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The War Isn’t Over: World at War Map Pack #3 advances in August

19932No Comments2009-07-22+13%3A37%3A30Peter+Skerritt 22 July 2009 | Tags: activision, Call of Duty: World at War, Certain Affinity, PlayStation 3, treyarch, Xbox 360

Before you think about putting Call of Duty: World at War away or trading it in towards Modern Warfare 2, Activision is giving you a reason to keep playing with the announcement of Map Pack #3.

This new DLC will deliver three new maps for multiplayer skirmishes, named Battery, Revolution, and Breach. These new maps are the result of a continuing collaborative project between Treyarch and Certain Affinity. Certain Affinity is a development team that sound familiar to some players, as they’ve been involved with Left 4 Dead and Halo 2 in the past, as well as helming development of Capcom’s Age of Booty. In addition to these new multiplayer maps, Treyarch will also be offering a new Zombie map, called Der Riese.

According to a post on the World at War website, the Battery map take place on an armored island in the ocean, Revolution takes place in Russia, and Breach is set in Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate. As for Der Riese, it is said to be a Nazi research facility and features the Pack A Punch machine, which upgrades weaponry, and also has transporters, which may supply quick escapes from potentially fatal situations. The post also mentions that 10 new Achievements and Trophies will be added to World at War’s already extensive list.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a more solid date for the release of Map Pack #3– other than the fact that it’s coming in August. No pricing details have been mentioned, either, although it’s a likely bet that it will sell for $10 (800 Microsoft Points). If nothing else, Map Pack #3 could be a nice buffer to get players over the hump and satisfy their FPS cravings until Modern Warfare 2 invades in November. Watch for more specifics on Map Pack #3 as the August draws closer.

Playstation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Review: Guitar Hero: World Tour Pt 3 (360/PS3)

68442 Comments2008-12-04+16%3A23%3A56Gabriel+Marchisio 04 December 2008 | Tags: 360, activision, Guitar Hero, playstation, Playstation 3, Review, rhythm games, treyarch, world tour, xbox

Release: Oct 26 2008 (US), Nov 7 2008 (UK)
Developer: Neversoft
Publisher: Activision
Genre: Rhythm Games

Alright readers, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Does Guitar Hero: World Tour rock out loud or should it stick to the garage? Here’s the final part of our immense review.

If you missed the previous sections you can find them here:

PART ONE | PART TWO

Career Mode

Rock Band 2 recently changed the typical ‘Career Mode’ from the old-fashioned tier system to the ‘Tour’; granting a sense of freedom to the player, but it was all a bit unorganized. So which route does World Tour take? Surprisingly, neither. First off, there are four different careers for each instrument, as well as a complete band career. The way it works is that you are given a whole bunch of venues with a few (roughly between three and six) songs to perform in each. Completing each of these ’gigs’ unlocks more and more venues as you go. You don’t have to complete every single gig, giving you the tiniest amount of choice in in performing the tracks you want to play.

We took a liking to this career mode style, and even though its nowhere near as involving or lengthy as Rock Band 2’s, it gave us everything we could possibly ask; how many stars you get per track, gaps between setlist songs, freedom of choice after completion.

Band Quickplay

There was a lot of commotion about how Guitar Hero would function with four instruments, so here is the skinny: It’s a decent band game that makes a lot of poor design choices. The star power system, for example, is a group project. When any player in a band successfully completes a ’star power’ phrase, it goes into a star power pool shared by the entire band. This is really confusing, and takes away from the teamwork aspect you’d expect when playing with four people.

Also, the ‘Rock Meter’ shows both the band’s, and each individual’s performance. It takes a bit of getting used to, and players won’t ‘fail out’ when playing poorly, they will just bring everybody else down until someone stops stealing star power from the pool and starts thinking strategically. But, even though it falls short in those respects, it adds a few nice touches, like band wide streaks earning more points; a very welcome - essential - feature.

Online Perfection?

If you were worried about a lack of online game types, you need worry no longer. A plethora of modes include pro face-off and face-off modes (for every instrument), band quickplay, guitar and bass co-op, two vs. two guitar matches, and more. One of the most interesting modes is band vs. band, in which eight players get together and battle for the high score on a single song. Yes, everyone plays at the same time. Now that’s a Battle of the Bands.

You are free to party up with friends thanks to a matchmaking system very much akin to Halo 3. The upside to this, as opposed to the GH3 method, is that connection dropping is virtually non-existent. Bad news though, and not unlike Gears of War 2, it takes quite a bit of time to get into a match; if you are planning to get into a Band vs. Band game, you best start partying up fast. Online matches are very entertaining, and thankfully a skill system is in place to make sure you don’t end up playing Battle Mode with an opponent that isn’t at your level.

Music Studio

One of the biggest causes for excitement prior to World Tour’s release was the ‘Music Studio’, which allows you to create your own songs and/or download the creations of others for free through ‘GHTunes’. It’s as revolutionary a feature for the genre as LAN was in the early days of the FPS’. Never before have we been so enthralled by a game mode like we have with the Music Studio. The tools available for creating your own rock masterpiece can be extremely deep and complex (like GHMix), or you can make them as simple as simple mashing frets in the Recording Studio.

Basically, the motto goes, “If you can imagine it, you can make it”. You are able to assign whatever notes you like to each fret, apply any Line6 effect you want, and even alter the sound of the Drum Set. Make no mistake, this is a truly powerful creation tool. The top songs on GHTunes are so good you’d think they came straight from a ’real’ band’s recording.

