My Name Is Max: Part 1

I've really been enjoying the new Mad Max game. Runs great on PC too. That's why I recorded over an hour of gameplay footage this weekend, and I'll probably record more in the near future. I used LoiLo Game Recorder to capture the footage. It's a great and free program. Enjoy.

The Facepalm Roundup: Digital Homicide Is At It Again!

Not content to just spit in the face of its customers, reviewers, and of course, Jim Fucking Sterling Son, Digital Homicide is now trying to destroy any potential good will remaining between it and the community. Today, for the third time in about a week, they have thrown their latest abomination, "Temper Tantrum 2," onto Steam Greenlight. It is the third time because they keep getting destroyed every time they put it up. Pages of criticism telling them in no uncertain terms that their latest "game" is, like the others, a lazily thrown together smattering of pre-made Unity assets, barely functional gameplay, and shameless delusions of grandeur.

The members of Digital Homicide simply can't, or refuse to see that every decision they make hurts no one but themselves. Robert, who I guess is the one that runs the whole show, recently baited Jim Sterling into an "interview," in which Robert made accusations that bordered on the insane. Robert accused Jim of "stifling innovation." He claimed that he has written thousands of lines of code. It goes on and on. Outrageous claims. Insults towards the gaming community. I even had a minor Twitter "discussion" with him a few weeks ago in which he insulted me a few times after I said some of the same things I'm saying in this blog post.

This man, his company, and everything they do makes it harder for true indie developers to make a living. They flood the market with some of the laziest attempts at game development I've ever had the misfortune of witnessing, and that offends me. I take it personally, because if I ever get a game up and running, games like theirs are only going to make it harder for me to distribute mine. They think the community is stupid, and for some reason, feel like it owes them something. They release garbage and then have the gall, the arrogance, to become filled with indignation when that garbage doesn't make them mountains of cash overnight. Most games take several years to make, even for experienced developers with a full crew and plenty of funding. What does it say about Digital Homicide that they've release five games in the past year and a half (Slaughtering Grounds, Deadly Profits, Temper Tantrum, Forsaken Uprising, and Medieval Mercs), in addition to having two more on Greenlight (Six Nights At Susie's and Temper Tantrum 2). Seven games in a year in a half. Let that sink in for a minute. That alone should tell you how much these people care about providing their customers with a quality product. 

I have a full time job. It's a good job. My employers are good people, and I enjoy the work that I do. However, I've never wanted anything more than to make video games, and to make a living doing that. It is something I wake up thinking about, and one of the last things I think about before I fall asleep. I may succeed, I may not. I may release a string of hits that win awards. I may release some games that crash and burn. Something I will never do, is lie to my customers, allow my ego to swat away good judgement and reasonable criticism, or bite the same hands I expect to feed me. 

No More COD For Me Until It Goes Through Rehab

COD has become a drug addict. A thin, weak shadow of its former self that is still trying to convince us that it has it's shit together even while it hits us up for some spare cash. It needs to be sent to rehab, and I won't let it set foot in my home again until it is.

Alright, enough with the metaphor. This is simply a list of things that would need to be removed or changed in order to get me to buy another COD title. I skipped Modern Warfare 3 and Ghosts, and was extremely let down/furious with Advanced Warfare.

*Activision's overall disdainful attitude towards the customer: Activision essentially sees its customers as wallets with feet, or as children nagging wallets with feet to buy them the latest release. Everything they do is geared towards providing an endless, nearly unimaginable revenue stream. And there's nothing wrong with that on its surface. Businesses exist to make money. Businesses making money off of Johnny and Jane consumer are how the economy stays afloat. But, the services rendered for our hard earned cash need to be worth the asking price, and need to not be shoved in our faces by corporate suits that barely hide their contempt for us. They need to, through their actions, essentially say "We know times are tough and you're spending some of your limited funds on our products. We respect you for that." Instead we're getting "You'll buy this because you always do, no matter what bullshit we try to pull, and you'll buy anything extra we tack on, because the product we've given you is gimped otherwise!"

