Family Learning Center

Posts Tagged ‘Infinity Ward’

The making and unmaking of Infinity Ward

The implosion of Infinity Ward, one of the best game studios ever founded in video games, is the latest chapter in a long saga that is intertwined with the history of intense combat video games. The lawsuit filed by the studio’s co-founders last week against parent company Activision Blizzard was the saddest milestone at a studio that has come to be cherished by millions of hardcore game fans.

In the beginning, there was Saving Private Ryan. Steven Spielberg’s horrific World War II movie opened in 1998 and shocked audiences with its realistic, horrifying portrayal of the D-Day landings at Omaha Beach and the subsequent fighting in the liberation of France.

Spielberg wanted to re-introduce young people to the horrors of war and the sacrifices made by those that Tom Brokaw called The Greatest Generation. He thought that a video game based on the move would reach younger audiences with the same kind of message. But after the dismal failure of the dinosaur-fighting game Jurassic Park: Trespasser, Spielberg lost his appetite for games and sold DreamWorks Interactive to Electronic Arts in 2000.

The project survived the tranisition. EA asked id Software, which had made the World War II-era Wolfenstein games, if it wanted to make a game dubbed Medal of Honor. The id veterans had their hands full and pointed to a young game company in Oklahoma called 2015 Studios, founded in 1997 by Tom Kudirka. EA commissioned 2015 to make the game.

Dale Dye, a decorated combat veteran who was an advisor on Saving Private Ryan, gave the young developers in the studio a lot of advice about how to create a realistic combat scene. He knew, for instance, just how big the explosions were when a grenade went off, and what it sounded like when a bullet whizzed by your head. The team was inspired by Saving Private Ryan and Dye to make a memorable game. In 2002, EA launched Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. It was an outstanding game that made the player really feel like they were inside the beach landing scene in Saving Private Ryan. As a player, you realized that you were not invincible as the Germans sprayed machine gun and mortar fire from the bluffs above. Instead of charging into the fray, you had to find cover to survive. The game set a new bar for realism in war combat.

2015 Studios eventually went on to work on a Vietnam war game, Men of Valor. But there was a faction that didn’t like working in Tulsa and didn’t like the way 2015 was run. After the Medal of Honor game shipped in 2002, Grant Collier and Vince Zampella left 2015 to set up their own game studio, Infinity Ward. They started out in Santa Monica, Calif., as close to the beach as possible. Their friend Jason West joined them, as did a total of 22 former 2015 employees. They got their startup money from Activision, the game publisher run by Bobby Kotick, who wanted them to get Activision into the hot genre of World War II shooting games. Activision game them $1.5 million for a 30 percent stake; at the time, that was plenty of money to make a PC game. The deal made a lot of sense because the Infinity Ward crew had proven it could make an outstanding game. And Kotick was always happy to give seed money for teams that were willing to break away from Electronic Arts, his chief rival.

The team was full of history buffs who had studied the maps of the D-Day landings and had carefully decided where to put foxholes and trenches in their games. With a team of 25, they worked hard to produce a game dubbed Call of Duty. Critics thought it was just a clone of Medal of Honor. But the game was inspired by the most intense battle scenes in movies such as Enemy at the Gates, Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. The title launched in October, 2003, on the PC. Gamers loved it and felt as if they were inside a combat movie as they played through the relentlessly intense combat scenes across the British, American and Russian armies in World War II. In each case, you played a vulnerable infantry soldier amid a sea of enemies.

Activision was thrilled at the reception and agreed to acquire the remaining 70 percent of the studio in 2003 for $3.5 million. While Activision now held the purse strings for resources, Kotick let the team run independently. He wanted the team to “preserve the magic.” Infinity Ward began work on a sequel. About three months into that work, Microsoft contacted Activision, asking if it had any games it could make for the launch of a new game console: the still-secret Xbox 360.

