During Electronic Art’s most recent earnings call executives from the company discussed the company’s view on Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall 2. It turns out that despite large amounts of critical acclaim, especially for its’ single player campaign, and high user satisfaction scores this FPS sequel failed to live up to EA’s expectations.
Even in the face of disappointing sales numbers, EA has recommitted itself to the support not only the already released 2016 sequel but also the franchise as a whole. Titanfall 2 will continue to see new maps, modes and cosmetic DLC released throughout its life, it is not known if the next Titanfall title will be developed internally at Respawn but their deal with EA does provide Respawn with the ownership rights to the franchise.
No particular reason for the less than expected sales figures was provided but could it have something to do with the fact that Titanfall 2 was released one week after EA’s other massively successful shooter Battlefield 1 and a week prior to the launch of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare? With so many shooters releasing in such a short time I wouldn’t be surprised if more than a couple of folks decided to only pick up one of the three excellent FPS titles released back-to-back-to-back last Fall.
Here is a quote from the investor’s call:
“Titanfall 2 delivered the next important step in this new franchise we are building with our partners at Respawn – a highly-rated, action-packed experience that has thrilled players in the year’s biggest category. Player satisfaction scores for Titanfall 2 are among the highest in our portfolio, showing just how much fun players are having with this game. Titanfall 2 will be played for a long time to come, with new maps, modes and content updates continuing to expand the experience and engage our players. We’re excited about our long-term plans for the Titanfall franchise.”
In the first post-holiday sales charts for the United Kingdom both the juggernaut Call of Duty and FIFA franchises have maintained their stranglehold on the top two sales positions heading into the second week 2017.
While established top contenders like COD may not have budged from the top spot the lower rankings did see quite a bit of a shuffle with Microsoft’s Forza Horizon 3 jumping up 7 places to claim the 5th spot this past week. Also up in the charts is Nintendo’s Pokemon Sun & Moon which climbed 4 ranks to clinch the 9th position in this week’s top ten.
Here are the top 10 games for the UK for the week ending January 7th:
Did you play any of the U.K’s top ten games over the holidays? What are your top ten upcoming games for any platforms in 2017? Let us know in the comments section.
Call of Duty Infinite Warfare’s multiplayer will feel very similar to series veterans that find themselves purchasing the yearly editions of the military shooter, like I have. This is because Infinity Ward’s latest entry in the series does very little to differentiate itself in terms of core game design from last year’s Black Ops III. Rather then continue to innovate or tweak the existing formula ever so slightly towards a more arcadey / MOBA-esque feature set like Black Ops III and Advanced Warfare before it, IW opts for what feels like an almost a complete copy & paste of last year’s mechanics with some of the extra interesting flair and aesthetic choices removed entirely.
I don’t feel like whenever I boot up the latest iteration of Call of Duty that I am expecting a fundamental shift in how the game functions – this is a series that has made its bread & butter out of a simple to pick up twitch shooter formula: you chose your load-out, aim down the sights and hopefully decimate your opponents (or get killed five thousand times if you’re me playing this year’s installment for the first time). Unfortunately for Infinite Warfare it copies these mechanics from last year’s entry almost to a fault – you’ll chose one of three “rig suits” which allow for extra perks & a super weapon that charges over time, the standard expected gun attachments, kill-streaks and ancillary tactical grenades. Infinite Ware’s class creation system bring absolutely nothing new to the table and while the inclusion of Black Ops II’s “Pick 10 System” is a welcomed inclusion, it is not a fresh approach to load out creation. Player movement also feels near identical to Black Ops III’s improvement upon Advanced Warfare‘s EXO-Suits. Soldiers are able to dash with four degrees of two dimensional movement and can use a built in thruster for wall jumping and accessing vertical sections of the map.
Compared to Black Ops III and Advanced Warfare before it, Infinite Warfare actually offers players less choice when it comes to their in-game avatar and the special abilities that they are able to wield. Upon choosing one of three starter RIGS your character’s appearance will change in accordance with your choice- you can be an armored dude, another armored dude or a robot. Contrast this with Black Ops III which provided players an “unlock token” upon leveling up, which they could use to chose a brand new multiplayer character – each with their own personality, aesthetic and choice of special power-up. These characters could be further enhanced with the player being presented the choice of spending another unlock point to earn a second special power-up. Going back a couple of years. Advanced Warfare offered players the ability to customize their avatars with sliders for skin color, gender, optional accessories, patches, outfits and more. Sadly BO III‘s MOBA style heroes are missing in action and so is Advanced Warfare‘s much more in-depth customization options and in their place are DUDE, other DUDE and ROBOT WITH GUN.
