In a move that certainly caught me by surprise, American Nightmare builds an arcade mode around the combat mechanics of light and evasion from the 2010 title, offering a survival challenge that hopes to find longevity after players have chewed through the standalone pulp horror story.

With the game releasing this week, I managed to gather a few of my endless questions regarding digital content and American Nightmare’s direction, which Remedy CEO Matias Myllyrinne was good enough to answer.

Gamesugar: I recently attended a game and finance event, where the investment focus for digital titles definitely leaned heavily on iOS, and there was a vibe that the XBLA and PSN market was too risky and difficult, both because of competition and marketing challenges. With American Nightmare hitting Xbox LIVE Arcade, you must believe that the potential reward of succeeding on that market still outweighs the risk, and I was hoping I could get you to share your thoughts on that?

Matias Myllyrinne: Right…The whole landscape of games as an art form and business is changing and that is awesome – it keeps us all learning and looking for new novel ways to entertain as wide an audience as possible.

So yeah, digital distribution on the whole is changing the games industry in many ways – most of them for the better. I think whenever the creative and the audience come closer together it is a good thing, be it on the iPhone, XBLA or other such channel. It used to be that you would spend a lot of time convincing a publisher to take your game and then they would spend a lot of time getting Wal-Mart et al. to take the game on the shelf. Now, two guys in a garage anywhere can create something cool – get it onto worldwide distribution, entertain millions and have a way of getting paid for their efforts. The audience is king… the audience judges what they like and that kind of feels like a nice level playing field… it is not so much about what a retailer has chosen to give shelf space for or what game has the largest budget.

Whatever the market, traditional retail, XBLA or iPhone – we at Remedy want to delight the players with unique yet accessible entertainment. I think the iOS market is great – we’ve had an awesome time with Death Rally there and we continue to learn more and more – basically it runs more like a service than a product. Constant updates and such help you to keep the game fresh and exciting…

The content and dynamics are a little different on XBLA – I think it is natural to expect a different experience on the 360 than on the iPhone. I don’t think that XBLA is more risky than the iOS market – I think good games made for the medium does well in both. The key success factors are different and the dynamics change a little but ultimately it comes down to making something so compelling that people will want to put down their hard earned money and spend their valuable time with the experiences you have crafted.

GS: You’ve had experience with episodic content with the original Alan Wake release, which resulted in two additional episodes, but now American Nightmare seems poised to offer something that could continue with future offerings if warranted, but isn’t necessarily committed to that goal from the outset.

How did your own experience with episodic content influence the goals for American Nightmare?

MM: American Nightmare was built to be a standalone experience and a perfect entry point for gamers. We felt it was crucial to have a game that works on its own. This allows us to reach the widest possible audience. On the other hand we wanted to give the fans of Alan Wake a satisfactory experience and to move the fiction ahead as well… so for example there is a lot of optional content that adds more color to the wider story and moves things ahead.

GS: Digital multiplayer releases is an idea I’m a fan of, particularly given the number of times over the last few years that we’ve seen multiplayer focused games add a story mode in the hopes of justifying a retail disc release. Still, Alan Wake’s original retail release was entirely story driven, so this one really surprised me when the announcement came. I’ve read that the move was very much inspired by what fans were asking for, but curious about whether this was the direction from day one, or the end result of a long process about where to take the series next?

MM: We have a wider overall fiction mapped out and Sam has this compelling story to tell. When we had the arcade mode done it was a full XBLA game in its own right, but we wanted to add a story mode… we are Remedy after all. So, I guess you could say this time round we did things opposite to how we have done them in the past. We went action first when usually we start with story.

Anyway, we ended up selecting elements in the fiction that fit well with XBLA and the things we felt would be cool to pursue and fit the medium…

GS: Was co-operative multiplayer ever on the table? I’m sure there must be some people that would have been eager to play as Barry Wheeler.

