Now, Jay’s a friend of Dave’s and mine on Xbox Live, and we’ve played many a game online together (including 1 vs. 100) despite our distance (we’re in Ontario and he’s in Quebec). His site is way more well established than ours but, since our approaches are slightly different, we’ve never seen each other as competitors. But we’re also Facebook friends, and we’ve recently launched our Facebook fan pages.

So wasn’t it super sweet of him, after getting a bajillion more fans than we did, to offer us a prize for our first Facebook contest? Answer: Yes, it was.

And so, to make a long story short (too late), Dave and I would like to offer you (and your significant other) the chance to win a code to download Perfect Dark for XBLA. For two. Because it has co-op.

It’s easy—all you need to do is:

• Become a fan of our Facebook page
• Become a follower of our Twitter feed
• Comment on the link to this article on our Facebook fan page with your Twitter name and tell us a bit about how gaming affects your love life (please keep it relatively clean)

You could also visit GameFocus.ca and become a fan of their site on Facebook and follow them on Twitter as well; though this is optional, it will happen. Because Jay is awesome.

Anyway, I figure that, since it’s the middle of the week right now, I’ll give you all until Saturday at 5 p.m. EST to get in on the action. We’ll draw the lucky fan/follower randomly and DM you through Twitter. Good luck, kids!

P.S. We’re in Canada. I’m not sure if this code will work outside of North America. Please feel free to chime in and let me know if I’m wrong.

Dave: This is a look at Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for Xbox 360 (also available for PS3 and PC). For context, I’m a fan of FPS games. I did not play the original Bad Company, but I have played and enjoyed most of the other games in the Battlefield series. Lori had little-to-no interest in playing or watching me play this title (having already recently played other similar games), though I did catch her laughing at some of the dialogue.

Much to Lori’s chagrin, I’ve cut short our virtual trip to Renaissance Italy to return to modern times so that I can point a gun at things in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the latest big modern military first-person shooter.

This time around, the soldiers at the wrong end of the barrel are Russian military—again showing that, when they want a conventional military adversary, game developers seem most comfortable creating a sort of neo-cold war gone hot. I should note that I’m only vaguely aware of the fiction established in the original Bad Company, and this sequel does very little to help me out with this—other than to show swaths of red and tiny Russian flags growing to cover regions on a map that I’m quite certain aren’t part of present-day Russia.  That said, I play these games for the action, not the plot, and I’m not too keen on sitting through a lot of unnecessary exposition anyway.

Dave: If rumours that the next Call of Duty will actually take place during the cold war era are correct, I’m not sure if we’ll be able to tell the difference… other than that they’ll be calling the enemies “Reds” and they can use trendy Soviet iconography.

The single-player campaign centers on the exploits of Bravo (“Bad”) Company, a squad of four US soldiers who, in the first game, went looking for gold (in a similar vein to the protagonists of films like Kelly’s Heroes or Three Kings). I’ve gathered from various game previews and marketing materials (rather than the game itself) that, having been reeled in, the crew is forced into military servitude once again. The members of Bad Company are a fairly colourful cast, where the player fills the shoes of Preston Marlowe, more-or-less the straight man of the bunch. Compared to most FPS games, the other three characters (Sarge, Sweetwater, and Haggard) offer a decent amount of entertaining dialogue, both in cutscenes and gameplay—the latter mostly during the slower moments between the more common frenetic combat sequences.

Lori: “You had me at ‘interesting.’” That still makes me chuckle. Evidently, it doesn’t take much to amuse me.

And the combat in Bad Company 2 is about as frenzied and chaotic as is comes. A key feature of the Battlefield franchise in recent years has been fully destructible environments, and they’re not afraid to show off that feature throughout the campaign.  Buildings explode and collapse, trees and wood fences splinter and disintegrate—in turn filling the air with dust, smoke, and various flying objects. Of course, the most relevant flying objects are still bullets, and the gunfire zings and pops with great effect—aided in no small part by some superbly deep and detailed sound effect design. The sights and sounds of battle are all there, and they’re usually coming at you from all angles. No doubt: when it comes to graphics and audio, this game is at or near the top of the pile when it comes to console games. From start to finish, I was treated to rich settings, impressive set pieces, and glorious expansive backdrops unmatched by most games. It may not have a particularly compelling narrative, but the action is in no short supply.

