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Call of Duty: Strike Team studio in peril as Activision mulls its future
UK mobile developer The Blast Furnace is in stasis as owner Activision reassesses its relationship with the studio, Game Informer reports. "Like any successful business, Activision Publishing continuously works to evolve its business based on our strategic plans and market opportunities," an Activision representative told Game Informer. "As we focus on our 2014 operating plan, we are aligning our resources against our anticipated business requirements. As part of this review, we have started a consultation at Blast Furnace based in Leeds in the UK." The Blast Furnace previously produced mobile entries in Activision's Pitfall and Wipeout franchises, and headed up last year's iOS release Call of Duty: Strike Team. Game Informer notes that Activision's proposed options for the studio include closure, downsizing, or splitting it off into its own independent entity. Speaking to MCV, an Activision representative revealed that the publisher wishes to "keep The Blast Furnace together and develop a plan that will enable them to remain as a team." Activision added that it will maintain its commitment to mobile platforms going forward, regardless of its plans for The Blast Furnace. [Image: Activision]
Daily Update for September 6, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Daily iPad App: Get a change of perspective in Call of Duty: Strike Team
To be completely honest, I wasn't expecting much from Call of Duty: Strike Team. It's not that Call of Duty titles on iOS are notoriously bad -- in fact, most of them have been quite good -- but the fact that we had heard practically nothing about the game prior to it popping up in the App Store made me think it wasn't a particularly rich experience. I am pleased to say I was wrong. The plot of Strike Team is fragmented and presented as multiple conflicts that dot the globe. You can pick and choose which missions to play (or replay), and each will have you performing familiar tasks such as eliminating enemy forces, collecting key items or surviving an onslaught of attackers. As the "team" moniker suggests, squad play is a major part of the game, and you'll almost always need to control multiple soldiers at a time. This is less cumbersome than it may sound, and as you maneuver through each mission, there's always an on-screen button that forces your teammates to gather on you. Strike Team doesn't try to completely replicate the traditionally twitchy first-person Call of Duty experience on iOS, but instead takes a more tactical approach. Most missions allow you to switch seamlessly between a first-person perspective and a top-down view that lets you control all your squad members independently. You can drag them to new positions and control even the tiniest aspects of your approach, which is something never before offered in a Call of Duty game. The on-screen controls work well for an iOS shooter, and in first-person mode it's still rather easy to make accurate head shots and dart from cover to cover. The environments are similarly excellent for a mobile title, though the ultra-smooth framerate comes with some relatively ugly textures if you happen to get up close to an object or flat surface. Completing missions earns you experience points that helps you level up, as well as in-game currency which you can use to unlock additional weapons, perks and other goodies. You can also take a shortcut and use the in-app purchase option to get an edge, but even the earliest missions are so enjoyable that there's really no reason to want to skip them. The game costs US$6.99, which is more than you might be used to paying for an iOS game, but it's certainly worth the premium. There's a lot of content here, and online leaderboards can keep groups of friends busy trying to best each other for a long, long time.
Call of Duty: Strike Team ducks out of cover onto iOS [update: trailer!]
A new Call of Duty ambushes us out of nowhere - on iOS no less! Call of Duty: Strike Team is a first-person shooter/squad-based RTS hybrid, out now for iPhone and iPad at $7. Developed by Activision mobile studio The Blast Furnace, Call of Duty: Strike Team puts players in an squad of operatives sent to deal with the latest worldwide conflict in which the US has become embroiled. That's a brief synopsis of the single-player campaign, while there's also a Horde-like survival mode that's integrated with leaderboards.