MM: We wanted to focus on improving the core gameplay loop and building wild weapons to combat even wilder enemies… Also, we ended up boosting the rendering, AI and such and the art team improved the environmental visuals with a much richer color palette…

Co-op could be cool, but we felt that we did not have anything new to add to that field now – I mean it would have been pointless to spend all this time and effort to replicate what others have already done well. We try to do things that are in some way unique and surprising… or at least have a new kind of twist to the formula.

GS: Alan Wake generated plenty of open-ended ideas through the narrative of the original release, and certainly reveled in the horror genre to that end. But a retail release offered plenty of room to play and explore ideas too. Has it been a challenge creating a fresh story experience accessible to both fans and newcomers alike?

MM: It is hard. Striking the balance is difficult and building a structure that works for new comers and die hard fans is not trivial.

GS: The semiotic word play of the original release and follow-up episodes that allowed Alan to literally brings words to life is a subject I like to obsess over quite a bit. Is that something Remedy is still experimenting with?

MM: In a way we played with the same theme – just moving from individual words to entire paragraphs. So, this time round fiction can become real. So if Wake matches the details in a scene to the details on a manuscript page reality can be rewritten… it is a new kind of story puzzle we’re introducing but also a weapon for Wake against Mr. Scratch.

*Alan Wake’s American Nightmare releases exclusively for Xbox LIVE Arcade on February 22nd.

In addition to the in-game soundtrack created by musician Peter Chapman, it was recently revealed that game journalist, musician, and long-time Sugarfriend, Shaun Hatton, will be lending his audio talents to the game by contributing a song for the ending-credit sequence of the game. This weekend I had a chance to catch up with Shaun to talk briefly about that project as well as his work for the upcoming Indie game, They Bleed Pixels – which I’ve since distilled into convenient MP3 format for your listening pleasure.

Catch a rare audio sugar fix below, along with Shaun’s track for Mutant Blobs Attack!!!

SugarCast – Shaun Hatton Talks Mutant Blobs Attack!!! [0:17:28]

Check out additional remix tracks and more of Shaun’s music via his site.

Since I like to get my answers straight from the horse’s mouth whenever possible, I took some questions about Runner2 to the nearest horse available, only to find it rather stubbornly silent on the subject. Fortunately, Gaijin’s Alex Neuse happened to be standing next to the horse at the time and generously agreed to help me out.

Gamesugar: Since the arc of Commandervideo’s journey came to an end this year, and received a retail release on the 3DS and Wii to boot, it seems like the first question to ask is, given the choice, what made you decide to make another BIT.TRIP inspired game, specifically one feeding from RUNNER?

Alex Neuse: BIT.TRIP RUNNER was one of the most fun games in the series to work on, and we had a ton of ideas that we had to keep out of the original game due to time constraints, etc, so we wanted to revisit the gameplay and themes of RUNNER before we moved on from the BIT.TRIP world.

GS: Did you ever consider porting the games to Xbox LIVE Arcade and the PlayStation Network – those HD and Super Turbo Editions are pretty popular after all – or was the pursuit here always more a case of, we have the technology, better, stronger, faster?

AN: We have been asked this question often. Our fans really want HD versions of the original games, and while we’d love to give them to the world, a certain 1st party won’t allow games already released on the Wii to be released on their platform, so one of those two is 100% out. The other one… Hm…

GS: Jumping from the Wii to those other consoles, was the visual potential overwhelming at first? I’ve been curious about whether the HD factor buried you in ideas that have been refined during development, or if there was always a pretty clear vision of what the game is shooting for from the start?

AN: We’ve always had a pretty clear vision of what we’d do in HD. Even while developing the original series on the Wii, we were constantly remarking “ooh, if this were in HD…” So, we’re bringing a lot of ideas over that we had shelved due to technical constraints the first time around. There’s not a lot that is overwhelming when dealing with an HD presentation. In fact, it’s more liberating than anything.

