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We take a closer look at the hardware carrying the flag for Windows RT in our hands on with the Microsoft Surface.

Press from around the world flocked to Microsoft’s Windows 8 event launch even in New York Cityon Thursday, but few expected to see anything new. Besides a Surface skateboard, that expectation held true. That said, we did get some hands-on time with Microsoft’s new Surface tablet (sans wheels), and we have to say, we liked what we saw and touched. Digital Trends will have a full review of the Surface very soon, but in the mean time, here are our preliminary thoughts on Microsoft’s flagship hardware for the new OS. If you’re wondering what’s new with the software, also make sure to check out our full Windows 8 review!

Tough as nails

Though a Microsoft presenter managed not to scratch the Surface when he dropped it onto the stage (twice) during today’s keynote, we didn’t think the security guys at the event would take too kindly on us testing that feature once the keynote was over and we had free reign to check out the tablet. At about 1.5 pounds for the RT version, and just under 2 pounds for the Windows 8 Pro version (slightly heavier than an iPad), it definitely has some heft to it. It feels sturdy, but at that weight, we’d be afraid to hold it with just one hand if it weren’t for the Gorilla Glass protection put to the test on stage earlier in the day. Made of a type of magnesium that uses Microsoft’s fancy new “Vapor Mg” process, the matte surface feels pretty sexy in the hand. The design and shape give it a comfortable feel when carrying it like a book under your arm.

Touch Cover is cool, but less functional

As for the Touch Cover ($120), we found of it a little odd at first. Many of us are used to typing on a keyboard with some sort of tactile feedback, but the Touch Cover doesn’t offer much. Aside from a slightly raised surface (yep) for each key, there’s no way to feel if you’re finger is really hitting the right button. We consider ourselves pretty good at typing, but our first go with the Touch Cover resulted in a fair amount of typing errors. With a few more hours with the thing, we might forget what a normal keyboard feels like, but we’ve only had a few minutes, so far. As for the material used for the Touch Cover, it feels a bit grainy, and we’re concerned that it’d be difficult to clean if it got dirty.

Type Cover feels better, but…

For $10 more, the $130 Type Cover is much more functional. It gave us the tactile feedback that’s missing from the Touch Cover, and made our typing experience much more comfortable. The problem with the Type Cover, though, is that when you want to use the tablet as simply a tablet, without an extra keyboard, flipping the cover to the back and holding the tablet in your hand is strange. You’re basically pressing keys with the hand holding the tablet, while your other hand navigates the screen. Though the keyboard is deactivated when you flip it over, it’s still uncomfortable to hold. You can remove the keyboard altogether, but if you just want to quickly flip the cover around to turn your “laptop” into a tablet, you’re out of luck. 

Mighty magnets

Whether you choose a Touch or a Type Cover – and you should choose one, since the experience won’t be equal without it – the keyboard connects to the Surface with six strong magnets that can hold the tablet’s weight, even if you dangle the Surface by its keyboard. After seeing it on stage during the Surface keynote, we tried it out ourselves. Indeed, those are some powerful magnets. 

Can I kick it? Yes, you can

The back of the Surface has a kickstand that allows the user to prop it up, turning the device into a laptop when attaching the Touch or Type Cover. Our one complaint is that you can’t adjust the angle. For those of us who are a bit taller, the way the screen sits when using the kickstand might not be exactly at the right position.

On a similar note, when holding the device in portrait mode, the hand naturally rests with your thumb covering the camera. That’s not a huge deal, but after only a brief time with the Surface, we noticed a fair amount of fingerprints in that very area that, which, if left un-cleaned, could lead to some smudgy photos. 

Display’s good enough

At 10.6 inches diagonally, the display looks fantastic. And even though the resolution is much lower than the new iPad at 1,366 x 768 pixels, it still looked pretty darn good to us.  The Surface uses Microsoft’s ClearType sub-pixel rendering technology to help make the words on the screen look “almost as sharp and clear as those printed on a piece of paper.” We tested Fruit Ninja, performed some basic Web browsing, and found the touch capabilities to be quick and responsive. 

Final thoughts

Few, if any, tablets are on the same level as the iPad, but the Surface is definitely up there as an option to consider when shopping for a tablet. It can double as a laptop and has features that Apple’s iPad lacks, such as a microSD slot, USB 2.0, and Micro HD video. In all, the Surface was a delight to use. The only downside to buying a Windows RT tablet like this will be apps: RT users will have to get them all from the Windows Store, and right now there are only around 5,000. That may lead power users to wait for the Surface Pro, available some time next year. Stay tuned for our full review of the Surface this weekend!

Microsoft's new Surface tablet launches on Friday. Ballmer's been singing its praises in various interviews, while Apple boss Tim Cook has been doing what he can to dampen any excitement.

Thanks to the earth’s rotation and the sun’s rays and the time zones and the International Date Line and the general way in which the universe has organized itself, it’s consumers in China who will be among the first to get their hands on Microsoft’s new Surface tablet.

The brand new device, which marks Microsoft’s entry into an already crowded market, launches Friday, along with the Redmond-based company’s new Windows 8 operating system.

Ballmer

In an interview with the BBC this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer described the new product launches as an “epic” moment for the company. “It’s right up there in the top two or three big moments, including Windows 95 and the launch of the IBM PC, and it really starts us on this new era of computing,” Ballmer said.

Asked about the Surface, Ballmer gave a perfectly worded answer that sounded like a voiceover for an ad, describing it as “the one device you need for work and for play, that you can just take with you; you can really do what you need to do for school or for your job, you can really enjoy movies, books, entertainment, reading, games, all in one thin, light package – there’ll be nothing like the Surface with Windows 8.”

China

Consumers in China will be among the first to discover if Ballmer’s words are baseless baloney or bang on the money, with many in the country about to tear the packaging off the new tablet in the next few hours.

IDG News reported “hundreds of buyers” lined up outside one particular Beijing electronics store overnight,

One guy waiting in line, Chen Shi, reiterated Ballmer’s comment that the device is for work as well as play. “The tablet supports more software features for office work, things that you would actually use,” he told IDG. “Basically, Microsoft is reinventing the tablet, because now people are used to using their tablets as toys, and only use them to play games. These tablets lack features to do work for the office.”

Cook

Of course, Microsoft is late to the game when it comes to tablets, with Apple’s iPad dominating the market since launch day in 2010, and other big-hitters such as Amazon and Google already in the business. Apple CEO Tim Cook wasted little time in throwing in a few choice comments about Microsoft’s new arrival, telling analysts during an earnings call Thursday that though he hadn’t yet had a chance to use it, he was getting the impression from reviews that Microsoft’s new tablet “is a fairly compromised, confusing product.” But he would say that, wouldn’t he.

It’s the opinions of ordinary consumers that really matter, and these will soon begin filling forums across the Web. Only then will we have a better idea if the Surface is going to sink or swim. Or simply be used as a skateboard.

