Grave Gamer News & Views — activision

New DLC Has Snoop Dogg Narrating Call of Duty: Ghosts Matches; “It’s the Coolest Game in the Hood” Apparently

Well, in just about the best news I’ve heard in 2014, a new personalization pack for Activision’s annual cash-in, Call of Duty: Ghosts, allows you to replace the multiplayer narrator with – and I am in no way shitting you – hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg’s smooth-as-thousand-dollar-velvet voice.

I’m uncertain what brought us to this reality. I understand micro-content; it makes sense for a corporation to further monetize their top selling product. I get that. And I understand personalization tweaks; for a few bucks, you can download weapon skins so people who don’t instinctively double-tap out of the Kill-Cam can see they were murdered by someone with style.

But Snoop to the Dee Oh Double Gee Dogg? Saying shit like “Squad Member active – a brother from another mother” and “Yeeahh, crizz-ay” during an online match? This is a stroke of idiotic genius. It’s completely stupid, yet I will purchase the voice-over pack with less hesitation than I’d have saving my own child from drowning. Just watch this video and try not to smile. Just fucking try.

Ghosts is a rather dry product – admittedly the least amount of fun I’ve had plugging into this series since Call of Duty 3 – butlittle stunts like adding Michael Myers and the goddamn Predator into the game provide the necessary flavoring that stops me from ejecting this vanilla wafer entry out of my collection.

The Snoop Dogg Voice-Over Pack, obviously trumping The Last of Us’ Left Behind expansion as the most emotionally affecting piece of DLC this year, releases April 22nd on Xbox platforms, priced at $2.99.

Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark Pits Bay’s Bots vs. Cybertron’s Bots… For Some Reason

Today’s NYC Toy Fair saw Activision and Hasbro reveal the next video game foray in store for everyone’s favorite robots – no, not Jaegers; how dare you? – the Transformers. But this follow up to 2012’s Fall of Cybertron may, uh, surprise you in one very unexpected way.

Transformers: Rise of the Dark Sparkdep...

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Trailer Is Spectacularly Un-amazing

So, here, I present to you the second official trailer for Beenox’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The first was a teaser trailer, which is a lot like someone slapping a slice of hot pizza out of your hand just as you’re bringing it to your mouth, so it doesn’t count in my book.

Let me power through some preamble: Spider-Man’s my favorite...

Destiny Launches Globally on September 9th, 2014

“We first shared the design pillars of Destiny less than one year ago. We promised to redefine what players should expect from a Bungie game. We said we wanted to change the way people play games together. We set our bar high. For us, Destiny represents a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

– from Bungie.net

Bungie’s “shared-world shooter” – the first title coming out of the studio’s gates since 2010’s Halo: Reach – has finally been dated. Destiny finds a home on both current and next-gen consoles, releasing for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, and PS4 simultaneously.

The public beta for the game begins Summer 2014, starting on Sony’s systems first.

From Zombies to Aliens -  Call of Duty: Ghosts’ Extinction Mode Revealed

Our nation has been invaded by extraterrestrial creatures intent on wiping our collective gene pools off the map of existence. Our only defense? Four-player co-op!

Infinity Ward’s run on the Call of Duty series usually serves as the straight-laced dose of military action while Treyarch pumps out their games with whacky shit like B-List celebrities fighting zombies and an after credits performance by a digitally rendered Avenged Sevenfold (I traded in my copy of Black Ops II without regret or feeling).

Now, IW is joining the genre-bending fun with Extinction Mode; a four-player co-op mode that replaces the undead from Zombies with – get this – aliens. I’ll forever lament a game called Ghosts for not featuring a first-person ghostbusting mode, but the ghoulie wheel was spun and chance said it wanted aliens.

This Invasion: Earth flavored horde mode has you fending through waves of unfriendly E.T.’s while you eviscerate the hives that spawn them. The classic Zombies suite of base fortifying and item hunting return in addition to an upgrade system and character specific classes, each with their own abilities (that just may be the saving grace keeping Extinction from being the tired Zombies clone it’s already teetering towards).

Watch the Extinction Mode debut trailer right hereabouts!