GS: The WiiWare releases often made me feel like I was being schooled at controlling a game, almost as if I were graduating to each new release in the series. Do you see a challenge to dropping players not familiar with the series to date into Runner2, or do you see the gameplay as immediately self-explanatory?

AN: BIT.TRIP RUNNER was always the most accessible game in the series, so we don’t think that there will be much of a shock to gamers when they pick up Runner2. There’s something that’s inherently understandable about controlling an on-screen humanoid avatar. In many ways, the abstractness of the other games was more confusing to players than the myriad moves that Commandervideo can do in RUNNER. Also, we’ll have a good tutorial system.

GS: Since Runner2 is hitting XBLA and PSN, I’m obligated to slip in a marketing question. BIT.TRIP originally released on WiiWare after all, and faced the challenges developers had pushing awareness of the service and the games it offered, I’m wondering what you think of both the continuing potential of digital distribution on consoles, and if you’ve gained some insights about what it takes to draw gamers in. Gaijin has been very open about Runner2′s development for instance, even offering peeks at very early code of the game in motion, which we certainly don’t see very often.

AN: Raising awareness of one’s game is always a challenge, and it’s a unique challenge each time. Certainly, having an established series will help, as gamers will recognize the name and the main character, but we can’t deny our belief that the development blog (and other similar efforts) are super important. It’s rare that a development team shares work-in-progress news about their game, and we hope that doing so builds some buzz. Really, though, we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re just trying to do what we think we’d like to see if we were on the receiving end.

GS: Speaking of early glimpses at the game, I couldn’t help noticing Commandervideo’s jump-slide move. Any chance you want to give away info on more slick moves up the Commander’s sleeve this time around?

AN: As a matter of fact, we’re going to announce a new move relatively soon. Keep watching www.runner2.com to see one in action soon! But he’s going to have at least 5 new abilities… At least.

GS: You’ve posted a few old cartoons on the Runner2 development blog as inspirations for aspects of Runner2. I found that pretty damn interesting, because I’m a fan of old cartoons and have always been a bit fascinated by the way so many of them use exaggerated movement to bring more life to the screen and revel in the art of animation. Is there anything you can tell us yet about how Runner2 might revel in that way?

AN: We’re hoping to push the wackiness of Runner2 in everything we do from the background imagery and environments to the animations on all of the characters. And this isn’t just a stylistic preference either; it fits in with the story. Basically, the Timbletot has hit Commandervideo with a Reality-Unfusion Beam, and Commandervideo’s reality has become unfused. Whereas Commandervideo is used to existing in a blocky, rigid world, all of a sudden, everything is smooth and strange…

GS: Since I’d regret not asking you about it, today’s super bonus challenge question is whether you’re still putting some time toward LaserLife. I should mention that today’s prize for the correct answer is a lovely stainless steel four-slice toaster.

AN: Right now, we’re all hands on deck with Runner2, so we’re not thinking of much beyond this current project, but Laserlife is something that we do talk about in the office a lot. Laserlife still has a very special place in our hearts, so I don’t think it’s going away.

*Runner2 is slated to release in 2012, and you can stay up to speed on developments via Gaijin Game’s Runner2 blog.

This time around Bryce and his partner Arcadia were investigating another demon hive in an abandoned hospital, offering me a chance to watch Bryce have his limbs torn off repeatedly while I attempted to clear areas and rack experience points.

Following up on my previous time with the game, I’m going to attempt to narrow down and itemize what stood out during this trip, which you can catch below.

A Working Relationship…

Bryce’s partnership with Arcadia serves a very immediate purpose by balancing his immortality with a measure of consequence should she die in battle and cause players to fail the mission. Whenever demons take her down, Bryce needs to reach her to lift her up again, as with other games featuring AI companions like a solitary run of Resident Evil 5. Unlike that game however, Arcadia isn’t dwindling precious ammunition, and she does a rather good job of staying on her feet – though it was noticeable that most demons were intently fixated on tearing Bryce apart instead of bothering her.

