Call of Duty 4 was unceremoniously knocked out of its long held position as Most Played 360 Game when Grand Theft Auto IV was released a month ago, but today it has reclaimed its spot while GTAIV has fallen to third place, behind Halo 3. In celebration, all COD4 players will receive double experience points when playing this weekend.
To be honest, I was surprised it took this long. It was pretty clear that the game was topping the charts based mainly on people playing the single player game, so once they had their fill, unless they moved onto regularly playing the multiplayer, the game was going to drop like a rock.
I have to hand it to GTAIV, keeping so many people involved in a single player game for a month is no small feat. Can it climb back to the top when the still mysterious "episode" drops in the Fall?
[via fourzerotwo]
Showing posts with label cod4. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cod4. Show all posts
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
COD4 Variety Pack Goes Platinum
Infinity Ward are the Kings of the World. Not only has Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare been the number one game on Xbox Live for essentially all of 2008, but it now has the honor of having the most downloaded premium content pack ever.
In its first 9 days, the Variety Map Pack was downloaded over 1 million times. Considering Infinity Ward recently claimed that the game has 1.3 million people playing the game every single day (on Live alone), that's an incredible tie-ratio.
They even managed to get me to buy the damn thing and I am usually repulsed by premium maps.
You know what though? Infinity Ward did it right. The maps are seamlessly integrated into existing playlists as you are simply matched up with other players who have them. People without the maps will be matched up with those who don't have them. It takes no longer to get a game going then it did before.
In Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2, players are automatically booted from a server if a host loads up a map they don't have. In Halo 3, the months old Heroic Map Pack was only just added to regular playlists, now that the new 3-map pack is out. And that pack won't be added to playlists until sometime in July. Who wants to pay $10 for new maps when it's just a huge hassle to play them? Either make the maps free or implement them into the game in a way that people who do pay for them actually get to play them as if they had been included with the game to begin with. IW is the first developer to pull off the latter.
Ubisoft and Bungie could both learn a lesson from IW's integration of the maps as it has no doubt played a big part in their success. I'd love to see how many Heroic Map Packs Microsoft actually sold, because there was certainly never any major announcement about it hitting any kind of sales milestone. Releasing only 3 new maps was a mistake too. When Halo 2 had a 9 map pack a few years ago for $20 it's hard to justify a 3 map pack for $10. Microsoft got too greedy and it bit them in their ass.
I don't think it's a coincidence that COD4 didn't start topping Halo 3 on the Live charts until right after the Heroic Map Pack hit. Logic would dictate that a new map pack would renew interest in Halo 3, but the opposite happened.
[via CVG]
In its first 9 days, the Variety Map Pack was downloaded over 1 million times. Considering Infinity Ward recently claimed that the game has 1.3 million people playing the game every single day (on Live alone), that's an incredible tie-ratio.
They even managed to get me to buy the damn thing and I am usually repulsed by premium maps.
You know what though? Infinity Ward did it right. The maps are seamlessly integrated into existing playlists as you are simply matched up with other players who have them. People without the maps will be matched up with those who don't have them. It takes no longer to get a game going then it did before.
In Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2, players are automatically booted from a server if a host loads up a map they don't have. In Halo 3, the months old Heroic Map Pack was only just added to regular playlists, now that the new 3-map pack is out. And that pack won't be added to playlists until sometime in July. Who wants to pay $10 for new maps when it's just a huge hassle to play them? Either make the maps free or implement them into the game in a way that people who do pay for them actually get to play them as if they had been included with the game to begin with. IW is the first developer to pull off the latter.
Ubisoft and Bungie could both learn a lesson from IW's integration of the maps as it has no doubt played a big part in their success. I'd love to see how many Heroic Map Packs Microsoft actually sold, because there was certainly never any major announcement about it hitting any kind of sales milestone. Releasing only 3 new maps was a mistake too. When Halo 2 had a 9 map pack a few years ago for $20 it's hard to justify a 3 map pack for $10. Microsoft got too greedy and it bit them in their ass.
I don't think it's a coincidence that COD4 didn't start topping Halo 3 on the Live charts until right after the Heroic Map Pack hit. Logic would dictate that a new map pack would renew interest in Halo 3, but the opposite happened.
[via CVG]
Friday, February 29, 2008
COD4 Patch Arrives, Better Late Than Never
Earlier today, the long overdue patch for Call of Duty 4 was finally made available. After playing for about six hours total, it's clear they really didn't fix much.