Microsoft had a big problem. Halo 2, the sequel to the big sci-fi shooting hit on the original Xbox, had not yet shipped. And so it was clear that Halo 3 would not be ready for the planned launch of the Xbox 360 in the fall of 2005. Microsoft’s top game executive, Robbie Bach, had decided that the company was not going to delay the launch, partly because Microsoft assumed Sony and Nintendo would launch new consoles in 2005 and Microsoft could not be late. So Microsoft needed an outstanding shooting game for the console, and it asked Activision to make Call of Duty 2 a launch title for the Xbox 360.

Collier told me in an interview a few years back that he was ecstatic about the request from Microsoft. His team wanted to get into the consoles, and this was the avenue to escape the stigma of being just a PC game maker. Infinity Ward kept its PC version going, but then it hired like crazy and broke off a team to make the console version. The game would share the same art as the PC version, but the control scheme would be very different. The pressure was on because there were less than two years to go before the console launch.

Collier, West and Zampella tripled the size of their studio to about 75 people. Their lead engineers went to Redmond, Wash., to learn the specifications of the console hardware, which was still under design at the Advanced Technology Group with Microsoft’s Xbox division. Infinity Ward decided to take a very big risk that would characterize its approach to doing big games. Even though it wasn’t sure exactly what the Xbox 360 would be able to do, it decided to create a game that would tax all of the console’s theoretical capability, with its ATI graphics chip and its triple-core IBM microprocessor.

The result was that their game had special effects, such as smoke from smoke grenades, that other games didn’t have. That smoke changed the game’s tactics. Players could toss smoke grenades in front of machine guns and then charge into dangerous streets to clear them. It was, Collier said, serious “eye candy at 60 hertz.” The game maps were also not linear paths; they were environments such as towns where you could take any path you wanted to clear the whole space of enemies. Again, that allowed players to use realistic combat tactics of moving forward until they hit danger spots; then they could outflank the enemies and take them out from the side or behind. This made the design of levels harder, but it paid off.

Infinity Ward also put serious effort into creating artificial intelligence in its enemy soldiers. If the player stayed too long in one spot, the enemies would gather and outflank or encircle the player. The player also had intelligent squad mates who had to stay out of the real players way and yet guide the player to the objective. All of this pushed the budget for the game into the realm of $30 million. That was a big bet by Activision, which had to approve the game’s direction and budget.

When I saw the result in 2005, I was stunned at how good it was. Peter Moore, who then headed Microsoft’s Xbox business, showed me a demo where a soldier was kicking down a door, only to be sprayed by bullets that burst through the timber from the other side. The scene was a cinematic, or pre-canned film. It seamlessly melded into a game scene where I could play. That added to the feeling that you were inside a movie-like scene and were playing the game at the same time. The Infinity Ward team finished the game under a punishing schedule. When the Xbox 360 debuted in the fall of 2005, it was a hit. And it was a hit because Infinity Ward’s big game just blew away the competition. Only a handful of studios were able to master the programming tricks of the Xbox 360 in time to come up with launch titles, but Infinity Ward’s game looked the best and outsold all of the others.

By this time, Activision knew that it had a huge hit on its hands. It began to alternate the Call of Duty franchise between Infinity Ward and another developer, Treyarch. Infinity Ward led the franchise by creating a new game technology, or engine, at the same time it was creating a new game. Treyarch took the completed engine and then made another Call of the Duty game with it. Treyarch’s challenge was to move beyond expansion packs and put it on an equal footing with Infinity Ward. But it took the pressure off of Infinity Ward itself, which could take a couple of years to make every game.

After Call of Duty shipped, Infinity Ward’s developers immediately went back to work on another engine and another game, while Treyarch picked up the Call of Duty 2 engine and started working on Call of Duty 3. They launched that game for Activision in 2006. It did well, satisfying the fans of the genre. But Infinity Ward started working on something altogether different: a combat game set in modern times. At a time when the U.S. was at war in Iraq And Afghanistan, this topic was sure to hit home.

