This week, the crew discusses all of the news surrounding Activision/Blizzard after its purchase by Microsoft, and the consensus is that Bobby Kotick is still a slime.
The crew realize how prickly gamers are getting. Lootboxes may make them complain, but it won’t stop them from paying. Exclusive DLC? That seems to be a bridge too far.
The news includes:
Modern Warfare fans are cancelling pre-orders over Spec Ops exclusivity
PS4 cross-play features reportedly out of beta, now available to all developers
French CS:GO players can preview loot box contents now, but still have to claim them
One thing Activision does very well with the Call of Duty series is making you feel like you’re part of the war and not just a gamer. It may be the coloring, the life-like environments, explosions or movie-style filtering, whatever it is makes their series feel like a world at war.
Now, we’re heading back to WWII but from a brand new perspective, the Pacific Theatre. Why did it take so long to produce a game in this area of the world? Our guess, to gain the intensity and power of the battle we needed higher end console/pc processors to properly render the jungles, waters and terrains in a life-like manner.
Or, maybe nobody thought of it? In any case this is a must buy game for myself and probably many others, regardless to multi-player capabilities. World at War will be released for Wii, PS3, PS2, Xbox 360, and PC.
Unfortunately, we had to skip a week despite recording a good podcast thanks to technical difficulties – don’t worry, we’ll air it at some point in the near future. It was a good episode. This episode had its own issues, as Jonah was unable to record the podcast at home, so he was outside in the New York City night air podcasting with TJ and Scott.
This week’s news includes:
Microsoft cancels Fable Legends, closes Press Play Studios, considers shuttering Lionhead Studios UK
Report: SpinTires developer sabotaged his own game
10 months later, MAME finishes its transition to open source
Valve announces The Lab, a compilation of free VR “experiments”