In a matter of weeks, EA’s Battlefield 4 and Activision’s Call of Duty: Ghosts will represent their respective series in the usual fall battle for the attentions of first-person shooter fans. Predictably, the competition between the two games has recently been heating up. You could say it’s turned into a real… dogfight.
How did dogs get roped into this whole thing? Well. It all started when Call of Duty: Ghosts made an (accidental, many would say) name for itself earlier this year when its developers revealed Riley, better known as Call of Duty Dog.
Beloved by many members of the press and public alike, Call of Duty Dog went on to become something of an internet sensation. He’s even got his own Know Your Meme page. Why did this happen? Perhaps because a lot of us in the press are a bit exhausted by the overwhelming sameness of these annual military shooting games and latched onto a welcome bit of unintentional goofiness? Likely.
Anyway, Activision recently shared a new Call of Duty trailer that, for a few glorious seconds, featured Riley taking down a mother effing helicopter. It was… so awesome.
Just this week, Riley turned up in another trailer, this time facing down some wolves. Sic ’em, Riley!
Now here’s where it becomes a dog war. Not content to let CoD hog all the dog-glory, EA offered something of a response today, tossing a clip of a soldier brutally pummelling a German Shepard into their latest BF4 trailer:
Whoa! Escalation!
Here we have two war-game marketing campaigns, and two very different uses of dogs. Though to be fair, Call of Duty has included plenty of canine massacre in the past, and in addition to heroic Riley, Ghosts will almost surely have its share of brutal doggicide.
Still, it’s hard not to read EA’s most recent dog-attack as a direct shot at Call of Duty. OK, Ghosts, the ball’s in your court. Fetch the ball! Good boy!
Comments
39 responses to “Forget The Console War. This Is The Dog War.”
Dog gone it…
EA will get hounded for this one.
I can hear the CoD team MUTTering under their breath already.
Yo dawg.. i heard you like Chuloopa comments…
Fell free to downvote any and ALL of these terrible PAWns… er… punsLame yet funny…
Nah, I’ll throw you a bone.
These comments are making me feel a little husky…
Sit.
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war…
They’re just chasing each other’s tail now…..
They’re all bark and no bite
Surprised these games aren’t both XBone exclusives…
Woofenstein: The New Order will also be multiplatform.
War is a bitch
I don’t think I really want a dog punching game. Thanks all the same.
Is it just the the whole premise is just a little long in the tooth?
It’s a bit of a dog act.
How about ‘Whoa, how the f*** is this entertainment?’
Take doge. Such killings. Loyalty. Wow. Such best friend. Death to ennemees.
Lets see him try and take on Riley
I just punched a dog in GTA V last night. And no I didn’t like it. I immediately regretted it
What about pussy punching would this be acceptable?
I liked Battlefield 4, until I seen the guy punch a dog.
Wouldn’t the whole reaction to Riley probably dying, have shown devs that we actually LIKE our dogs, and want to keep them?
You know this was shown back in March and the guy who punches the dog is just a supporting character in a singleplayer cutscene?
http://www.doesthedogdie.com/
My eyes!
So where’s PETA (or the RSPCA) on this one?
Doing something useful instead I hope.
Didn’t we kill heaps of dogs in Call of Duty World at War? I seem to remember them having really lousy quicktime events or something. I know they were a multiplayer kill streak reward.
yep cod4:MW gave us the insta kill german sherpards if failed to melee at the right time
Yeah, because that’s what the market’s been crying out for, more games to beat the shit out of or kill dogs. Talk about pandering to the CoD crowd. Seriously, fuck this shit.
The game’s not about beating dogs, you’re taking Kotaku articles far too seriously.
I never take Kotaku seriously, I don’t want games to put me in a position of having to kill dogs and I don’t want to see dogs getting punched. What a completely unreasonable position I have.
Battlefield4 needs a trailer punching some realistic fish that were mentioned in the Ghosts dev diaries to reeally convince me this was deliberate.
I must be the only one that remembers the dog punching from the first BF4 trailer.
Guys, it’s not even a dog act, in the gameplay, the dog attacks him first, then he hits it.
Just waiting on the next one to feature Donkeys. Then we’ll have a game.
So they introduce women soldiers in this title, then include a lot of ass in the next? Well that escalated quickly.
Even the original Wolfenstien had dogs.
Firstly, we’ve already seen this – it was in the very first trailer for BF4 just from a different angle.
Secondly, the guy punching the dog is not your character so the player will not be doing the dog punching.
Thirdly, he is defending himself from the attack dogs that the Russians sent after him. Ever heard of that thing called CONTEXT?