At several points the two became separated, specifically when Bryce needed to use his immortal abilities to reach a new area and either find the means to open a locked door between them or reunite with Arcadia at a different location. In other words, Arcadia doesn’t seem to be a nuisance continually pulling players away from the demon killing, which was a legitimate concern.

Upgrades-a-Plenty…

Gathering experience points scattered around areas as well as those earned by defeating demons led me to the upgrade screen, which could be accessed at anytime. Upgrades can be purchased and then equipped in a set amount of equipped slots, and the number of upgrades listed was a bit dizzying, covering usage of weapons, physical abilities, etc. It’s clear you’ll spend lots of time attempting to unlock all of these, and then even more making the choice about which ones are essential. It could represent an impressive addition of potential strategy, but the single mission simply didn’t provide enough space to put that theory to the test.

In other words, I’m not certain that many or any of them will prove essential toward completing a game in which you can keep putting yourself back together and hacking away mindlessly if you so choose to. I will say that the listings appeared more functional versus the quirky upgrade abilities that say, allow Bayonetta to pole dance and shoot – not that I didn’t love that, because I did.

Again with the Exploding Tanks…

Yes explosive tanks were everywhere, sometimes discovered as I struck them with the sword and caused Bryce to be blown back in pieces. Those old friends are as tired as ever, but I can’t deny that they do come in handy when hordes of creatures swarm into an area, which happened quite often thanks to larger nest creatures that enthusiastically spew them out until destroyed.

Danger Danger High Voltage…

I already knew that Bryce could catch himself on fire and spread that burning love to enemies. This time around there was a sequence where it was necessary to do the same with an electrical charge in order to share the current with an elevator to bring it back to life.

The Sword is Mightier Than the Gun…

While Bryce is encouraged to spew plenty of bullets at enemies, it requires a lot of running and gunning given how enemies will tear off limbs while you’re trying to fill them with ammo – and you need those limbs to hold the damn guns.

There were plenty of tight rooms where the sword became essential for taking out swarms of enemies quickly. The added bonus was the level of destruction in the game – nearly every wall and pillar explodes and crumbles when struck by blade or bullets.

I’m still worried that some will find the sword frustrating to use. Rather than simply press one button to slash, you hold a shoulder button to ready the sword and use an analog stick to swing it in the direction you wish to slice. It didn’t necessarily slow down the strikes, but it does require a bit more attention in facing enemies to place ideal strikes rather than mindlessly hacking and slashing.

Humor Me…

I couldn’t help noticing an experience pickup waiting in a basketball net for Bryce to tear his head off and make a throw. Nice touch.

End Scene…

As I wrapped up these observations, a large monster crashed into the room and put my weapons training to the test – rest assured I emerged victorious to trigger more banter between Bryce and Arcadia. The bulk of that battle involved slicing repeatedly, putting myself back together and then slicing some more until the creature collapsed.

In an interview with Jesse McGibney, Co-founder of the developer, Alien Trap, he says Capsized will be available on Xbox LIVE Arcade by the end of December followed by an iPad version.

Alien Trap is a two-man Game Developer consisting solely of McGibney, the Illustrator and Lee Vermeulen, the programmer. Sound design has been handled by freelancers for their games so far.

Apotheon Concept Art

“Capsized started as a school project,” says McGibney. When he was a fourth-year Illustration student at Sheridan College in Oakville he was contacted by Vermeulen, who was then a Computer Science student at the University of Saskatchewan, about making a videogame as a school project. McGibney had an interest in game design so he agreed to help.

“After we graduated we kept working on [Capsized],” says McGibney. The two decided to quit their jobs and start working on it full-time, and Alien Trap was formed.

Alien Trap’s new project is called Apotheon, an Action RPG set in ancient Greece. McGibney says they have been working on it “for the past 4-5 months.”

