After a lovely opening dinner and introduction to the event, it was down to business as journalists and retailers from all walks of life sat down and were treated to a whole bunch of numbers and charts, basically explaining that the company was the biggest money-maker in the industry with both the Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft franchises both firmly under their belt since the merger between Activision and Blizzard occurred almost a year ago. Oh, and apparently Call of Duty as a franchise has also done wonderful things for the company, which was one of those not-so-surprising developments that also got mentioned.
Call of Duty: World At War
Now at this moment, we could spend time boring you about our trip and all the wonderful things we did while we were over in the land of sheep and kiwis, such as wine-tasting at the gorgeous Cable Bay vineyards on Waiheke Island and a yacht racing event between the media and the retailers (we won, of course), but let's stop for a minute and actually talk about why the event was being held in the first place: to whet our appetites for some of the big upcoming titles from Activision Blizzard.
What better way to begin than to give us a glimpse at Call of Duty: World At War, the fifth game in the incredibly popular franchise, and the follow up to Modern Warfare from last year, which was easily one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful shooters in recent memory. Despite some concerns that interim COD developer Treyarch had made a potential mis-step by taking us out of the modern era and throwing us back into a WWII based scenario, World At War was presented with the same amount of polish that we witnessed last year with Call of Duty 4, and they look to be delivering the most intense WWII experience ever created.
From the realistic and intense battlefields of World At War and into something a little more light-hearted, Spiderman: Web of Shadows took our focus, showing off some over-the-top combat including a mid-air battle that lasted several minutes without our webbed hero ever having to return to the surface. Followed up by something for perhaps a younger audience, the next editions of Crash and Spyro were shown. While Crash seems to be continuing with the general craziness the franchise is known for, The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon definitely had a more epic feel than usual, with Spyro a bit older and wiser (in his 'teen' years, now) and the gameplay having many options for combos and powers, reminiscent in some ways of a Devil May Cry/God of War hybrid. It's the purple dragon's tenth anniversary, and it could indeed be the best Spyro game to date.
James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace
Next on the agenda was the game based on the upcoming James Bond flick, titled Quantum of Solace. Now, many gamers would agree that there hasn't been a decent 007 game for many years, since back in the glory days of Goldeneye 007 on the Nintendo 64. Using the same engine as Modern Warfare, we were pleasantly surprised by what we experienced of Quantum of Solace; in fact, one of the main topics of conversation amongst the group of us after the presentations was that the new Bond game (which is the first ever to be released alongside its movie counter-part, by the way), could easily be the Goldeneye of a modern era, with effective gameplay and a storyline which combines both Casino Royale and the new movie, Quantum of Solace.
After a packed morning, it was time to jump on the ferry to Waiheke Island, where Cable Bay vineyards was the location of LucasArts' presentation, featuring Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Fracture and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. We've already spent some time with The Force Unleashed and Fracture in the past, so we were most interested in giving The Clone Wars a shot, the lightsaber duelling game that's exclusive to the Wii and Nintendo DS. The style of the game is taken straight out of the recently released movie, and with dynamic environments and gameplay that takes seconds to learn but hours to master, Clone Wars should be a great title for not only the kids for for any Star Wars fan that's been waiting for a game that uses the Wii remote as their very own lightsaber.
The main event of the week though, and the game that everybody is still buzzing about, was Guitar Hero: World Tour. After discovering the track-list and pricing of the game, we were very eager to get our hands on all of the peripherals, but the drums in particular were the most intriguing, given that the guitar and microphone elements have already made their uses apparent in other games before. Of course, things don't always happen the way we plan them, and when they were calling for four people to come up on stage and play a song in front of the crowd of 150 or so people, the lead guitar, bass and drum kit found themselves occupied quite quickly. Nobody wanted to take on the most embarrassing role of the game by being the singer, and everybody sat in awkward chatter-mode as we waited for some brave soul to grab the microphone and take to the stage. Just to prove how awesome PALGN is, yours truly stood up out of his seat and jumped onto the stage, which caused the impatient crowd to applaud and cheer. Just for the record: I was awesome.
Guitar Hero: World Tour
After 3 days of Activate and more games than we could poke a stick at, it was time to get back on the plane to Australia and come home. With popular titles like Call of Duty: World at War, Guitar Hero: World Tour and the Star Wars titles due out, along with surprises like 007 and Spyro also around the corner, Activision Blizzard has a very solid line-up leading into the busy holiday season. Rest assured, we got some serious hands-on time with all of the titles we've mentioned, so check back over the coming week for in-depth previews and impressions on everything we played.
We'd like to thank everybody at Activision Blizzard for organizing such a fun event, specifically Tash and Joel for being there with us every step of the way and keeping us out of trouble. (For the most part.)
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