By this time, Activision asked to renew the three-year contracts that Infinity Ward’s leaders had signed to tay on as studio chiefs. In November, 2006, in the midst of the development of Call of Duty 4, Activision extended employment contracts for the leaders. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, debuted in October, 2007. It became a monster hit, selling more than 13 million copies in the next two years. By this time, Infinity Ward had more than 100 people. But there were very few teams with multiple blockbusters behind them. So Activision’s heavy investment in resources was worth it, as Infinity Ward had become as rare among studios as id Software, Epic Games, and EA’s DICE studio in Sweden.

The game once again had the Infinity Ward signature. It had outstanding realism in its graphics. It had a tight story about the pursuit of terrorists. And every scene was riveting. There was no boring stuff in it. In one scene, you had to escape a sinking ship as water poured in and alarms were blaring. As a helicopter starts taking off, you have to jump to its ramp. You barely make it as your commander grabs you and pulls you in. The game won big awards, such as the Game of the Year at the Dice Summit’s Interactive Achievement Awards (pictured, with West on the left, Collier in the middle and Zampella on the right). The accolades rolled in.

The game was so successful that it propelled Activision into the big time. In December, 2007, the company announced an $18 billion dollar deal with Vivendi Universal’s game division. The merger combined Activision — with assets ranging from Spider-Man to Call of Duty — with Vivendi Games’ Blizzard Entertainment, which had huge hits such as World of Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft. The combined entity became the world’s biggest independent video game company, and Kotick became its chief executive. The mega merger was just another indicator of how massive and mass market the video game industry had become.

Treyarch, meanwhile, grew up into a first-class studio as well. In 2008, it launched Call of Duty: World at War, a World War II game set in the Pacific theater. That game was also an outstanding hit, and fans poured out in droves to buy it. The Call of Duty franchise was becoming an annual blockbuster franchise.

But burnout was becoming evident. About a year ago, Collier, the man who was the head spokesman for Infinity Ward, left the company. There was no announcement. It was just quiet and there was no explanation. According to a lawsuit filed by West and Zampella last week, the leaders were worried about the growing interference from the parent company. They were not eager to start work on Modern Warfare 2. They wanted to do original games, and they felt the break-neck pace of doing games so fast would burn out the crew. They were also starting to feel like Activision wasn’t given them their fair share.

Activision was making billions of dollars in revenue from Call of Duty now. It entered into negotiations with Zampella and West and induced them to take on the sequel. In March, 2008, Activision now offered them more money. They extended their contracts through 2011. Then they promised to deliver Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 by Nov. 15, 2009.

In return, West and Zampella got complete creative control over any games produced under the Modern Warfare brand name. They were also given creative control over Infinity Ward and the right to operate independently. Activision also promised to give the two men more compensation in the form of royalties and restricted stock grants. The agreement also promised to share money with Infinity Ward employees too.

In a year and eight months, Infinity Ward completed the game. Modern Warfare 2 launched on Nov. 10, 2009, to almost universal critical acclaim. It created a huge controversy because there was a scene where the player, acting as an undercover agent, had to accompany a group of terrorists as they mowed down unarmed Russian civilians at an airport. The outcry simply generated more sales for the game, which set records of all kinds. Activision Blizzard said the game was the fastest selling in history. It has sold more than 15 million units and generated more than a billion dollars in sales. And Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty franchise, purchased by Activision for $5 million, had generated more than $3 billion in sales. While the rest of the video game industry was hurting from the recession, Activision Blizzard prospered.

But even as fans were celebrating, things fell apart. Activision’s lawyers, working with outside legal counsel, initiated an investigation on Feb. 3. At the Dice Summit, Zampella didn’t show for a scheduled talk. Instead, Kotick appeared, talking about Activision’s strategy for fostering talented studios to produce great games. [photo: Elisabeth Caren].

If game developers want to get resources and support to make their huge games, they should come to Activision Blizzard, he said. During the talk, Kotick insisted that his company is respectful of creative talent and it appreciates what the studios — where many founders remain — had done for the mothership. But he added, “If you want to sell out and move on, there are a lot of other companies to go to.”

