Despite the sophistication of their products, video game publishers are just as susceptible as less technically inclined brands to finding their carefully organised media coverage turning on them. This month, the trailer for upcoming game of drones and shooting people Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare became the second most disliked video in YouTube history, while fellow online first-person shooter, Battlefield 1 became one of the 150 most liked.
One reason posited for this vast discrepancy is that players have finally got bored with the glib futurism of many current military games, their fatigue at yet more satellite strikes and exoskeletons brought into sharp relief by Battlefield 1’s earthy, steampunk alternate first world war. While there may be an element of truth in that, it’s mostly the result of vote-brigading by rabidly contrarian posters on games forums, and demonstrates that even with rigorous planning and budgetary figures normally associated with money laundering operations, you can still be the victim of unintended consequences.
Capcom, makers of the Resident Evil series, also found out that publicity can create unpredictable knock-on effects. A whirlwind of accusations on social media in Zambia, accompanied by lurid photographs of human cadavers being prepared for sale as meat, emerged this month, along with rumours that China was dealing with graveyard-overcrowding by canning its deceased and shipping them to southern Africa labelled as corned beef. The panic reached sufficient proportions that the Chinese ambassador to Zambia issued a strongly worded rebuttal, describing the speculation as, “a malicious slandering”.
The images, it turns out, were of a PR stunt supporting the 2012 launch of Resident Evil 6, in which a mock human butcher was set up in London’s Smithfield Market, selling various cuts of person, which all turned out to be made of bacon. Zambia’s government has promised a full investigation into who started the rumours, although Chinese corned beef sales in the territory may take a while to recover.
You don’t always need to generate your own publicity; you can just borrow someone else’s instead. Noticing that World Of Warcraft developer Blizzard was launching Overwatch (PS4, Xbox One, PC), a gloriously colourful and addictive first-person shooter in which your team members’ choices of character have a huge bearing on success, 2K Games rushed out its own gaudy squad shooter, Battleborn (PS4, Xbox One, PC), three weeks earlier. It’s a tactic already practised in the film industry, with pairings like A Bug’s Life and Antz, or Armageddon and Deep Impact trying to spoil each other’s box-office take. Unfortunately for 2K, Battleborn turned out to be Iron Eagle to Overwatch’s Top Gun. It’s unlikely to be remembered for long.
Rather more memorable is Lumo (PS4). It’s a game that makes great use of its retro styling, looking like 80s Spectrum classic Knight Lore, with its isometric viewpoint (an expression you probably won’t have heard in several decades) fixed in place, giving you a limited window on its perfectly designed dungeon rooms, each of which is its own discrete puzzle. Stuffed with various old-school references, from The Crystal Maze to Blockbusters, it’s a treat for glassy-eyed game veterans. Homefront: The Revolution (PS4, Xbox One, PC), by contrast, offers little pleasure for anyone.
Its depiction of an America occupied by a high-tech North Korean army is silly even by video game standards, while its mix of first-person shooting and Assassin’s Creed-style open-world exploration is hamstrung by technical problems and a fun-leeching lack of finesse. Your fellow resistance fighters also have a habit of standing around in doorways, boxing you into rooms until you get frustrated enough to finish them all off without the Koreans even having to load a gun.
Following last month’s widely derided multiplayer beta test, Doom (PS4, Xbox One, PC) has arrived, and even though its online game is indeed pretty lifeless, its single-player mode just about makes up for it. Almost immediately you’ll find yourself elbow deep in demon offal, your expanding gun collection bolstered by a chainsaw that causes enemies’ corpses to spew ammunition for you to pick up.
Doom’s trademark unmerciful difficulty and a plethora of secret areas make exploring its labyrinthine levels endlessly rewarding, if not for the faint-hearted. There’s more gratuitous viscera and a lot more swearing in NotCoD (PC & Mac), a 2D side-scrolling Call Of Duty spoof set at a village fete. Among the bloodshed and sponge-throwing mini-games, you’ll find savage mockery of Rupert Murdoch, fracking and inane video game tropes. Mordant, genuinely funny British satire is in short supply these days, but this is the real thing.
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