Call of Duty Archive

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Editorial: How Minecraft helped me see the light

By
Ryan Reynolds
– September 10, 2012Posted in: Features, Weekend Rant

The last year of my life has been one filled with a tremendous amount of change, challenges, and learning. I’ve reached a plethora of major life milestones. I’m a new home owner. I’m an elected official, trusted by my peers to make the right decisions for our community. Things at my day job have been going very well and I may be looking at another promotion in the not so distant future. And I’m in the best shape of my life. To say the least, things have been going well for me. And I’m absolutely proud of everything that I’ve accomplished in my life thus far.

Every once in a while however, something comes along and it makes you take a step back and think about things. You know what I’m talking about. It’s different from everybody. Nonetheless however, things change in life and we often find ourselves at crossroads. We meet new challenges, learn new lessons, and grow as human beings. A combination of two things recently made me step back and take a look at my outlook on life. One is a girl, who is quickly becoming very special to me. The second is Minecraft.

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Weekend Rant: Annual iterations of shooters

By
Andy Tran
– September 8, 2012Posted in: Features, Weekend Rant

 

Hello fellow gamers, I’m here to talk about a disturbing trend in video game development. Like nearly everyone else in the gaming world, I’m sure you’ve played your fair share of first person shooters, be it triple-A blockbusters, one hit wonders, or free-to-play. But there’s a certain shooter trend that I’m not too fond of and is quickly watering down my experience. It’s the annual iteration model that is growing so popular within the genre.

Some would call the first-person shooter space oversaturated right now. Call of Duty, Battlefield, Counter-Strike, and Medal of Honor are just a few big names competing for your attention alongside a multitude of free-to-play titles.  Each year, depending on the sales figures of the previous entry in a given triple-A FPS, many studios get a bigger budget for the sequel. This cycle – in theory – is a great thing. Players get more of what they want and developers get to make the next title even stronger for the fans that love to play it. Unfortunately there’s also something called the marketing department. They determine the best way to use money and collect data as to see where money can best be used to make more money.

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Weekend Rant: Player Hosts

By
Sean Prideaux
– May 12, 2012Posted in: Features, Weekend Rant

Player hosts are annoying, unfair and unreliable, I said it. You’ve all noticed it. You’re playing a game, you watch a replay, and what you saw doesn’t match up with whats being shown to you through the enemy’s eyes. This, and the fits of rage that often ensue are due to minute amounts of latency that exist in sending signals to and from the host of the game. The player that is the host of the game doesn’t have to deal with this latency and often has the advantage over his opponents. It is because of this that things that can only be perceived as false come into play.

Latency is something that we all have to deal with. There will always be issues with it in online games. LAN and split screen games don’t have to deal with this issue because there are no signals to be sent, just hard wires. Dedicated servers on the other hand, such as those found in Battlefield 3 or League of Legends puts everyone on a level playing field, making players deal with the same amount of latency. Usually, when dedicated servers are employed, latency isn’t really an issue at all. The problem is, and always has been, player hosts. When one player in the game is serving as the conduit for every other player in the game, they don’t have to wait a fraction of a second for a signal to make it back to them. They are, in essence, playing the game in real-time, just as if it were a single-player game. Except, there are other people in the game, and they’re a tad bit behind you in witnessing the action unfold on screen.

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Weekend Rant: Plight of the impatient gamer

By
Ryan Reynolds
– April 14, 2012Posted in: Features, Weekend Rant

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ryan Reynolds, I’m a life long gamer, I recently moved over from XBLA Fans to Xbox Kinect Fans, and I’ve come to realize that I’m impatient. I was always told that with age comes patience. At 25 years old however, I seem to find myself having less and less. I am quickly growing tired and bored of things in my everyday life, and to be quite frank it’s beginning to scare me. When it comes to entertainment in my life, gaming takes up the majority of my “free time”. But lately, I’m finding myself lacking the patience to even bother playing half the time. So I ask myself, why am I so impatient, and what can I do to change this? The answer may be something that many of you don’t want to hear; I need more new games to be released.

That’s right, I said it. I want more new games. I want more sequels, I want more original IPs, I want more downloadable content – the works. More and more I find myself lacking the patience to play through a game for a second time. Other times, I’ll pay for a game, get stuck or get to an dull section, and just flat out never play the game again. There was a time when I was dedicated and would trod through nearly any experience, no matter how bad. But the fact is, I’d honestly rather just pay to experience something new and more enjoyable than something that I’m not having fun with. When I finished Mass Effect 3 and finally got to watch it’s controversial ending, I instantly wanted more. I wanted downloadable content, I wanted Mass Effect 4, and I wanted a Mass Effect MMO. Thus far however, it seems that we’re going to have to wait until summer to get the first batch of Mass Effect 3 DLC, and that’s actually just an extension of the ending that I’ve already seen. I give credit to Bioware for listening to the fans and expanding the ending that’s been the cause of so much drama, but what I really want is more content. By the time Mass Effect 3‘s Extended Cut rolls around, I might not even care anymore. Because I’m impatient.

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