The major problem was the lack of host migration. Before the patch you'd be lucky if you were able to play 2 rounds in a row before the host dropped out and you were dumped back to the lobby by yourself, forcing you to join a new match. Just as often, you'd find a game, the match would start, and the "host" would leave immediately, breaking up everyone who had just been matched together. When this happened a couple times in a row, it got frustrating real quick. It was also a ton of fun when you were in the middle of a great match and the host would drop.
After the patch, the frequency of host disconnects seems to be diminished but "host migration" isn't anything of the kind. What happens is, if the host leaves, the game ends and everyone gets dumped back to the lobby where a new host is selected and a new game is started. It doesn't pick up in the middle of the game like we were led to believe. And it took how many months to get this patch out?
The quick mute was another option I was looking forward to, but its implementation is half-assed as well. From the score screen (Back button) you can use the D-pad to scroll through the names and press the A button to immediately mute whoever is selected. That's about as simple as it can be, only for whatever reason, that person becomes unmuted at the end of the match. Seeing as the "host migration" actually makes it possible to play with the same group of people for more than 2-3 games in a row, you'll have to mute people individually every single match. Not a huge deal, but it doesn't really make any sense. Because of this, it's more effective to just bring up their profile and mute them the old way.
The last major thing fixed by the patch was sniping, which beforehand was pretty much useless. It is certainly better; a 20-6 run on Bloc with a sniper rifle confirmed this for me. If I had tried that before the patch my score would've been more like 6-20. Still, I've never been big on sniping so I don't see myself breaking out the rifle too often. And even though it is much improved I still experienced a couple instances where I shot a guy dead on multiple times and he didn't drop. All in all though, I'd imagine people who love sniping are going to be pretty pleased. If you were somehow able to pull off sniping before the patch, you're gonna be a force to be reckoned with now that your bullets actually tend to go where your cross hairs are pointed.
They also finally fixed the "Your playlist data is older than the hosts" error you'd get whenever joining a friends game from an invite when you first started the game up.
I'm just completely baffled that it took them 4 months to get this patch out and it doesn't even do what it was supposed to.
The major problem was the lack of host migration. Before the patch you'd be lucky if you were able to play 2 rounds in a row before the host dropped out and you were dumped back to the lobby by yourself, forcing you to join a new match. Just as often, you'd find a game, the match would start, and the "host" would leave immediately, breaking up everyone who had just been matched together. When this happened a couple times in a row, it got frustrating real quick. It was also a ton of fun when you were in the middle of a great match and the host would drop.
After the patch, the frequency of host disconnects seems to be diminished but "host migration" isn't anything of the kind. What happens is, if the host leaves, the game ends and everyone gets dumped back to the lobby where a new host is selected and a new game is started. It doesn't pick up in the middle of the game like we were led to believe. And it took how many months to get this patch out?
The quick mute was another option I was looking forward to, but its implementation is half-assed as well. From the score screen (Back button) you can use the D-pad to scroll through the names and press the A button to immediately mute whoever is selected. That's about as simple as it can be, only for whatever reason, that person becomes unmuted at the end of the match. Seeing as the "host migration" actually makes it possible to play with the same group of people for more than 2-3 games in a row, you'll have to mute people individually every single match. Not a huge deal, but it doesn't really make any sense. Because of this, it's more effective to just bring up their profile and mute them the old way.
The last major thing fixed by the patch was sniping, which beforehand was pretty much useless. It is certainly better; a 20-6 run on Bloc with a sniper rifle confirmed this for me. If I had tried that before the patch my score would've been more like 6-20. Still, I've never been big on sniping so I don't see myself breaking out the rifle too often. And even though it is much improved I still experienced a couple instances where I shot a guy dead on multiple times and he didn't drop. All in all though, I'd imagine people who love sniping are going to be pretty pleased. If you were somehow able to pull off sniping before the patch, you're gonna be a force to be reckoned with now that your bullets actually tend to go where your cross hairs are pointed.
They also finally fixed the "Your playlist data is older than the hosts" error you'd get whenever joining a friends game from an invite when you first started the game up.
I'm just completely baffled that it took them 4 months to get this patch out and it doesn't even do what it was supposed to.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
The Club First (and Last!) Impressions
I received The Club from the fine folks at Gamefly yesterday and did a quick playthrough of the first level and tried a couple rounds of multiplayer. The prognosis? Not good.