He added, “Some ego is healthy, but outsized egos should be checked at the door. As Hillary Clinton says, it takes a village to make a game. If you think you can do it all by yourself, you’re probably the village idiot.”

The investigation into “insubordination” and “breach of contract” continued. Activision lawyers grilled Zampella and West in a windowless room for six hours on President’s Day. They also interviewed Infinity Ward employees. The company attorneys were allegedly seeking information about attempts by the founders to contact Electronic Arts and other potential competitors. The lawsuit said this was simply an attempt to “manufacture a basis to fire West and Zampella.” The lawyers demanded that the founders surrender their cell phones, PCs and other communications devices. When they refused on privacy grounds, the lawyers asserted that this was an additional act of insubordination. The company fired them on March 1.

West and Zampella sued Activision Blizzard’s Activision Publishing division on March 3, saying that the company was trying to get out of paying them $36 million.

“Activision has refused to honor the terms of its agreements and is intentionally flouting the fundamental public policy of this State (California) that employers must pay their employees what they have rightfully earned,” said their attorney Robert Schwartz, in a statement.  “Instead of thanking, lauding, or just plain paying Jason and Vince for giving Activision the most successful entertainment product ever offered to the public, last month Activision hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual ‘investigation’ into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of ‘insubordination’ and ‘breach of fiduciary duty,’ which then became the grounds for their termination on Monday, March 1st.”

“We were shocked by Activision’s decision to terminate our contract,” said West in a statement. “We poured our heart and soul into that company, building not only a world class development studio, but assembling a team we’ve been proud to work with for nearly a decade. We think the work we’ve done speaks for itself.”

Zampella added, “After all we have given to Activision, we shouldn’t have to sue to get paid.”

Then Activision Blizzard announced it had formed a new studio to take over the Call of Duty franchise, headed by Activision veteran Philip Earl. Zampella and West found that Activision Blizzard had long been in preparations to replace Infinity Ward. It was quite ready for life to go on without them. It is interesting in hindsight that Activision Blizzard vacillated during 2009 about whether to call the new game Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 or just Modern Warfare 2. West and Zampella say that their employment agreement means that they have control over the Modern Warfare name and any use of their game technology.

Activision Blizzard expects to release a new Call of Duty game from Treyarch this fall. In addition, Infinity Ward is in development on the first two downloadable map packs for Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer combat, for release in 2010. (Will those be released on time? That’s anybody’s guess). Activision Blizzard is in discussions with partners in Asia who could bring the franchise to online games in that region.

Activision Blizzard is announcing that a new game in the Call of Duty series is expected to be released in 2011 and that Sledgehammer Games, a newly formed, wholly owned studio, is in development on a Call of Duty game that will extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre. Sledgehammer is headed by industry veterans Glen A. Schofield and Michael Condrey. Schofield and Condrey previously created the DeadSpace shooting game for Electronic Arts.

In a statement, Activision Blizzard said, “Activision is disappointed that Mr. Zampella and Mr. West have chosen to file a lawsuit, and believes their claims are meritless. Over eight years, Activision shareholders provided these executives with the capital they needed to start Infinity Ward, as well as the financial support, resources and creative independence that helped them flourish and achieve enormous professional success and personal wealth. In return, Activision legitimately expected them to honor their obligations to Activision, just like any other executives who hold  positions of trust in the company.  While the company showed enormous patience, it firmly believes that its decision was justified based on their course of conduct and actions. Activision remains committed to the Call of Duty franchise, which it owns, and will continue to produce exciting and innovative games for its millions of fans.”

Electronic Arts, meanwhile, has announced that it will launch a new version of Medal of Honor game, set in in the modern combat era in Afghanistan, this fall. That leads us to where we are today. It sounds all too typical a story, with founders being pushed out of their company, developers squaring off against their publisher for the sake of independence and compensation, and lots of litigation ahead before the truth really materializes.

