While Black Ops 2 is tearing it up on retail since its release, some people might have forgotten that there's another Call of Duty game released on November 13.
If the headline wasn't a dead giveaway, I'm, of course, talking about Black Ops: Declassified for the PlayStation Vita. While the game itself was revealed by Sony at E3, it pretty much dropped off the radar since then. Now, that it's out, it seems there's a reason for the lack of media coverage. In a word, it's not good. As of this writing, Black Ops: Declassified is sitting at an abysmal 29 on Metacritic. For the industry that normally uses the "7-10" scale in grading games, then this must mean the game is really, really awful.
Well, if internet videogame sleuth Superannuation is to be believed, Nihilistic Software, developers behind Resistance: Burning Skies for the PS Vita and Declassified, only had four to five months to develop the game.
In a pair of tweets, Superannuation mentioned the following:
If my math is correct, CoD Vita had like a four-five month development cycle.
They didn't really start development until around when Resistance shipped and wrapped up early last month. So May to October.
If this is indeed true, then Sony and Activision pretty much knew that the game was not going to be good at all. While Activision can survive having one of its Call of Duty spinoffs to be less than mediocre, I can't say the same for Sony and its fledgling platform.
Are you one of the unfortunate souls who bought Black Ops: Declassified? How is it? If this rumor turns out to be legit, who do you blame for all this? Is it Activision's fault for lending the Call of Duty name or is it Sony for trying to cash in?