It's official: Assassin's Creed III is now the most pre-ordered Ubisoft game in history.

As of now the upcoming Assassin’s Creed III holds the record among Ubisoft-published games for attracting the most pre-orders.

You’d think that an imminent blockbuster title accomplishing a feat like this would drive Ubisoft to plaster its record-setting pre-order figures anywhere it can find a proper outlet for the news, but the PR blast announcing this milestone is surprisingly devoid of solid numbers. While Ubisoft repeatedly points out that Assassin’s Creed III currently has over twice as many pre-orders as its predecessor Assassin’s Creed Revelations, we’re never told exactly how many pre-orders that might be.

Still, Ubisoft executives seem elated by this news. “Assassin’s Creed III is one of the most anticipated games of the year and this impressive pre-order mark is just a hint of the game’s potential,” said Ubisoft’s senior vice president of sales and marketing Tony Key. “When players discover the new features, historical period, characters and gaming experience that the development team has worked so hard to create, we’re confident that they will agree that this is the biggest, best Assassin’s Creed game yet.”

As if searching for something to replace the bizarrely missing pre-order figures, the rest of the announcement helpfully reminds prospective players that there is still time to pre-order the game as well as its $30 Season Pass (which will allow players to pre-purchase a wide swath of DLC additions for the title at a 25-percent discount) prior to the title’s official launch on October 30. While Ubisoft directly quotes GameStop president Tony Bartel in its press release — call it cross-brand synergy, if you’d like — those of you suddenly interested in pre-ordering Assassin’s Creed III can visit almost any gaming retailer to register your official interest in this title.

If you’re still on the fence though, we have a number of things you should probably see in anticipation of Assassin’s Creed III. Things like this trailer, this examination of the game’s upcoming alternate history DLC and this interview with the game’s writer on how he approached writing a story that is equal parts conspiracy fiction and a fanciful retelling of the events surrounding the Revolutionary War. It’s all great stuff, and whether it convinces you to buy the game or not, at least now you’ll be able to respond thoughtfully when your best pal mentions that time that he jumped out of a tree to stab a British loyalist in the throat.

Microsoft attempts a precarious balance between what worked in the past and what’s needed for the future with Windows 8, but ends up coming up short on both.

Steve Ballmer breaks out in an excited sweat just thinking about it. Angry nerds foam at the mouth over it in forums and chatrooms. Average consumers are still sliding mice around wondering where the hell the Start menu went while they use it.

If you thought Microsoft ruffled feathers with Windows Vista, you haven’t seen anything yet.

Windows 8 will be, without a doubt, the most divisive update to the operating system Microsoft has ever released. While other updates have rearranged, reskinned and retooled the desktop, Windows 8 is the first to push it away entirely and challenge the notion that a mouse and keyboard are necessary at all.

We could write volumes about everything that’s new in Windows 8 — and we already have — but if you’re just looking for the final word on what’s new in a nutshell, what works, what doesn’t, and whether you’ll like it, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s our full review of Windows 8.

Rebirth of an OS

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Microsoft must have had a cement mixer churning with the stuff when it set out to design Windows 8. Rather than carrying its touch-centric Windows Phone operating system over to tablets — as Apple did with iOS and Google did with Android — Microsoft worked the other direction, converting its full desktop operating system to touch.

Crazy? Perhaps. Harebrained? Maybe all three! But the strategy also leverages Microsoft’s most valuable asset: decades’ worth of compatible software. Everything from Microsoft Office to Photoshop remains accessible on Windows 8 tablets and convertibles, just as you would use them on a desktop or laptop computer. Hell, you can run AutoCAD and design furniture on your Surface Pro, as long as you’re cool with sketching out table legs with your finger.

To make full use of this blended mobile and desktop operating system, manufacturers are blurring the lines with their hardware as well. An armada of convertibles and hybrids has emerged on the horizon: laptops with screens that lay flat to act like tablets, and tablets that plug into optional keyboard docks to act like laptops. Most notably, Microsoft’s own Surface illuminates just how flexible the ideal Windows 8 machine could really be. While Apple hopes consumers will buy both iPads and MacBooks, Microsoft seems certain that one device can fulfill both roles, with Windows 8 as the glue that binds them together.

Different strokes for different folks

Microsoft offers its latest OS in four flavors: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 Enterprise, and Windows RT. The vanilla version should work fine for 90 percent of consumer needs, but Pro offers some business-savvy perks like BitLocker encryption for safeguarding data from prying eyes. The Enterprise version offers a unique feature called Windows To Go, which lets you actually boot a full, working version of Windows 8 off a thumb drive, but it’s only available through bulk licensing, effectively placing it out of the reach of consumers. Windows RT is only available when you buy a mobile device with it preinstalled. Because it runs on fundamentally different hardware (ARM processing chips instead of Intel x86 chips), Windows RT cannot run legacy Windows programs, only new software designed specifically for it. This lack of backward compatibility may be confusing to those shopping for Windows 8, because Microsoft isn’t advertising the differences. Keep it in mind.

Enter the age of ‘Modern UI’

Firing up Windows 8 for the first time, you’ll land on the Start screen, which is essentially a full-screen version of what used to be the Start menu. When fingers have to be accommodated alongside cursors, large icons are the order of the day, and Windows 8 has plenty. Various apps and functions are represented by colorful Live Tiles, which festoon the screen like colorful Chiclets. These are basically just shortcuts, but they have the ability to display information from within the app they represent, rather than just static icons. For instance, the Photos Live Tile will rotate through your photo collection, and the Weather Live Tile will show current conditions for your home location.

Microsoft refers to this supersized, colorful new computing environment as “Modern UI.” It extends beyond just the Start screen to apps that have been specifically built for it, which use the same giant text, squared-off edges and stark expanses of solid color.

Besides simply making everything bigger for fingers, Microsoft has cleaned up the interface with the same strategy you may have employed as a 10-year-old when you “cleaned” your room by bulldozing all your toys under the bed. None of the options you used to find under menus like File, Edit, View are visible at the top of the screen anymore; they’ve all been shoved off screen. You’ll need to summon them by right clicking, moving your mouse to the corners of the screen, or swiping in from the corners, if you’re using a touch interface. For instance, moving the mouse to the lower right-hand corner summons a “Charms bar,” where you can search within an app, share, interact with devices (think printing) and find more settings. Digging around within these takes place in a right-hand column that opens to show the various menus.

If you’re using a tablet device, a physical home button will always bring you back to the Start screen from whatever app or menu you’re in — a familiar gesture from anyone making the transition from iOS or Android. If you’re on a PC, the Windows button the keyboard will serve the same purpose.

