VentureBeat » Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified

Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable brings B-movie fun to the Vita (review)

Mike Minotti — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:24:15 +0000

Some games can open your eyes to new possibilities. They can make you question the world around you or even your own being. They are profound, intelligent, and important.

Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable is not one of these. This PlayStation Vita game is about shooting giant bugs. It is ugly, stupid, repetitive, and uninspired.

And yet, somehow, fun.

What you’ll like

Portable shooting

If you’re looking for an entertaining shooter on the Vita, you don’t have many options. Well, not many good ones, anyway. Too many attempts at bringing the genre to Sony’s handheld feel like half-cooked versions of their console counterparts, like Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified and Resistance: Burning Skies.

EDF 2017 is actually a port of an Xbox 360 third-person shooter from 2007, but it feels like it was always meant for a portable system. Instead of a continuous campaign, developer Sandlot spreads the bug-slaying over 50 missions. These bite-sized chunks of action are well suited to on-the-go play. Even if you only have 10 minutes, you can still complete a full mission. You can also enjoy cooperative play with up to three friends (or strangers) with local and online multiplayer.

Getting gear

I’ve described EDF 2017 as a shooter, but its role-playing elements are what really make it entertaining. No, you don’t gain experience points or learn new skills by leveling up you character, but every defeated enemy can drop new weapons, an item that’ll regain some of your lost health, or a permanent increase to your maximum health that persists throughout the entire game.

The new weapons are the most rewarding, and EDF 2017 offers a lot of firepower. The trick is that you’ll have to play missions on harder difficulties if you want the best loot. So even if you play through it on normal mode, you’ll be in for a rough ride if you don’t go back to earlier levels on a more difficult setting and grab some advanced weaponry.

Make no mistake; you’re grinding for items, an activity that many gamers find tedious. However, I adore spending hours searching for optimal gear, and I love destroying the later missions with my overpowered guns. My favorite was a rapid-fire rocket launcher that defied all logic as it caused many a bug to explode.

So bad it’s good

Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable is the gaming equivalent of a bad sci-fi movie. Its plot is simple and ridiculous. Giant bug aliens are attacking the planet, and you have to stop them. That’s pretty much it. And I really mean giant bugs. They aren’t some sort of monster that resembles an insect. They are oversized ants and spiders. I had to laugh sometimes when I saw a swarm of them running toward me. I probably giggled even more when they died, since their carcasses just froze up and fell weightlessly around the map.

Oh, but let’s talk about my favorite gameplay mechanic. Is that giant skyscraper obscuring your shot? Then blow it up! Yup, just one shot from any explosive can take down the tallest of buildings. Nothing like leveling an entire city while you’re “saving” it from invasion.

I don’t even know what to say about the voice acting. I like to pretend it’s intentionally bad to help re-create that B-movie vibe.

Again, this stuff is admittedly stupid, but it’s a large part of 2017′s charm. And as goofy as the game is, the actual mechanics, like aiming and shooting, are sound. You just have to learn to not take it seriously.

What you won’t like

It’s not pretty

Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable is not a pretty game. Remember when I compared it to a bad sci-fi flick? That includes the visuals. If Far Cry 3 is Star Wars, then 2017 is Plan 9 from Outer Space. Its textures are muddy and blurry, and character models are blocky. You’ll also experience some significant slowdown when the screen becomes crowded with bugs, which happens a lot since, you know, that’s kind of the whole point of the game.

The Vita has shown off some incredibly beautiful games that can sometimes look as good as what we’re used to seeing on a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. Unfortunately, 2017 looks more like a PSP game that can barely measure up to the PlayStation 2.

Bad vehicles

Some missions give you a few vehicles, like tanks and helicopters, but these were the worst-handling machines of destruction I’ve ever had the displeasure of driving. Each vehicle felt like it was operating under a lake of molasses. Simply turning left and right was a monumental task requiring the depths of my patience. This is a big problem when most of the enemies have a tendency toward quick, jerky movements.

You’re better off just staying on foot.

It’s repetitive

As much fun as you’ll have shooting aliens and bugs, that’s pretty much all EDF 2017 has to offer. Playing it a little bit at a time is great, but you’ll easily go brain-dead if you spend a few straight hours working through missions. You really only fight a handful of the same enemies over and over. Sometimes it introduces a “new” foe, but it’s often just a bigger version of some alien you’ve already been battling for hours. Sometimes it’s just a slightly tougher bug with a different color.

Conclusion

I almost don’t want to like Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable. It offers nothing outside of mindless shooting and gun-looting. But that’s also why I admire it. It’s a throwback to an era when technology limited storytelling and games were simpler. EDF 2017 is not a deep experience, but it’s a very pure one.

