14 DAY TRIAL // Activision is a company that’s focused on its biggest franchises and wants to only focus on delivering titles that are profitable in the long run, and that attitude was reflected during E3 2014, where its booth only featured Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Destiny, and Skylanders: Trap Team.
Destiny is the Bungie-created mix between science fiction, fantasy, first-person shooter and social experience that aims to take players on a journey through the universe as they try to get the resources required to protect the final human city remaining on Earth.
The demo showed a fast, solid, complex game with plenty of options, but despite the September launch date, there are still many questions about the core story of the title and about the variety of the in-game challenges that need to be answered.
Skylanders: Trap Team aims to keep the toy-based story relevant for another year while also making sure that it offers both new characters and new mechanics that can compete with the rapidly expanding Disney infinity, which will soon benefit from the popularity of The Avengers superhero team from Marvel.
A new portal of power and an expanded array of options for collectors will satisfy fans, but Skylanders might see a decline for the first time and could have a troubled long-term future.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is Activision’s biggest release for the fall of this year, and it’s a rather risky bet because this is the first time that new studio Sledgehammer Games has taken control of the franchise.
The shooter takes players further into the future than ever before and includes a lot of science fiction level tech, including hover biker, plasma based rifles, and exo-skeletons.
The developers have also promised that the single-player experience will be more focused on emotion and on interesting combat scenarios while the multiplayer will retain the core elements of the series while introducing more options for the player to juggle.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will probably be one of the biggest-selling titles of the year, but the franchise has not impressed during the move to the next generation of home consoles and it might be in a long-term decline.
E3 2014 Highlight: Destiny – the first-person shooter could become as big as Halo in the long term and has the potential to capture the attention of those who love the first-person shooter genre but also of those who are looking for a more dynamic take on the social and the MMO spaces.