What happened to “old Windows?” It’s still there, hiding under a Live Tile labeled desktop. Here, longtime Windows users will feel right at home: It looks almost identical to Windows 7, minus a few visual tweaks (like getting rid of Aero) and the missing Start menu. Mousing to where Start used to be will bring you to the Start screen instead, snapping you back to the Modern user interface.

When apps load on the desktop, they stay on the desktop, rather than loading fullscreen like a Modern UI app. The desktop is essentially treated as just another app within the larger Modern UI interface — a sandbox for you to run all the legacy software you need to run, but no longer “home.”

More than just a new face

The Modern UI overhaul represents the most dramatic and easily noticeable change to Windows 8, but there are other surprises beneath the surface (pun intended) for users who care more about how Windows runs than what it looks like. Streamlined code delivers boot speeds that Windows users could only dream of up until this point — it loads significantly faster than Windows 7. The task manager gets a visual overhaul that makes it easier to spot which programs are gobbling up precious RAM and which are benign. File Explorer (formerly Windows Explorer) now sports the same “ribbon” interface you’ve seen in the most recent versions of Microsoft Office, which changes on the fly to deliver the options that are most relevant to you. (You don’t need the option to rotate a picture, for instance, if you’re not clicking on a picture.) Antivirus protection now comes standard with Windows Defender, and you have more security options for locking your PC, like PIN numbers and picture passwords (which you tap and swipe in different spots to unlock).

Perhaps most dramatically, Microsoft now offers the Windows Store as a central place to buy software over the Internet. Like the App Store on iOS or Google Play store in Android, apps have been neatly categorized with screenshots, system requirements, reviews, and installation is as easy as clicking one button. Your purchases — if you decide to stray from the many free apps — will be billed through a Microsoft account.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

So what is it like to actually use this new machination? It depends a lot on what kind of device you’re using.

On a touchscreen tablet, the Modern UI is actually a remarkably clean, intuitive way to get around Windows. The large fonts make text easily legible on small screens, the giant tiles are easy to tap, and dragging a finger in from the side of the screen is a smart way to bring up options you wouldn’t want cluttering up precious screen real estate. Despite the relative paucity of new Modern UI-style apps, the ones we have had a chance to try so far feel solid, though a bit clunky on early Windows 8 touch devices. Most developers have done a good job sticking to Microsoft’s design templates, giving the apps a tightly integrated, unified feel that was missing from the desktop version of Windows, where designers seem to simply do whatever the hell they want. The downside to these new, structured Modern UI apps is that they are more limited in scope. You can find apps for things like Netflix and the Weather, but feature-rich software like Adobe Photoshop is still missing. If you want to use software like that, you need to use it in the legacy Windows desktop.

On a touchscreen, this is a mobile operating system every bit as competitive as iOS or Android, though still in its infancy. If Microsoft can lure over enough developers to build a robust library of Modern UI apps, there’s no good reason you wouldn’t choose a Windows 8 tablet over an Android or iOS tablet, and in fact, many good reasons why you would. It’s more flexible than iOS, sleeker than Android, and supports legacy Windows applications, making it more capable than either of them.

But about those legacy applications. While the allure of “old Windows” hanging out beneath a desktop tile is intriguing, in practice it feels like a strange antiquity. The classic Windows interface is no more pleasant to use with touch than it used to be, but you’ll still be forced to poke through it if you want to actually take advantage of apps that weren’t designed for Modern UI. Even if you don’t, many of the deepest levels of Windows configuration are still buried there, so you’ll find yourself popping into the Control Panel and other legacy Windows features when you need to troubleshoot or configure new hardware.

With a mouse and keyboard, or even touchpad and keyboard, Modern UI feels less like something sleek and new, and more like eyecandy shoehorned into what used to be a useful product. PC users never needed monolithic icons that force you to mouse across the Great Plains to reach them. PC users never needed a library of apps that insist on dominating your full screen — or working in a hobbled splitscreen capacity. PC users never needed picture passwords, or virtual keyboards, or any of the other touch-centric features that Windows 8 piles on.

What PC users did need — a cohesive user interface well adapted for the mouse and keyboard — Windows 8 destroys. While Microsoft would have you believe that you can simply retreat into the old desktop, hole up there, and pretend Modern UI doesn’t exist, that’s far from the case. It intrudes into every aspect of the Windows experience. You can’t view all your apps without returning to the full-screen Start screen, formerly the compact and unobtrusive Start menu. You can’t start up without wading through the same menu, or shut down without summoning the obnoxious Charms bar, clicking settings, then “Shut down” — an unintuitive and unnecessarily lengthy process to perform a simple ask that used to be easy. The Charms bar loves to creep out at other inappropriate times, too, leaping out from the edge of the screen when you get too close to the right side, blocking the function you really wanted to click, like the scroll bar in a browser. If you didn’t know better, you might assume it was an old-school prank app or preinstalled bloatware on a cheap Gateway, but no, this is how Windows works now.

While tablet owners at least gain something useful when they stray outside the Modern UI by visiting the desktop, Modern UI offers desktop and laptop owners almost no reason to embrace it. Colors aside, it just isn’t practical with a cursor and large monitor, and offers zero reward for the patience you’ll expend learning to deal with it. It’s like relearning to use your PC with your non-dominant hand. You could probably rewire your brain to do it, but why? Windows 8 offers the same pointless exercise in inconvenience.

Conclusion

With Windows 8, Microsoft is simultaneously pandering to a new generation of mobile computing users who already see it as late to the game, and spraying mace in the eyes of a content PC user base it has spent the last 20 years building.

The truth is, Windows 8 could have been two excellent operating systems. Instead, Microsoft mashed them both together into one that reeks of compromise on both ends. While it offers PC users a few perks like faster boot times and a revamped task manager, they hardly justify the pain of learning Modern UI, not to mention the actual purchase price. Tablet users should be pleased with the slick new user interface, but probably won’t find as much as use as anticipated for the inclusion of old-school Windows underneath. On a tablet, classic Windows is just slow and difficult to use, especially for those on Windows RT, who won’t have the benefit of being able to install things like Web plugins and old Windows software.

Is this the end of Windows dominance? Likely not. If Microsoft could sink that ship with one bad launch, it would already be at the bottom of the sea from Vista. But it still doesn’t bode well for a company teetering on the brink of irrelevance in the coming decade. With Apple continuing to make the right moves and Google edging toward PCs with its ever-improving Chrome OS and Android operating systems, Microsoft doesn’t have the leeway it once had. We may end up having to use Windows 8, but we can’t say we’re happy about it.

Pros

• Sleek-looking Modern UI interface
• Much faster booting
• Small improvements to desktop

Cons

• Modern UI interferes with mouse-and-keyboard use
• Very limited selection of Modern-UI apps
• Graphically disjointed
• Windows RT users can’t install legacy software

It looks like Matthew Vaughn will no longer be directing the follow up to 2011's X-Men: First Class. His most likely replacement? Director of 2000's X-Men, Bryan Singer.