“You are a dead hero who’s gone to Hades,” explains McGbney. “It’s an alternate telling of Greek myth.”

Like Capsized, it is a side-scrolling adventure but this time will feature more role-playing elements such as equipping new armour and weapons and a more open world. However McGibney says “it won’t be a heavy RPG” and points out that the player “won’t level up.”

Apotheon Concept Art

“I think a lot of people were expecting Capsized to be more open,” explains McGibney. Apotheon will feature a more free-roaming level design, akin to games like Castlevania Symphony of the Night.

“The big difference [between Capsized and Apotheon] is it’s a big art style change,” says McGibney. While Capsized had a more vibrant visual style with dense jungle environment, Apotheon will have a simplified style to look like ancient Greek pottery paintings.

“Everything is very iconic and symbolic,” says McGibney.

Another new gameplay element not present in Capsized is that Apotheon will feature several multiplayer modes like death-match and team-based gameplay.

“We’re working on [the multiplayer] first because it’s a much easier environment to work on [gameplay] mechanics,” says McGibney. Apotheon will feature a full single-player mode as well once the game is complete.

Apotheon has no set release date yet but Alien Trap hopes to have something playable to show in the coming months.

“We should have some stuff pop up in [trade]shows [soon],” says McGibney.

[You can pay Alien Trap a visit at their website here.]

Operation Kingfish is something of a success story; after many mistook Find Makarov for a part of Activision’s MW3 marketing campaign, the publisher hunted down the men and women behind it—but not to shut them down. Instead, they wanted to put the team to work crafting a sequel.

It turns out members of The Junction VFX, the visual effects team behind the films (based right here in Toronto, no less), were on the plane to LA with me—though they couldn’t say as much at that time. In fact, the actor portraying Soap was right across the aisle from my seat. Side note: he is large.

After the short screened, I met up with them again, and the group gave me a sense of the work that went into making this project a reality, on what was roughly a two month schedule.

Virtually every shot in the six-and-a-half minute film is a visual effects shot, from backgrounds right down to the spent shell casings flying through the air—and the fruits of The Junction’s labor is easy to spot.

Operation Kingfish is characterized by an impressive level of fidelity capturing the visual style and atmosphere of the Modern Warfare games, with the iconic AC-130 seemingly ripped directly from the games, alongside stealth moments, tactical entries, and even a large scale battle that does the series proud.

With shorts like these becoming an increasingly common component in the videogame marketing scene, and Activision’s Elite subscription service including exclusive video content in the form of Elite TV, one wonders if the team behind Operation Kingfish will have further opportunities to work with the franchise.

I was teamed up with a girl who hadn’t yet played Survival herself, and she asked me if it was akin to zombie mode from Treyarch’s parallel series. I hadn’t though of it that way, but the comparison is apt; Survival is the Modern Warfare stab at the now ubiquitous horde mode concept, much like zombie mode was for Treyarch.

The difference, of course, is that Modern Warfare puts a slightly more in-universe spin on things—and a little more traditional, too. Treyarch’s zombie maps have been increasingly experimental, putting bizarre twists on Call of Duty gameplay—but Survival takes a different approach, instead packaging the standard COD trappings in a reasonably straightforward Battle Royale, though that’s not to say there are no new ideas.

As is horde standard, waves of enemies descend on players who must fend them off co-operatively. Survival can take place on any of the sixteen on-disc multiplayer maps, and unlike zombie mode, there’s nowhere safe to hide and no way to turn back the approaching army—besides the liberal application of weapons fire, that is.

Enemies come in a number of varieties; I encountered run of the mill soldiers, suicide bombers, dogs, suicide dogs, helicopters and heavily armored juggernauts, all looking to ruin my day in grand videogame tradition.

Players start with little but pistols and grenades—but as waves progress, stations activate from which guns, ammo, explosives, strike packages, and other upgrades can be purchased, using points earned from smacking down enemies.

