Leveling Down

Been seeing this dude on my 360 dashboard for several days now…

After about a month or so of R&R away from Modern Warfare 2, I jumped back into the game this past weekend and haven’t stopped playing it since. I had been playing Bayonetta, Brutal Legend, Band Hero, BioShock 2 (that’s a lot of B’s!), and GTA IV: The Lost and the Damned. After spending some time with BioShock 2’s multiplayer, it sort of jolted me back into wanting to play Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer. After all, why play BioShock 2’s multiplayer when I could be playing something else far superior? Here is a recount of me getting back into the game, consisting of my thoughts on how it feels to be back, and whether I have what it takes to keep up with the “kids” these days…

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With the firing of Infinity Ward CEO Jason West and Infinity Ward President Vince Zampella, will we ever see another Modern Warfare game as good as the first two?

Video games news outlets were all a twitter about the strange machinations going on at Infinity Ward, the Activision owned developer responsible for Modern Warfare. A quick summary of what went down:

- Late Monday night, rumors come out that bouncer-types showed up unannounced at the Infinity Ward offices, unnamed staffer states Infinity Ward staff is “freaked out”. Two senior employees not seen since they had a meeting with Activision big shots [Kotaku]
- Tuesday morning, it is confirmed that President Jason West and CEO Vince Zampella are no longer with Infinity Ward, and that they were let go for “insubordination” (Did they not properly execute a Code Red?) [Wired]

- In an official press release, Activision announces that Treyarch will release another COD title this year, Infinity Ward is working on two downloadable map packs for Modern Warfare 2, and a third studio, Sledgehammer Games, is working on a Call of Duty ACTION ADVENTURE game [Giant Bomb]

Now, we don’t usually report news here on Leveling Down, but this story is so crazy and has me freaked out in multiple ways. Here’s why…

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BioShock 2’s multiplayer is about to take a turn for the worst.

Earlier this week, Take-Two announced that the first of several DLC packs for BioShock 2 would be released starting in March. I’ve been digging BioShock 2’s campaign so far, even if it does feel a bit unnecessary, but multiplayer is still up in the air for me. If you’ve read my initial impressions on the game, you’ll remember that I thought the multiplayer was playable as it’s set up just like Modern Warfare’s rank progression and unlock system, but it still doesn’t compare with Modern Warfare 2. Take-Two’s recent announcement of DLC has sort of infuriated me in a way, on two counts. Read on to to see what gets me to proclaim that this series has sold out.

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In BioShock 2, you get to play the role of a Big Daddy

I finally got to spend several hours with BioShock 2 these last few days, so I’m ready to share my impressions. If you’ve been following Leveling Down for a while, you’re probably aware that my Game of the Year in 2007 was BioShock. That was a crazy good year in gaming, so for it to beat out Halo 3, The Orange Box, Mass Effect and Call of Duty 4 for me that meant it was ridiculously good. The sequel has been handed off to 4 different developers, and there’s even multiplayer now which has learned a thing or two from Modern Warfare. Does the sequel look to carry the quality of the first or even surpass it? Read on for my impressions of BioShock 2 after playing through about a quarter of the campaign and an hour of the multiplayer.
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The snow-based Port Valdez is the one playable map in the demo

The Battlefield: Bad Company 2 demo was just released last week on the Xbox 360, so I got a chance to play around with it for a couple hours in the last few days. PS3 owners have been lucky as they had access to the beta since last November.

Read on for my likes and dislikes, as well as my initial comparisons to the first Bad Company.

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Mass Effect 2 – an RPG with a shooter soul, or the other way around?

We live in an interesting time for games. In the not too distant past, gaming genres were clearly delineated: you’d play Doom to get your first-person shooting on, Starcraft to focus on real-time strategy, platformers like Super Mario Brothers 3 for throw your controller out the window experiences, and the turn based Final Fantasy role playing series for some heavy stories and to prove that “video games can make grown men cry”. But then, a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century…

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Did you know that the Terminator is featured in Modern Warfare 2?

I’m sure there are a lot of conflicting views about this, but I feel compelled to write about it: I absolutely HATE the double shotgun build in Modern Warfare 2. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the build (although at this point if you’ve played enough multiplayer that’s impossible), it goes something like this:

1. Level up to 67.
2. Unlock Model 1887 shotgun.
3. Use Akimbo, Stopping Power, and Steady Aim
4. Kill everyone with 20 yards of you.
5. LOL out loud to yourself.

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We’ve finally reached the last day of our 2009 Xbox 360 Awards & Holiday Shopping Guide, culminating in our Game of the Year. For those following the awards throughout the week, you may have a good guess as to what game will be our game of the year. Is it the same as your pick?

In any case, please remember that while we’ve chosen only one winner from each category, all games nominated within each category are all worth considering, depending on how much you enjoy that category. This week’s feature has doubled as a shopping guide as well as an awards “ceremony”. With that, let’s draw back the curtains for the finale…

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In Part 4 of the Awards/Shopping Guide, Leveling Down will be tackling some of the more controversial categories: Best Story, Best Value, and Most Overrated. Admittedly, these categories are VERY subjective and are only our opinions, and on some counts even espion4ge and I don’t see *exactly* eye to eye. Nonetheless, controversy is a lot of fun, so might as well give it a shot!

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One of the Xbox 360’s strongest features compared to other consoles is its multiplayer gameplay, which can probably be attributed to the Live infrastructure. It is thus not surprisingly to see strong multiplayer games on this system. For today’s awards, I will be discussing the best multiplayer games released this year, and the one better than the rest.

I will also be discussing the best new IP and best sequel of the year. It’s good to see that in 2009, there were nearly an equal number of good new IPs and sequels. The moment we begin seeing only sequels releasing and new IPs no longer developed is the moment the game industry stops advancing. It’s easy to support sequels since you know what you’re getting yourself into, but this year was perhaps the year with the largest number of development studios shutting down. Continue to take a chance by supporting new IPs – the developers need this type of support to stay in business and come up with new and exciting games to push our industry forward!

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