Indeed, BF:BC2’s campaign has got all the spectacle that military shooter fans have come to expect, but that’s also a clue to what is, perhaps, my only letdown: that I’m starting to get the feeling that I’ve done this all before. After all, it was just a few months ago that I was the nervous gunner in a Humvee convoy, or that I watched as jets streak through the sky to strike at entrenched enemy targets, and that I was faced with the threat of Russia invading the continental US—all in another game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Of course, the developers of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (DICE) deserve a ton of credit for meeting the extremely high bar set by the developers of Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward), but the reality is that I played this one second, and the highs didn’t seem quite as high this time around.

Dave: As a note, I played the campaign mode on “Normal” difficulty and, as an FPS veteran, it was not particularly challenging (when compared to MW2 on the middle “Hardened” difficulty, for example). It took about 6-7 hours to complete at a fairly leisurely pace (I didn’t “review-rush” it). There’s no doubt that some may find that short, but I was reasonably satisfied in knowing the amount of content and entertainment present in multiplayer (next page)…

]]> http://www.coupleofgamers.com/2010/02/battlefield-bad-company-2/feed/ 3 http://www.coupleofgamers.com/2010/01/splinter-cell-conviction-update-ubi-gives-love-a-bad-name/ http://www.coupleofgamers.com/2010/01/splinter-cell-conviction-update-ubi-gives-love-a-bad-name/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:48:07 +0000 Lori http://www.coupleofgamers.com/?p=1102

I’ve been shot through the heart—and Ubisoft’s to blame.

I was really excited about the fact that the release date for Splinter Cell: Conviction fell on the eighth anniversary of my first date with Dave—so much so that not only was I willing to play a game that totally goes against my own playing style (read: I suck at stealth and shooting) because it looks cool, but I was also considering filming our gameplay for a possible video review. Nothing fancy (or saucy)—just a little something I’d been thinking about for a while and, since the game recently announced split-screen co-op play, it seemed like an excellent candidate for our inaugural vodcast (or whatever it is the kids are calling it these days).

Yesterday, however, my anniversary plans were ruined. A press release from Ubisoft, announcing its third-quarter performance and targets, broke the news that the release date of Splinter Cell: Conviction was to be delayed until April. The release said other stuff, but my vision was blurred with tears after I saw those words that broke my heart.

(Actually, I did read the whole thing and, personally, I think that if Ubi focused more on titles like Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes and less time on the Imagine and Petz franchises, they could take their place as a strong contender in the DS market and wouldn’t have to scale back on their tentative grasp on this platform. But that’s just me…)

So yes, I now have to make other plans for my anniversary. I may even have to use some…shudder…creativity. But what are we going to do for our first video review? We can’t wait until April. Any suggestions?

Because nothing says “lovin’” like some hot shared ass-kicking action, Ubisoft has announced that Splinter Cell: Conviction will, indeed, offer split-screen co-op play.

Sure, I thought the game looked cool, and we were thinking of picking it up but, like many games that came before Splinter Cell: Conviction, I figured that it would fall under one of three categories:

a) The game contains elements that allow for two players to pass the controller back and forth (like UC2 and ACII).
b) The game is cool-looking enough that one person doesn’t mind watching the other person play (like Bioshock).
c) The game is super fun, and you really want to play together in the same room, but you can’t (I’m looking at you and shaking my fist, Crackdown).

However, when I woke up this morning, I was greeted by a tweet from fellow COG writer Andrew Carreiro informing me of this interesting development; oddly enough, the announcement was reserved for Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell Facebook page.

