Grave Gamer News & Views — sledgehammer games

Guns, Exo-suits, Kevin Spacey – Advanced Warfare Trailer Shows Badassery from Least to Greatest

This can’t be just another military shooter. It’s a private military shooter. Big difference. ‘Lot less folks being kicked through walls by exoskeletoned legs.

Call of Dutyhas been known to shake up its story backdrop; we’ve been to space, we fought through (parts of) Vietnam, and we’ve actually already...

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (November 4th, 2014)

Here’s actual in-engine shots of Sledgehammer’s “next-gen focused” Call of Duty – the first title apart of Acti’s three-year dev cycle proposed for all forthcoming games in the series.

And it looks… mighty interesting, it turns out. If there were ever a formula in desperate, desperate need of new ingredients, the seven-year-old archetype introduced in the original Modern Warfare would be the first candidate.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Screens Straight from the Future

What if Private Military Contractors turned against us? Scarier thought: what if Kevin Spacey turned against us? I shudder to think.

But we might just find out in Sledgehammer Games’ surprisingly evocative take on Activision’s yearly trip to the bank. Black Ops II took us to the near future, now the series looks to go even further, presenting us with a battlefield of exo-suit wearing soldiers of fortune fighting for corporations instead of governments. It’s like a Heinlein novel come alive, but with more Spacey.

Sledgehammer promises the exo-suits aren’t some cheap gimmick, either; they fundamentally change how you move and fight – from increasing your speed to giving the ability to scale lateral surfaces and outright jump obstacles like a disciple of Matty Damon’s character from Elysium.

You might say to yourself, “So they’ve essentially created a sci-fi shooter where you have upped maneuverability and, hey-o, there’s some mechs thrown into the mix.” Maybe that sounds familiar to you Xbox Oners out there.

Still, my excitement for this stretched-thin property is piqued by the mere fact they’re actually taking risks with the formula. Take a look at Ghosts. It’s fear of change led to a phenomenally boring entry all too easy to want to forget about. Plus a “next-gen first” build of Call of Duty is exactly what Advanced Warfare’s predecessor did not feel like in the remotest.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is strapped into a November 4th, 2014 release. Exact consoles haven’t been locked down, though Activision confirmed forthcoming DLC will continue appearing on Xbox consoles first.

Sledgehammer Games Tackling Call of Duty 2013

Prepare to be savagely unsurprised: Activision plans to release yet another annual increment of Call of Duty in 2013.  Unlike the Infinity Ward/Treyarch development house trade off that’s been routine practice the last four years or so, a recent job listing on Sledgehammer’s website points to the Modern Warfare 3 collaborators as the next in line to handle the franchise instead.

Their ad for a Senior FX Artist (which has since been filled) also requested the candidate have professional experience with the inner workings of “current generation hardware."  Murmurs suggest this may be the last Call of Duty to come out during this console cycle and Infinity Ward’s assignment on an unnamed next-gen shooter reinforces that rumor.

Why even waste the resources, Activision?  The manpower, the advertising, the plastic you print the games on – save all that shit.  The way I see it, you don’t need to make a new CoD every year.  Just make one game that, every November, renders my system completely useless until I feed it $59.99.  For Elite Subscribers, they can have the additional incentive of a small fire emitting from the disc tray that can only be put out with a credit card.  I get to shoot virtual people, my family’s out of danger, and Acti makes more money – everyone’s happy.