Splinter Cell, Call of Duty x2, Rock Band

Since it's CES 2010 time it's good to spread the news wealth around and here's some more to throw at you to juggle around.

 

Splinter Cell Conviction showed off a new Co-op mode called Deniable Ops which includes 4 modes within itself called Hunter (eliminate all enemies), Last Stand (protecting an object from enemies), Infiltration (classic Splinter Cell stealth, if you are seen, game over) and Face Off (two player versus with enemy AI, you can use enemy AI as sort of a trap to lure the other player out and defeat them).  

 

I for one think this is an excellent addition on top of the 5-6 hour co-op campaign they are making.  Co-op is the way of the future my friends and Conviction is definitely embracing it.

 

Microsoft announced during CES 2010 that the first round of DLC for Modern Warfare 2 would be coming soon.  What that DLC includes remains to be seen, however, players have found a way to unlock a hidden mode called "Global Thermonuclear War," that pits 2 teams trying to capture the nuke and finally launch it at the end resulting in a victory for the captors.  It seems to be a 'King of the Hill' mode but without the hill ever moving and how people were able to unlock it remains to be figured out but it has been done and here's a video of the gameplay. 

 

The second Call of Duty news is about the World at War developer Treyarch.  Sources tell CVG that Activision has set a release date for the next Call of Duty in November and is said to be based on the Vietnam War.  The game is expected to borrow from Vietnam movies such as Apocalypse Now and Platoon.  Personally I was thinking it was going to take place during the Cold War once that was rumored at the beginning but this is a different setting as well and if it's successful it would be one of the few successful Vietnam based games so I'm hopeful for it.  

 

The last tidbit is for the dedicated Rock Band players that want to use the XNA Creators Club to distribute their own songs on XBL for Rock Band.  It takes a lot of time to do it all yourself so music distributor TuneCore is out to help those in need.  The kicker?  It costs $2500 per song for them to translate onto the XBL marketplace for Rock Band.  Going back to the beginning of the paragraph I say again, this is only for the dedicated.  For a limited time now they are offering $999 per song but still when the XNA Creators Club is $99 per year it's hard to shell out $999 or $2500 per song; doing it yourself doesn't sound half bad.  Also, every time your $2 track is downloaded you make about $0.60 off of it so if you go through TuneCore your song better be amazing to get those downloads so you can make some profit.  I'm sure some band in the future is going to get successful from Rock Band distribution but if they are willing to pay $2500 for each song they probably could have put that money together for a whole first demo album.