Xbox One Drops in Price in UK Market, US To Follow?

Today the Redmond, WA-based Microsoft grew some teeth and announced a price drop for the Xbox One from £429 to £399 in the UK.  The price drop doesn’t seem to have much rhyme or reason, but it is likely attributed to Microsoft needing to succeed in Europe to keep pace with Sony’s PS4 console.  Does this mean that the United States and Canada will also see a price drop?  Not likely.  North America is big for Xbox, and despite reports that the PS4 outsold the Xbox One in the US during the month of January, Microsoft will be thumping Sony (barring a freak sales surge of the PS4) in March and perhaps the rest of 2014.  This will be attributed to TitanFall, the first must-have game for either console and is an Xbox exclusive.  Sony will not be picking up this game ever, and they will have to rely on the lesser-hyped Infamous: Second Son to try and move a few more consoles.  TitanFall is so heavily promoted and raved about, Infamous doesn’t stand a chance even if critics were to love it more than TitanFall.  But seeing how Call of Duty was once the dominant figure in gaming and moved millions upon millions of games per release, TitanFall stands to greatly pump some good lifeblood into the Xbox One games library and get consoles off the shelves faster.

As a result, the US and Canada will likely not be high-value targets for a price drop in 2014.  This is Microsoft’s home field advantage and they don’t have to rely on price drops to move consoles.  In reality, Microsoft need to get past their limited 13 market release as Sony is drastically more available across the world with their 50+ market availability.  The Xbox One is expected to launch in many more markets in 2014, but it remains undetermined as to when that global expansion will happen.  Initially we thought it would be early 2014, but the lack of any information from Microsoft on the issue seems to lead us to believe that a late-spring or summer timeframe will be the earliest we see the Xbox One expand its reach.  If they haven’t already caught up with Sony in sales, doubling or tripling their market availability will certainly help make up significant ground.  But for Xbox One owners, rejoice – you have the coolest exclusive and a guaranteed-nomination for Game of the Year title on its way on March 11 (for the US and Canada).

TitanFall Is Best. Period.

After 20 hours of beta play and plenty of time to learn and digest the fraction of what TitanFall will be come March 11, there is one inescapable truth that has been unfolded before myself and hundreds of thousands of beta players: TitanFall is incredible.  The open beta on Xbox One, just like the PC counterpart, features two levels (Angel City and Fraction) and gives gamers the opportunity to sample three different game modes: Attrition (team deathmatch), Hardpoint (domination/territories), Last Titan Standing (self explanatory).  You can choose to run one playlist or randomly cycle through all three.  On top of that, you get to play up to level 14, which is extremely reminiscent of Call of Duty’s leveling system.  As you level up, more opportunities and gear become unlocked for your disposal in-game.  The game features 6 v 6 multiplayer only matches, though artificial intelligence players are inserted to keep things feeling slightly crowded, and even though it’s not on the scale of the massive Battlefield 4, it still works extremely well.  The only disappointment to this game really comes at the limitation of you and five other friends that can play together. Because of how popular this game is already, as long as you have plenty of real life or online-met friends, you’re going to have a massive group to play with.  Should levels ever be slightly larger in the future, 7 v 7 or 8 v 8 would sit well for TitanFall.  But as it stands, the game is nearly impeccable and shows that single player campaigns aren’t necessary for first person shooters.  We all just want to crush other players hard – something that TitanFall makes absolutely possible without appealing to only hardcore gamers.  The AI makes certain of that since they’re more cannon fodder than helpful ally assistance, thus both lesser and more experienced players can have a sense of contribution and excellence while playing this rather straight-forward shooter.  The addition of mechs simply adds a deeper level of combat to be experienced and keeps the feel of the game varied.

TitanFall is so good it’s hard to imagine how other games like Destiny, The Division and Halo 5 are going to meet this new level of addictive and frantic fun

Oh, I’m sure they’ll actually find ways to compete, but for how immediate TitanFall is I’m absolutely blown away by how fun it is to repeatedly play for hours on end when only a limited selection of game variants and equipment are available.  This is something Call of Duty could stand to learn from.  TitanFall isn’t hard to learn – the tutorial really walks you through all of the basics very well.  Whether you’ll be a master on the field of battle is entirely up to you and your ability to think three-dimensionally and be strategic in your approach.  Even the run-and-gun approach can be a strategy as long as you’re quick on the trigger and don’t run into any mechanized giants strolling into your path.  It’s truly impressive to think that playing as a “pilot” (standard foot soldier with the ability to control a Titan) can be just as advantageous as playing as a Titan, only you’re more frail and thus need to be careful with how you will approach certain encounters.

While the game doesn’t feature Call of Duty’s iconic and steadily-dulled killstreak system, Burn Cards act as a way of allowing players to gain an upper-hand so long as they don’t die, otherwise a burn card is consumed and nullified.  Burn Cards can be used to call Titans in faster/immediately, gain extra XP, gain access to special weapons/abilities, and so much more.  You can play as many as three of them per match and can hold a maximum of 26 cards before you have to cycle out cards.  Some cards are more common than others, so be sure to consistently use a card or two per match in case there’s an opportunity to earn more rare cards.  Titan are on a 4-minute countdown at the beginning of a match, so using a card like “Pull Rank” to eliminate 80 seconds off of your timer can be a huge advantage in a game of Attrition, and eliminating enemy players and AI can further shorten that countdown, allowing you to gain access to a powerful Titan well before enemy players do.

