Call Of Duty: Black Ops

Call Of Duty: Black Ops Confirmed New Details

Several gaming sites have posted their impressions of Call of Duty Black Ops. With dozens of different articles and interviews we decided to post a summary of all the new information, although some bits have been confirmed before. Check out the list below:

 

Singleplayer

 

* Vietnam is just a small part of the story. The games story is set across a large period of time.

* Some of the singleplayer maps are based on multiplayer maps, which is usually the other way around.

* In some missions you have the option to move in stealthily or go in guns blazing.

* The enemy AI is smarter. They will now try to dodge if you aim at them.

 

Multiplayer

 

* Multiplayer has been in development from day one.

* Lean is back!

* Vehicles will be returning.

* Create-A-Class 2.0 includes deep customization and new features.

* The game will include a “barebones” game mode.

1. As the name implies, there won’t be any perks or killstreaks, just old school gameplay.

* Many familiar weapons will be making a return, including the AK-47.

* The region filter is back.

* Improved matchmaking and server browser.

* Modern Warfare 2’s host migration will be included.

* Auto-Aim can be turned on/off.

* PC gamers will be able to enjoy the comfort and luxury of dedicated servers.

* The PC version will have an anti-cheat software, but it’s unknown if it’s Punkbuster.

* There will be support for the competitive community, which will include great tools.

* The team focusing on the multiplayer aspect of the game is twice the size (World at War).

 

Co-op Mode

 

* There will be 2-4 player co-op.

* Supports 2 player offline split-screen.

* It won’t be based on the singleplayer campaign.

* Zombies might be making a return from World at War.

 

Miscellaneous

 

* The game engine is a heavily modified version of the IW engine which was used in World at War.

* The game runs at 60 FPS!

* Physics destruction is going to be limited, so no Battlefield Bad Company 2 style “blow holes in the walls” gameplay.

* The PC version will look better than the console versions (duh).

* There are over 200 people working on Black Ops!

CoD: Black Ops: 'Wii version will blow you away'

Treyarch are promising to blow Wii owners away with a version of Call Of Duty: Black Ops that's similar to the 360, PS3 and PC versions.

 

Treyarch were behind the rather rough-looking Modern Warfare Wii port last year but, according to the company's Studio Head Mark Lamia, players won't believe that Black Ops is running on Wii.

 

"We do everything we can to make the two as similar as possible," Lamia told ONM.

 

"Whereas we're able to create the same assets that can be displayed on the PS3, PC and the 360, we actually have to do quite a bit of work both on the technology and the assets and the investment is heavy to get it working on the Wii but we're committed to it as we were with World At War and Call Of Duty 3 which was a Wii launch game.

 

"What we want to be able to do is create the most intense, the most cinematic 'you can't believe this is running on the Wii' situation that you could imagine. That's what people expect from Call Of Duty. They expect to be blown away. We're going to blow you away."

Call Of Duty: Black Ops: Single Player Campaign Revealed

It seems Treyarch have decided that they've pretty much exhausted the World War II genre of gaming. After milking the proverbial gaming cow for all it's worth in their previous title World at War; Black Ops will be set in the Cold War era and beyond, promising battles across the globe stretching from Vietnam to Russia. The Call of Duty games are renowned for their scripted, movie-like sequences and for Black Ops the CoD formula has not been altered in any way. Treyarch have promised Black Ops to be very character-driven, and will be the first Call of Duty game to have the protagonist actually speaking from a first-person perspective.

 

Black Ops witnesses the evolution of the Special Forces, and players can expect to experience various covert, secret operations spanning decades apart, with unconventional weaponry - including a scoped crossbow for players to use. The fact that Black Ops spans so much time has me worried, I'm worried because the Single Player campaign will have to be easy to follow and not convoluted and with so much skipping forward and backward it could end up being a Lost-esque affair with the characters jumping through time. Treyarch will find it difficult to hold the average gamers' attention if this is the case, and I hope it does not fall prey to several gaps in the storyline as they jump from the war in Vietnam to, say, a covert op in Russia. Only time will tell.

 

The game was recently shown to a variety of gaming journalists from the big gaming magazines. One of the levels has you manning a SR-71 high altitude reconnaissance craft. It echoes of the AC-130 missions as you look through a grainy, black and white screen at the figures down below. Another sequence shown was the player working their way down a mountainside (sound familiar?) towards a military base in a canyon of ice and rock. It looks to be an exciting affair, as you're given the aforementioned scoped crossbow, you can approach the military base two ways. You can either pick them off stealthily or go for all out explosions with explosive tipped crossbows. I'm looking forward to how this particular part plays. It could go very well, but similarly it could just feel same-y and feel too familiar.

 

The second sequence shown takes part in Hue City, Vietnam. As you rappel from a helicopter, it gets a direct hit and you find yourself landing in a nearby office building. What follows is a precisely scripted sequence as you make your way through the burning building, with plenty of visceral, grisly encounters, locals fleeing for their lives, people dieing all around you. As you go through, enemies immediately poke out from corners and try to attack you. It all seems really exciting, and very much scripted, as we've come to expect from this genre. You are given a shotgun which fires napalm-type charges, and can take out groups of enemies in a single hit - that sounds absolutely bad-ass to me. Another note to add is they have kept in the particularly bloody, icky parts from World at War, which in my opinion is a plus, as it conveys the seriousness of war rather than making it arcade-like.

 

I really like how they are giving the guns elemental tweaks and hope they can include electric shock type bullets as well. This writer would be brimming with anticipation if you could use this type of elemental shotgun in the multiplayer. Ah, multiplayer, that is one thing which is yet to be shown, but let's hope it's as fast paced and brilliantly made as Modern Warfare's multiplayer was. Ever since Call Of Duty 4, it has not been beaten, and I hope CoD: BO can surpass it. One thing I will credit Treyarch of doing well is creating vast, sprawling maps for vehicular use as well as running around in. If they could just add more vehicles, like in BFBC2, they could be onto a winning formula. According to the Call of Duty wiki, they have left out Commando.