It’s truly sad, as I have never loved a video game franchise as much as this one. I have to believe that Zampella and West will form their own company and come up with something spectacular that makes Activision rue the day that it didn’t pay them $36 million. And Kotick will now have a tough time convincing other independent studios that his parent company is kind and gentle enough to give them a fair deal and share the wealth that their games generate. It’s ugly all the way around. And if it means that there will be delays in the launch of new Call of Duty or Modern Warfare games, fans will lose.

The topic of the building a blockbuster franchise will come up at GamesBeat@GDC inside the Game Developers Conference in the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. Note: Online registration for the conference on Wednesday is closed but you can still register on site. Monday onsite registration is 5-7 pm. On Tuesday and Wednesday, on-site registration is open all day. Reminder: A press pass for GDC or an All-Access Pass for GDC can get you into GamesBeat@GDC. You can also get a GamesBeat only pass by registering on site.

Companies: activision, DreamWorks Interactive, electronic arts, Infinity Ward

People: Grant Collier, Jason West, Vince Zampella

Read the whole story…

Week in gaming: Activision goes to war, God of War 3

Activision Blizzard has become an immensely successful company with three large franchises under its belt. So what’s the only thing to do? Begin burning one down! The drama between Activision and Infinity Ward has lead to lawsuits, stories in the press, and rampant speculation about what’s really going on. What’s clear is that the people who were the driving force behind the series have left the company, and Activision is looking to release as many Call of Duty games in as short of time as possible.

What else happened this week? We play God of War 3, we review Bad Company 2, we give some thoughts on the DSi XL, and we look at the glitch that caused older models of the PlayStation 3 to fail. What a week!

Read the comments on this post

Read the whole story…

The best video games of 2009; you pick your favorite too

1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Sony PlayStation 3. Teen) Naughty Dog/Sony. I’m on the record as saying that this first-person shooter title is one of the best video games ever made. Uncharted 2 certainly could have been a tired sequel and a clone of Tomb Raider, but Naughty Dog got this one right. Just about everything is executed well. The story is compelling and sustains your interest over 26 chapters. Treasure hunter Nathan Drake has to choose between goodness and greed as he hunts down an ancient treasure. He also has to fight off thugs and decide which of two very different women he loves. The art style is hyper-realistic, with vibrant, larger-than-life colors in everything from the characters to the breathtaking Himalayan landscapes. The combat scenes are tough because you’re always fighting your way out of some kind of trap. The train chase scene is unforgettable as you fight thugs from car to car, evade a helicopter blasting at you from above, and make sure you don’t lose your footing as the swaying train rocks back and forth. Those combat scenes, set against lush scenery, are so tough to render that you won’t see them on rival game consoles. You feel like you’re in the midst of a Hollywood blockbuster as you scale dizzying heights and solve riddles as you track down the lost city of Shambhala hidden in the mountains. This game is sharp, polished and consistent from beginning to end, pulling together great elements from good weaponry to awesome sound. That’s why I think this game is one of the finest video games of all time. It’s not enough to single-handedly turn around Sony’s fortunes as the third-place player in the console market, but if Sony can keep on making games like this one, it won’t have to worry.

2. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (PS 3, Xbox 360, and PC. Mature). Infinity Ward/Activision Blizzard. The single-player campaign of this modern combat game has a controversial civilian-shooting scene and a plot that has some mighty strange twists. The plot was such a stinker I decided not to name this as the best game of the year. (Not only do you shoot Russian civilians, you also shoot Russian soldiers, Brazilian thugs, American soldiers, and an American general). But the action is truly riveting as no one delivers a feel for the experience of modern warfare as Infinity Ward. You can participate in a wide array of tactical combat scenes and choose from all sorts of weapons. That includes Predator drones, Stinger missiles, and sniper rifles with thermal sites. The game really shines with multiplayer combat, where the action is intense as you fight it out in street battles among the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, caves in Afghanistan, and the streets of ruined cities. Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer gaming is addictive because there are so many rewards built into the game, even for those who aren’t playing good. There are 70 levels to achieve, so the multiplayer play could last for months. With a little practice, you can take on the combat fanatics online. My rank is around 3.6 million worldwide now after about 22 hours of multiplayer combat. I live for the kill streak rewards in multiplayer that allow you to rain down Predator strikes on the rest of the players.