Interestingly, it’s even possible to call down squads of AI soldiers to help break the enemy advance, or care packages offering some of the perks found in the multiplayer component.

With only two players, however, Survival is a different animal from comparable horde game types: it’s a, uh, harder animal. It didn’t take many waves for myself and my teammate to be overwhelmed by exploding dog bombs and juggernauts, kicking us right back down to wave number one. The upgrades become critical almost immediately, as exponentially increasing difficulty demands player re-equip regularly.

While I didn’t spend much time with the game, Spec Ops felt like a reasonably exciting means to be defeated endlessly within Call of Duty—only by AI instead of thirteen year-old kids with aimbots.

Still, where zombie mode was very much the opposite of what one might have expected from Call of Duty, Spec Ops Survival is more or less exactly what one might expect—whether that’s to its credit will be for gamers to decide this November.

I wondered what niche XP filled, what need it answered.

Or, to put it another way: a lot of people watch Survivor, just like a lot of people watch Star Trek—but you can’t really have a Survivor convention the way you can have a Star Trek convention—it can’t be leveraged that way, and it doesn’t need to be. I thought Call of Duty the same.

Turns out I was wrong.

The show opened with a video package showcasing the lifeblood of Call of Duty—a montage of the bombastic set pieces that are a hallmark of the series. Explosions, ziplines, breaking glass, throwing knives and pounding music; the enthusiasm of the audience became a pulse that was impossible not to feel.

Adherence to Call of Duty feels very different from the reverence for a series like Halo—the hardest of the hardcore are invested in the lore of Halo; they’re talking about Spartans and Shield Worlds and the deep, foundational mythology of that universe—but the conversations I’ve heard from Call of Duty fans this weekend have been a little different, as is the way Activision presents the product.

Perks, maps, killstreaks—that’s the dialogue of COD.

Nobody is talking about what Soap McTavish is going to do next—the conversation is always about mechanics, about balance, about attachments and game modes and progression systems, and all those little COD-isms.

The franchise has become, for its disciples, pure game. There’s nothing to talk about but game, and it’s an interesting condition—almost the stark opposite of the way some other franchises have made their name with engrossing lore and world-building.

COD XP is a direct expression of this condition, with almost every attraction an attempt to pull those gameplay moments into the real world, to make the game tangible.

Out in the open, with patrons lined in a forty-minute wait, stands Burgertown—a nigh-perfect recreation of the besieged MW2 restaurant, and the closest thing to lore Activision chose to leverage. And that recreation advertised to me that Activision understand that the attachment their fans have to the series lies elsewhere.

It’s the investment in the visceral that makes Call of Duty, and that’s what XP is about. You go to ride the zipline, to strap on Juggernaut armor, and to run the Pit. You go to drag those small, self-contained elements of gamplay into sharp, physical dimension.

I played paintball on an MW2 multiplayer map brought to life, and I ran a replica of the Pit from that same title—and I understood that Activision had achieved something unique. I’ll never ride a bomb through space like the Master Chief, but I was able to run that pit, drop twenty eight targets in twenty eight seconds, and I’ll never forget that. They took a part of that series—one of my favorite parts of Modern Warfare, truth be told—and made it real, burned it into my brain for all time.

In a lot of ways, Call of Duty isn’t a franchise built for me—it doesn’t have the mythology and the material that I crave. XP, though, was an eye-opening experience, illuminating the reason I and a million other players keep coming back year after year.

When the event opened, Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg talked about Call of Duty being the ultimate fan event for the ultimate fans—and I didn’t really grasp that offering until I was running and gunning my way through the pit. I may not be the ultimate Call of Duty fan, but what XP does is done so well, so tangibly, that even the casual fan is going to walk away thinking “Fuck yeah, Call of Duty!”

After being briefly lost in the shuffle as hundreds of Xbox’s were claimed by other raging nerd-journos, I eventually got my hands on the game—and found an equal share of the expected and unexpected.

