Did you know that Activision officially announced Call of Duty: Ghosts yesterday? “Boo!”, they said, brandishing a name we’ve already heard and a release date they’ve favoured with only minor deviations since the entire series began. I’m sorry to say that we clean forgot to be surprised and amazed.
Here’s a thing, though. Sledgehammer Games, last seen assisting on Modern Warfare 3, won’t be stepping in for second-studio duties on Infinity Ward’s new “sub-brand”. Instead, they’re developing a CoD FPS entirely separate from Ghosts.
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Activision have been teasing the existence of the next Call of Duty for the past month and such tweaks and tugs continue in the absence of a full announcement. Today’s twist of the proverbial excitement nipple comes in the form of a Facebook profile pic photo montage: taking over Call of Duty's official site, you’re invited to throw your face in with the others and further define the ghostly skull images that is gradually emerging from the background.
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Mob of the Dead is one of five maps found in Black Ops 2’s imminent Uprising map pack, but I can’t imagine any of the others are nearly so star-splattered as this. Welcome to Alcatraz, where you’ll be recast as the spitting image of one of four Hollywood gangsters: Ray Liotta, Joe Pantoliano, Chazz Palmentiri, or Michael Madsen.
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Activision’s cheekily irresponsible live-action shorts have returned for Black Ops 2’s latest map pack, Uprising. If you somehow missed the TV spots last time, you’ll grasp the gist soon enough: stone-cold chiller The Replacer is employed to keep the domestic wheels of Call of Duty players’ lives turning while they work on their K/D ratio, and this time has brought a friend. Laugh as the pair carry out the jobs Activision have determined are held down by the median Call of Duty player. Tee hee! Chortle as the Replacers humour the love interests of their invariably heterosexual absentee boyfriends. Ho ho!
But more importantly, play close attention to the new map footage buried around the trailer’s midpoint, and check out Treyarch’s Behind the Scenes look at Alcatraz-set Zombies map Mob of the Dead.
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Black Ops 2: Uprising is yet to be the beneficiary of an official announcement, let alone a laggy PC release date. But we already know where its risings will emerge - either from the graves of a new Zombies level, or the throats of enthusiastic players across four PvP maps.
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Trawling website source code is the new bin-rummaging - the cleaner, warmer, and ethically sleep-better-at-nightier hallmark of contemporary sort-of-journalism. Call of Duty YouTube regular MrDarlekJD knows this, having had a root about in the organs of the official Black Ops 2 DLC page and come up trumps from the comfort of his own home. Black Ops 2 will continue its mystifying propensity for Bolshevik monitors with Uprising, he discovered, a map pack with a new Zombies level in tow.
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This weekend saw Cologne play host to the finals of the Electronic Sports League, which was also acting as the European qualifier for the Call of Duty Championship 2013. Epsilon emerged the winners of the contest, narrowly defeating Fariko.Dragons for first place.
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Treyarch have been working to improve CODcast, Black Ops 2’s in-game tool for shouting over the top of matches. In sparsely-populated matches, for instance, the CODcast control panel can now be made to show the overhead map in the player list, which should allow commentators a more holistic view of events. So that’s good. Most of the rest of this week’s patch is given over to fixing issues with the recent Revolution DLC. See what’s changed below.
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You know Tripwire, right? Killing Floor, Red Orchestra, shooty murder-death? They’re a studio founded by modders, build on the first-person shooters of the ‘90s. And they don’t like what Call of Duty has done in the last decade to change the expectations of their audience.
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Gosh, that’s a tabloid headline and a half, isn’t it? In a future Black Ops 2 update, Treyarch will introduce optional in-game ‘Micro Item’ purchases. Among the items will be calling cards, extra create-a-class slots and aesthetic weapon upgrades, including something called a ‘Bacon Personalisation Pack’.
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Infinity Ward have posted an image to their Facebook which suggests they may have got into bed with the Piston, a mini computer designed by Xi3, endorsed by Valve, and possibly to become one of the first Steam Boxes (I still lament that the Steam box is the name everyone opted for and not the Gabe Cube).
Speculation on what this all means is dramatically withheld till after the break.
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It seems unfeasible to imagine a Jason West whose name isn’t immediately followed by ‘and Vince Zampella’, but that’s the possibility we’re faced with this morning. Sources close to the pair’s new outfit, Respawn Entertainment, claim that West has left the company and that Zampella is now acting head of the studio.Read and Comment
Gosh, verbs are tricky, aren’t they? ‘Rises up’ was supposed to sound more Les Mis than stomach bug, but you can never be quite sure.
Anyway. Black Ops 2: Revolution is home to five new maps, including a zombie level which sees China interpreted as a “dilapidated and dangerous MC Escher painting”, and it’s out on PC today. As per tradition, Treyarch have deigned to offer us double weapon XP over the weekend in celebration.Read and Comment
According to a KGN interview with Randy Pitchford, Gearbox were approached by Activision to develop a new Call of Duty but they turned down the opportunity because Pitchford saw "no real challenge" in making "what is expected of a Call of Duty".
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What on earth did I miss? I took the liberty of having a Christmas, and in the meantime the definition of revolution seems to have deteriorated to the point of absurdity. In 2013, it seems revolution is spelled ‘map pack’.Read and Comment
Treyarch have revealed what new features came to stay during yesterday’s Black Ops 2 update, and which bugs were shown the door. I’d like you all to join me in extending a very warm welcome to a new FOV of 90, and in wishing a fond farewell to “horses falling through the world in Afghanistan”.Read and Comment
Pre-orderers of Black Ops 2 today logged into the game to find a new playlist: the ‘Chaos Moshpit’. Made up of “small maps with a variety of play modes”, the playlist is now the only place to play the Nuketown 2025 map for XP. It was hastily thrown together by developers Treyarch in response to fan uproar after Nuketown was briefly removed from rotation entirely. More on that below.
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Remember when Treyarch were Call of Duty’s second studio and Infinity Ward hadn’t been gutted from the inside? The former made a game called World at War, and it featured a new multiplayer mode. Named War. Well - now they’re working on bringing back something similar for contemporary mega-success Black Ops 2.Read and Comment
Oh, good grief. If you’re in the US and preloaded your copy of Black Ops 2 via Steam, you’ll likely be fragging away unaware of the farce other PC gamers have been subject to overnight. Those players - the same who’ve queued through the night to pick up a retail copy of the game - have reportedly thrust Black Ops 2’s second disc into their CD drives to find that it reads as something entirely different: EA’s Mass Effect 2.
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Here’s a question that might have popped into your head just now: How many livestreamers use unlicensed music? The answer: Practically all of them. Anybody who’s ever soundtracked the makings of a nice KDR with a slice of unplaceable dubstep. Those are the people who will be subject to at least a temporary ban from livestreaming under Black Ops 2’s Security and Enforcement Policy.Read and Comment
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