*We need real dedicated servers: For several years, we've seen connectivity and matchmaking issues, trouble joining friend's parties, and inconsistencies with latency/host advantage/who shot first/etc. I recently saw a video where someone theorized that this has been done intentionally to keep the skill gap small (more on that later), and it wouldn't surprise me. However, I'm just going to roll with my initial assertion. Activision is too damned cheap to implement proper dedicated servers. Especially with the release of a COD title every year, that's a lot of servers to maintain. Heaven forbid something cut into their revenue stream that is for the good of the customer. This is the highest selling franchise in gaming history. They throw millions of dollars towards PR and marketing. But can they get up off their asses, and throw some money at some true dedicated servers? Not this hybrid garbage that they keep shoving down our throats. Real life dedicated servers. I don't care if there's a server browser or not, either. I just want consistent, reliable performance that doesn't cause me to question every kill I get.

*Outdated tech: This doesn't really bother me, as long as a game looks good, can support modern gameplay features, and performs well...so yeah, COD needs a new engine.

*The appeal to the LCD of gamers: COD is designed to make anyone a rockstar of first person shooters. Between the small map sizes, the lack of any real respawn delays, the random (and often completely ludicrous) spawn points, and the general approach to gameplay (sprint and spray), every COD player can rack up some kills. No one wants to play a game where they get destroyed constantly. But they've crushed the skill gap so much that there's virtually no learning curve. It boils down to using a lightweight, fully automatic weapon and shooting the other guy first. Weapons like shotguns, LMG's, and sniper rifles are considered weapons requiring skill to use instead of being weapons designed for different situations. Everything, including the sniper rifles, are used by the player base in fast paced, relatively close range combat. Maps and sniper rifles that prevent sniping by design, exist only to provide the illusion of variety and to, once again, keep that skill gap small.

*The small map sizes and limited game types: This all basically stems from my previous points. Game modes that emphasize team work, and maps that allow for some tactical freedom would pull away from the small skill gap and "make everyone feel like Rambo" approach. Changing this would also interrupt their brisk development cycle, thereby interrupting the revenue stream, and once again, Activision simply cannot allow that.

*Abusive DLC practices: How much money does someone need to spend before they realize they're being taken? Activision is clearly pushing hard to find out. For Advanced Warfare, we had the base game ($60), the season pass ($50), cosmetic DLC (roughly $1.99 each), and, wait for it, extra armory and loadout slots sold in packs ($1.99 per pack). This last item in particular infuriated me. We paid full price, and then some, for a full featured game. Why in the holy fuck are they charging us for extra loadout and armory slots, especially when the armory slots are tied to the best new feature Advanced Warfare possessed (the loot system)? I can picture Michael Condrey telling an Activision higher-up, "I don't think this will fly with the playerbase." I can also picture that same higher-up responding with "You must be new here. Every year, we push the boundaries of what we can get away with in terms of how we charge the players for a complete experience." It is absolutely insulting and disgusting that in order to earn (and keep) all of the content that came with the Advanced Warfare base game, I need to shell out extra money for slots that took Sledgehammer probably about fifteen minutes to add to the game, and should have been there in the first place. I uninstalled the same day that was announced. Not that I had gotten much playtime in anyway...

*PC players getting shafted: I realize that consoles are now the primary market for COD. But if you're going to put a half-baked, lazy ass port of a PC version together, don't bother at all in the future. Advanced Warfare's LAG and issues getting into games took weeks to be resolved, and by the time they were, the entire community had sort of given up from some of the other things I've mentioned and general franchise fatigue. When the game was finally stable and playable for me, all I could find was TDM and Domination matches. Wheee. I'm ready for this carnival ride to stop now.

It's simple. Activision is too greedy and proud to relent in any meaningful way to its customers. Especially now that Destiny is becoming their new cash cow. Mark my words. If they don't make some big changes in the coming years, they will run COD straight into the ground. A lot of talented people will be out of work. Everyone will lose in some way. Except for Activision. Who will continue to reign as one of the wealthiest, yet worst publishers in the business. I've already floated to shore. I'm just waiting for this leaky, rat infested ship to completely sink. Shit, another metaphor.

