Displaying items by tag: Medal of Honor

Although this is not a new or novel concept we are seeing companies begin to use the power of branding to make their games more attractive to the consumer. The concept really started many, many years ago when software companies noted an increased demand for games that had not only similar themes, but the exact same theme and setting. To capitalize on this they began making follow-on installments to their games. Some of the more notable are Doom, Quake, and Wing Commander. Certainly there are more than this small list, but these represent some of the early franchise names that pushed the market along. For those of you wondering why HalfLife is not in there, it is simply because of the length of time between the first and the second games, but yes HalfLife is certainly one of the major Brand Names in gaming now.

Military simulation games are nothing new, but their popularity has certainly increased with some of the recent press about US Special Operations Teams including the US Army Special Forces Delta Team and the Navy’s Elite SEALs Of the Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU); or as they are incorrectly called in the media SEAL Team 6. These groups are tasked with convert missions around the globe to execute US policy on a “personal” level. It was members of DEVGRU that put paid to Osama Bin Laden’s account. Medal of Honor Warfighter takes its story line from the exploits of these highly trained men. In fact EA actually consulted both Active Duty and Retired SEALs to finish the game. This cooperation got some of the SEALs in hot water as the Navy now claims they gave up classified information. Does Medal of Honor Warfighter have an edge to it realism that no other game has? We will be loading it up to see in our typical 30-45 minute test. Will it grab our interest, or will it end up on the shelf collecting dust?

Imagine how bad MOH Warfighter would be if they did not have valuable advice from a couple of U.S. Navy SEAL's during the game development. I cannot, but their superiors believe that the Navy would be better if they never contacted Electronic Arts. Specifically, the seven members, some of them ex, some still active members of the naval elite Special Forces were fined for revealing military secrets to the development studio that made MOH: Warfighter.

Cooler Mater is a company that is certainly moving up. It was not that many years ago that they were not well thought of. This was until they released a lineup of cases and coolers that showed they were serious about their business. We saw products like the HAF932, the CM storm series cases and mice, the V8 cooler and others. While this was going on their more consumer based products were benefiting as well. We saw the Hiper 212+ become a favorite of many air cooling aficionados. We used them exclusively for over a year in our labs. Back in January we saw some nice new designs from Cooler Master in their suite at the Bellagio, today we have one of these in the lab and are eager to tell you how it performed. This is the CM Storm Spawn Gaming mouse. Let’s see if it has increased our frag rate.