Score: 72/100

Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable is out now for the PlayStation Vita. The publisher provided GamesBeat with a copy of the game for the purposes of this review.

Filed under: Games

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The 5 worst gaming trends of 2012

Jeffrey Grubb — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:00:26 +0000

I’m in a bad mood. Christmas was tough on me this year. I didn’t get my shopping done until the last minute, my doctor says I need to cut out egg nog, and the only holiday movie on TV right now is A Christmas Story. I hate A Christmas Story.

Thankfully, my colleagues at GamesBeat know just how to get me in the holiday spirit: Make me write a list about the year’s worst gaming trends. In a year that had some great trends, like bows and arrows in every game, we also had some ideas that are really starting to stink up our favorite hobby. So, happy holidays; it’s time to get negative.

Ancient aliens in every sci-fi game

Halo 4, Mass Effect 3, and Assassin’s Creed III were arguably the biggest releases of 2012. They’re massive games with budgets that rival most blockbuster movies, so it’s strange that they all ended up using a very similar plot device: the ancient alien.

Sure, the title’s share the science-fiction genre, but it had seemed that each one was telling a very distinct story. That’s why it is so weird that each game ended up have some sort ancient race that is pushing forward the plot.

Mass Effect 3 has the Repears, an ancient race of machines who wish to destroy all the civilizations of the universe. Halo 4 has the Precursor, a civilization of ancient aliens that even predate the Forerunner race of ancient aliens. Assassin’s Creed has the First Civilization, which aren’t Aliens (I don’t think) but have god-like powers and lived on Earth long before recorded history.

In a vacuum, any one of these games using this narrative gambit would be interesting, but when they’re all happening simultaneously, they tend to cancel each other out.

Insulting downloadable content

As gamers, we have accepted that a game is more than what is on the disc. The economics of development often require studios to sell extra story, multiplayer maps, and more as DLC to pad their bottom line. That’s OK.

But it’s not OK to hold back crucial story content or a game’s “true” ending in an attempt to shake down dedicated fans.

In Mass Effect 3, the best character and crucial elements to the lore of that universe were held back for the day-one add-on From Ashes which cost around $5. It introduced the only surviving member of an ancient alien (!) race whose actions have influences the Mass Effect trilogy’s plot since the beginning.

Publisher Capcom has a history of making poor decisions with its downloadable content packs. In its insane anime-inspired title Asura’s Wrath, it held back the ending of the game’s plot in a piece of $7 DLC. This is after the company included paid DLC characters on the disc for Street Fighter X Tekken, which had customers asking what exactly is the “downloadable” aspect of the content.

B-team studios adapting A-list franchises on PlayStation Vita

This is a trend that spilled over from the launch of Sony’s newest gaming handheld, but it dampened (or destroyed) at least two big releases in 2012.

The promise of the PlayStation Vita, according to Sony’s own marketing, is that it is basically a home console on the go. It’s powerful and has dual analog sticks, so why are games like Assassin’s Creed 3: Liberation and Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified so disappointing?

Because publishers bring in small outside developers that have no experience with the property they’re adapting.

NStigate Games (formerly Nihilistic Software) got the nod to adapt Call of Duty to the Vita. This is after that studio produced a very mediocre adaptation of the first-person shooter series Resistance for Vita around the system’s launch. Nstigate had nothing to do with producing a Call of Duty game prior to Declassified and it shows in the subpar final product.

The same thing happened with the Vita version of Assassin’s Creed. Ubisoft Sofia, a studio that had little to do with Assassin’s Creed, was in charge of bringing a console-quality version to the Vita.

What’s truly sad is that Ubisoft Sofia just came off the decent 3DS launch game Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars. It was a strategy game that wasn’t trying to reproduce any other Ghost Recon game, which allowed the developer to create something new.

By setting the Vita up as some sort of PlayStation 3 on-the-go — and then constantly failing to meet that promise — Sony appears lost and confused about how to position the handheld. If they want publishers to release big-name games, they need to get developers who are up to the task.

Slot games on Facebook

I’m probably just old and set in my ways, but few things in gaming skeeve me out like the casino games on Facebook.

Specifically, the slot-machine titles that have become very popular in the last few months. As a medium, gaming has so much potential. Developers can present intricate systems to players that emulate or encapsulate our relationship to math, physics, and nature. At this point, the people who make games are also very good at rewarding players for actions and creating gameplay loops that trigger a nice release of dopamine in our brains.

Developers use these manipulative techniques in a variety of interesting ways, but these slot machine games take all of that knowledge and use it for evil.