Call of Duty has made its mark by endlessly refining a very particular product; succeeding in the science of visceral, fast-paced close-quarter combat, in a shooter where shooting is even more integral than the name implies.

At XP, the developers reaffirmed their belief in the “niche” of Call of Duty (insofar as a game like Call of Duty can have a niche), but at the same time, described a desire to refocus and refresh some of the core gameplay tenets.

This, ultimately, is about balance. COD has become the territory of super-pros, endlessly hammering you with shotguns and noobtubes and other exciting assault strategies. What MW3 brings to the table is some careful rebalancing; for instance, several extremely popular perks from MW2—most notably the preposterous Commando perk that superpowers the knife lunge—have been axed.

More interestingly, the kill-streak system has been completely redesigned in an effort to balance the game for new and hardcore players alike—and, in an interesting twist for a COD game, there’s even emphasis on a support role.

The new system eschews kill-streaks in the traditional sense; instead, there are point streaks, where completing objectives (such as capturing a flag) will contribute to the player’s streak (in addition to killing). Additionally, streaks are now divided into three separate loadouts, called strike packages.

Players choose a strike package, and then choose a selection of streak rewards inside that package—but that’s not all. What makes this unique is that each package has unique properties. There’s the assault pack, which functions like a more traditional streak and includes offense-oriented rewards—but then there’s the support package, in which streaks do not reset upon death, so that the player can rack up rewards more easily.

The trade off is that the support pack has rewards geared toward enhancing team play rather than increasing personal score. This won’t make it the go-to pack for people who love their air assaults, but if you’ve ever thought that your team wasn’t using enough UAVs, this is for you.

Perhaps most interesting of all, is the specialist package—which doesn’t offer streak rewards in the traditional sense at all. Instead, the player will be rewarded with additional perks for their kills—so if you keep running out of ammo after your forth kill, you can set it so scavenger will activate on a four kill streak, thus allowing you to restock.

The strike package system looks to dramatically shift the balance of power in Call of Duty, giving some of the edge back to the player who isn’t rocking an 8-1 kill/death ratio.

Another new addition is weapon proficiency, which effectively functions as a progression and perk system for particular guns. In the build I played, I was able to select a particular perk for my weapon—for example, my choice of reduced kickback.

There are also new swappable optics—that is to say the dual-scope system previously seen in the campaign footage, allowing players to swap between long and short range sights on the fly.

The team describes MW3 as the most radically different COD multiplayer experience to date—and it’s hard to argue, though the scale for change in COD isn’t very wide. Make no mistake, this is no less Call of Duty, and the core gameplay remains the same as ever—but a renewed focus on balance is readily apparent. By and large, the game was immediately more comfortable and more rewarding to play, allowing me to focus less on K/D and more on completing objectives and supporting the team.

Activision went on to debut a new multiplayer mode, Kill Confirmed, whereby dog tags must be collected from fallen enemies in order to claim the point for that kill. Additionally, points can be denied if the opposing team collects the tags of one of their own members. This looks to be an effort to weed out nefarious campers, by forcing players to move out into the open to claim points for their kills.

Also detailed at the event was Elite, Activision’s new multiplayer platform. Most of this information is already known; Elite will provide a wealth of social and stat-tracking functions for everyone, as well as offering all yearly DLC and some premium items (such as exclusive video content, featuring such talent as Ridley Scott—yeah, that’s right—and Jason Bateman) to paid subscribers. The price is fifty dollars for a year’s subscription, which is ten dollars less than the cost of the four maps packs Activision will be putting out every year.

What I found most interesting about this were the implications about the fanbase. Consider: one of the advertised features of Elite is that, should he or she so choose, a player can access Elite from their iPod while on the train or at work, watch training videos, analyze heat maps, and then customize a new loadout that will be waiting for them when they get home.

