Call of Duty: Warfare evolves at E3 2014

The Electronics Entertainment Expo returned to Los Angeles this past week and with it came a plethora of new games scheduled for release over the coming year. Action gaming fans especially will have plenty to look forward to as a number of high-profile combat games were unveiled at the expo.

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For starters, Activision showed off more footage from its upcoming first-person shooter Call Of Duty:

Advanced Warfare (release date 11/4/14). The game, one in a long line of popular military action games, is the first from developer Sledgehammer and the first to be set in a distant future.

The game drops gamers into the year 2054 where the world’s best military power is not a country but a corporation. Actor Kevin Spacey not only lends his voice but his complete digital likeness to the game as Jonathan Irons, CEO of the Atlas military corporation. As a member of Atlas, players will have access to a futuristic arsenal including robotic exoskeletons, jetpacks, and smart grenades.

Meanwhile, publisher Electronic Arts will take its military shooter onto new terrain in Battlefield:

Hardline (release date 10/21/14). Players will not find themselves in WWII, the jungles of Vietnam, or the streets of Iran. Instead, they will find themselves deep within suburban USA as they take control of SWAT officer Nick Mendoza.

Neither EA nor game developer Visceral Games revealed much but what they did reveal was a completely different experience from previous titles in the series. Hardline will offer a number of different game modes other than the single-player campaign and the usual variety of multiplayer matches.

Tom Clancy passed away last year but his legacy lives on as not one but two titles were shown bearing his name. The first is Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege (release date 2015), the first game from the series in four years. As with previous games in the series, the emphasis will be on teamwork and realism (re: no respawns).

Ubisoft revealed one of the game’s multiplayer modes which showed a team of five counter-terrorist operatives rescuing a hostage trapped inside her home. The demo revealed how destructible environments (new to the series) will play an important gameplay role.

The second title is Tom Clancy’s The Division (release date 2015), an online third-person shooter inspired by Operation Dark Winter, a bio-terror attack simulation, and Directive 51, signed into law by then-president George W. Bush. The game adds various aspects of role-playing games as players create their own characters and specific weapon load-outs as they venture into a virus-ravaged New York City on Christmas Day.

Finally, Konami’s beloved Metal Gear franchise continues where it left off in the hotly anticipated Metal Gear Solid V:

The Phantom Pain (release date 2015). The sequel/prequel follows the ongoing saga of the legendary soldier known as Big Boss/Naked Snake as he awakens from a nine-year coma to seek revenge for the destruction of his military base, Outer Heaven. Fans will finally see and come to understand how the “world’s greatest living soldier” evolves from a hero to villain, ending where the series’ story originally began on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987.

Fans were given a glimpse of the game earlier this year in Metal Gear Solid V:

Ground Zeroes, which moves the series out of its familiar linear-stages into a complete open world. It’s Metal Gear the way it was always meant to be.

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