Now, I don’t really think the slots on Facebook are evil, and I don’t want to take anything away from people who enjoy spending their time pulling a lever with nothing tangible to show for it — but I won’t shed any tears when these games fall out of popularity.

The main problem is that the slots are completely devoid of any actual game. All the player does is pull a lever and then play an occasional minigame that amounts to nothing more than picking a number between 1 and 10. Yet, these games are bursting with experience points and satisfying sound effects and bonuses and meta games and social links and every other trick to keep players pulling the lever.

And the setup is so devious. The most offensive slot games have more than one machine. They have a series of themed slots that always start with a machine that seems to spit out tons of coins on every pull. Then each successive table is less likely to pay out than the previous one, but they reward (and require) more money. The idea — at least as it appears to me as a cynic — is to get a certain percentage of players hooked on winning from the generous early games only to take everything back with the greedy later machines. Then, when the player is broke, get them to pay a few bucks for more coins so they can keep playing.

If that’s what people want to do with their time, so be it. But it’s still an ugly use of gaming’s strengths.

Mobs of angry and embarrassing gamers

As gamers, we’re a highly connected group. We play games and then look for places to go and talk about them on the Internet. Our passion for the medium is so great, we’re also easily riled up when we feel like something is threatening the games we love … or if we don’t get our way.

In 2012, mobs of irate gamers took the rage to a new and unnecessary level.

Nothing embodies this phenomenon like the reaction to feminist blogger Anita Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian introduced a Kickstarter project called Tropes vs. Women that will examine the many stereotypical ways that games depict females. A vocal group of gamers felt threatened by this, and while some may have voiced their disagreement with Sarkeesian in a respectful manner, the loud apparent majority drowned out all reasonable discourse with a disgusting wall of sexism.

Groups of male gamers banded together online to systematically harass Sarkeesian. Someone posted a web-based game called Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian. Essentially, they proved her right and embarrassed the rest of us who are willing to talk about these topics.

Fear of change seems to provoke these mobs more than anything. When Madden 13 launched earlier this year, a new mode replaced the Franchise mode that’s been a part of the series for years. This created a hornet’s nest in our article that explained the change. Gamers filled the comment section of that story with impotent rage. It isn’t even a big change, but that didn’t stop the mob from demanding publisher Electronic Arts fire the game’s designer.

I’m sure that angry fan backlash like this is common across a variety of mediums, but that doesn’t make it any better. It’s poor behavior for anyone for any reason. The worst part is that genuine criticism is lost in the caps-locking, screaming mob.

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat weekly roundup: Humble THQ Bundle, sexism, and The Walking Dead Episode 5

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:55:17 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, THQ releases Saints Row: The Third and more of its popular games in the first non-indie Humble Bundle, women in the games industry talk about about the sexism they face in the workplace, and Atari celebrates Pong’s 40th anniversary.

You’ll also find reviews for Portal 2 In Motion, Crashmo, The Walking Dead Episode 5, King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North, Adventure Time, and Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified.

News:

Mobile news:

Reviews:

Interviews:

Pieces of flair:

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Sony says PlayStation 3 sales soared during Black Friday week

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 20:29:44 +0000

Sony said its game device sales “soared” during the week of Black Friday, with the PlayStation 3 selling more than 525,000 units and the PlayStation Vita selling more than 160,000 units in the U.S.

The sales show that bundles and promotions helped push the older console out the door, even as gamers figure that Sony will launch a PlayStation 4 sometime soon. By comparison, Microsoft said it sold 750,000 Xbox 360 units, which launched seven years ago. And that compares to 400,000 Wii U consoles and 300,000 Wiis that Nintendo announced selling in the same time frame, from Nov. 18 to Nov. 24.

PS3 Black Friday bundle sales were up 15 percent, Sony said. Total PS3 hardware, software, and peripheral sales were up 9 percent from a year ago. The Ultimate PlayStation Value Bundle — including a 250-gigabyte PS3, the Uncharted Dual Pack, and Infamous Collection for $199 — sold out across the U.S. In Latin America, sales grew 200 percent, according to Sony.

The PS Vita’s Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation bundle ($199) sold out. Two other bundles, The Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified bundle and Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes bundle, were also popular.

“We’re very pleased with the Black Friday sales results, especially the incredible reception for the PS3 and PS Vita bundles. The demand was very strong, which quickly depleted our inventory across retailers nationwide,” said Jack Tretton, president and chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America. “The PlayStation brand generated significant revenue and year-over-year growth at retail because of our focus on what gamers love most in combining amazing hardware with great games and digital entertainment.”