The Facepalm Roundup: Issue 3

I apologize for being away for so long. My wife and I have been prepping to buy a house, I recently gutted and rebuilt my gaming PC, I've been taking on more responsibility at work, and I'm trying to get my own game project off the ground before the end of the year. However, that is no excuse to allow a blog to stagnate, so I will try my hardest to be more diligent in the future. Some of my posts may be a bit shorter, but I'll be able to get more information and news to everyone a little bit more frequently.

In the past couple weeks I've become a fan of Jim Sterling. Until I stumbled upon his back and forth with Digital Homicide over their lazily copy/pasted shooter, The Slaughtering Grounds, I wasn't overly familiar with him. Even if his presentation can be (for some, I'm fine with it) a bit vulgar, bombastic, or downright silly, I usually end up cheering towards my phone when I watch his videos, as he frequently echoes sentiments that I have been feeling for some time.

I was both infuriated and gleefully excited when Jim recently put a disturbing trend on display. He called it "asset flipping." That is, buying asset/starter packs for game engines and either assembling them using the most minimal effort possible, or simply using the sample levels that often come with them, packaging them up, and trying to sell the end result as a "game." With Valve's virtually non-existent quality control on Steam Greenlight, along with the community's often painful ineptitude towards researching a product before spending their money, this has begun to spiral out of control.

We saw it with West Games and their Areal/Stalker Apocalypse/Everything They've Ever Had A Hand In scam. We saw it with Digital Homicide and The Slaughtering Grounds. Right now, we're seeing it with the developer simply known as "Kotach," as he buys Unity asset packs, imports them into the engine, compiles them, and sells them. He even uses the descriptions from the asset packs as the descriptions for his "games." Once a week, he clears the forums of any threads calling him out on his garbage, and then continues searching for the next way to exploit the community. And while most people know he's being a dishonest lazy greedy pompous scumbag, you see the occasional comment saying "this game looks great!" Even if there is only one comment like that, it is one comment too many.

And so, we circle back around to something I'm constantly saying. We as consumers have to educate ourselves on a product before making a purchase. Uncrowded, one of Kotach's "games," uses the Unity UnitZ asset pack. So do many other games, several of which have been hastily thrown together as a scummy cash-grab, just like Uncrowded. However, if I am a casual gamer, and I am not even aware of the existence of pre-made asset packs or Greenlight's awful filtering system, or I am seeing this asset pack in action for the first time, I can see how someone might feel a twinge of excitement. You should be able to walk down a dark alleyway without fear. You also should be able to support an "indie developer" to promote the release of solid, feature complete games without being worried about being scammed. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, if you choose to walk down a dangerous alley and get mugged, its partially your fault. Additionally, if you choose to give money to someone before researching whether or not they just want to take your money and run, it is also partially your fault.

These types of "developers" are particularly infuriating for me, because I'm trying to break into the indie development scene. Guess what? We're making all of our assets from scratch. We're writing all of our code and blueprints ourselves. And, even after we have a solid gameplay demonstration put together, I know that I will still need to campaign like hell on Steam Greenlight, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or wherever we go, in order to make any headway and gain any exposure. You know why? Because those places are now being flooded with lazy, half-assed attempts to sell "games" that barely pass for a playable tech demo. These people are dragging the rest of the indie community down, and the indie community is, if we're being honest, the only future the gaming industry has left. Indie games are all we have to turn to after we've gotten fed up with being squeezed for every last penny by large publishers. There are a few exceptions to this, but its not like these exceptions can cover every genre and corner of the industry.

In this situation, there's something to be said for being an elitist, I think. With accessibility, comes the masses of assholes who want to exploit the entire system for a profit with the laziest efforts possible. It seems we have reached that stage with game development. The only way to stop it, is to do a few paragraphs of reading on a product before buying it (suck it up and do it, you'll be fine), and for Steam, Kickstarter, and other indie developer outlets to start policing what get's approved and what doesn't through carefully altered policies/restrictions. The refund policy was a step in the right direction for the most part, but we need to stand together to prevent this type of garbage from taking over the entire indie community. Its only going to hurt all of us in the long run.

Strafe Tech Demo Footage

So I recorded this last week during the end of Pixel Titan's Kickstarter campaign for Strafe. They hit their goal, thankfully. We need more games like this. Check it out.