Activision is making Elite the Facebook of videogames (incidentally, it will support Facebook integration)—and like Facebook, the experience sounds almost religious when described by someone truly invested in it. Elite aims to make Call of Duty omnipresent, reflecting its ever-expanding place in the market.

Check back later for more from the event, assuming I don’t suffer some kind of exploded head from all the Call of Duty being thrown at me.

The chance to step into Bryce’s immortal shoes recently lent a few more insights into how that ambition and collaboration with Rebellion is playing out, so let’s finally chew on matters of life, death, and Bryce’s unfortunate position between those two points.

A failed attempt to slay the Demon King has left Bryce cursed with immortality, which might not be so bad if he didn’t look like a man who’d been kicking around for hundreds of years, and also didn’t have to continually reattach or respawn the limbs regularly being torn from his body. Despite the weathering years, Bryce doesn’t enjoy a retirement lifestyle – there’s an immediate urgency to continual movement in the game, else players will find themselves reduced to scattered body parts repeatedly.

There’s also an immediate and ridiculous pleasure in the ability to tear one’s own limbs off, and even find oneself reduced to a head, rolling around to perform furious head attacks before reclaiming limbs or gaining time to regrow Bryce’s entire body anew – pressing down on the analog button to do so came in handy given the frequency by which I lost track of limbs along the way. Frantic attack strategies are the order of the day for the undead protagonist, who can catch fire to set enemies ablaze while unloading generous portions of ammunition.

Bryce wields a machine-gun and a pistol, with an absurd amount of bullets littering the environment, ensuring that players take a moment to appreciate just how much destruction can be unleashed at times. Dismembered bullet-spraying is a particularly humorous treat, achieved when Bryce’s head connects to an arm and the player can spin around in all directions to cover every angle with lead in the most ludicrous fashion imaginable.

There’s a loose play to these two weapons, almost ensuring that ammunition will destroy every area along with the demons infesting them – but should the bullet ballet ever grow tiring, players can also reach for Bryce’s sword as a secondary option. Swordplay introduces a control scheme that is certainly interesting, but could also prove problematic for some. To use the sword, players can lock onto a target (pressing L1 on a PS3 controller) and then swing the sword using the opposing analog stick. There’s an initial space for confusion there, toggling the analog and not producing any concrete results. And while it wasn’t long before I found the groove for slicing enemies like watermelons, it’s easy to see how a certain frustration could spawn there – particularly considering enemies that require being dispatched via sword dismemberment.

It’s by no means a deal breaker, and eventually lends a certain level of tactile pleasure, but it’s hard to think that design choice won’t turn some players off.

Enemy designs might follow suit in that regard, with many of the initial demons infesting my time with the game lacking a certain level of care and identity to match the otherwise unique quirks of NeverDead’s ambitions – a few looked like extras from Silent Hill titles, perhaps lifted from the cutting-room floor to see their fleshy inside-out skins shine in a new environment.

Bryce’s immortality is only challenged when he finds himself reduced to a rolling head, at which point he can be swallowed by demons. Naturally this raises the question of player motivation and mortality, which is unsurprisingly answered in the form of Bryce’s female partner, Arcadia. Her mortality keeps the player in-check, requiring them to never entirely lose sight of her, least she be felled by demons while the player is rolling Bryce’s head around ad nauseum. Thankfully, an icon will appear when she does fall victim to enemies, slowly filling with blood to signify the speed by which player’s need to reach and rescue her.

Looking over my measured appraisal so-far, I feel inclined to add that NeverDead remains high on my release radar this year – third-person action games that break the established molds even slightly are hard to come by, and few of those allow your entire body to be torn apart without showing technical glitches for the stress, which so far remain thankfully absent within NeverDead.

There’s something entirely special about the game. But gritty diamond in the rough that it is, I don’t suffer any delusions about everyone agreeing with me on that front. I will however persist in suggesting that everyone should spend at least a few minutes experiencing the dismemberment based shenanigans for themselves.