New events and screens for Karma Online: Prisoners of the Dead

Online FPS Karma Online: Prisoners of the Dead will feature three new events to entertain current players and maybe entice a few more, with the first being an ‘Axis vs Allies War’ which runs from August 30th to September 14th. If you’re in a clan, then you follow the choice of your clan master, but if not you can choose your allegiance, and there are prizes up for grabs in the shape of 5,000 Silk, +500000KP and a Turkish Dagger going to each member of the top clan of the winning camp, with silver and bronze prizes also available.

‘Clan Match’ also runs over the same period of time with the top three clans receiving prizes. The top spot gets 1st Place Clan Mark for 30 days, the Berreta M92FS for 7 days and Quick Respawn for 7 days. Winners for both the ‘Allied vs Axis War’ and ‘Clan Match’ will be announced on September 15th with the prizes awarded on September 20th.

And finally there’s a new ‘Happy Hour’ which rewards players with +50%KP and +50%EXP if you connect and play during the set Joymax Standard Time Happy Hours (GMT+9). The times are 12-3AM, 5-8AM and 6-9PM (stretching the definition of an hour slightly, but there you go!)

If you haven’t taken a look at Karma Online: Prisoners of the Dead, it’s an online WW2 FPS which sees you not only fighting enemy soldiers, but also undead zombies in your attempts to secure victory, and there are local language versions available in English, German, Spanish and Turkish.

Bodycount Official Launch Trailer

Call of Duty XP nears launch

As the end of August falls upon us all, the new gaming date for all FPS fans’ calendar edges nearer. There is no denying that on Friday, Los Angeles will be buzzing with avid Call of Duty gamers who are eagerly awaiting the opening to the first (probably of many) Call of Duty XP event. Or do they want to pick up an early copy of the soon to be released Modern Warfare 3 title? Hmmm…

With this year set to be another blockbusting year for the hugely successful first person shooter, such an event should have been expected. This brand name has been more successful than god knows how many Hollywood smash hits, further expressing to all that video gaming is an entertainment medium not to be messed with, no matter how some games may be perceived.

Therefore, making an appearance at the first Call of Duty fan experience event, and undoubtedly the star of the show, will be… Kanye West!!… OK OK… I meant Modern Warfare 3. But all you Kanye fans can rejoice as he will be there to sign off the two day event. However, the presence of MW3 will definitely bump attendance as fans of the franchise will be amongst the first ever to play the game and partake in multiplayer challenges. Not only that, ticketholders will get a taster of the ever impressive Survival mode, or relive their past delights with both Modern Warfare 1 and 2, Black Ops and World at War.

But that’s just the start…

Attendees will have the opportunity to get down to some Live Action Experiences on one of Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer maps, The Scrapyard. Yes, I’m not joking. The multiplayer map has become a paintballing reality at CoD XP as teams go to battle it out on the life-like aeroplane graveyard. Oh, and that’s not forgetting another replica with the Pit training sequence.

As mentioned before, Modern Warfare 3 is guaranteed to be the star of the show. So it’s easy to understand that MW3 will be the basis of the main event tournament presented by Xbox 360. Here, 32 four man teams will battle it out in single-elimination competitions with the ultimate goal of winning the $1 million in cash and prizes… And bragging rights as the King of MW3 pre-release.

I guess it’d be wrong to not mention Kanye West, who’ll be making his first public performance since releasing his latest album “Watch the Throne,” as he signs off CoD XP on the second day. The opening night will end with a performance by Dropkick Murphys.

Are any of you guys (and gals) registered for the tournament? No? You’ll be jetting off to LA with hotel accommodation paid for. Interested now? Register up here as there are a few slots left. Not going? Well you don’t have to miss a thing. Jump on over to your Call of Duty Profile and watch the event Live.

Activision’s Call of Duty XP is a two day event kicking off on the 2nd September 2011, ending on the 3rd, from 10am to 10pm. It’s to be held at Playa Vista in California, the heart of LA.

Portal: No Escape (Live action fan video)

Rezurrection arrives for Call of Duty Black Ops

The fourth and final downloadable content for Call of Duty Black Ops, Rezurrection, is now available for the Xbox 360, expanding the amount of zombie-based mayhem you can enjoy.

Included in Rezurrection are the new Moon level, and remakes of ‘Nacht der Untoten’, ‘Verruckt’, ‘Shi No Numa’ and ‘Der Riese’. Plus you also get a free Zombies soundtrack with three new tracks (Avenged Sevenfold make another appearance with ‘Nightmare’) and a Moon theme. If you own the Hardened or Prestige edition of Black Ops, and you’ve downloaded the Classic Zombie pack, you can redownload to get the lot for free. For everyone else, it’s the usual 1200 MS points, and PC or PS3 owners will have to wait the usual delay of around a month before getting access.

In addition, to celebrate the map pack and the Call of Duty fan event, Call of Duty XP, there’s a double XP weekend from September 2nd until September 5th.

Black Ops Playlist Update removes perks and adds features

Coinciding with the release of the final Rezurrection Zombie Maps DLC, an update has been released for Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer, focusing mainly on a new Express playlist.

In Express, there is a 30 second lobby timer, and both the Ghost and Second Chance perks have been removed, presumably to speed things up, although we’d have probably stopped at removing Second Chance.

The Annihilation list has now been removed, and replaced by a DLC playlist featuring all the downloaded map packs, and the choice of DLC Moshpit orDLC  Hardcore game types.

