Back in early January we brought you a rumor that the new Call of Duty title would be set during the Vietnam War. This would make sense considering World War II is ridiculously played out and Infinity Ward has a pretty firm grasp on the whole Modern Warfare concept. However, ever since that inital rumor emerged we haven’t heard much of anything regarding the game’s contents since.

Now, we havea  new rumor that says the game will be entitled Call of Duty: Black Ops and will jump around in history with scenes set in times like Vietnam,the Cold War and more. Oh, and the same rumors say that Nazi Zombies i going to be back. Let’s at least hope that part of the rumor is true.

via tvgb

I can’t say I was a huge fan of the original UFC game, I’m more of a Street Figher kind of guy, but this recent rumor has got me pretty excited for the next title. Buzz arround the Internet says that THQ is looking into incorporating both Project Natal and Playstation Move into UFC Undisputed 2011.

How exactly they would do this, I don’t know, but beating the crap out of a dude with Project Natal would be totally badass. Count me in!

via cvg

If you have an Xbox 360 and a Live subscription you’ve undoubtedly heard of Major Nelson. He’s the guy over at Microsoft that clues us in on pretty much all the happenings in the Xbox world. Anyways, it seems that a guy by the name of Lightzz has hacked Major Nelson’s account and is going around the Internet parading what he’s done.

Major Nelson’s account has since been restored by if you’re going to hack someone why would you go around bragging about it? Especially if you have a lisp, jackass.

Learn more here but watch out, an angered e-thug with a potty mouth ensues.

via kotaku

Battlefield 1943 was released to Xbox Live some time ago and it’s been met with an amazing reception. Such good reception, in fact, that it was just announced that the game has sold 1 million copies. Of course, the game retails for just $15 so it’d be unfair to compare it to full priced titles but DICE assures us that Battlefield 1943 is the fastest title to hit 1 million downloads. Good job!

via cvg

Skate 3 was announced quite a while ago but EA is letting us know something we don’t already know: a demo is on its way. That’s right in just 2 short weeks the Skate 3 demo will be released for the Xbox 360 and PS3.

That’s April 15th, for those of you who have a hard time with math.

Opinion.

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Remember back in the day, when RTS games were about base building and resource management as much as they were about combat? Remember classics like Total Annihilation, arguably the greatest RTS game ever created? And Age Of Empires? Sadly, RTS games are moving away from the tried and tested formula to a more arcade style gameplay in hopes of gaining a wider audience.

Recent developments

Lately, RTS games have been moving away from the classic gameplay style of gathering resources, building a base and buildings units, to just “getting units” and storming into combat. Recently, in order to appeal to a wider range of audience, RTS games have moved away from their base to an almost arcade style gameplay, where the player isn’t required to posses great management or multitasking skills, only requirement is to know a bit of tactic.

The classic concept of managing resources, building bases and building armies is slowly being phased out, with games like Dawn of War 2, Company of Heroes, and Command & Conquer 4. Even Supreme Commander 2 has taken the same route and moved away from its core into a more simplified style. Granted, those games aren’t bad games by any stretch, and they do tend to appeal to a wider variety of gamers.

Another reason for this is that RTS games are now being ported to consoles as well, and it’s nearly impossible to have anything but a simplified, arcade-style gameplay with the limited controls and lack of a mouse and keyboard.

What it was like before

However, by simplifying the gameplay, the developers cut off what was once some of the best part of RTS games, and what kept hard core players spending hours on a single skirmish mission, building up huge bases, massive armies and combing the map for every bit of resources. There was a certain pride hard core RTS gamers had when they hit the unit limit in Age of Empires, or lead an assault on the enemy with hundreds of units in Rise of Nations, with carefully planned companies and groups.

Naturally, not everyone has that much time to spend on a single mission, but it’s that exact challenge that made it so rewarding — multitasking between several bases on the map, deciding whether to spend your resources on research or build new units, try and anticipate where the enemy will strike and place your defenses there and so on. It required sheer gamer intelligence to pull it off. Today? Take Dawn Of War 2 for instance: you get a handful of units and go hunting across the map. Simple, to the point, but certainly not as rewarding. You might as well play a squad based FPS game instead.

What the future holds

Hopefully we’ll at least have a few games which focus on the classic RTS experience, but sadly, it doesn’t look like that. Some of the best franchises that did that are either gone or they’ve turned into arcade-style games, where they’re less about “Real Time Strategy” and more about “Read Time Tactics”.

Age Of Empires and Rise Of Nations are dead. Command & Conquer 4 and Supreme Commander 2 have moved in the arcade direction, and their successors will most likely move further in that direction. And new franchises like Tom Clancy’s EndWar and the upcoming RUSE focus on the same gameplay style as well.

One tiny hope on the horizon is StarCraft 2, and we can only hope it’ll stick to its roots more than the other franchises have over the past few years.

To contact the author of this post, send an email to jamesxhyde(at)gmail(dot)com.

The Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package was announced not too long ago but gamers everywhere have been raising their eyebrows at the $15 price tag. Has Activision rubbed off onto Infinity Ward? Are they really extorting their fans?

According to Infinity Ward’s community manager Robert Bowling, no, it was in fact Activision that set the price for the map pack.

Will you be buying the pack? I’m a bit iffy but I was to play Crash really badly.

via kotaku

Our friends over at VG247 have gotten their hands on a document from video game retailer GAME that reportedly says EA‘s Crysis 2 will be dropping on September 24th.

If you’re not familiar with the Crysis franchise, the original game was widely known as one of the most graphic intensive PC games out there. If you have a beast of a computer and haven’t checked it out you definitely should as it’s beautiful.

I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of any of the LEGO games but I have read through all of the Harry Potter books whether I like to admit it or not. If you’re like me and like Harry Potter, but also happen to like the LEGO games you should check out above trailer for LEGO Harry Potter.

The trailer follows Harry Potter in his 3rd year at Hogwarts and all that follows.

Check it out and we’ll let you know when more information is made known.

To combat used game sales, video game studios introduced bundled DLC. This was in an effort to entice people to buy brand new games as opposed to used games. Well, one customer who picked up Dragon Age: Origins at a GameStop wasn’t too pleased when he went home to find out that the DLC advertised on the front of the box was not included.

He then proceeded to sue GameStop for presumably false advertising. We’ll have to wait and see how this one unfolds.

via ign