Call of Duty Infinite Warfare offers the standard suite of modes that you’ve come to expect from the franchise. The venerable Team Deathmatch and Free For All modes that have been with the franchise since Call of Duty 4 make their obligatory appearance in this year’s title and it is my opinion that like in years past , these two modes will probably be the ones with the highest population. Kill Confirmedfrom Modern Warfare 3 also returns – a mode where players drop a set of dog tags upon death and the team that collects the most dog tags in a match before the timer expires wins. Hardcore variants of these modes plus others like Search & Destroy and a new alternating attack/defense mode round out the offerings. Like the rest of its’ multiplayer suite Infinite Warfare gives us exactly what we’ve come to expect from a Call of Duty title without any of the pleasant surprises.
Possibly the most egregious thing about Infinite Warefare’s multiplayer isn’t the removal of customization character with their own unique gender & aesthetics or the lack of innovative multiplayer modes but the sheer determination for which Activision is gunning for player’s wallets with this latest edition. Leaving aside the fact that the Legacy Edition (which in fairness contains two complete Call of Duty titles) costs $109.99 CDN, but rather the return of micro-transactions that began life as reward boxes containing aesthetic items all the way back in Advanced Warfare.
Infinite Warfare continues the tradition of offering randomized loot boxes in the form of “Supply Drops” which can be either purchased for real world currency via Steam, PlayStation Network or Xbox Live or by using in-game “keys” which are earned at a rate of 1 – 1.5 keys per match. A “common supply drop” which contains 3 “common” rarity items, and if you’re lucky and have prayed to the RNG gods possibly a rarer item, can be had for ten keys. A “rare supply drop” costs 30 keys and is guaranteed to either give you a rare skin or “scrap” for use in Infinite Warefare’s new crafting system.
Crafting? In a COD game? How could that possibly work? Well, once you’ve either paid real world currency or spent between 2 – 15 hours per box earning enough keys to collect the scrap that you will need to upgrade each individual gun a number of times. Each weapon has its own progression tree, offering soldiers ever increasing small bonuses for increasingly larger amounts of scrap, which can only be acquired through the supply drops. As if this type of micro-transaction grinding wasn’t prevalent enough in non premium priced titles, the last unlocks for some of the standard weapons give them permanent statistics upgrades. This means that your fully crafted assault rifle might have no fall of range for damage or other stat bonuses. Yup, forget game balance – if you’ve got enough time or money you can literally unlock more powerful versions of the base weapons everyone else has.
Overall Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare‘s multiplayer mode provides those looking for a fast paced experience with more than enough unlocks, perks, weapons and other trinkits to stay entertained until the next huge AAA shooter comes along to claim COD’s throne. For players, like myself, looking for some innovation in their yearly COD experience – Infinite Ware sadly will not deliver on these expectations. Going into IW‘s multiplayer it is best to think of this year’s entry as an expansion pack to last year’s Black Ops III – the base mechancis remained almost unchanged, although some of the cooler flair is lacking. RNG boxes and crafting new weapons might leave a sour taste in the mouth of those who favor balance over the pay-to-not-grind psychology that RNG supply boxes encourage. At it’s core Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s multiplayer is a solid entry that gives players more of what they love.
Activision Publishing provided Broken Joysticks two Legacy Edition copies of Call of Duty Infinite Warfare for our consideration, review and content creation.
Much to the excitement of many Call of Duty fans, Infinite Warfare is just around the corner. As a treat for those who ordered Infinite Warfare for PS4, players have been given access to try the Infinite Warfare Multiplayer Beta this weekend. While it’s just a limited beta, there’s a decent amount of content, and things to expect when Infinite Warfare is released. In addition to that, Activision announced the multiplayer beta has been extended for another day in case people haven’t had the chance to p, or can’t get enough of Infinite Warfare’s multiplayer!Read More
Activision will give players on PlayStation 4 preferential access to the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare for those who pre-order the title. Xbox owners will get the multiplayer beta at a later date with PC players completely left out in the cold as the beta is “not available on PC. No mention of the multiplayer beta being open – looks like putting $5 down at a participating retailer is the only way in.