And within Hardcore, Bombs and Flags have been removed and replaced with Headquarters and Capture the Flag playlists.

Not exactly a revolution in Black Ops multiplayer, but some variation is never a bad thing, and the express option could be appreciated by a number of people. The changes are live for Xbox 360, and are being rolled out on PS3 shortly.

Call of Duty Black Ops Rezurrection Zombies Preview

And after Modern Warfare 3 comes? Call of Duty Iron Wolf?

Given the annual releases in the Call of Duty series, it’s not surprising that developers might already be working on something to come after the release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 in November.

And there is a lot of speculation after a gamer with Treyarch developers on his Xbox Live friends list spotted a number of them playing something titled Iron Wolf on various untitled maps, and with the Modern Warfare 2 icon displaying on the achievements page etc.

The most popular theory is that following on from Black Ops, Treyarch might be developing the next Call of Duty game around Reznov, the Russian POW character who appeared to have died as Mason escaped. Part of this theory follows the nickname given to Reznov ‘The Wolf’, and partly due to the Nato codenames for each mission in Black Ops, which appear to spell out a message if used with the phonetic alphabet – dubbed the ‘Maverick Code’ after the first person to publicise finding it, the message appears to be: “Reznov is dead, or is he dead, there was no body, not what he says he is”.

So given that Infinity Ward are responsible for Modern Warfare 3, are we seeing Treyarch already play testing elements of their Black Ops follow-up? And do you think it might involve Mr Reznov? And why won’t Mason tell me the numbers?

 

Black Ops: The Quickest Prestige #3

So I decided to see how quickly I could prestige in Call of Duty : Black Ops, and although it started pretty well, I had one heck of a dip on my second evening. So could I get back on schedule to prestige in 24 hours of game time – effectively given my schedule, roughly once a week? That would mean I’d finally finish the 15th prestige by the start of October, in time to put down Call of Duty and pick up Battlefield 3.

So my third evening session racked up 10 games of Headquarters, in a little over 3 hours of actual gametime, but about 5 hours of sitting around in lobbies and waiting for matchmaking to work before kicking me out when the host quit.

So Game 22 of the series saw me at Level 20 – 2 levels behind the schedule I’d hoped to maintain until at least level 35 or 40. And by Game 31, a much better evening overall saw me at Level 28. So I despite playing much better overall, and getting some great kill counts, I still couldn’t get it back on track, showing how important it is to play well on the early levels when you’re trying to prestige – if you can play well with the M16 and the MP5, that helps immensely!

Not much in the way of insights – I now have access to Slight of Hand Pro, which is an essential perk in most cases, and pretty much Ghost Pro (Just wish the Strela was available earlier to knock down more enemy aircraft before level 30). After that, it’s the trio of Perk 3 choices – Ninja, Hacker and Marathon (which is probably not worth 15 Capture The Flag captures in terms of time spent for XP gained, sadly).

It’s also noticeable that the Famas and AK74u both seem to have been nerfed some what since the early days of the game – although I much, much prefer the Famas to the M16 due to the fact it allows me to be a little more innaccurate, it suffers hugely from ammo shortages, and making it less deadly has meant the balance is a little less than ideal – therefore I’m now switching everything over to the Galil – worse close up, but allowing me to take people down from a longer distance more effectively, and use a suppressor without turning an assault rifle into a waterpistol.

The one major change in the way I play has been to focus more on grenade kills by cooking them before throwing – it’s something I always knew I should practice, but given the fact you can have 3 or 4 players crowded around in a Headquarters, it’s an element which is now essential, even if I’ve come close to grenading myself on a few occasions with a misplaced throw.

Still I haven’t managed to fail in as epic a fashion as this yet:

So I’ve made it to Level 28 pretty quickly – that’s over halfway in about 12 hours or so of total gametime. But it gets harder from here on in to maintain that pace, meaning I either need to radically up my game, or hope that some of the Lifetime achievements pay out damn soon!

Black Ops: The Quickest Prestige: Update #2

When I decided to test the quickest ways to prestige in Black Ops, I knew I was tempting fate. And tonight has proven the point, as it’s been the worst night of gaming I’ve had in Call of Duty for a while. Some of it was just misfortune as I jumped into games with teams already losing my 180+ points and facing endless Hueys as my teammates ran headlong into bullets. And some of it was my own bad choices – ever had those nights where laying a Claymore is guaranteed to coincide with the enemy running around the corner?

Either way, I played 14 games, and made just 7 levels, from 15 to 21. Frustratingly I ended up taking 3 matches to clear levels 17 and 19 due to extreme suckiness, barely breaking even on Kill/Death ratios on the better games, and ending up with some heavy losses on the bad ones. Towards the end of the night, I was finally pulling back some +20 KD ratios, but it’s not looking good. Essentially to regain a decent rate of progress, I need to really nail the next 10 or so levels with at least one per match to account for the fact everything will slow down around level 45.

In terms of gametime, those 14 games (Including the part games I jumped into and one or two which went back to lobby when the host quit), took me from a total of 8 days, 18 hours, 47 minutes and 22seconds at Level 13, to 8 days, 21 hours, 22 minutes and 43 seconds at level 21. so that’s 8 levels in less than 3 hours of actual game time.

All I can hope is that I jump into some lobbies with friends, rather than players who gift the enemy 20+ kills and a Huey or Attack Dogs and then quit out on me.

Next Page »