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Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified review: A black mark
Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified should have been a pleasing success, a competent shooter on the go, but instead it triggers the awkward smile and feigned gratuity reserved for an earnest, botched gift. Like a slice of cake poured from a decanter, there are clear, disturbing signs of a good thing gone wrong in its preparation.%Gallery-171355%
Special Vita, PS3 bundles drop to $200 for Black Friday
If you're willing to put your life on the line and shop on November 23 or 24, you could get a wi-fi Vita for $50 off its normal MSRP, and a free game for your trouble.The Assassin's Creed 3 Liberation bundle, containing a Crystal White Vita, a copy of the game, and a 4GB memory card, is discounted to $199.99 across US retail for those days, as are special Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified (black Vita, the game, 4GB memory card) and Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (black Vita, the game) bundles.Sony is also offering a special $200 PS3 bundle, with a 250GB system, the Uncharted Dual Pack, the Infamous Collection, and 30 days of PlayStation Plus. Dualshock 3 controllers will be discounted $15, to a temporary price of $39.99.
PSN Wednesday: Black Ops Declassified, PS All-Stars pre-orders
Last night's PSN update arrived a bit late, so you may not have noticed what went up on the store. With that in mind, we thought it would be useful to show the highlights from yesterday's update, and link out to the full list, so your shopping is unaffected.PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is up for pre-order through the PS Store this week. The freemium version of SingStar is now downloadable, so you can try it out and decide if you want to fill your catalog with SingStore songs. And Tekken Tag Tournament 2 brings fighting dinosaurs, bears and cyborgs to PS3. In less happy news, the God of War Ascension beta is not on PSN as planned. If you have a voucher, don't redeem it yet!Meanwhile, the biggest release on Vita is Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified by default, but we're delighted to see a Vita version of Colors!, which began its life as a DS homebrew app before going to 3DS and now Vita officially. It's a drawing app that lets you save and share your work online.
Nihilistic becomes nStigate, steps away from retail game development
Black Ops: Declassified and Resistance: Burning Skies developer Nihilistic Software is reorganizing and reforming, with a focus on moving from retail game development towards downloadable, online, and mobile markets. The California-based company today announced it's renaming itself as nStigate following a reorganization that won't see any "planned layoffs," but will see its staff base shrink across the coming months.Founded in 1998, Nihilistic debuted two years later with the macabre RPG Vampire: The Masquerade. The studio more recently came into prominence on PlayStation Vita, releasing Burning Skies and being hired by Activision to develop Call of Duty for Sony's new handheld. Black Ops: Declassified releases next month and Nihilistic assured gamers on Twitter the coming transition won't affect any current projects.[Thanks, Ethan]
Black Ops Declassified has no zombies, you can still shoot the living
Vita's Black Ops Declassified will not feature zombies, Activision community manager Dan Amrich confirmed on his blog, One of Swords. Zombies mode got pushed out so the team could focus on building multiplayer."This is the first Call of Duty game on Vita, and it needs to deliver on its core strengths – arguably, multiplayer gaming with twin-stick controls in a portable format. That's the core experience, and that simply needs to come first. There's always a list of things you want to do and things you need to do, and at the end of the day, realistic goals are the ones that people actually attain," Amrich wrote."Declassified will offer a Hostiles Mode, which challenges you to defeat waves of enemies, but alas, those enemies are not shambling corpses. So we'll see what the future brings for Zombies, but for Declassified, it's an MP focus first and foremost."Black Ops Declassified is out on November 13, right alongside Black Ops 2, which does include a (very expansive) zombies mode.
Sony: Vita won't repeat PSP's port-heavy lineup
The Vita's sales pitch – "console-like" games in a mobile device – mirrors that of the PSP when it first launched, admits John Koller, Sony Marketing VP for handhelds and consoles. The Vita, however, has learned from the PSP's failures."The issue that happened with PSP is we got overrun with ports," Koller tells Gamasutra. "It became very difficult for us to define what made PSP unique. The content development became a bit unstructured or decentralized, in that we got a lot of content that was on PlayStation 2 and got thrown over to the handheld."Sony is recommending publishers create unique content for the Vita, citing Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation or Activision with Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified, rather than ports."The messaging is similar [between PSP and PS Vita], but I think the output is going to be quite different," Koller says.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified Vita bundle announced [update: trailer]
Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified will be included in a special PlayStation Vita bundle, Sony Europe president Jim Ryan revealed at Sony's Gamescom press conference. The bundle will include a Vita, a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified and a pouch. Presumably the bundle will launch alongside Declassified this November. The price was not announced.Declassified will take place between Call of Duty: Black Ops and the upcoming Black Ops 2. It will feature singe-player content as well as 4-on-4 multiplayer, featuring maps built specifically for Vita and familiar modes like Team Deathmatch and Kill Confirmed.Update: See the first gameplay footage of Declassified above.
Rumor: Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified to feature Spec Ops missions
A Walmart listing for Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified for the PS Vita may provide some insight on what we can expect from the game (which hasn't been described beyond its branding). Promising the "most intense handheld Call of Duty experience to date," the game will have both the Special Ops Story mode and multiplayer gameplay, according to the listing.In other words, it sounds like what you'd anticipate from a Vita Call of Duty game. There's no studio listed, but it's likely coming from a contracted third-party studio (in the past, n-Space has done most of the mobile Call of Duty titles). We'll look for more information on this soon.Walmart has a date of December 31 for release, but that's certainly a placeholder. Black Ops 2, on the other hand, is due on November 13.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified hitting Vita
The Call of Duty title we knew would be coming to Vita this fall is Black Ops Declassified, Sony announced today at its E3 press conference.