The Facepalm Roundup: Issue 2

Let me start this off with a simple, direct statement. I hate people that intentionally try to take advantage of or scam others. I find it to be one of the lowest forms of ugly behavior. With that in mind, I've spent the past two weeks piecing bits of information together, forming a mosaic of scamming and shady behavior that makes me cross-eyed when I try to understand all of it. And, while much of this information has become common knowledge amongst the community over the past six months, I have made an attempt to add the smaller bits that may have gone unnoticed.

I don't know who Max Kovtun is, but I don't like him. Based on what I've seen, he's been at the core of several of the scam projects that this post will discuss. The first one that he tried of which I am aware, was an indiegogo campaign for a "Nuclear Energy Space Station." The pitch is filled with a bunch of buzz words. It was also complete bullshit. Check it out here.

His second project was a game called "Space Pioneer." Its Kickstarter campaign claimed to have cosmonauts and scientists involved in its development. Based on what I've seen, they dropped a bunch of names and posted pictures of people that are part of the scientific community and can be found through a Google search, but their actual involvement was questionable at best. At any rate, this project was clearly another scam from the get go. The Kickstarter contained stolen concept art. It once again, used a bunch of buzz words. The video had nothing to do with the game itself. The Kickstarter campaign failed. When that happened, Kovtun took to encouraging people to donate directly through Space Pioneer's website. The site seems functional on the main page, and I'm quite sure the Paypal donation links work, but clicking on the forums, or anything that would actually be relevant to the game itself, lead to nowhere or provide no real information whatsoever.

Now, we come to the project that brought all of this to the public eye and brought all of this garbage to my attention. Early last year, a team calling themselves West Games, who claimed to be made up of "core developers of the STALKER franchise," began a Kickstarter campaign for Areal, a spiritual successor to STALKER. The team/project was lead by Eugene Kim, a Ukrainian, yet the Kickstarter page said that it was based in Las Vegas. Interestingly enough, the campaign money was supposed to go to a man named Leonid Kovtun. That is just the tip of the iceberg. In order to make this go faster for you, the reader, allow me to quick-list off the veritable litany of bullshit that they pushed onto people. They are in no particular order.  
*Their involvement in the STALKER series turned out to be greatly exaggerated.
*The initial version of the campaign page contained alpha footage of Stalker, although it was implied that it was footage of Areal. 
*They set the goal at a measly 50k, despite the fact that they were supposedly creating a custom engine, and planned on releasing Areal on consoles.
*Once they were called on the fact that they hadn't shown anything original, they posted an update with screens of the Areal "prototype." Those screens turned out to be comprised of store-bought Unity assets. A whole map, in fact, from the Unity Apocalypse pack. All they did was make the billboard on the map say "Areal." That's all.
*Their first "gameplay footage" was, once again, store bought Unity assets. 
*When the word "scam" started to circulate, West Games (Eugene Kim specifically), accused the press of being dishonest, posted personal information of Kickstarter backers in public areas, created fake Kickstaer accounts that spammed the comments section of their campaign (in order to troll or bury those that knew what was happening), and even claimed to receive a letter of support from Vladimir Putin.
*Eugene Kim performed a reddit AMA that was a complete disaster. Kim refused to answer basic questions about the project and the company, and the whole thing only reinforced the notion that something sketchy was happening. Several accounts that had been created that day seemed to be the majority of the positive feedback being directed at Kim. 
*It didn't look like they were going to hit their goal, but at the last minute, a couple of backers contributed several thousand to push them over the edge.
*Thankfully, Kickstarter suspended the project, but West Games tried the same "fund us directly through our site" crap that was attempted with Space Pioneer.
*I'm sure I have forgotten a couple things.