The awesome thing is that the release date for Splinter Cell: Conviction is February 13th, which happens to be the eighth anniversary of the first time Dave and I met. What better way to celebrate than to test my husband’s patience whilst I exhibit my complete lack of stealth and aiming skills? I guess I should probably buy him dinner first…

The first thing to mention is the characters: In Assassin’s Creed II, Ezio (the player character) grows and meets many characters, some of which we became very attached to. A missed QuickTime event prompt caused Ezio to decline a hug from a very let-down Leonardo Da Vinci. It’s interesting that we felt terrible about that for the rest of the evening, yet we didn’t care about stabbing some minstrel that was in our way.

As developed as the characters are, Assassin’s Creed II’s best character is Renaissance Italy. The world is so strong and believable that one feels right inside a condensed version of Venice or Florence. Even if Assassin’s Creed II doesn’t have the graphics of Uncharted 2, we still had a wow moment the first time we climbed a tower and saw how huge the city was. Free running over the rooftops is a blast; especially if you have guards trailing you.

When free running, we would sometimes expect a platform where there was none, and we would have a long fall from the rooftops. My fiancée plays games a lot and never feels motion sickness or any such experience but, when she falls off the roofs in ACII, she feels like she’s on a roller coaster.

Another thing we really liked besides the world was how dissimilar in pace and structure ACII was to ACI. The first outing in the series places the player in an assembly line of killing; the objectives became tedious and repetitive soon into the game. Assassin’s Creed II has a huge amount of variation to keep things fresh. Side quests, armor and weapon upgrades, collectibles, cryptic messages to decode, assassin’s tombs (all-platforming sections), and refurbishing Ezio’s uncle’s villa kept us busy when we needed a break from knife-facing. The problem was deciding when to take a break.

Due to the open-world nature of Assassin’s Creed II, it’s difficult to assign turns and decide what  the next move will be. It’s not a strike against the design or execution by any means, it’s simply that a game with so many directions to go doesn’t lend itself to a group playthrough.

Assassin’s Creed II is a solid game and I would recommend it to couples for controller-passing playthroughs. If you do play it, I would advise you play it during the day because you may miss some of the complex storyline if you happen to fall asleep while your significant other is still playing.

I’ll get this out of the way: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is good.

With accomplished first-person-shooter developer Infinity Ward behind it, and with the backing of 800-pound gorilla-slash-publisher Activision-Blizzard (and the expectations of their shareholders), there was very little chance of the game being bad. Modern Warfare 2 is too big to fail.

Recognized or not, the understanding that MW2 was a “sure thing” appears to have made its way into the public consciousness in the form of mammoth first-day and first-week sales (perhaps the most successful entertainment launch of all time).

As a gamer—an FPS gamer—and perhaps as a member of the more violent sex, I was probably as guilty as the next guy in those assumptions. And there were a lot of “next guys” on my Xbox friends list: on the game’s release, the colourful array of Dragon Age, Lego Rock Band, Forza 3, Borderlands, and FIFA 10 box art that populated the list of games my friends were currently playing immediately became a uniform phalanx of pale brown Modern Warfare soldiers. It wasn’t exactly peer pressure, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t influence the urgency of my purchase or cement what platform I’d be purchasing it for.

And with a game like Modern Warfare 2, friend availability does come into play. Call of Duty games have always had very well-crafted single-player experiences—perhaps even best-of-breed in a crowded class of WWII shooters (the setting for the first few iterations of the franchise). Increasingly, however, the real meat and potatoes of these games have been their robust and addictive multiplayer features—both competitive and cooperative.

Modern Warfare 2 continues this trend by offering a single-player campaign that I completed in somewhere around six hours, and multiplayer in which I’ve logged eight hours so far and still feel that I’m just getting started.

I don’t feel cheated by a campaign that’s short by current standards, nor did I feel the need to lengthen the experience by playing at a harder level of difficulty (I played on “regular”)…

Dave: OK, so at this point those who play these games are likely questioning my gamer cred, if not my masculinity—so let me go into overly defensive man-talk mode: Fuck that. I can compete just fine in multiplayer, but when SP gets hard it doesn’t get more fun—it just makes you play the same short sequence until you manage to sprint to where the next damn checkpoint is or find the perfect spots to exploit the endless stream of AI. The Ferris wheel in CoD4 was the last time I will do that.