X-Men: First Class was a successful film in almost every regard. Not only did it assemble an excellent cast to deliver one of the best comic book superhero movies to date, it also pulled down huge amounts of cash at the box office (Box Office Mojo has the total take pegged at $350 million worldwide).

Given this success, a sequel seemed assured, and Hollywood responding by jumping on that plan with gusto. Matthew Vaughn, who had directed First Class was tapped to again direct the follow up, and a script was written based on one of the most famous X-Men comic book stories ever written. For those of you oblivious to Marvel’s comics (or that awesome mid-90s Fox cartoon), the Days Of Future Past storyline is something of a blend of X-Men tropes and ideas liberally swiped from James Cameron’s Terminator films. Time travel (and all its ensuing paradoxes) are a big part of this story, and fans have always had a soft spot for the tale’s futuristic incarnations of classic X-Men characters.

Before we launch into a lengthy explanation of why seeing Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton suspended in a futuristic vat of fluid is one of the coolest moments in the history of comic books, let’s get back to the film’s behind the scenes issues. In a report published earlier today, Deadline reveals that Vaughn “has decided not to direct the sequel.” Deadline claims that Vaughn will most likely instead helm a film called Secret Service, based on a comic book of the same name written by Kick-Ass scribe Mark Millar.

That however is not the interesting part of this news. According to Deadline, with Vaughn’s departure, executives at 20th Century Fox have begun searching for possible replacement directors. Topping the studio’s list is none other than Bryan Singer, director of 2000′s X-Men, 2003′s X2 and 2006′s disappointing Superman Returns. That choice makes a lot of sense, not only because Singer has an unprecedented level of experience in making movies about Marvel’s most lucrative mutants, but also because Singer served as producer on X-Men: First Class. On paper at least he seems like the perfect selection.

Before you get too excited though, know that there are additional elements in play here. First, as Deadline points out, prior to X-Men: First Class entering production Vaughn told executives that he would be leaving the project to pursue other directorial work. He eventually returned to helm the movie, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that we might still see Vaughn in the director’s chair for this sequel. Second, regardless of who happens to be yelling “ACTION!” on set it should be remembered that this film will feature the fantastic cast assembled for the original X-Men: First Class. This includes acclaimed actors like Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence, so that alone should go a long way in ensuring the sequel’s quality.

Expect more information on X-Men: Days Of Future Past as it becomes available. Both because that’s our job, and because we’re utterly psyched for this film. Did we mention that skeleton-in-a-vat scene? Man, that was rad.

Bethesda announced its first expansion to Dishonored on Thursday. Out in December, the $5 downloadable content pack will add a good chunk of content for combat and stealth obsessed players, but story fans will have to wait until 2013.

Dishonored has been roundly praised in the weeks since its release for the creative freedom it gives players. How you achieve the game’s goals, whether you resort to grizzly murders, bloodless stealth, or a mix of the two, is entirely up to you and the game begs you to experiment. It is, however, a touch on the short side when compared to publish Bethesda’s other games like Skyrim. For gluttons that have already played through the game multiple times, though, Bethesda’s got you covered with the game’s first downloadable content.

Bethesda announced Dishonored: Dunwall City Trials on Thursday. For anyone interested in expanding Corvo’s story or the history of his strange, rat-infested city, you’ll have to keep waiting. This $5 expansion is mostly based on short play sessions in combat, stealth, and moving through the city. The ten added trials include “an arena battle against waves of enemy AI.” Original as Dishonored is, even it isn’t immune from the plague of Horde modes thrown into every game.

There will be some more story-based DLC next year. The second DLC pack due in the spring will actually include new Dunwall city districts where Corvo will face of with The Whalers, a group of supernatural assassins led by a fella named Daud.

America's favorite action hero turned governor turned action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed on to star in The Legend Of Conan.

When you think of Arnold Schwarzenegger a myriad of images likely flashes through your mind. There’s Schwarzenegger in a dapper suit addressing his constituents as governor of California. There’s Schwarzenegger riding a Harley while firing a sawed-off shotgun with one hand in Terminator 2. There’s Schwarzenegger swinging a gigantic sword in some dusty desert landscape, accompanied by a stirring Basil Poledouris score in Conan The Barbarian.

While that last one might have partially been pushed out of your memory banks by the recent reboot of the Conan series starring Jason Momoa, now would be a very good time to pull Schwarzenegger’s turn as Robert E. Howard’s most famous half-naked warrior to the forefront of your mind. According to a new Deadline report, Schwarzenegger has signed an agreement with Universal Pictures to return to his iconic role in The Legend Of Conan.

Though Deadline’s piece offers scant few details on what this film will be about, we are told that like 1982′s Conan The Barbarian, Legend will be an adaptation of Howard’s Conan tales. Given that there is no Robert E. Howard story called The Legend Of Conan however, we imagine that Universal plans to cherry-pick interesting moments from Howard’s stories to create something of a hybrid Conan adventure.

Intriguingly, it’s being reported that Legend will ignore both the 2011 Conan The Barbarian as well as 1984′s Conan The Destroyer. While not necessarily a direct sequel in name, Legend will create its fiction based on the events of Schwarzenegger’s first Conan film. “The original ended with Arnold on the throne as a seasoned warrior, and this is the take of the film we will make,” said producer Fredrik Malmberg. “It’s that Nordic Viking mythic guy who has played the role of king, warrior, soldier and mercenary, and who has bedded more women than anyone, nearing the last cycle of his life. He knows he’ll be going to Valhalla, and wants to go out with a good battle.”

Corroborating Malmberg’s words is producer Chris Morgan who explains why the original Conan film was the peak of the franchise and the only logical entry on which to build this new film. “Robert E. Howard’s mythology and some great philosophy from Nietzsche to Atilla the Hun was layered in the original film,” Morgan states. “People say, he didn’t speak for the first 20 minutes of the film, but that was calculated in depicting this man who takes control of life with his own hand. This movie picks up Conan where Arnold is now in his life, and we will be able to use the fact that he has aged in this story. I love the property of Conan so much that I wouldn’t touch it unless we came up with something worthy. We think this is a worthy successor to the original film. Think of this as Conan’s Unforgiven.

That seems like an intriguing premise and an excellent way to gloss over Schwarzenegger’s age. 1982 was three decades ago, and while the 65-year-old actor is still likely in far better shape than the vast majority of us common folk, he’s not exactly the same sculpted statue of masculinity that captured the world’s heart during the Reagan administration. That said, the man has a seemingly endless font of charisma, so assuming the script is well-written we’d be very excited to see Schwarzenegger tackle a more complex, older version of the sword-swinging barbarian character he made famous in his earlier days.