Have you read enough yet? Is your skin crawling? Its not over yet. Late last year, a website was privately registered through Godaddy. World Wide Funder claims to be a crowd funding website similar to Kickstarter. And wouldn't you know it, Areal (now rebranded as STALKER: Apocalypse) and Space Pioneer (rebranded as Project Tool) are both on the site. Any money donated goes straight to the project owners. They don't need to meet their goals. Most of the links on the project pages, predictably, lead nowhere. At least one of the very limited assets shown on the STALKER: Apocalypse age comes standard with Unreal 4. Project Tool's campaign video is actually a video stolen from an indie film creator, which can be found here. The rest of the projects on the site are clearly scams. All written in the same broken English, one of the projects is for Counter-Strike 1.6 for Pete sake. Stolen Youtube videos, generic images found on the web, and complete nonsense make up the majority of the content on the site. They even keep pushing back the end dates of the funding campaigns on the projects.

So, let's piece it all together. The Kovtuns, Eugene Kim, and the people that are involved with them are scamming people out of their money by claiming to be working on projects that members of the gaming community would love to see. Everything they display as part of their projects is either stolen, or thrown together with the laziest of efforts possible. Every time one of their scams fails, they come up with something new. They are heartlessly preying on people's gullibility and passion for certain genres and intellectual properties. They are bad people. They are scumbags. And it makes me sick that there are people out there damaging the gaming community in such a way. To be fair, this entire situation has basically become a joke amongst most members of the gaming community, because almost everyone sees this for what it is. However, if even one dollar goes to these charlatans, then we have failed in stopping them. This points back to the importance of being an informed consumer. Now, people shouldn't NEED to lock their car doors, carry mace, or make sure they aren't being scammed when donating to a crowd-funded project, but the reality of the world we live in is that it is often necessary to take precautions in order to protect ourselves.

Hopefully the gaming community can come together and get their scam site (and all future scams of theirs) shut down. Until that time, spread the word. We need to stick together and protect each other. The members of the community are often at odds with one another. "This platform is better. This game sucks. You're a fanboy." However, we should be able to put all of our differences aside in these situations and work together to put a stop to this sort of thing. This behavior goes beyond gaming. Scams are something that threaten to affect everyone, every day. Whether its the old "Nigerian Prince" e-mail scam, or credit card fraud, we have to put a stop to it. The first step in halting this sort of behavior is paying attention, and noticing the little indicators that something is amiss. So, in the words of a great man, "Stay frosty and alert."

The Facepalm Roundup

This is a new type of post that I will start writing intermittently. Its sole purpose is to expose and chronicle some of the shady, underhanded, or dishonest types that have begun to make headway in the industry.

The first member of our roundup is developer ImminentUprising. A part of Digital Homicide Studios (they're the same people from what I can tell), I've heard that they are a two person team, possibly brothers. Their release in October of this year, The Slaughtering Grounds, was not well received. It was universally panned by Steam user reviews, and Jim Sterling gave it a less than stellar review of his own. Overall, it is seen by the community as a lazy attempt to cash in on the zombie/wave survival genres of which everyone is so fond.

How did ImminentUprising respond? They took Jim Sterling's initial review video and put snarky, sarcastic text comments throughout the video. Very classy. As I understand it, the video feud continued on for weeks, with Jim Sterling and ImminentUprising making response videos to their response videos. In addition, ImminentUprising began removing any negative feedback on the Steam forums. The game's forums are a ghost town even now, because they burn down any threads that aren't complimentary. They also proposed a giveaway on their official forums in which they would give a free copy of the game to anyone that gave The Slaughtering Grounds a negative review. Instead of receiving a copy of the game, anyone that participated got banned. On top of all of that, several people noticed that The Slaughtering Grounds consisted mostly of premade assets that had been purchased, or in the case of the game's blood effects and concept art, stolen from a Google image search and an artist they do not know, respectively. In a moment of panic, ImminentUprising leveled a case of some form of copyright infringement at Sterling, which was utter bullshit. It predictably failed.

Wow. Just wow. This kind of behavior is that of a spoiled, ten year old brat. The "developer's" at ImminentUprising don't deserve to have access to development tools of any kind after a legacy of douche-baggery such as this. But wait, what's that? Its not over yet?

They are now working on a new game called Forsaken Uprising. It is basically a Rust clone, and from what I've seen, its faring a little better than The Slaughtering Grounds, but not by much. They seem to have an active presence on the game's Steam forums, and are at least trying a little bit harder with this one. The reviews are still mostly negative, but that's not what is bothering me. What is bothering me is the fact that they have lazily tried to distance themselves from The Slaughtering Grounds by creating a new Steam developer profile with a slightly different formatting of their Developer/Publisher name.