All the pieces together make for the greatest FPS experience I’ve seen in many years.  Games like Far Cry 3 and Halo 4 were great, but just like so many others, they didn’t keep everyone mesmerized for hours on end without throwing what some might call fodder content to keep things somewhat fresh (something Call of Duty has really fallen prey to post-Modern Warfare 3).  TitanFall could easily be addicting day one as it is month six, and that is why March 11 cannot come fast enough.  I don’t want to play anything else right now.  I just want the full TitanFall experience to waste my hours on.  If you would have told me parkour + mechs + FPS = best shooter of the last five years, I would have been very skeptical.  But playing this open beta has convinced me that everyone owning an Xbox One or a PC (capable of playing the game) needs to pick up TitanFall the day it comes out if possible.  Unless you have a pure hatred toward FPS’ and aren’t open to reinvented experiences, you are going to love this game.  Now I have to wonder where a game like this can go with future iterations.  But for the time being, I know it only has one place it can be: at the top.

This is what Microsoft needed to convince on-the-fence buyers to empty store shelves of Xbox Ones.  This is what we can call next-gen gaming.  Get ready.

Call of Duty: Ghosts – Review

Like another Fast and the Furious movie, Call of Duty is back… again.  Still hailed as the biggest selling and most played shooter franchise of all, Call of Duty has been the mainstay of the FPS genre for years after dethroning the once-great Halo.  But here was are at the end of 2013, and the biggest question everyone is asking about Ghosts is whether or not Infinity Ward have finally found the magic that they created from CoD 4: Modern Warfare. 

Let me save you some reading and give you a quick answer: NO.  This is not the new hotness that we were promised.  Ghosts had every opportunity to mix things up and offer a new height of experiences.  Instead, we’re left with a near copy of Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 2.  That’s not to say that it’s total garbage, but there’s a lot to be disappointed in – or, at the very least, bored of.  So where does one start with dissecting this now repetitive franchise?

The campaign is uninteresting most of the time.  Very seldom did I feel like I was being hooked with the story and its characters.  The apocalyptic mayhem begins so quickly with characters you know nothing about and it all just kind of becomes a blur of stuff.  A crippled American military and post-invaded country is such an awesome concept, but it never really takes off in Ghosts.  You will get a nice variety of environments to play through and the occasional mix of gun-play and gadget use, but at no point in time did I feel like I was experiencing something new and grand.  It was playing Call of Duty for the sake of playing Call of Duty.  At least there are achievements to be had. 

Then there’s the multiplayer.  In one hand, it’s the most balanced and honed Call of Duty has ever been.  It’s not as easy to be a one-man wrecking crew.  The levels are the best ever launched with the series as a whole.  There’s even new gametypes like Cranked and Blitz to offer some breath of fresh air when competing against other players.  Cranked is a team deathmatch variant that forces you to find another player to kill within 30 seconds of your first kill, or you explode.  Totally zany, but it keep people moving – so there’s less chance of getting corner-camped.  Blitz is a cool play on Search and Destroy, where instead of trying to get a bomb to a designated target, you must get yourself to a goal.  If you don’t get killed before you drop into the goal, your team scores a point.  But each team’s goal is active, so offense and defense must be played simultaneously to win out.  But even with these interesting new playlists and a more balanced game, it still falls short of a good time.

There are a few culprits to why Call of Duty misses the mark.  First, the lack of dedicated servers is simply unforgivable.  Not only were they promised for Ghosts, they are expected on all of these big multiplayer games.  In the lack of dedicated servers, your Xbox must server as the hosting console, which can create variable experiences for anyone joining your game because of issues like host location and internet speed inconsistencies.  This nearly eradicates cover-to-cover evasion tactics that are so well established in games like Gears of War or Ghost Recon, and a viable survival tactic that should be possible here but isn’t.  Infinity Ward added the lean mechanic to try and relieve this shortcoming, but it does little to create any real tactical edge in-game.  This can also lead to choppy play and a lot of anger management therapy for the competitive players.

Another almost-cool factor that ends of being nothing more than a bit gimmicky is the “dynamic map” element that IW attempts to drop into the fray.  Maps like Chasm or the Free Fall DLC map have things going on throughout the game that are meant to reshape the landscape or create chaos in some way.  What it all amounts to is a lot of shimmies and shakes.  Speaking of Free Fall – you may be better off not downloading it.  Just ask the community, who have done nothing but bash it on Xbox Live. 

There are a small list of other tweaks or additions to Call of Duty.  Some are interesting, others aren’t.  The omission of the AC-130 gunship killstreak is sad, as are some of the killstreak options.  Thus, after hours and hours of play and observation, I am helplessly torn between what is a good experience and a disappointing experience at the same time.  For every bit of refinement and balancing that Ghosts provides, there’s a frustration to counter it.  To that end, Call of Duty is just another game and lacks the greatness that could have been.  Perhaps these shortcomings can be blamed on a lack of prep time for the new next generation consoles, and the REAL Call of Duty resurgence is still to come on Ghosts 2, or whatever else comes next.  What positive mention Call of Duty does earn is a familiar and smooth experience when upgrading to the next generation consoles.  Games like Battlefield 4 require time to adjust to and learn, whereas Ghosts is pretty easy to simply pick up and play.  Just remember that there’s a host of exclusives and multi-platform titles comes to Xbox One in 2014 – among them the much-anticipated TitanFall which has been created by the original Modern Warfare creators.  That is perhaps the fine-tuned FPS experience we all hoped Ghosts would be.

SCORE: 6.5