Activision

They’re Giving Away the Coolest Giant Skylander in New York Next Week

Of all the new figures Toys for Bob introduced in Skylanders Giants, there is one I desire above all others. She’s a ninja. She’s a djinn. She’s Ninjini, and Activision is giving her away free at the Times Square Toys’R’Us on Tuesday, the jerks. Celebrating Toy Fair 2013 and the overwhelming success of the Skylanders…

Bungie Panel at GDC Hints That We Will Hear More About Destiny Soon

We can expect to hear something official, and soon, about the game Bungie is building for Activision, rumored to be a sci-fi epic titled Destiny. GameSpot reported today that the studio is scheduled to give a talk about its new game at Game Developers Conference in late March, which would indicate a more formal reveal…

Joe Biden Sat Down With Gaming’s Leaders Today, And One Of Them Brought A Copy of Blastman III

This afternoon, U.S. vice president Joe Biden met with video game representatives to talk about the Sandy Hook shooting. Here’s a picture of the meeting in action. Hopefully it went well. Wondering who’s who? The AP’s caption: Vice President Joe Biden, center, speaks during a meeting with representatives from the video game industry in the…

Black Ops II‘s First DLC will be a Timed Xbox 360 Exclusive

Images purportedly of in-store promotional materials suggest that Call of Duty: Black Ops II‘s first map pack extension will be a timed Xbox 360 exclusive arriving on Jan. 29. Five maps are included. “Revolution” sports five maps, one of which—”Die Rise”—appears to be a zombie map. The others are named Hydro, Grind, Downhill and Mirage.…

Reign In Your Rage With the First Angry Birds Trilogy DLC

After talking about Sandy Hook all day, I really just feel like flinging birds at pigs for the rest of the night. Thankfully, the first DLC pack for the Angry Birds Trilogy arrived today, and judging by its title—”Anger Management”—it should be specially tailored to help players reign in their rage. The $5 “Anger Management”…

Please Quit Photoshopping Horns Onto Bobby Kotick. It’s Bad for His Dating Life.

Today’s New York Times profiles Bobby Kotick, the boss of Activision Blizzard and longtime bête noir of many a longtime gamer, many of whom have created unflattering portrayals of him quickly found by Google Image search. Well, he wants you to know this doesn’t help his game. See, he’s divorced and on the prowl. “Think…

1167 People Are Playing Black Ops II Online On Wii U Now

1069 people are playing multiplayer, with 98 people playing Zombies mode on the Wii U version of Black Ops II. More than last week Like we’ve said, comparing the number of people playing the game on a brand new console to those playing on the veteran machines from Microsoft and Sony is unfair. Not to…

This Dud is Still a One-Hit Kill in Black Ops II

This could only come from the great laboratory of death known as free-for-all in a multiplayer shooter. Given enough matches, enough combatants and enough button-spamming, you’ll inevitably discover that a bouncing betty to the face is a one-hit kill Call of Duty: Black Ops II—without detonating. YouTube video uploaded by reader Danny

The endless-runningfree iOS version of Pitfall! has been updated with an exciting new Relic Rush mode. Grab it here

How Square Enix Screwed Up Black Ops II for Japan

For years now, Square Enix has published the Call of Duty games in Japan. Square Enix honcho Yoichi Wada is apparently a big fan of the series—and Western games. His goal is apparently to make Japanese gamers more open to playing foreign titles. That’s admirable. It would be more admirable if the company didn’t keep…

Call of Duty: Black Ops II GPU & CPU Performance

For Call of Duty fans, developer Treyarch just delivered an early Christmas present when they released Black Ops II. As the ninth game in the Call of Duty franchise and the sequel to the 2010 game Black Ops, we are hoping to see something meaningfully new from Black Ops II. We say this because last…

Transformers Prime Teaches the Wii U Control Pad How to Drive

Transformers Prime for the Wii U isn’t a particularly spectacular game, but it does hint at big things to come for racing games on the console, transforming that bulky control pad into a capable little steering wheel peripheral. Turning the Wii remote sideways never made for an immersive driving experience. It was novel at best,…

The new Call of Duty: Black Ops II update fixes the Theater Mode error and the Scorestreak snafus.

Skylanders Battlegrounds and the Best iPad Peripheral a Collector Can Have

Since the release of Skylanders Cloud Patrol for iOS last year, fans of Activision’s toys-meet-games franchise have been clamoring for a more direct way to interact with their precious plastic playmates than entering in a cold, impersonal numeric code. Tomorrow’s release of Skylanders Battlegrounds finally gets a Bluetooth summoning portal into players hands, along with…

Fan Outrage Brings the Nuketown 2025 Map Back to Call of Duty: Black Ops II Multiplayer

After suddenly pulling a popular pre-order multiplayer map from Black Ops II online play yesterday, Activision added it back to a new playlist called Chaos Moshpit. Game design director David Vonderhaar from dev studio Treyarch—who delivered the bad news—made it seem possible that the map could come back in a tweet late yesterday: That was…

Activision Suddenly Pulls Nuketown 2025 Map from Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Multiplayer

Earlier this month, Activision announced that it would let people who pre-ordered the publisher’s latest FPS mega-hit play on a re-imagined version of the popular Nuketown multiplayer map. That part of the promotion turned out to be true. But that access to the special battleground appears to have been suddenly revoked. The sudden bad news…

Skylanders Giants Has a Little Something Extra on the Wii U

The Wii U version of Skylanders Giants doesn’t look noticeably better or worse than the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 version. It plays exactly the same as well—the Skylander toys are placed on the USB-connected portal, they come to life in the game, adventure ensues. For the Wii U version of Skylanders Giants, the Wii…

The Sounds And Stylings Of Black Ops II‘s Kick-Ass Soundtrack

I haven’t played enough of Black Ops II to render a real verdict on how I feel about as a game, I can say for sure that I really enjoy the soundtrack. It’s a cut up from past games in the series, an exciting, diverse blend of whirling orchestral parts, ethnic instruments and atmospheric electronics.…

At Least Black Ops II Doesn’t Lecture Me Every Time I Die

“The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” It was General Douglas MacArthur who said that, and his words are as true now as they were in his time. The reason I know MacArthur said that is because…

Rumor: 2013’s Call of Duty is Another Modern Warfare Game

According to a report on Siliconera, next year’s Call of Duty game will take place in the same universe as Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare titles. The site’s source, related to the game’s voice acting, is the same one who accurately leaked a ton of Sleeping Dogs info over a year before that game’s release, so…