3. Killzone 2 (PS 3. Mature) Guerrilla Games/Sony. This game was another of the raft of titles that helped turn around the console war for Sony in 2009. The game had daunting Helghast enemies with heavy weapons, good artificial intelligence, and spooky orange eyes. Outstanding visual effects are almost routine in this game. You see little dust storms that swirl around an outpost and obscure your view of the action. Wind blows back curtains from windows. Bullets pierce thin metal walls, sending out sparks and killing those hiding behind the barriers. The sound is excellent, and the screams of the enemy Helghast through their muffled helmets is quite haunting. The action is chaotic and the feeling you get is like a sci-fi version of the combat in the Black Hawk Down film. Fighting from a distance is hard because it’s not easy to aim with the controller, but the game is quite satisfying in close combat.

4. Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360, Mature). Bungie/Microsoft. This game was just supposed to be an expansion pack, but in 14 months, Bungie managed to create a cool new game in the Halo universe that has enthralled nearly 30 million gamers since 2001. You play an “orbital drop shock trooper” who drops into the African city of New Mumbasa to save it from a nasty Covenant surprise attack. These soldiers aren’t as powerful as Master Chief, who isn’t in the game, and that makes you play in a different way as you take on the aliens. Your efforts are just a kind of rear-guard action in a doomed defensive effort. The game comes with Fourth Wall Studios’ Sadie’s Story, a game within the game that is a audio play which reconstructs the story of the city’s fall through the eyes of a civilian. It’s a creative addition to the game. The multiplayer combat is fun, but not that much different from the experience in Halo 3.

5. Flower (PS 3-PlayStation Network, Everyone) Thatgamecompany/Sony. This game is a breath of fresh air. You play the wind in the dream of a flower that wants nature to return to a delapidated city. And that is no joke. This game is wonderfully creative, a wellspring from the mind of Jenova Chen, whose games have been far different. Usually, when you find out that a game has no guns or violence, it’s easy to presume it will be entirely boring. But this game is also quite replayable, as my kids demonstrated. The graphics of the grass and flowers swaying in the breeze tapped the processing power of the Playstation 3. The scenery contains as many as 200,000 individually swaying leaves of grass. And the action at times feels like you’re on a rollercoaster. The game is so pretty to look at that my kids actually snapped digital camera pictures of the game while they were playing it. As a downloadable game, it’s relatively short at a few hours or so. But it also costs less than usual games at $9.99.

6. Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360, PS 3, PC, Mature) Capcom. Zombies have been a god-send to the video game industry, and to Capcom in particular. In this game, as in many others, they move so slow that they’re easy to take out with shotguns. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. But if you’re surrounded by them and are running out of ammo, it can get quite scary. This game keeps you on the edge of your seat as it alternates between zombie massacres and a deep plot that you unravel bit by bit. This game requires the combination of shooting and puzzle solving skills. You use those skills in scenes like where you have to trap a monster that you can’t possibly kill by luring it into an incinerator. Besides zombies, you have to watch out for crocodiles, gigantic worm-like creatures, runaway trucks, and motorcycle-riding zombies. It’s a long game with hours of zombie-slaying fun. The imagery in the game is disturbing, and there was a big debate about whether the game was racist because it is set in Africa and you kill a lot of black zombies. The story has nothing to do with racial differences and the setting just happens to be in Africa. If you don’t mind exploding heads, bursting bodies, and truly disturbing scenes, then this is the game for you.