Like an action flick, I don’t really play Call of Duty campaigns to be challenged—I want to be thrust into spectacular circumstances, locales, and scenarios. Infinity Ward knows this, or they wouldn’t constantly steal scenes directly from movies (like the shower scene from The Rock) or call chapters “Wolverines!” (Red Dawn). In action movies, the hero rarely dies; in games, dying now and then is necessary. Dying more than 20 times in a row, on the other hand, only kills my suspension of disbelief and spoils the cinematic experience.

Like watching a movie, Lori can appreciate a well-orchestrated single-player campaign when she sees one. When it comes to action games, she’ll happily defer to my hand-eye-coordination to facilitate the experience—especially when the game has a compelling story or art style (Bioshock being an excellent recent example of a shooter with both). When at its best, Modern Warfare 2 is like watching a Michael Bay/Tom Clancy collaboration for a summer blockbuster—an “action-packed thrillride.” However, just like that theoretical crazy Michael Bay/Tom Clancy blockbuster, Lori isn’t too excited about watching it.

Lori: I actually don’t mind watching the single-player campaign if that’s what’s being played, and I don’t mind providing the occasional “sniper on your left, sweetie” during multiplayer. However, the removal of party chat in some modes forces one to listen to ten-year-olds sing “This Is How We Do It” perhaps more often than my limited tolerance for such things will allow—and that’s when the DS comes out.

So this one, like an over-the-top action movie, I’ll enjoy with just the guys. Virtual soldiers will be shot in the head, there will be bright flashes and loud bangs, and we will yell a lot. If someone asks, I won’t say it’s a masterwork that advances the medium and forces one to consider the nature of 21st century armed conflict; I will simply say that Modern Warfare 2 is good.

Photo by Andrew Spearin.

However, as it turned out, I was going to be in the area at the time, so I asked intrepid photojournalist/game designer Andrew Spearin to tag along. Though I’m not the kind of gamer to whom MW2 would cater (I’m an RPGamer myself), I figured it would be worth it to check out what my competition for my husband’s attention for the next little while would be—and, at the very least, if I should be jealous of my new rival for his affection…

Dave: It’s worth noting that aside from being a talented photographer, Andrew is no stranger to infantry combat games, having been one of the founders of the award-winning Insurgency mod for Half-Life 2.

When Andrew and I arrived at EB Games on Queen Street, a crowd had been transplanted from the queue in front of the store and was lining up in a parking lot across the street. Sony Canada had their PlayStation truck all set up to accommodate the myriad young’uns eager to play the game for a few scant moments before being herded back into line to await their coveted pre-order when midnight rolled around.

As Andrew snapped shots, I said hello to Kyle Moffatt and spied Matt Levitan, director of marketing and public relations for Sony Computer Entertainment Canada, standing near the door. After sharing our mutual love of turn-based RPGs (and receiving the requisite ire of passersby), I asked him how excited he was about the night’s launch.

“I’m very excited,” he replied (excitedly). “My first Call of Duty was Call of Duty 3 on the PS3 which was…I don’t know if it was a launch game, but it was somewhere within the launch window…I really loved it and, of course, from that went Modern Warfare and World at War so, now, being able to see what Infinity Ward’s able to do with Modern Warfare 2, obviously, everyone’s very excited.”  (You may have read another article of mine previously belying his gamer-nerd status.) “I don’t think there’s much doubt in anyone’s mind that it’s going to be the best selling game this year, and everyone’s just going to be in its wake for the next six to eight weeks before the end of the calendar year. It speaks volumes to the quality of the game, without a doubt.”

Andrew took a few more choice photos and, though the idea of winning a 250GB PS3 (or a copy of the coveted Prestige Edition) was deliciously enticing, we figured that we were close enough to the other nearby launches to give them a little face time (despite not having a truck in their parking lot), so we went northbound to see what the other stores had going on. You know, sharing the love and all that.

]]> http://www.coupleofgamers.com/2009/11/mw2-where-was-your-significant-other-last-night/feed/ 0