Activision

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…

After The Credits Roll In Black Ops II, Terrible Things Happen

Needless to say, there are spoilers in both this video and post. If you don’t want to know what the post-credit shenanigans are all about, feel free to move along. Now that we’re all clear, watch the above video with the most ridiculous post-credit scene I’ve been forced to watch, where two of Black Ops…

Remember: This is How Call of Duty Games Are Made Now

A reminder (this pic is from May) that when you fire up Black Ops II and about an hour in are greeted by horses, Activision’s billions do not get you hand-animated horses. They get you this It’s like Andy Serkis lay down and dreamed of Vladimir Putin… Black Ops 2 preview [PC Gamer]

Black Ops II’s Weapons, Broken Down Into Tiny Statistics

If you’re about to settle in for 11 months of Black Ops II multiplayer, you’d do well to take this chart with you, as it shows just about everything you need to know about all the game’s weapons. Having spent four days doing nothing but shooting and recording data, pwnsweet and his brother can now…

If Everything’s a Call of Duty Clone, Why Can’t Anyone Outdo Call of Duty?

Whenever a military-themed shooter comes out, the first thing many people say is “oh great, here comes another Call of Duty clone”. It’s a term used as a slur against a game, saying that it’s not just copying another game, it’s copying another game that for many has long run out of ideas. Why, then,…

Reviewers Love the Shooting, the Killing, and the Choices in Call of Duty: Black Ops II

It’s November, and that means three things. The days are getting shorter, holiday advertising is ramping up, and there’s a new Call of Duty game. Last year’s entry, Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 3, shattered all kinds of sales records in its first day and first weeks on store shelves, launching into the stratospheric billion-dollar sales…

Call of Duty is Turning Into Mass Effect

Many Mass Effect fans lamented the recent metamorphosis of BioWare’s signature sci-fi series from a role-playing game with shooter elements to a shooter with role-playing game elements. So what are we to make of the new Call of Duty playing a bit more like a Mass Effect? This new Call of Duty: Black Ops II…

Mysterious 24-Hour Call of Duty Flu Keeping Gamers Home “Sick”

Let’s be honest for a moment here: pretty much everyone around the world has at the very least thought about calling in “sick” to work or school while their health was perfectly fine, for one reason or another. For some folks, it’s a beach day; for others, just a chance to sleep for an extra…

Here Are A Bunch Of Black Ops II Glitch Videos For You To Laugh At

It’s not uncommon for a game to have bugs and glitches, just ask Bethesda. But especially when multiplayer is involved, people will dig up or stumble on some hilarious (and sometimes useful) glitches. Here are a few that people have already been uploading to YouTube, not even a full day after Black Ops II has…

Your Skylanders Are the Most Important Resource in Lost Islands

Build things to harvest things to build more things—the resource management genre is huge on mobile, thanks to its simple click-based gameplay and the ability to play for minutes at a time and still get things done. Activision takes that winning formula and layers another one on top—the ability to transfer real-world collectible figures into…

Watch These Black Ops II Players Put Everyone To Shame With Scoped Weapons

The latest Call of Duty title has been out for less than a day, but people are already rampaging their way through the multiplayer and quick-scoping enemies to death. Check out the montage above, courtesy of AmazingFilms247, where you’ll see snipers and an ACOG-attached weapon shred the opposing team. Black Ops 2 First Ever QUAD…