As this deal just came to light a few moments ago, we’re not likely to see The Legend Of Conan in theaters any time soon. Given the rigors of production and the number of other projects Schwarzenegger has lined up since leaving the world of politics, we’d expect at least a year to pass before Legend makes it theatrical debut. Deadline offers no word on when this film might enter production nor even an estimate on when it might see theaters, so please temper any giddy excitement you’re currently experiencing at this news. 

Just as the video game industry is evolving to digital distribution platforms rather physical games sold at stores, the regulatory board responsible for rating those games in the US is evolving too.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board, the independent organization responsible for assigning ratings for commercially sold video games in the United States, announced a significant change to its services on Wednesday. The Digital Rating Service will now be used to assign an age-appropriate rating for games sold or distributed through digital channels. That means any game sold through Steam, the Windows 8 Marketplance, the Xbox Live Arcade, Nintendo eShop, iTunes, the PlayStation Network, and any number of digital-only distribution channels will use the new system. Publishers and developers will fill out a questionnaire online, and that will be used in determining not just the game’s age appropriateness but also what digital information the game records and shares about the player.

These aren’t the biggest changes to the ESRB’s process, though. The biggest change is that the Digital Rating Service will be free. This will not only make it markedly easier for independent game developers with limited funds to get their games on multiple platforms, it will also streamline the process of bringing older games released before the ESRB was established to digital platforms.

“If a game is to be distributed by digital means only then it can utilize the Digital Rating Service,” the ESRB’s Eliot Mizrachi tells Digital Trends, “This includes games that are direct downloads to a console or PC, browser or mobile games, or even streamed games. Only if a game is to have a packaged component does it need to undergo the traditional process, which includes a fee since it involves raters reviewing content.”

The ESRB has charged for ratings for nearly twenty years now. Why change to this new free format after so long? Mizrachi explains that the board’s process was past overdue for a change considering how dramatically the video game industry has evolved in recent years.

“The ESRB must evolve along with the rapidly changing industry it serves and the Digital Rating Service is reflective of that reality. The goal is to foster consistent, reliable rating information across the various platforms on which consumers access games and apps. The system makes it easier for developers by streamlining the process to obtain a rating.”

While the new rating system will most benefit small game studios that couldn’t afford the thousands of dollars necessary for getting a game rated by the ESRB, it will also make it significantly easier to release legacy content. Part of the reason Nintendo’s Virtual Console has been so sparsely stocked on Wii and the Nintendo 3DS over the years is that publisher’s saw little merit in uploading an old NES game that would sell to only a small audience when it would cost so much to have it rated for distribution. Niche NES, Sega Master system, and many other games from before the ESRB’s founding in 1993 now have a better chance at making it to digital distribution platforms since rating them will be totally free.

 “Previously rated product does not need to obtain a new rating when it is ported to a new platform provided that its content remains the same,” says Mizrachi, “If it is unrated and will only be distributed digitally then it may obtain a rating using the Digital Rating Service.” 

Four years after it was optioned and one year after plot details were first discussed, the Mass Effect movie has a new writer. Its new scribe, though, has never has a script produced. How will he change the BioWare adaptation?

Another year, more forward motion on the film adaptation of BioWare’s Mass Effect. While series creator Casey Hudson and Thor writer Mark Protosevich were attached as the writing creative team in 2011, the production has been silent since. Sam Raimi’s production company Legendary Entertainment shed more light on the project on Wednesday, announcing that it’s brought in a new writer to tackle Shepard’s silver screen adventures.

Variety reported that Morgan Davis Foehl has taken over script duties from Protosevich on Mass Effect. Foehl’s background in film and television is predominantly as an assistant editor, working on series like Rescue Me and Queer Eye as well as movies Click and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Not exactly the sort of space opera pyrotechnical projects the Mass Effect series is known for. His work in comic books with projects like City of Refuge and Crosshair, the film adaptation of which Foehl scripted, are a bit more in line with BioWare’s source material.

Mass Effect’s producers—including Avi Arad, the Marvel Studios founder producing film adaptations of Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, and Infamous—chose Foehl for his adeptness at scripting action with an espionage bent.

In 2011, a San Diego Comic-Con panel including the producers of the film said it would only cover the events of the first game, not its two sequels. The original Mass Effect was more focused than its successors. Commander Shepard is the first human to become a Specter, the intergalactic equivalent of a US Marshal, and he/she is tasked with combating the Geth, a robotic race bent on wiping out and dominating organic life. By the end of the game, though, it’s revealed that the true threat is a larger, more ancient artificial species called the Reapers.

Mass Effect borrows much from film already, in its character dialogues as well as its story pacing, but what makes the games so memorable is how personal they are. Its fans are passionate about that aspect of the series as well, to the point that mass petitions and fund raising efforts were started after the release of Mass Effect 3 because fans felt its ending wasn’t reflective enough of their personal choices throughout the games.

With a new writer on board, though, it’s possible that the story plans for the Mass Effect movie have changed since last year. A story separate from Shepard might be the best choice for the screen.

Nintendo revealed comprehensive lists of the best-selling video games of 2012 to date, shedding significant light on player tastes around the world. What games will publishers be investing in based on current trends?

Regional sales tracking firms like the NPD Group, Media Creates and others are often the only regular source for getting a picture of what people are paying to play in the video game market. As the balance between digital distribution and traditional brick and mortar retail even out, it’s become more difficult to accurately portray just what people like to play besides Call of Duty. It’s surprising then that Nintendo, one of gaming’s most secretive companies, revealed the top twenty bestselling video games from around the world during its recent earnings report. Nintendo compiled data from those previously listed research firms as well as Gfk International.

With breakdowns for the US, Europe, and Japan, the lists show not just what’s performed well this year, but helps gauge what types of games console publishers will invest in over the next few years as the transition to next-gen consoles begins in earnest.

The tops of the charts aren’t surprising based on how the industry’s past half decade. The top two best-selling video games in the United States between January and September 2012 were Madden NFL 13 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Electronic Arts also dominated Europe (Gfk tracks fourteen countries in the region), taking the top three spots with FIFA 13 on PS3 and Xbox 360 in first and second respectively with FIFA 12 on PS3 taking third. Nintendo dominated Japan, with Pokémon Black 2/White 2 taking the top two slots.

It’s deeper in the list that more revealing statistics emerge. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, for example, was only the sixth best-selling game across 2012, beaten out by competitors like Mass Effect 3 and even Borderlands 2 (fifth and third respectively.) This means that while the sales tail on Call of Duty remains strong, it’s diminished from highs in 2010 with Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which dominated for months after their respective releases. The competitive shooting games was not as favored over the first nine months of the year as co-operative, campaign-centric shooters like Mass Effect and Borderlands. The rest of the list bears this out as well. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier came in at eleventh, where EA’s Battlefield 3 came in at fourteenth. Future Soldier was a May release, and it does sport competitive modes, but even that example supports the POV that multiplayer tastes in the US are shifting.