7. Assassin’s Creed II (Xbox 360, PS 3, Mature) Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft. This stealth-oriented title was one of the most successful original games in 2007, and now in the first week of sales the title is up 32 percent over the 2007 performancein the same period. This title has a new lead character in a new time. The previous game was set in the Crusades, but now Assassin’s Creed II has moved into the Renaissance, in the time of Leonardo and the Medici. You play a nobleman-turned-assassin, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. The game features outstanding art direction that really makes you feel like you’re amidst the canals of Venice, Florence and the Italian countryside. Half the fun is exploring the cities. You can scale to the top of buildings, parkour style, and look around at the view. It’s a marvelous journey into history. Mix that with the action of a stealth killing game, where the object is to avoid getting caught doing bad deeds. The assassin is armed with knives that pop out of his sleeves, but you can also disarm foes and use their weapons against them. The object remains to sneak undetected through a crowd, pounce on your victim, and then make your escape. This game is Ubisoft at its best, executing on the stealth combat genre.

8. Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo Wii, everyone) Nintendo. This game had a built-in audience, since the original Wii Sports was packaged with the Nintendo Wii game console that sold more than 50 million units. The company took its time launching the sequel and came up with a polished game that took advantage of a new peripheral, the Wii MotionPlus, which made motion-sensing more accurate with added gyroscopes. The better accuracy shows up when you try to flick your wrist to throw a Frisbee or duel with swords. The game takes place on WuHu island, which has plenty of Nintendo-style personality. There are 12 different sports to try, such as flying a stunt airplane, kayaking, and archery. As you play the motion-sensing games, you get a work out. Everything is infused with a sense of humor. My kids laughed their heads off in the sword fights where the loser falls into the water with a splash. It is one of those games where you have as much fun looking at the players guffawing on the couch as you do looking at the screen.

9. Plants vs. Zombies (PC, Everyone 10+). PopCap Games. A casual game, this one is a rare bird. The team of just a few people worked on it for more than three years just to get it right. Popcap’s designers took the popular “tower defense” concept and turned it into a funny, frenzied action game where you use a cartoon plant army to defend your house against a horde of attacking zombies. It’s cute action, where you can catapult a chunk of butter at the end of a zombie, beheading the groaning creature. As you proceed, the game gets harder and harder. The zombies come at you with fast or slow speeds, with offensive or defensive approaches, and you have to line up your defense in depth to knock their heads off and stop them from coming. The deadliest weapons you can deploy are pea shooting plants that can take multiple shots at the same time. The game has amazing depth, with 48 types of plants and 26 different zombies. The art style isn’t scary, so it’s fairly kid friendly.

10. Borderlands (Xbox 360, PC, PS 3, Mature). Gearbox Software/Take-Two Interactive. This game managed to garner good sales in between major releases, and that’s because this brand new property was a lot of fun. It’s a first-person sci-fi shooter game with role-playing elements, not unlike last year’s Fallout 3 game, set in a wasteland society on a desert planet. But the style of animation is unique; it has a non-realistic, comic-book style “cel shading” art that seems both realistic and far out at the same time. You play a scavenger, fulfilling missions so that you can earn more currency to spend on weapons and possessions. You can pick one of four combat types and kill foes to earn bounties, a la the Wild West. Since every bullet costs you money, you have to think about exactly how you’re going to dispatch foes without spending your entire hoard replenishing your ammo or weapons. It makes you feel like a miser, but you’re rewarded if you’re a sure shot. The fun part is that you’re constantly rewarded as you find little objects from ammo to better guns that will help you survive the badlands.

Honorable mention: Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360, PS 3, PC, Mature) Rocksteady Studios/Eidos/Warner Bros. Interactive. This game came out in August, but it has a lot of lasting power. And surprise, surprise. It is possible to make a superhero game that isn’t horrible. I was ready to dislike this from the beginning, but I was mesmerized by it instead. The beginning of the game is haunting as a captured Joker — always Batman’s most unpredictable enemy — is escorted by Batman into Arkham Asylum. The foreshadowing of something going wrong builds a lot of anticipation. The interior of the insane asylum is menacing, making you feel like you’re descending into Dante’s Inferno. Then the Joker springs his trap, taking over the entire asylum and setting up ambush after ambush for the caped crusader. The Joker lets loose all of the asylum’s baddies, forcing Batman to fight some of the most well-known figures in the Batman pantheon. Batman can fight enemies with his brute strength, glide with his cape from one part of the asylum to another, and use his grappling hook to spirit himself out of troubles on the ground. The combat system is cool and the fighting animations are quite fluid and realistic.