Sales of PlayStation Plus subscriptions on PlayStation Network increased 259 percent compared to last year’s Black Friday period.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified should be dishonorably discharged (review)

Eduardo Moutinho — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 00:25:56 +0000

Sony built the PlayStation Vita for bombastic, previously living-room-exclusive franchises like Call of Duty. With better graphics, a bigger screen, and a right analog stick, the Japanese electronics giant designed the PlayStation Portable successor to literally be a console … that just happens to fit in your hands.

Unfortunately, publisher Activision and developer Nihilistic Software (now known as nStigate) didn’t design the recently released, Vita-exclusive Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified to take advantage of the horsepower-packed handheld.

The on-the-go first-person shooter falls way short of achieving its ambitious mission in pretty much every way possible.

What you’ll like

Occasionally, it feels like you’re actually playing Call of Duty

Declassified takes place in the shady, off-the-record Black Ops universe. That means you’ll play as familiar hard-assed protagonists Frank Woods and Alex Mason. And that also means you’ll be shooting up locations all over the world, from Russian military bases to the constricted alleyways of Saigon.

The series’ quick-twitch controls have, for the most part, made a successful transition to the Vita. You’ll depend on your shoulder buttons for looking down the crosshairs and pulling the trigger while the touchscreen takes care of things like throwing grenades and dishing out stab-happy melee attacks. Tapping the display can get frustrating in the middle of a firefight, unfortunately, which left me yearning for a console-style controller on an occasion or two.

I also found the analog-stick movement to be a little on the sensitive side, and I needed some time to get comfortable with the combat. But after an hour and a few menu-slider adjustments, I found my bearings.

Hostiles mode is a good way to kill bad guys … and free time

The wave-based Hostiles mode complements the remarkably thin single-player campaign and tasks you with surviving round after round of enemies. Your performance is based on the number of Russian Spetsnaz operatives, bomb-vest-wearing insurgents, and drug-cartel foot soldiers you can take down. If you make it past a round, the game rewards you with new weapons and ammo.

It’s all pretty straightforward, but I enjoyed this mode the most out of Declassified’s solo offerings because of its semi-addictive nature.

Multiplayer is fun … every now and then

Being a Call of Duty title, Declassified features a multiplayer component. You’ll find standard game types like team deathmatch and free-for-all along with the Call of Duty-centric Kill Confirmed and Drop Zone.

Kill Confirmed is a variant of team deathmatch where you have to pick up dog tags dropped by downed opponents while Drop Zone asks you to fight over specific locations on a map for points.

During certain matchups with skilled players, I enjoyed myself. The condensed nature of the maps led to plenty of corridor-style shooting galleries that helped add a few chevrons to my uniform. While limited, knowing that you’re playing these modes on a portable can at times be pretty cool.

What you won’t like

Frequently, it feels like you’re playing a Call of Duty clone

Many Vita owners will purchase Declassified for the big Call of Duty logo stamped on the box. Unfortunately, these people will not receive the travel-sized blockbuster they’re expecting.

Declassified has the COD name and includes most of Black Ops’ principal personalities, but that’s about it. The game features a single-player campaign that amounts to 10 “operations” and five shoot-the-target time trials. Now, take into account that each operation lasts about five minutes and that most time trials take fewer than 45 seconds to finish.

I don’t have to add the numbers for you to realize that the campaign is ridiculously short. I’m talking did-I-miss-something, I-can-blow-through-this-in-a-lunch-hour short.

Even worse, the operations have no checkpoints. That means if you go down in an ambush right before completing the final objective, you have to go through the whole sequence again from the beginning. While the scenarios are bite-sized, Nihilistic’s choice to artificially extend the single-player experience with the omission of a checkpoint system only highlights the campaign’s serious issues.

And don’t expect Declassified to fill in any narrative gaps or introduce intriguing side stories. Each operation begins with a brief cutscene featuring the classified documents, hand-written notes, and chaotic cuts we all expect from a Black Ops release, but the videos, just like the gameplay, are barebones. Throw in some horrible voice work from actors pretending to be the heroes from the console titles, and Declassified ends up feeling like a bad knockoff.

Multiplayer is uninspired … each time you boot it up

For every fun online shootout I had while playing Declassified, I endured multiple failed matchmaking attempts. Not only did I repeatedly get kicked out of encounters before they started, I often had to deal with unbalanced teams when I did get into skirmishes.

The multiplayer maps are small and generic, like their single-player counterparts. The tight hallways and confined enclosures lead to the aforementioned point-blank firefights. While fun, they take a lot of the strategy away. I constantly chose a close-quarters-combat loadout, knowing that I’d be mostly hitting people from short distances. Because of this, the other classes felt pointless.