The entire Music Studio package is great because it mkes up for any possible quarrel you may have with the game. Not enough songs on the retail disc for you? You’ve got infinite possibilities my friend. Don’t like the charts? Make one yourself, you know what you like! The game is given an extraordinary lifespan through GHTunes, as you’ll keep logging on every day to check which new song made it to the top. Unfortunately everything has its downside, and Music Studio’s are the lack of vocal recording and the three minute time limit per song. However, if you have even a passing interest in music, (which we assume you do since you are reading this) you’ll definitely find a huge amount to enjoy in the Music Studio.

It may not be the most polished fish in the pond, but Guitar Hero: World Tour is worth the purchase for anyone who has enjoyed the previous titlies in the series. Great music, great charts and a near-godlike music creation tool make this game a great holiday season choice.

Playstation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360

Review: Call of Duty: World at War (360/PS3/PC)

69436 Comments2008-11-14+04%3A25%3A12John+Robertson 13 November 2008 | Tags: 360, activision, cod4, cod5, duty, fps, infinity, pc, playstation, PS3 Evil, Review, treyarch, war, WW2, xbox

Release: Nov 11 2008 (US), Nov 14 2008 (UK)
Developer: Treyarch
Publisher: Activision
Genre: First-person shooter

It was never going to be easy for Treyarch to create a follow-up game that would adhere to the same high levels of quality that Infinity Ward managed with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (COD4); especially considering the current backlash against World War 2 games. However, Call of Duty: World at War, while certainly not as a groundbreaking as its aforementioned predecessor, is a fantastic entry into the series that will please series veterans and wow the virgins.

The horror of war

From beginning to end World at War is a tougher, bloodier and more visceral experience than we have come to expect from the franchise. Characters are merciless, often callous, individuals who seem to relish the opportunity to spill the blood of any and all that are unlucky enough to cross their path. This is evidenced from the very first scene, which sees you having to watch as a fellow U.S. Marine prisoner of war has a lit cigarette thrust into his eye before his neck is viciously sliced open by a Japanese soldier.

That level of intensity is mirrored in the actual gameplay which features fire fights of epic magnitude, with numbers of both friendly, and enemy, soldiers far beyond the scale seen in COD4, or most other shooters for that matter. At times the odds seem impossibly stacked against you and you’ll be struggling to stay alive, let alone think about fighting back. This is where the main strength of the campaign mode lays, as every moment spent playing is constantly engaging and exhilarating, demanding your full attention in order to progress. No one can accuse this particular game of having any ‘filler’ moments what so ever.

As a result each mission tends to be fairly short in length and usually consists of a single objective or enemy encounter. This structure helps keep the action fresh in that you’re constantly experiencing new environments and taking on new challenges. That being said the nature of your objectives never really change throughout the course of the campaign, and largely involve destroying a set number of tanks/artillery guns/mortar pits etc. It can all get a little repetitive after a while and it would’ve been nice to have had some variation; rescue this person or escort these vehicles, for example.

A couple of vehicle based missions (both in the driving and gunner positions) help break up the repetition to an extent but they are too infrequent to fully succeed in that regard. These missions in themselves are extremely well designed and a lot of fun to play, unlike the majority of vehicle sections in first person shooters.

A war of two worlds

The campaign takes the form of two separate stories; the American attack on the Japanese in the Pacific and the Russian invasion of Berlin. Missions intersect each other at random, meaning one moment you may find yourself as Private Miller of the US Marines head-to-head with a Japanese ‘banzai’ soldier and the next you’re Private Petrenko of Russian Red Army flushing out some Nazis from Berlin’s underground metro system. Each of the narratives jump forward in time between missions (at one point the Russian story jumps forwards three years), which is somewhat of a mixed blessing. On the one hand it helps in exposing you to lots of different environments and enables the plot to cover a huge span of time but, on the other hand, it’s difficult to become attached to any of the game’s characters; a task already made difficult by having two parallel stories.

Accompanying you on these journeys are a plethora of weapons, from standard rifles to the all-powerful ‘Panzershrek’ rocket launcher. All have a real ‘kick’ to them and it actually feels as though you’re doing some real damage when someone gets in the way of your bullets. This is aided by the way that bodies tear up and become dismembered when hit with a heavy barrage of lead, or happen to be too close to a live grenade. Bodies will literally be torn in half from the burst of a mounted gun, and if you throw a grenade into just the right place then you can just sit back and watch in macabre satisfaction as the enemy is hurtled thirty feet into the sky.

Despite the destructive force of the aforementioned arsenal, it’s the flamethrower that packs the biggest punch. While the majority of the scenery is – disappointingly – invulnerable to its flame, the enemy certainly is not, and when used properly it’s arguably the most lethal weapon at your disposal, easily taking down ten enemies at time within close quarters.

The graphics and presentation are very similar in their design and quality to those in COD4; most likely due to the use of the same game engine. Character models and particle effects are extremely impressive, as is the lighting and texture quality. Audio design is also phenomenal in all departments, be it the roar of a tank’s engine, the deep growl of a machine gun or the high pitched ping of a bullet bouncing off metal it’s all without fault. Voice acting, lead by Hollywood hot-shots Gary Oldman and Keifer Sutherland, is also fantastic.
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