Call of Duty 7 Possibly Set in Vietnam, Cuba

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Activision’s music licensing habits have possibly given away a clue to where the next CoD game will take you: Vietnam. Or Cuba.
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Release Dates: Call of Duty 5, Dead Space, Lich King

Dead Space In October, no one will hear you scream. No, we’re not talking about Halloween, but the release of the highly anticipated sci-fi horror shooter from EA, Dead Space. Yes, we love taking potshots at that tagline that much.

EA has confirmed that the game will be heading into stores on October 14th for all the consoles (all meaning Xbox 360 and PS3), while the PC version will come ambling in on October 20th. Need to give it special time and all, I guess.

In any case, this will make for a good Halloween costume idea…

Lich King!

Next up, on November 4th will be coming World of WarCraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Man, how long has that been in development? A year and a half? Pretty long for an expansion, methinks. That prolly goes to show how freakin’ awesome it just might be…

There isn’t any official word on this, but Kotaku seems to have found it out by abducting and interrogating random store employees. 

Call of Duty 5

And finally, on November 11th, the world goes to war as Call of Duty: World at War will be released. This one’s official, yes sir and comes straight from the investors site at Activision. It’ll be coming out for all consoles on that date, except, of course, the PS2.

In my honest opinion, this won’t be something very special. Especially not as special as the glorious Call of Duty 4. Because this one’s more of a “filler” game, and is, therefore, being developed by Treyarch, instead of everyone’s favourite Call-of-Duty-devs Infinity Ward.

Infinity Ward working on new IP

Call of Duty 4 screenshot

Infinity Ward is about as synonymous with Call of Duty as Valve is with Half-Life or Bungie with Halo. Okay, Treyarch did make Call of Duty 3 and will be alternating with Infinity Ward in making CoD titles now, but nobody seriously cares about them. Sorry, Treyarch. 🙁

Now, while Call of Duty is all fun and all, we’d like to see a little something different from Infinity Ward, and things seem to be on the right track. Talking from his blag, Robert Bowling, the Director of Communications at Infinity Ward announced that they have decided to reup their publishing contract with Activision, which kickstarts their future project, “a unique new IP” that they will have “complete control over”.

Since Bowling isn’t very willing to divulge any details on this “unique” new project, we’re guessing it’s going to be a long while before we actually find out what happens of this. I would be surprised if we get an announcement by February next year! Still, it’s great to know that Infinity Ward is up to something creative and not abother war shooter (which they are pretty good at anyways).

On a pretty loose guess, I’m thinking it will be a typical dystopian/space sci-fi shooter that will probably involve either zombies or aliens or alien zombies. What do you think of this? What is Infinity Ward up to?

Call of Duty 5, Guitar Hero IV, and what we know about them

Activision’s 2007 Batch of Games

We have no doubt that you know of the random Activision-Blizzard merger, which happened yesterday to give birth to Activision Blizzard. A fact sheet for the merger has leaked detail that there are several sequels and games coming from Activision worth knowing about. The two biggest stars here are Activision’s current favourite money-milking franchises – Call of Duty and Guitar Hero, as well as another Tony Hawk game.

As for originals (which are not quite so original), we have a James Bond game to tie up with the next James Bond movie, some games for Marvel comics and then some for Dreamworks movies like Madascar 2 and Kung-Fu Panda. There’s also a racing game from Bizarre Creations (the makers of Project Gotham Raving), which Activision bought earlier this year. You can view the entire fact sheet here.

Decided to do some research on the Call of Duty and Guitar Hero sequels, and found some interesting stuff. Call of Duty 5 was talked about waay back, when in early 2007 a rumour said that Infinity Ward will not handle CoD 5. The reason is that Activision wants a new CoD game every year (much like EA’s sport games and their general be a lousy corporation strategy). Infinity Ward stated that this does not match their interests.

This resulted in a compromise – Infinity Ward churns out a new CoD game every two years, while the middle year’s game is filled in by Treyarch, the guys responsible for CoD 3. So, if this rumour is right, Call of Duty 5 will be done by Treyarch, and Infinity Ward’s next will be Call of Duty 6. I’m not complaining about CoD 4’s quality or anything, but all of this just sounds filthy. 🙁

As for Guitar Hero IV, RedOctane had already announced this April that they will be churning out a Guitar Hero game every year. Not much of a surprise, then, that Call of Duty 5 and Guitar Hero IV will just be a “2008 Batch”. This saddens me in that instead of looking forward to create great games, or creating games for gaming’s sake – corporations have seized franchises to milk money from them, reducing the franchise’s name itself to shame. 🙁 This works only in sports games, Activision Blizzard.

Also, Aerosmith is involved in Guitar Hero IV and hence we should expect quite a few Aerosmith songs in it. If the guys of Aerosmith are right, they are a major theme in the game, and will have much influence over it. Wowie.

What do you think of this? Do you praise Activision Blizzard for the idea? Hate them? Think you smell? Discuss below!