The Slaughtering Grounds format:
ImminentUprising
Digital Homicide Studios LLC

Forsaken Uprising format:
imminentuprising
Digital Homicide Studios LLC.

There you have it. Switching from uppercase to lowercase and adding a period. If you're going to try and improve your image, don't hide from your past mistakes. Don't try to continue to cover them up. Embrace them, apologize for them, learn something from them, and move on.

This was just the warmup round. Check back in the near future. I'll be doing another edition of The Facepalm Roundup.

Happy Birthday Doom

For Doom's 21st birthday, I played through its entire first episode, Knee Deep in The Dead. Enjoy.

The Verdict...Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

I was in the shower today when I realized my ambivalence towards Call of Duty can be neatly categorized into either optimism or realism. These two sides often duke it out, and much like Call of Duty's own multiplayer matches, the victories only last for a split second. Here is how the internal discussion often takes place...

Optimistic Tony: "A brand new studio, a longer development cycle, and new gameplay mechanics that make sense! Advanced Warfare is going to be the breath of fresh air the series so desperately needs. Its in the future, it includes new movement abilities, and even has a loot drop system. Sounds good to me."

Realistic Tony: "Yeah, but its still Activision publishing the damn thing, which means issues from previous iterations will still exist, and the total amount of paid content will be enough to make Bobby Kotick's money-stuffed mattress even more full than it already is. Its a cash cow for the publisher at this point, pure and simple."

Optimistic Tony: "Well hopefully they'll adjust some of their methods before they run the franchise into the ground, close all three development studios, and cause a lot of people to become jobless."

Realistic Tony: "Are we really up to three development studios for a single franchise? Is that what gaming is becoming? And if you think Activision cares about what happens to the franchise, or its associated developers, you're sorely mistaken. The only thing they understand is a revenue stream."

Optimistic Tony: "Don't think that way! They might do the right thing!"

Realistic Tony: "Good luck with that buddy..."

Advanced Warfare really is a fun game. It contains a large amount of content straight out of the box, it introduces some spectacular new gameplay mechanics, and the PC version (the version I purchased) is not a lazy port. However, lingering under all of this, are the same freaking issues Call of Duty has had for several years. The potential Advanced Warfare has to truly be great, makes the presence of those issues all the more enraging.

The campaign is primarily about Atlas, a private military corporation that rivals many countries in military might. As Mitchell (voiced by Troy Baker), I join Atlas after losing my arm during my brief time in the Marine Corps. Jonathan Irons (voiced by Kevin Spacey), the CEO of Atlas takes Mitchell under his wing, outfitting him with a high-tech prosthetic arm and putting him to work for the PMC. That's about all I know so far. I'll be honest, I haven't beaten the campaign yet, as multiplayer has been my primary focus. Its safe to say that it's standard Call of Duty. Corridors filled with bad guys, and scripted use of awesome gadgets that would really shine in more open environments. There is an upgrade system that allows you to improve your Exo-Suit Battery or Reload Speed between missions, but its nothing that will knock off any socks. The cut-scenes in between missions also stutter to the point where they are unwatchable, but I haven't fiddled with the settings enough to see if this can be fixed.

Exo-Suit Survival is a pretty cool diversion from the other game modes. Wave based survival with limited time in between rounds to upgrade weapons and your Exo. There are objectives to complete, such as finding and disarming bombs, or collecting intel from fallen enemies, so it isn't just killing all the enemies to move onto the next round. There is also a brief zombie level if you complete certain challenges within this mode, hinting at what is to come with DLC packs. Now, a lot of people have gotten really worked up about the fact that zombies was not included with the base game, but I feel that Exo-Suit Survival provides a comparable amount of content, even if zombies is the more beloved mode. It makes sense that Sledgehammer would want to introduce their new gameplay elements into as much of the base game content as possible.

As usual, multiplayer is the focus of most players.

