“We don’t even think about them”

So said Activision Senior Producer: Noah Heller. When interviewed about how he regarded the largest competition for Call of Duty: World at War, Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway developed by Gearbox.

“We don’t even think about them. They’re not a game we even think about when we’re playing, we think about the best shooters, we play [Call of Duty 4] Modern Warfare, we play… Gears of War, we play Halo, you know, that’s the competition. We want to look at the games that do great storytelling.” 

Only digging himself and his company into a deeper PR ditch Heller goes on to say:

“We don’t want to look at someone who’s just making a crappy war game.”

While it must be said Noah Heller does not represent the views and opinions of the entire Activision studio or Treyarch the company behind the development of Call of Duty: World at War. You have to wonder how he can make such comments with a straight face when BIA is a large established franchise of its own. 

The first Call of Duty spin off (Call of Duty 3) developed by Treyarch and published by Activision received an average rating of 82% on Metacritic however is looked back upon by fans of the series as a low point. The first Brother In Arms game (Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30) was given an 88% and in turn is widely considered one of the only WWII games not getting stale.

A developer at Treyarch later made a post on Xbox Forums making it clear that Treyarch does not share these feelings towards BIA or Gearbox the company who develops it. 

Diablo III

Its offical folks, after many days of speculation Diablo III has been announced. It all began when a teaser site was set up just before the Blizzard 2008 Worldwide Invintational.

With the announcement we recieve not only a cineimatic trailer, which is come to be expected from Blizzard, but also gameplay and concept art footage showing off a very good looking game.

Below the jump is both the cinematic trailer as well as a gameplay trailer. All of this is also located at the offical Diablo III website also linked.

Xbox 360 Price Drop?

A leaked K Mart ad has reveleaed what could possible be a price drop to $299 for the Xbox 360 just before this years E3 Convention. The ad is dated for July 6th with an offical annoucement likely to be made before hand if the price drop is indeed coming across the board.

Price drops before the holiday season may spur Sony to do the same if they are not already planning to.

Source

Spore Creature Creator

The first real hands on taste of Spore a game made by the creator of The Sims, Will Wright, has been released. The Spore Creature Creator lets you sample the tools found ingame. A trial version is available with 25% of the creator unlocked or for the full fledged version you can pay $10.

Players can already begin to upload their creations to the Sporepedia where others can view, download, and rate creations. While only a small portion of what Spore will be become the sheer variety already available with this one tool boggles the mind for what will come this September.

Spore Creature Creator

Sporepedia

Civilization Revolution

Playing Civilization Revolution on the recently released demo for Xbox Live and the PSN was a refreshing experience I had definitely not expected from the long running series.

I have never been the biggest Turn Based Strategy fan however I have had my share of experiences. Civilization Revolution is the latest Civ game from Sid Meir but marks the first time that the series has made a serious attempt at the console market.