Another Honorable mention: Brutal Legend.

Brutal Legend (Xbox 360, PS 3, Mature). Double Fine Productions/Electronic Arts. This is probably the most creative and unique titles of the season, or maybe in the history of gaming. It springs from the brain of star developer Tim Schafer, one of the funniest people in games. The game is a sci-fi combat game that is a heavy metal fantasy. You play a Eddie Riggs, a rock band roadie modeled after actor Jack Black who gets hurt in an accident and wakes up in a supernatural world full of monsters, thugs, demons and rock and roll legends. As Riggs, you have a battle axe in one hand and a guitar in another, pursuing enemies in a 64 kilometer square open world. You drive around in a hot rod with flame decals and fight off enemies with your guitar tricks and recruit as your soldiers “headbanger” miners who crack rocks with their own heads. Schafer says the game originated from his fantasies about heavy metal rock album covers. The soundtrack brings back memories, and the game’s story includes animated characters based on metal rock stars such as Ozzy Osbourne, Lita Ford, and a host of others. Despite its sometimes horrific and blood-soaked scenes, this game is one of the funniest I’ve played.

And we’ll close with the list of my top ten games of 2008. Please fill out the poll to tell us about your favorite game of the year and leave a comment explaining why (vote for one).

[EMBED1]

Also, here’s the top ten best-reviewed games of 2009 from Metacritic.com, which aggregates review scores.

Read the whole story…

Week in gaming: exploit ban-happiness edition

Microsoft has begun issuing temporary bans to players taking advantage of an exploit in Modern Warfare 2, while Infinity Ward works on a patch to fix the issue. While the servers may be kept slightly cleaner for the efforts, the amount of control Microsoft holds over owners of their consoles, and the arbitrary way they are able to wield it, is troubling.

With many platforms and little oversight, clones of popular games can become a major problem for original designers. Ars speaks with Jenova Chen, creator of Flower and flOw, about his experiences of having his games cloned. The problem may not be as cut and dried as it first appears.

Read the whole story…

List of the biggest launches in video game history

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is by all accounts likely to be the best-selling video game of all time.

Here are the biggest sales records in the game industry for opening day sales. At the bottom, we’ve also included a list of the biggest first-week sales for games in a chart from VGchartz. (Note unit and dollar sales don’t correlate due to price differences).

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 — 4.7 million copies in North America and UK alone, $320 million,  November 2009. Infinity Ward/Activision Blizzard. (Estimated worldwide day one sales: 7 million). Xbox 360, PS 3, PC.

2. Grand Theft Auto IV – 3.6 million copies, $310 million, May 2008. Rockstar Games/Take-Two Interactive. Xbox 360, PC, Ps 3.

3. Halo 3 — 3 million copies, $170 million in U.S., September 2007. Bungie/Microsoft. Xbox 360

4. Halo 2 — 2.4 million copies, $125 million, November 2004. Bungie/Microsoft. Xbox 360

5. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — 2.8 million copies, $112 million, November 2008. Blizzard Entertainment/Activision Blizzard. PC

Read the whole story…

Mad Catz doles out Modern Warfare 2 controllers for young (and old) whippersnipers

If Infinity Ward’s own Prestige Edition of Modern Warfare 2 isn’t enough to satisfy your lust for custom hardware, Mad Catz is ready to pick up the slack with no less than ten MW2-branded peripherals. The crown jewel to the set will be the Combat Controller, which will have a couple of extra buttons, but more importantly, is likely the controller Robert Bowling was tweeting about last month. Come this November, you’ll also be able to talk smack via a Throat Communicator on the 360 or a more mundane Bluetooth Headset on the PS3, add Skinz to your controllers and Microsoft console, and even your neglected PC can be enriched with an Elite Keyboard and Sniper Mouse combo.

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Mad Catz doles out Modern Warfare 2 controllers for young (and old) whippersnipers originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…