Now, onto the big one. Multiplayer. The movement system involving the Exo-Suits, along with their abilities, does make things fresh as long as everyone isn't hopping around like a bunch of jackasses. I've found that maintaining forward movement in conjunction with my vertical boosts and horizontal dodges has been pretty effective. Still, the overall increased game speed due to the new movement system can make things hectic. Its sometimes hard to see where the enemy is located. I simply die and have to watch the kill-cam to understand what happened. I've noticed that this increased speed has also made it more difficult to utilize certain gameplay styles. There are light machine-guns, but it takes so long to aim down the sights with them, that I am dead before I can get a shot off. SMG's and assault rifles are king right now. EM weapons, the new category of energy-based guns, are pretty fun to play with. They don't use ammo, but they can overheat.

The pick thirteen system, an extension of Black Ops 2's pick ten, was a great idea. It allows you to tailor your loadouts to your liking without becoming awesome at everything simultaneously. Scorestreaks have also made a return from Black Ops 2, and are now customizable. The customization options for the scorestreaks are both numerous and interesting, but all of them make their associated streak more expensive. Still, for a better than average (barely) player like myself, its good to add the support upgrade to several of my streaks so that my earned points carry over even when I die. You can also click on locked slots with the spade emblem to automatically equip the proper wildcard and open that slot up. 

The pick thirteen was a solid move.

 The single greatest addition to Advanced Warfare, in my opinion, is the supply drop system. Every hour of game time (give or take) rewards me with a supply drop. When I open it, it gives me weapons, cosmetic equipment (hats, gloves, knee guards, etc.), experience boosters, and boosters that lead to more frequent supply drops for a time. The variants for each base weapon are cool, and allow you to fine-tune your loadouts even more. They contain slightly different stats and sometimes have attachments permanently affixed to them. Any attachments and camouflages that are unlocked for a weapon are available for every variant as well.  

Loadouts are just one category of customization. You can also choose your gender, your face, and many other options.

Most equipment earned from loot drops can be sold for XP.

 

All of this would work together to create a phenomenal multiplayer package, if lingering issues with Call of Duty as a whole weren't glaringly present. Quick-scoping with sniper rifles is still a big issue. There have been several instances when I've watched the kill-cam and should not have died unless the sniper rifle projectiles are three feet wide. The spawns are often atrocious. It becomes one giant game of leapfrog as I kill someone and then am killed by a recently spawned enemy ten feet behind me, who is killed by someone that spawned ten feet from him, and so on. I have literally died, and come back facing my killer, who lit me up again since he had the advantage and I was attempting to take a few milliseconds to get my bearings. I'm fairly certain in a few of these instances, I respawned and saw my body still collapsing to the ground, just a few feet away. That does not create tense and hectic firefights. It builds a clusterfuck with advantages often being the luck of the draw.

But the worst thing, is that Activision is still trying to shove their proprietary matchmaking down our throats because apparently they're too cheap or stubborn to spring for real dedicated servers. This has resulted in massive amounts of unfair deaths, ping spikes, disconnects, and generally a bad time for a lot of people. I've had it pretty easy so far, but it isn't uncommon for me to open up the scoreboard mid-match and to see red bars on my ping indicator. There have been several instances where I seem to only take a few bullets before I die, when in fact the enemy player had started shooting much sooner, as indicated by the kill-cam. Michael Condrey stated about a month before release that we would receive dedicated servers, and that we should expect an announcement "soon." We have been given no information since then. In the past day or so, when asked again about their status, he merely shared this statement from Activision...

" Advanced Warfare employs game servers hosted at data centers globally on all platforms and listen servers as part of our proprietary matchmaking system. Our goal is to ensure the best possible connection and greatest gameplay experience regardless of location and time of day."

This has indicated to many people (myself included) that perhaps we may have been misled. I'm getting the vibe that Activision simply won't allow dedicated servers, even if Sledgehammer tells them that its for the good of the game and its what the players want. If that is the case, then that's a bunch of crap and several people somewhere need to pull their heads out of their collective asses. The conspiracy theorist in me also wouldn't put it past Activision to deny superior post-launch support in the form of dedicated servers, because they only care about the initial influx of sales and it herds everyone towards next year's release.

