the Xbox One . But why do game studios decide to re-release games from the past, instead of creating new games? One reason is that not all game sequels will be met with the same praise that their predecessors were. The Resident Evil franchise is regarded as one of the best in horror. Resident Evil 4 was nearly universally praised by reviewers and gamers alike but Resident Evil 5 and 6 were panned. They provide an example of how hard it can be for long running franchises to create fresh ideas that con...

One of my favorite games to play is Rocket League . The game consists of controlling a high speed car with rocket boosters attached, flying around, blowing up other cars all the while trying to hit a large ball into a goal. Just imagine playing soccer with rocket propelled cars and that’s the game. Rocket League has servers spanning most of the world in order to maintain consistency with multiplayer connectivity. It is fun and addictive with each match being an action packed five minutes. Since multiplayer games are competitive, anger and rage among players is not far behind. Matches can quickly turn into an exchange of toxic slander, bigotry and bullying. I do not have a problem with this because I believe anybody can say what they want, and trash talking and competition go hand in hand. What does bother me is how often it happens when playing in American servers compared to European ones. If I took the time to record how many times I have seen or been on the receiving end of abu...