What of Europe? Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3, Uncharted 3, and Mass Effect 3 were on the European list, but that was it for shooters. Nintendo published titles like Super Mario 3D Land, Wii Party and others were far more common in the region, boding well for the Wii U. Gran Turismo 5 also took eighth in Europe, reaffirming the strength of that brand for Sony abroad.

Japan was, again unsurprisingly, dominated by Nintendo and Square-Enix published games for handhelds, with three Capcom titles and two Namco Bandai titles sneaking in as well.

Pocket for Mac is officially released, and makes viewing multimedia easier, faster, and more refined for those saving on the go.

From commuting to appointment waiting to leisure, people are always looking for different ways to kill time by reading, viewing, and saving things from the Web. Read-it-later apps like Instapaper and Readability have dominated the market, but Pocket — formerly Read It later — continues to push ahead and win over users with its simplicity. If you’re one for saving articles on top of multimedia, Pocket may be your best bet at a beautiful way to save webpages for later viewing, complete with a tagging system to help organize your links. Now that the app’s come to the Mac platform, you can sync your iOS or Android accounts so saved pages can be viewed on-the-go, or saved on your mobile device to be read back on your desktop.

Pocket for Mac is as intuitive an app as you can imagine when it comes to saving pages. To get started, simply copy the link of the webpage you’re trying to store, and click File > Save Item from Clipboard, or shortcut Command+S. Your list of saved pages displays on a vertical screen to the left of the Pocket window, with the content on the right when you select.

Neat additions to the Mac version of Pocket is definitely the one-key shortcut, such as A for Archive and F to Favorite. You can also tag each page so they’re easier to search the more you accumulate saved links. Videos also translate nicely onto Pocket, especially if you already have Flash installed on your Mac. The app allows you to view the video straight out of its interface, otherwise requesting that you download necessary plug-ins to play multimedia. I personally haven’t run into file type errors, as most publications will post videos from YouTube or Vimeo anyway, and those seem to work just fine.

If you want to share a link after already viewing the content, the Item > Share button also does a good job of sending the item out to Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, and Buffer. It’s even got a tweet attribution when you send it from Pocket, which is a small but useful touch.

Overall, Pocket does a good job recognizing pictures in an article, article link, headline, byline, and publication. One function I wish was available is the ability to rename files, such as a photo I saved from a blog that didn’t have a get an assigned name, according to Pocket. Between constantly traveling and attempting to save things to read later, Pocket makes a nice alternative for those who enjoy minimal design with multimedia capability, and the willingness to learn some cool shortcuts and make saving for later quick and painless. Pocket for Mac is available now for free via the App Store.

Looking forward to the LG Nexus 4? The truth is we actually know quite a bit about the phone, especially considering Google has yet to confirm its existence. Now it seems that the UK phone retailer Carphone Warehouse has put up an official-looking pre-oder page for the device.

The page mentions things we already know such as it having a 4.7-inch 1280 x 768 display, NFC, quad-core Snapdragon S4, an 8MP camera and Android 4.2. There is also 8GB of onboard storage inside the device.

Carphone offered both contracts through Vodafone or O2. There was also another leaked image suggesting that the SIM-free version of the Nexus 4 would price at £389.95. If you are interested in heading over there and taking a look for yourself, sorry. The page is already offline. More than likely, it wasn’t meant to go up yet and someone caught the error and ripped it back down. It’s also possible that Google or LG got word of the mess up and pulled the plug.

So, anyone interested in the upcoming LG Nexus 4 or not?

During its Surface press conference today, Microsoft showed off the most capable tablet ever made. The new Surface is actually a skateboard.

Today, Microsoft unveiled one of the most expensive skateboards ever made. After demonstrating the durability of the Surface tablet by dropping it on stage (onto carpeted floor, might we add), Microsoft’s Panos Panay showed us another way he and Windows 8 chief Steven Sinofsky have been testing the durability of the new magnesium-encased tablet. The team pasted skateboard trucks onto a regular Surface and converted it into a skateboard. A skateboard! Though they didn’t do any kickflips or ollies on stage, we did see a picture of Sinofsky sporting a massive helmet standing on the homemade sports equipment. For some reason, it didn’t seem too crazy that tablets can become laptops, and since laptops have learned Yoga, why can’t a Surface become a deck?

No, you can’t buy a Surface skateboard, but we wish you could. It could be one hell of an optional accessory. Maybe the trucks could attach with industrial grade magnets like the TouchCover. And you don’t have to worry about falling after a tough grind either. The Surface can hit the ground in 72 different ways without breaking, or so we learned today. Actually, after three hours of Microsoft press conferences, this might have been the only thing we actually learned. But… skateboard! That’s hip, right?

Somebody should call Tony Hawk. He may have found the next great way to make a skateboarding game.

(GIF credit: @strngways)

After dodging the issue of profitability for months, Nintendo confirms that its new Wii U console will be sold below manufacturing cost at launch. How will it avoid the same financial troubles that have plagued the Nintendo 3DS?

Nintendo’s earnings report for the July to September quarter delivered good news and bad news. The good news was that Nintendo had staunched some of the bleeding that’s plagued the company since the beginning of 2011 when Wii sales began bottoming out. The bad news was that it was forced to cut its earnings projections for the full fiscal year by 70 percent. Where Nintendo was expecting to make a profit of $251 million for the year ending March 2013, now it’s only expecting around $75 million. While there are many factors contributing to Nintendo’s diminished earnings projections, it’s hard to ignore the specter of the Wii U. Nintendo’s new console, expensive in the market at a base price of $300, will be sold at a loss according to the company.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata confirmed during the company’s quarterly report that the Wii U, unlike previous consoles like the Wii, would not be sold above the manufacturing cost, earning the company profit on each machine sold from day one.

“[The] Wii U hardware will have a negative impact on Nintendo’s profits early after the launch because rather than determining a price based on its manufacturing cost, we selected one that consumers would consider reasonable,” said Iwata, “In the first half of the term before the launch of the Wii U, we were not able to make a profit on software for the system while we had to book a loss on the hardware, which is currently in production and will be sold below cost.”

“Although we expect our financial performance to be revitalized, under these circumstances, unfortunately we cannot say that we will achieve ‘Nintendo-like’ profits within this fiscal year.”

Nintendo was evasive when Digital Trends asked about the Wii U’s profitability at its event in New York last September. “I can’t speak to profitability with either SKU,” said Nintendo director of corporate communications Charlie Scibetta, “It’s razors and razor blades. I’m not prepared to talk about whether we’re going to try and turn a profit on the console or a profit on the games to make up for a loss on the other.”