Infinite Warfare’s multiplayer takes the class driven gameplay introduced in last year’s Black Ops III and expands upon it with the concept of “rigs”. Each “rig” is in actuality a combination of three different traits and perks that players can cycle through. Also changing are “payloads” – which are the new name for the powerful ultimate-weapons also introduced in Call of Duty: Blacks Ops III. During the course of a match players can swap between different rig load outs depending on their enemies’ tactics – not unlike how in Overwatch players can swap characters to meet their situational needs.
From those who have played the game at Call of Duty XP – Kill-streaks and staples like UAV / Counter UAV are still present with the parkour gameplay popularized by Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III.
Activision & Infinity Ward have also released a multiplayer reveal trailer so those of us not at the XP event can get a taste of whats coming this October.
Need to check out more Infinite Warfare action? Here’s 30 minutes of gameplay from Fanboy-Attack:
How do you feel about the pre-order requirement for the beta given that previous betas have been open to all?
What a doozie, this appears to take place right after the Switzerland mission that was shown earlier, we are now treated to a bit more info about what the games campaign will be about, and a few more characters we will no dobt see later. Give it watch, and then tell us if you are hyped for this new Call of Duty game.
Activision has released a new 13 minute single-player video showcasing some of the campaign mission ‘Black Sky’ from Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. This demonstration footage was released as part of Activision’s San Diego Comic Con festivities and was actually shown behind closed doors at E3 last month as well.
Here is the official description of ‘Black Sky’ from the Call of Duty YouTube channel:
“When the Settlement Defense Front attacks UNSA forces in Geneva without warning during Fleet Week, Lt. Reyes and his squad have only one option: Fight back against the SetDef and give ‘em hell. Check out the Campaign gameplay from “Black Sky” in Infinite Warfare.“
Infinite Warfare continues the series’ march into the far future, this time blasting players off into space with sub-orbital dogfights featuring smaller spacecraft but also large capital ships. During the single player campaign Lt.Reyes will actually get command of one of earth’s last remaining capital ships in a narrative that will take players across the solar system.
The first single-player gameplay from Infinite was released at Sony’s E3 press conference and our next chance to get a look at the game will be at Call of Duty XP from September 2-4th.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will be released on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on November 4th.
With the reveal of the first teaser trailer for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, rumors abound for months about the game’s premise and a leak of the game’s marketing materials last night we know a lot about the game. Yet, perhaps the one thing that everyone is overlooking is how an overpriced re-master of an 8 year old game really is.
Don’t get me wrong, I played a whole ton of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in my college days back in ’07. I spent late nights with friends, huddled around the television cheering as we passed the controller between rounds but can a re-master of an aging game that is available on every major 7th generation platform recapture that magic? Or is Activision and Infinity Ward mining the nostalgia for the past to get players to fork over some additional cash?
Supposedly the re-master of COD 4 will include the full campaign and 10 multiplayer maps. Why has Infinity Ward taken the time to re-master one of their most successful and refreshing titles in modern memory but not taken the effort to include all 20 original maps from the last gen version of the game, let alone the four maps that shipped as part of the Variety Map Pack back in ’08?
A re-mastered COD4 would have been a great pack-in with all editions of the game but by supposedly only including it in the $109 USD ‘Legacy Edition’, it puts the value of the COD 4 re-master at half the price of a full retail release. Activision might as well have called the Legacy Edition the Fuck You Edition, because even if COD4 re-mastered is a fantastic game it will never recap the magic of the original and will only contain a sliver of the original content.
Don’t be fooled – remember that some of the key folks from the original Modern Warfare team left Activision years ago and now have their own series!
The next entry in Activision’s popular FPS series is getting teased on their official channel thanks to the new teaser trailer titled “Know Your Enemy”. The end of the trailer mentions a “settlement defense force”, perhaps the rumors about this game being full of far-future space combat will be true. I also happened to pause the trailer at just the right moment and well – hey it’s ghost’s mask, which has been reoccurring in infinity war’s COD games.
