It's hard to believe the Xbox 360 is almost as if as my daughter.
Then again it's hard to believe if I want to in a year's time I can have my pancreas removed. So much as changed since 2005. Such high lights include receding hair, being out of the 20-30 category in questionnaires and beginning to read books about growing plants and what to eat to avoid high cholesterol.
One thing that has not changed is my LOVE for video games and all what is nerdy. Seriously. My clothes will drop off if I have an back and forth conversation with an woman who knows her rpgs from her mobas.
During my time at drama school my time playing video games and spending time with my then girl friend were mutually exclusive. Some time for me meant popping into my bedroom while she watched her soaps and I played PES 3.
My God, that game was the shit.
To THIS day I still can remember the epic battle I would have with hardest level cpu opposition. I remember losing an game in Europe 5-0 one leg, walking away from my PlayStation 2 before I smash the son of a bitch and new DVD drive and then coming back next leg to win 7-5. To THIS day, I've never had such an epic come back.
Sadly come back was the thing that happen when the Xbox 360 was released in Europe in 2005.
I remember being PES 6 hoping for an similar experience that made me act like an crack addict who smoked a pipe and then took sleeping pills after wards.
Sadly as kinda fun as that game was it didn't have the team name, stadiums or even the option to edit the squads in the game. The only fun that was to be had was in the game's master league mode which since new gen, now current gen in my mind seems to have got worst and worst.
Converting current gen favourites in to Next gen gaming is an simple concept but rarely one that is lasts both generations for long. Even the one mighty skate board games such as Tony Hawk's have failed to keep last gen's audience sniffing glue, smoking pot and eating munchies while nodding one's head like one of those plastic dogs in moving cars to the status excellent THPS sound tracks.
Interestingly enough Activision's current golden goose seems about to suffer from the same fate.
Call Of Duty: Ghosts is the tenth game in the game's franchise and frankly possibly the one with the biggest task on the gf (game's franchise).
But only does it have next gen to cope with (which I'm sure with the game's new engine will ofc handle with easy. That would be the problem) but also the exclusive content contract with Microsoft which the average gamer seems to believe that that's a company that doesn't give an sloppy seconds fuck about the average gamer.
The Xbox one's launch mentioned a lot of things. But what stuck out to three still considered niche market despite the games (such as call of duty modern warfare 2) grossing the highest opening weekend even beating movie history movie openings such as the Harry potter films and even the dark knight's seemingly impossible high box office sales for tactically nuked (see what I did there) the company decided to seemingly deny its company nerd roots and appeal to an larger media based market such as tv and music services.
The phrase that sticks out of my mind from that launch show was "we want this system to be the new water cooler."
I almost immediately put my Xbox 360 for sale.
Another problem CoD has is the overly bad ass it's great Fiercest competitor had become since its announcement at the beginning of this year; Battlefield 4.
Now an quick disclaimer; I am NEITHER an CoD or BF fan boy. If I'm honest, I'm a fan boy of Alice Morgan from Luther, Hayley Williams and Dita Von Tease. But more than that, I am a gamer. With frankly a raging hard on at the mention of Alice and Dita.
Woof.
Every thing from the 12 minutes of footage released with one of my favourite songs as an intro (total eclipse of the heart) from the intense for fights and direction of the scene/footage with the humour and respect which is slowly installed in to the audience... Even the tease of the introduction of female soldier characters had frankly made battlefield 4 scrap with CoD:G one of the most one sided fights I have ever seen in my life.
It's like Rodney King verses the LA police all over again. Spoiler; Rodney gets the shit kicked out of him.
This better advertising campaign had been going on all year. And consider both games are being released late November, CoD fans are being extremely concerned with the little coverage and footage they have seen.
Another reason why I'm worried is an personal one; the fandom itself. You only have to search YouTube for CoD to find childish, trolling, counter trolling our an mixture of the 3.
This fandom is notoriously one of the worst communities in the video game online world. Only league of legends community welcomes 'n00bs' with add much hostility as an old southern central republican American would treat an black family lost and asking for directions.
Thing is with this part of the argument CoD:G is 'fucked. Fucking fucked. Super fucking doomed' is more about parental control and common scene. An essay to discuss its self.
And frankly the fact is the an new series in the franchise with the originators of the franchise WITHOUT its former magic makers.
An huge part of the first CoD' s original appeal was its summer Hollywood block buster mentality. At the time, games wanted to be just that, games. What the first CoD bought to the table was big budget movie theatrics without condescending it's audience as many of that generation of gaming felt in to the trap of.
With Robert 'Trolling' Bowling leaving infinity ward, Jason West and Vince Zampella leaving, sueing Activision and then setting up 'Respawn Entertainment' with battlefield developers EA taking an LARGE chunk of IW staff with them and how disappointed the community was with modern warfare 3... I feel a little worried of the new breed of IW taking the stage.
Maybe this is an old man's worried. Maybe I should Fuck off back to PES 3 and my commodore amiga.
But on the other hand there seems to be enough writing on the wall to see that this title could be do or die for the 11 year old franchise.
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