“This demo has officially ended. If you would like to continue playing, please purchase the full version in the UbiShop or at a retailer near you.”

…

The Electronic Arts logo has undergone few changes in the company’s history. EA’s classic Square/Circle/Triangle corporate logo, adopted shortly after its founding and phased out in 1999, was devised by Barry Deutsch of Steinhilber Deutsch and Gard  design firm. The three shapes were meant to stand for the “basic alphabet of graphic design.” The shapes were rasterized to connote technology.

Many customers mistook the square/circle/triangle logo for a stylized “EOA.” Though they thought the “E” stood for “Electronic” and “A” for “Arts”, they had no idea what the “O” could stand for, except perhaps the o in “Electronic.” An early newsletter of EA, Farther, even jokingly discussed the topic in one issue, claiming that the square and triangle indeed stood for “E” and “A”, but that the circle was merely “a Nerf ball that got stuck in a floppy drive and has been popping up on our splash screens ever since.”

I’d be very happy if at least the core functionality from the party and matchmaking system from Modern Warfare 2 would be preserved in Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Seeing as how Call of Duty: Black Ops has a confirmed release date for 9 November 2010 (less than 6 months away) there may not be a lot of time left to integrate this feature if it has not already been taken into account but one can certainly hope :-)

Thanks!

Up until that day I had been a bit reluctant to actually pick up the guitar and play the game out of fear for “looking silly” but I thought to myself “Why the heck not?” and I must say I truly had a blast.

It also reminded me that I actually had already played another rhythm game a while back, to be precise the open source Frets on Fire, but actually using a guitar as a controller is half the fun.

The major reasons for falling short were:

• The investigations were repetitive and did not properly integrate into the storyline
• Combat and even hiding was simply too easy
• The assassinations themselves didn’t require much effort (only in part due to combat being so easy)

I’m quite interested in the second incarnation of Assassin’s Creed to see if these and the points below have been corrected, regretfully the PC release is scheduled for Q1 2010 (while the console version is coming out early next month).

I spent almost a day brainstorming about how the game could have been improved, mostly regarding gameplay and game mechanics, but also how the story plays out. I hope to go into that in another post, however, as that may take a while I want to start off by present some of the notes that came out of the brainstorm:

The great:

• Incredible environment (look and feel)
• Movement/climbing system
• Fighting system
• The field of vision and hiding system
• Camera system
• The story

The good:

• Leap of faith
• Crowds going into a frenzy when they see you kill somebody
• How other people react when you punch somebody’s lights out (scared and intimidated)
• Pickpocketing

The bad:

• When you kill all your pursuing enemies, you lose your entire wanted level
• Too many hiding spots
• You can never lose a fight, no matter how many opponent
  • Counter is way overpowered
  • Timed attacks are way overpowered
  • Enemies only attack one at a time
• Fist fighting is pretty useless (hit, deflect, hit, deflect, rinse and repeat)
• The camera system during cutscenes (the problem is that it makes it seem like you have control over something, while in actuality you really don’t)

The ugly:

• If bystanders see you commit a murder, they will run around screaming for guards, but never actually approach or lead one towards you
• People carrying stuff do not respond to dead bodies
• People will just leave dead bodies lying there
• Enemy guards are sometimes a bit oblivious to your presence and won’t chase you until they’re “notified” by other guards
• Guards won’t kill vigilantes

The downright silly:

• You can’t swim
• Exiting the game through the user interface — you have to “Exit Memory”, “Exit the Animus” , “Quit the Game” , select your profile and last but not last “Quit” (surprisingly ALT+F4 actually works)

1. Screamer, Moto Racer, Ford Racing and Test Drive Off Road
2. Psygnosis F1, Lankhor F1 and NASCAR Racing
3. V-Rally, Sega Rally and Rally Championship
4. ISI/EA F1, Ubisoft F1 and Grand Prix
5. Test Drive and Need For Speed
6. Colin McRae, ToCA/Race Driver and OutRun

In an earlier blog post I talked about the latest incarnation in the Race Driver so here are the comparison screenshots from the 1997 version (top), the 2003 version (middle) and the the 2008 version (bottom):

The good:

• Stunning graphics
• Awesome damage modeling system
• Flashbacks (the ability to go back in time)
• The little indicator that indicates your chances of making the next turn (yellow, orange, red) — though one could argue over the position
• The ability to have a teammate

The bad:

• Instant replay feature is only useful for flashbacks, not for reviewing the race itself
• Event selection doesn’t show you a live-preview of the track (just the title and the circuit)
• You can only have a single teammate and he/she is not very cooperative

Observations:

• The difficulty settings mainly influences two things: 1) How fast the opponents go 2) The number of flashbacks available
• The tense music in the final hours of the 24 Hours of Le Mans starts no matter what position you have (even if you are dead last and essentially have no chance of winning) and when you hit ESC during the music it will stop all together.
• Debris can actually get stuck under your car, impacting your car handling significantly

Ideas:

• While it’s cool that you can have a teammate at all, it would be much cooler if you could create an entire racing team. Having the ability to command the teammates during a race (push, let me pass, pass me, block) and having them learn from your driving (essentially have the A.I. base their own driving on yours) would also be quite interesting.

External links:

• http://www.gametrailers.com/game/grid/6195
• http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/racedriverone/index.html