Now it’s clear why Scibetta avoided the question. Nintendo’s inability to coax customers into paying more than a gaming machine’s cost is a significant change to its past business. In 2006, Nintendo was making $100 on every $250 Wii sold. It was turning a similar profit on each Nintendo 3DS sold at the system’s launch in early 2011, but consumers were so reticent to pay $250 for a devoted gaming handheld that Nintendo was forced to cut the price to $170 just months after its release, selling it below cost.

The iPad mini has been announced, but many seem to doubt it because of Apple's $330 price. I'm here to tell you why the iPad mini is worth the extra money and will only help accelerate Apple's growth in the tablet market.

From the reaction on the Internet yesterday and today, you would think the iPad mini is the most expensive tablet on the market. Gizmodo says it’s “crazy expensive;” Business Insider says it’s “overpriced;” Reuters was so concerned it made Apple’s Phil Schiller defend the $330 price tag; and InformationWeek is so hopped up about it that it’s written an article called “The Great Price Debate.” Those are only a few of the many hurt, angry journalists. But let’s look at the facts: Apple is releasing a far more portable, 7.9-inch iPad that retains all of the capabilities of its larger 9.7-inch brother, for $170 less. I cannot be the only person who’s excited about this… Whether or not it’s shocking enough for the Web’s second-to-second news coverage, a smaller cheaper iPad is a huge deal.

The iPad was the first tablet to capture the public’s attention when it debuted two and a half years ago, and it’s still, by far, the top selling tablet today. Apple revealed the other day that it has sold 100 million iPads. Think about that number. How many units has its nearest competitor sold?

In the second quarter of 2012, Apple held a 68 percent market share with the iPad. That means all other tablets — the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Nook Tablet, the Nexus 7, and dozens upon dozens of tablets by the likes of Samsung, Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, Motorola, LG, Dell, Sony, Pantech, ZTE, RIM, Archos, Coby, Pandigital, and ViewSonic — have, combined, only sold somewhere between 25 and 40 million tablets. And that’s being generous, as Apple held a 90+ percent tablet market share for well over a year before any of these companies got their act together at all.

Here’s the bottom line: $200 tablets like the Kindle Fire have been around for a year now and Apple’s single iPad started at $500. And in that  year, when potential buyers were faced with the choice of a $200 non-iPad and a $500 iPad, they chose to pay $300 extra dollars to get the iPad seven times out of 10. There were also a slew of other 7-, 8-, 9-, and 10.1-inch tablets for $300-$400, and people have still been choosing the one $500+ iPad. On Tuesday, Apple doubled the number of iPads it sells. Now it has a smaller iPad too, so people who want a tablet that they can use one-handed or keep in their purse/bag can opt for an iPad mini. Oh, and it’s now one of the cheapest tablets on the market, at $330. Is it the cheapest? No. Is it the best? Well, aside from the iPad, it might be.

There are big benefits to buying a Google Android phone — namely, maps and real-time notifications. Tablets are a different story. I’ve used nearly every tablet that’s been released and enjoyed many of them, but none of them compare to the usability and versatility of the iPad. There aren’t enough apps built for them and they aren’t as responsive. Judging by the sales, I’m not the only one who has noticed this.

Tablets are not a necessity; they are a luxury. You have to shell out money, and sometimes settle, to buy a new phone because without one you’re completely disconnected from your friends and family, but no one is going to die without a tablet. We can all live without playing searching up Honey Boo Boo on the toilet or playing Angry Birds during the presidential debate. Every function that a tablet provides can be done by a laptop or a smartphone, and almost everyone has one or both of those already.

This is why, so far, when most people have chosen to buy a tablet, they’ve opted to buy a really good one, the iPad, despite its higher price. Of course, there is a small (growing) percentage of people willing to settle, but the iPad mini has just doubled Apple’s appeal. It may not have a super high-resolution display or cutting-edge internal specs (it’s basically a shrunken iPad 2), but the iPad mini can run all of the nearly 300,000 iPad apps (every one of them designed solely for the iPad). They all work. It’s a complete iPad out of the box. You don’t even have to wait for apps to be shrunk or put up with black bars or any other inconvenience. This means that the iPad mini is now, by default, likely the second best tablet on the market, after the fourth-generation iPad.

I am looking forward to using the iPad mini. Eight- to 9-inch tablets have been my favorite size range since I first used Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 8.9 a year ago. Tablets the size of the iPad mini are small enough to easily hold with one hand, but have a little more screen space than 7-inch screens, which remain a bit cramped and don’t always offer a noticeably enhanced experience than you can achieve on your smartphone. Early hands-on accounts appear to show that Apple has put a lot of time into picking the right screen size for the mini.

The iPad won’t dominate the tablet market forever. That’s just not how things work. But I’m fairly convinced that the iPad mini will encourage millions more people to shell out for an Apple tablet than would have before. It’s going to be a hit. Cheaper tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 won’t die on Nov. 2 when the iPad mini launches, but selling at bargain bin prices may continue to be the only way competitors make mild gains against Apple. Both Amazon and Google make no profit from their cheap tablets. In fact, they’re likely losing money on each tablet they sell in the hopes that they’ll recoup their losses based on app and content sales. That’s not a strategy that will work for many companies.

I am not an Apple lover, but I can spot a good idea when I see one. The iPad mini is a good idea. It’s a product Apple should have released a year ago and it’s going to do incredibly well. As journalists, sometimes we just want eyeballs. When the iPad came out, writers at Business Insider labeled it a “big yawn” and Gizmodo listed “8 things that suck about the iPad.” In the end, it doesn’t really matter what I say. It only matters what people buy, and a lot of them are going to buy an iPad mini.

EA and Danger Close’s second offering in the rebooted Medal of Honor franchise, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, offers a few moments of brilliance that are offset by its many technical issues and design flaws.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter gets many things wrong, but most of all it is the victim of poor messaging. Those who have been following the marketing campaign for the latest from EA’s Danger Close studio have no doubt picked up on the fact that the game was developed in collaboration with actual Navy SEALs. There’s been a lot of noise from Danger Close about honoring those who serve, and while I do think that Warfighter‘s narrative speaks to that, the actual play is driven by the same sort of over-the-top spectacle that you’d expect from a modern military first-person shooter.

My negative reaction to Warfighter stems in part from getting something that was other than what had been expected. The key words there being “in part.” My negative reaction also stems even more from the fact that, at base, this is just not a very good game.

A Love Letter to the Troops

The patriotic narrative that drives events forward in Warfighter isn’t inherently a bad thing. I can even accept the loosely tied together series of levels. They don’t do much for telling a coherent story in the traditional sense, but I also imagine it’s similar to the experience of being a soldier who simply follows orders. The bigger picture comes together over the course of an extended military campaign, but your day-to-day operations aren’t necessarily accompanied by associated context. You might come to believe that the shadowy, faceless figure handing out each assignment in the game is actually presiding over some future conspiracy theory, but he’s really just the guy tasked with pulling the strings. 