I decided to run through the first level (or Tournament as the game's levels are broken down as) on the Insane difficulty simply to see if beating the level on the harder difficulty unlocks the achievements for lower difficulties (it does). What's odd is that Insane is hardly what I'd call difficult at all. While The Club is a different breed of shooter from say, Call of Duty 4, and is meant to be played at a furious nonstop pace, I was still able to breeze through the first Tournament with no trouble whatsoever. Granted it was only the first level, but still, I can't even imagine how easy the game must be on the normal difficulty setting.
The first tournament consisted of playing through the same level in a variety of different modes and paths where you're either trying to get to an exit in a set amount of time or you're limited to a small area where you must survive for a few minutes with an ever increasing onslaught of enemies coming after you. Again, neither mode is particularly interesting because they are both pretty easy. The difficulty in the game seems to revolve around getting high scores, which is something that rarely interests me.
I was very interested in the multiplayer however, as most reviews seemed to write-off the single player anyway and praised the online play. After two 20 minute rounds, I have no idea why. Aiming is a mess and the weaponry is impotent. You can easily blast 4 or 5 shotgun rounds into someone at point blank range and they'll still just run off like nothing happened. Headshots seem completely random and again, require multiple shots to drop an opponent. You have a melee attack but, just like the weapons, it does practically no damage.
I wanted to try out some of the alternate game modes offered, such as Hunter Hunted and Fox Hunt, but it was impossible to find a match in those gametypes or to get anyone to join if I hosted one myself.
It's also worth mentioning that during the two matches I did play, I heard more swearing and racial epithets than I have in over a hundred hours of COD4 and Halo 3. During the game there is no onscreen indicator (either during gameplay or on the score screen) that shows who is speaking at any given moment, so people feel free to say whatever hatespeech comes to mind and repeat it ad nauseum with no fear of being reported. Since you don't know who's speaking you can't even mute them.
The bottom line is that The Club is a somewhat fun single player game with lousy multiplayer. It's worth a shot, especially if you like arcade style games and enjoy replaying levels over and over for high scores. I can't recommend it for the multiplayer because even if you end up enjoying it, there are so few people playing it's simply not worth it.
I decided to run through the first level (or Tournament as the game's levels are broken down as) on the Insane difficulty simply to see if beating the level on the harder difficulty unlocks the achievements for lower difficulties (it does). What's odd is that Insane is hardly what I'd call difficult at all. While The Club is a different breed of shooter from say, Call of Duty 4, and is meant to be played at a furious nonstop pace, I was still able to breeze through the first Tournament with no trouble whatsoever. Granted it was only the first level, but still, I can't even imagine how easy the game must be on the normal difficulty setting.
The first tournament consisted of playing through the same level in a variety of different modes and paths where you're either trying to get to an exit in a set amount of time or you're limited to a small area where you must survive for a few minutes with an ever increasing onslaught of enemies coming after you. Again, neither mode is particularly interesting because they are both pretty easy. The difficulty in the game seems to revolve around getting high scores, which is something that rarely interests me.
I was very interested in the multiplayer however, as most reviews seemed to write-off the single player anyway and praised the online play. After two 20 minute rounds, I have no idea why. Aiming is a mess and the weaponry is impotent. You can easily blast 4 or 5 shotgun rounds into someone at point blank range and they'll still just run off like nothing happened. Headshots seem completely random and again, require multiple shots to drop an opponent. You have a melee attack but, just like the weapons, it does practically no damage.
I wanted to try out some of the alternate game modes offered, such as Hunter Hunted and Fox Hunt, but it was impossible to find a match in those gametypes or to get anyone to join if I hosted one myself.
It's also worth mentioning that during the two matches I did play, I heard more swearing and racial epithets than I have in over a hundred hours of COD4 and Halo 3. During the game there is no onscreen indicator (either during gameplay or on the score screen) that shows who is speaking at any given moment, so people feel free to say whatever hatespeech comes to mind and repeat it ad nauseum with no fear of being reported. Since you don't know who's speaking you can't even mute them.
The bottom line is that The Club is a somewhat fun single player game with lousy multiplayer. It's worth a shot, especially if you like arcade style games and enjoy replaying levels over and over for high scores. I can't recommend it for the multiplayer because even if you end up enjoying it, there are so few people playing it's simply not worth it.
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