 

Until they straighten out the inherent issues present in the Call of Duty franchise, it will continue to piss a lot of people off. People that put their faith, and their money, into each yearly release hoping that it will be better than the last. Unless Sledgehammer and Activision turn some of these issues around, Advanced Warfare will frustratingly solidify the fact that Call of Duty is the Justin Bieber of video games. It sells to the uninformed consumer and the young, but the number of frustrated people that don't want it to be around anymore, is growing exponentially. The only way we'll ever make any headway, is to speak with our wallets. Unfortunately though, we spoke with our wallets when it came to Guitar Hero, and Activision is still a giant in the industry while Guitar Hero's developer, Neversoft, is no longer in existence. 

Something needs to change, and unfortunately, Advanced Warfare is the poster child for that fact. I truly think Sledgehammer wants to give us the best game they can, but it seems like their money-hungry overlords are standing in the way of that. This is the last year I'm buying a Call of Duty title on release. I've skipped entries in the series entirely, but I've always given others my money on day one, because I wanted to believe the fundamental issues would be cleaned up at some point in addition to new mechanics.

Verdict: Some amazing improvements to the tired Call of Duty formula are painfully marred by Activisions' inability to treat their customers as more than walking bank accounts. Until we receive dedicated servers and fixed spawn points, let this ship sail.

I'm Excited for Advanced Warfare, and That's OK

I'm starting to get excited for the new Call of Duty. I tried to avoid it, I tried to prevent it, but its happening all the same. As I've said before, my COD love affair is one I would like to rekindle, but it has become very difficult these past few years. Still, I feel like I can maybe break out my little black book this year, and give the old girl a call.

Sledgehammer Games seems to really be putting forth their best effort to make this a fresh experience. For those that don't know, this is their first full COD title. They assisted on Modern Warfare 3, but spent the following three years working on Advanced Warfare. I think a new studio and a longer development cycle is just what the doctor ordered, but I am still concerned about having three studios producing titles for the same franchise. Even with this new blood, I'm wondering how long it will take for the fatigue to set back in. On the other hand, its not like anyone has to either buy all COD titles or none at all. I've picked the titles I wanted to purchase on a yearly basis. I skipped Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, and Ghosts. The Black Ops franchise is more my speed. I understand people not liking the setting as much, but for me, it was always about the gameplay mechanics. Things like Black Ops 2's pick ten system and score streaks were large steps forward in my opinion, and I think many of the gameplay mechanics becoming a part of Advanced Warfare are great ideas.

First of all, they've added a whole new movement system to the game. They've added exosuits, which will be a standard part of your loadouts. They allow the player to move faster, jump higher, and enable abilities like cloaking for a short period of time. These core mechanics will help the franchise move away from "whoever shoots first, wins." In addition, score streaks have made a return. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Score streaks can now be modified by upgrades. For instance, you may equip a standard auto-turret as one of your score streaks in your loadout. You can then modify that turret by adding a rocket pod to it. However, this will also make the turret more expensive. This will hopefully prevent score streaks from becoming overpowered. Advanced Warfare also brought the pick ten system back, only they have expanded it to a pick thirteen. I would imagine this was done to make room for the exosuits and their abilities.

The biggest and most exciting thing for me, is the addition of supply drops. These act as random loot drops. They provide thousands of different cosmetic customization options, weapon variants, and reinforcements. The player will still unlock Advanced Warfare's 35 base weapons as they level up, but each weapon also has nine variants that are earned through supply drops, for a total of 350 weapons. All of the weapons are still customizable as well. Reinforcements, on the other hand, act as single-use boosters to help you out of a jam. Think of them as Titanfall's burn cards. I'm a bit of a loot fiend, and as long as Sledgehammer keeps their promise of not charging for any supply drops, I will be a happy camper. I'm still a little wary, though, as I know how Activision likes to monetize their products aggressively.

I read that Advanced Warfare's campaign is going to be longer than the past few in the series. Hopefully that means it will be at least ten hours. Recently a co-op mode called exosuit survival was announced as well, so it seems like there will be a huge amount of content available when the game launches. All of this is sounding really good. Hopefully its not too good to be true, but we won't know for sure until November 4th. Here's to hoping I can reconnect with my old flame, and begin our relationship once more.