Activision's Iceberg Has Come, Abandon Ship!

Activision, for quite some time, was one of the top dogs in the gaming industry. They were the first to get into the music game market with Guitar Hero, and they owned Infinity Ward, makers of the highly successful Call of Duty (and therefore Modern Warfare) games. Activision makes a wide variety of games, is a very large company, and even owns Blizzard (although Blizzard is powerful enough to be very, very independent). Unfortunately (or more accurately: fortunately, but more on that later on) Activision has been shooting itself in the foot for quite some time now. First, they let the lead designer of Guitar Hero go to create Rock Band while they oversaturated and killed the Guitar Hero marker. Now, Modern Warfare 2 and Infinity Ward may have proved to be the iceberg that will do the unthinkable: Sink Activision, maybe for good.

The Entitled Versus the Underdog

It's been over a week since I've posted anything to this blog, and any time I do that I begin to feel like I'm neglecting it. But of course, I am running two other blogs at the moment, and sometimes I just need to give them all of the attention. In any case, today's write-up is a sort of on the spot article on a topic that I have been giving some thought to lately.

Crysis 2: An Update

Guess who was not only right, but days early? Today Ars Technica is running their feature story on Crysis 2, and those of you who read my blog, you got a great deal. The only new information that it presents is stuff that was said the them, in New York, by Yerl at the presentation of the trailer days ago. Not only that, but most of that information I had already speculated about, which we now know is correct.

What is new is that yes, the open world environment is still in and well in play. Those skyscrapers you see in the trailer? You can go inside of them. Punch a door, make a hole, whatever, you can get inside and become a parkour master of the rooftops (now making plans to make a playthrough without ever firing a bullet). Play like you want is still in effect.

The tactical mode? Right on the money, it will let you eavesdrop on enemy transmissions and pick out details you wouldn't normally be able to. Everything else I said seems to match up very well, so it seems that Crysis 2 is well on track. I'd better start saving for that quad core CPU some I'm ready come December....

Crysis 2: The First Good Look

Those few PC gamers out there lucky enough to have the beastly PC to run it may remember Crysis, and if they don't, it's probably because they somehow missed it. Crysis was an incredible first-person shooter made by Critek, the makers of the much applauded PC release Far Cry. Building off of Far Cry's success, Crysis dumped players onto a massive island in truly gargantuan levels miles to a side (and with a 15 kilometer draw distance) and inside a powerful military nanotech bodysuit that allowed them to leap 15 feet into the air, deflect bullets, even turn mostly invisible. Over the course of the game the player was free to use their abilities any way they wanted to accomplish the objectives, whether that meant run and gun or quiet behind the back kills. By the end of the game, the player had not only fought hardened (and extremely intelligent enemy soldiers), but he had investigated the inside of an alien ship (in Zero-G no less) and fought in a frozen winter as the aliens weather control sent the island from 100+ degrees to -200 degrees and below. So yeah, in the end, an epic ride.

Then Crysis 2 was announced for PC and consoles, and part of me whimpered. Don't get me wrong, consoles are fun too, but Crysis's complexity was something that couldn't be done on consoles. And now that we're finally getting some new information on the changes and upgrades to Crysis 2 for both settings, the question on every PC players mind is: Did they dumb it down for the consoles, and where?

Aftermath--The Top Ten Soundtracks

Does the top ten need closure? Of course it does. After all, I was given a lot of feedback on this list, some of it good, some of it...not so good, but such things need feedback! On feedback, yes. That and I needed to tie up a few loose ends left behind by the existence of the list. After all, quite a few people wanted to know what soundtracks barely made it, others wanted to know why certain albums just didn't quite cut it. For the majority of these questions, I have answers. Bear with me, this is a long one.

Number 1--Top Ten Game Soundtracks

This is it. The top of the list. The cream of the crop. The best video game soundtrack ever. And the winner is:

Number 2--Top Ten Game Soundtracks

Number 2: Halo 3

When it comes to going out with a bang, Martin O' Donnell and Michael Salvatori (who here make their third appearance on the list) can be counted on to succeed with a monumental testament of music. As evidenced by the name, Halo 3 was the close of a trilogy, and hence it was the finale of everything musical they had worked on for the last seven or so years. So they set out to compose a soundtrack that would go over the edge...and back. They succeeded.

Number 3--Top Ten Game Soundtracks

Number 3: Chrono Trigger

Ranking in at number 3 is what is certainly one of the grandest soundtracks that has ever been made: Chrono Trigger. A masterpiece of composition by Yasunori Mitsuda, Chrono Trigger truly serves to encompass everything a soundtrack can aspire to be, and yet it is comprised entirely of 16-bit synthetic sound. But sometimes we just need to be reminded, just because something seems simple on the surface does not mean that it cannot be infinitely deep.