Warfighter‘s story is just about as “America, f*ck yeah!” as it can be, but again, that’s not a bad thing in and of itself. It’s frankly more than a little bit refreshing. With so many military shooters embracing the paranoia of what we don’t know about our country’s military maneuverings, it’s nice to see a narrative like this that steps away from conspiracy and offers a nod of appreciation to the troops on the ground. The game’s coda is particularly moving despite the fact that its impact is lessened by the game that precedes it.

Players take control of two different SEALs in two separate teams over the course of the campaign: Preacher and Stump. Both teams are working to bring down a terrorist organization, and while their paths rarely cross, their individual squad efforts resonate back and forth into each subsequent mission. You need to pay careful attention to cutscenes and incidental dialogue to pick up on all of this since, as I mentioned previously, there’s a disjointed feel to the way your missions are presented. Just prepare for some nightmare fuel: the CG cutscenes feature some mind-bogglingly impressive graphics, but the lifelike facial animations, particularly on the main character’s little daughter, are ridiculously creepy.

Carrying a Big Stick

As much as the story concerns itself with looking at the real life implications of trying to balance family with the life of a soldier, the gameplay couldn’t be further removed from reality. Medal of Honor: Warfighter embraces spectacle just as much as its predecessor. It’s less a FPS than it is an over-the-top military simulation. I’d estimate that you spend only roughly half the game doing the sort of things that one would typically expect from an FPS. The rest of the play is focused on scripted sequences (such as providing sniper support) or vehicle/turret sequences.

This sort of setup is actually integral to Medal of Honor‘s brand identity under Danger Close’s watch. For the most part, it also works in Warfighter. The driving sequences in particular really shine thanks to the development time put in by EA Black Box, the team behind Need for Speed: The Run. The non-FPS moments serve to break up the action, but they’re also (for the most part) plenty of fun in their own right.

Also strong is Warfighter‘s peek-from-cover mechanic. It amounts to only a slight control tweak to the established norms for modern-day first-person shooters, but it works so well that I hope to see it embraced more widely. In a standard FPS, holding down left trigger or L2 on a PS3 controller will typically aim down your weapon’s sights. The same is true in Warfighter, but you also have the option of holding down the left bumper or L1 to aim down your sights. LB/L1 aiming locks your soldier in place, with the left stick controlling the direction and extent of your lean. It’s brilliantly simple and it works extremely well in those rare moments that you’re able to overlook the rest of the game’s technical shortcomings.

Unfortunately, Warfighter really goes off the rails in the one category where it’s supposed to excel: being a shooter. The FPS gameplay leans on some of the genre’s worst design tactics. I blame the Frostbite 2 engine. DICE’s Battlefield 3 workhorse paints a pretty picture (less pretty on consoles), but as we learned from the 2011 game’s campaign, it doesn’t fare so well outside of multiplayer.

The AI governing both your allies and your enemies is blindingly stupid. Foes will prioritize you above all targets, even if that means they’re running right past your completely exposed squadmates as they rush you. Not that your squadmates will respond in any appreciable way.  They’re similarly dim and generally unreliable, leaving you with the grim task of killing every gun-toting brown person (Eastern Europeans, at one point!) that you see.

The armies of bad guys will pop up out of nowhere too. It’s not quite on the level of Doom‘s “monster closets,” but Warfighter‘s enemies spawn in unrealistic ways. You might thoroughly check and re-check one area, only to cross an invisible checkpoint and suddenly find yourself facing half a dozen armed foes who have magically appeared in that very spot. Of that group, four will almost certainly dip behind any nearby cover, popping out in an easily predicted pattern like you’re playing some modern warfare-themed shooting gallery. The other two will run blindly toward you, no doubt hoping to shoot you in the face.

This blunt-force AI is what ultimately shatters any sense of investment in the action. You may as well be shooting metal ducks on a track with an Airsoft rifle. There’s no nuance, no sense of tactical engagement. See bad guys, shoot bad guys, move on to the next gallery. Again, the issue comes back to the Frostbite 2 engine in my mind. You’ve got a campaign-focused shooter here relying heavily on a game engine designed, first and foremost, for a multiplayer gaming environment. If Danger Close and EA really want to challenge Call of Duty with Medal of Honor — and, after playing the game, that certainly seems to be the case — it’s going to take more than pretty graphics and a story built around lip service.

Finding Your Fireteam

Given all of that, it’s no surprise that Warfighter‘s multiplayer is up to the same standards, generally speaking, as Battlefield 3 (after its various post-release patches). The scale is much, much smaller, with more compact maps and zero vehicles to be found. The action also has its own distinct feel; this is not a carbon-copy of BF3‘s Close Quarters map pack nor is it easily described as a Call of Duty clone. Warfighter‘s adversarial multiplayer definitely has its own flavor, thanks largely to its fireteam mechanics.

Similar to BF3‘s squads, fireteams are the individual two-person units that make up the ranks of each match’s two opposing teams. While you’re always fighting as part of a larger group, your fireteam buddy offers several specific advantages. You can always spawn on your partner, provided that he or she is out of combat and relatively safe for a few seconds after you’re taken out. Your partner is also always visible as a silhouette even if you don’t have direct line of sight, and you can use him or her as a resupply and healing point (as you can with anyone on your team).

There are a few cool returning objective-based game modes from 2010′s Medal of Honor in addition to the standard Team Deathmatch. The new mode, Hotspots, is actually a personal  favorite. Attacking and defending teams work to plant/defuse bombs at three of five possible locations. The twist is that the three locations are only revealed one at a time, and they’re picked randomly out of the five total spots. The flow of the action is dictated by the moving attack/defend locations, requiring lots of on-the-fly tactical thinking.

Unfortunately, a clunky interface and confusing profile customization features make Warfighter‘s multiplayer more unapproachable than it really needs to be. I’ve spent several hours now leveling up my various classes, and I’m still not entirely clear how everything works. I’m constantly unlocking tokens for use on the MedalofHonor.com website but none of that is ever really explained inside the game. There’s a very deep weapon customization system as well, with numbers tied to both cosmetic and functional unlocks. What’s not clear is which numbers those refer to. A tutorial, even just a non-interactive video, would go a long way toward explaining how things work. It’s not enough to make this information accessible online; it really ought to be included as part of the game.

Conclusion

I really wanted to like the Medal of Honor: Warfighter that I’ve been reading and writing about over the past bunch of months. Unfortunately, the game that Danger Close released isn’t quite that. The multiplayer offers good times once you get the hang of its various systems, but the campaign is an unrestrained mess. The driving sequences are solid and the peek-from-cover mechanic is genius in its intuitive simplicity, but the campaign that wraps around the good stuff simply doesn’t measure up. In a season where every game released is in a week-to-week shootout with competitors from the same genre, Warfighter just doesn’t have enough firepower to ensure a victory.

Score: 6.5 out of 10