What’s more disconcerting is that I encountered very few opponents online. Most of my matches included the same individuals, and I had trouble finding public games for modes like Drop Zone. This might be a broader PlayStation Vita-adoption issue, but for an online-heavy shooter like Declassified, having such a limited player base shortly after release is rather alarming.

Conclusion

Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified feels like a portable experience … in a pejorative mobile-app-store-crapware kind of way. Ironically, this shaky recruit of a game takes its place in the queue of modern-warfare shooters that have failed to match the last few flagship COD releases.

Declassified is brief, boring, and bland. It should have stayed locked up in the filing cabinet.

Score: 40/100

Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified released on Nov. 13, 2012 for the PlayStation Vita. The publisher provided GamesBeat with a copy of the game for the purpose of this review.

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Will Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified lure gamers to the PlayStation Vita? (hands-on preview)

Dean Takahashi — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:00:03 +0000

Activision Blizzard is taking the wraps off previews of its upcoming PlayStation Vita game, Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified. Gamers have high expectations for this game because it should settle once and for all whether first-person shooter games can work well on mobile devices.

We got some hands-on time with the Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified game this week. Unfortunately, the game has its pluses and minuses, and so it is not as definitive in settling the question about mobile game shooters. I’m afraid we won’t be seeing a multibillion-dollar first-person shooter business (as exists on the game consoles) anytime soon on the Vita, which has not sold well and desperately needs software that will make it seem more unique and desirable.

Nihilistic Software developed the game for Activision Publishing with the goal of bringing the Call of Duty experience to the Vita, which has analog controls and touchscreen features that make it a lot easier to play a first-person shooter on a mobile device. Normally, touchscreen controls just don’t cut it for precise shooting games, and so companies like PrimeA and Wikipad are addressing the problem with added controller hardware. The Vita, on the other hand, has a beautiful five-inch screen that can display outstanding 3D graphics and the controls to make a console shooter veteran feel comfortable, said producer Neven Dravinski.

I played a round of multiplayer combat and was pleasantly surprised that I was able to shoot and hit my enemy. You shoot with the right trigger and use the analog sticks to maneuver and fix your aim on a target. You can do that at high speed, but it takes some getting used to. I wasn’t able to hold my target reticle on a moving target for a long time. So I often missed getting enough shots off to take down the enemy, and merely wounded the other guy a number of times. The best thing about it is that the game looks like a Call of Duty game, and the game play is a lot like the console and PC titles. You can hit the left trigger to aim down a gun sight. And you can choose (or customize) your weapon loadout and play against multiple enemies via WiFi or hardwired links. I figure I can get used to the combat, but it was not a spectacular experience.

The story of the single-story Vita game bridges the gap of the 1960s-era Call of Duty: Black Ops game and the sequel coming out this fall, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, which is set in the year 2025. The multiplayer game supports up to eight players on WiFi, and it has six different maps. You can play in modes including Free for all, Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, Dropzone, and other “classic Call of Duty modes.” You get Killstreaks for multiple kills and earn XP, or experience points, for performing well. You can toss a knife, and throw a flashbang or frag grenade. I got enough kills to call in a Spy Plane, so that I could see on my mini map where the enemies were located. The battle chatter was nice, and the audio for the machine guns was top notch. And I have to say, it was the best experience of playing a shooter that I have seen on a mobile device. But that’s not really saying too much, and it is not what I would expect to keep me continuously playing a shooter on a mobile device.

R3 or L3 controls (where you push down on your analog sticks) don’t appear anyhwere. To throw the grenade, you touch the screen and drag a grenade icon to the area of the screen where you want to throw it. You can hold down the icon to shorten the fuse so you enemy has less time to react. Sony tells me that makes the placement of grenades a lot more accurate and lethal. To sprint, you press down on the directional pad, or you can hold a stick forward to sprint. I played a two-on-two game, but you can also play four-on-four multiplayer on WiFi. If you stick to the outside edges of maps, you won’t get lost easily.

You can call in Care Packages, which are loot drops parachuted to the filed. Unfortunately for me, I earned a Care Package and threw the marker on the ground for it while inside a building. That meant that the Care Package landed on the roof, where I couldn’t reach it. I did this not only once, but twice. Very embarrassing.

You can fulfill challenges, choose your perks, and rank up to Prestige levels. You can play single-player objective-based operations and perform Survival and Time Trail missions (like rescuing a hostage before the clock runs out). The multiplayer leveling up will have lots of ranks, so players who really enjoy the shooting experience on the Vita will be able to play for a long time.

The game comes out on Nov. 13, the same day that Call of Duty: Black Ops II debuts on the PC, PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360.

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