Black Ops: Escalation map pack revealed
Leaks are fun aren’t they?! Especially when it’s regarding a big hitting game like this one.
Well, it seems there may be some truth behind this leak which comes straight from an Australian retailer, nicely named GAME. With a slip of the tongue, a certain release date for the second map pack may have been mentioned along with it’s content.
It’s not been long since Call of Duty Black Ops had it’s first map pack content released, with that of First Strike. I mean, PC gamers have only had two weeks with it!! So one could throw out a question and ask why more maps are to be out so soon. Quite frankly, I don’t think I’ll ask. I have found, personally, the First Strike map pack a little… unfulfilling. Frustration levels reached a new high with a few of the maps.
Either way, there’s currently no confirmation from Activision regarding this leak, so the arrangement of the download may differ to what has been learnt today.
The second download map pack goes by the name Escalation and has the same map assignment as First Strike… In other words, four multiplayer maps going by the name Zoo, Hotel, Convoy and Stockpile; with a single zombie map adequately titled Survive. And at the moment, only the Xbox 360 version has been dated, with the release stated for the 3rd May.
As mentioned earlier though, this may not actually be the case because it’s not been confirmed. But lets all hope it is!! I want some new maps!!
Knowing that First Strike was 1200 Microsoft Points, would you be willing to spend another 1200 on Escalation?! Or have you given up on Black Ops altogether?! Leave you thoughts below.
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Black Ops: First Strike dated for PC
Today, Call of Duty Black Ops developers Treyarch, dated and priced the First Strike downloadable content for the PC iteration of the game.
On Friday, March 25th, the already released Xbox Live and PlayStation Network download will be available for PC gamers who want to extend their current multiplayer experience online. Four maps for your team deathmatch and capture the flags etc, and the awesome zombie map, Ascension.
To get our thoughts on the five new maps, check out our review here. Otherwise, if you knew you were going to get it, check out the offer on Steam at store.Steampowered.com, selling the download for £10.34, saving 10%.
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Baftas: Black Ops and Bad Company 2 win awards
On Wednesday 16th March, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (or Baftas for short) held their annual video games awards in London.
Activision’s Call of Duty Black Ops was one of two of the most nominated games, with the second being that of Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood.
Black Ops was nominated for half the available categories, but only managed to win GAME Award of 2010.
Battlefield Bad Company 2 was the winner of Use of Audio category.
With the overwhelming success of Treyarch’s approach to the outrightly awesome Modern Warfare titles by Infinty Ward, it’s surprising not to see more awards under Black Ops belt. Only having won an award based mostly on consumer thoughts and purchases, being that of the GAME award of 2010, isn’t something to complain about, but there were more engaging and polished games out there, like the overall best game winner Mass Effect 2.
Well, with the certainty that another Call of Duty title will be amongst us before the year end, maybe then can Activision reap the awards their beloved franchise most possibly deserves.
Let us know your thoughts below.
Black Ops: All time best seller
There is no denying that this was going to happen sooner or later with one of the Call of Duty titles. Black Ops however, has stolen the crown.
Although actual February sales figures are unknown, Black Ops became the best selling game of all time in U.S. history, having sold 13.7 millions copies since the game was released on November 9 last year.
The title had spent it’s entire top ten life at the top spot, which actually doesn’t seem that long since November’s release, would have been extended once the additional multiplayer maps, First Strike, was introduced. Not only that, Christmas was around the corner.
The previous top spot holder was Nintendo’s Wii Play, a title which launched back in 2006 with the console. This is a major feat, but also makes us wonder how many copies of Black Ops were sold in the rest of the world.
Not only this, it makes Activision’s next CoD game that ever more important if they are to top this. With Infinty Ward broken down since Modern Warfare 2, the next Modern Warfare instalment will be interesting. But it’ll be good to see some better competition with the likes of Duke Nukem and Battlefield 3 in the coming months. Lets see if they can do any better.
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You’ve not had to wait that long you PlayStation people, so you should now be fully complete with the release of 5 new maps.
Kowloon, Discovery, Berlin Wall and Stadium are the new, and fairly large multiplayer maps, with Ascension the also massive new zombies map.
With Black Ops being the PS3′s best selling title ever, this download should be picked up by all those hardcore CoD’er out there. For £11.49 from the PlayStation Network, and 1.4GB to download, you aren’t going to go wrong here, and it’s much needed extra life to a title many online gamers are getting frustrated with, so hopefully this will help ease the renowned CoD Rage.
Tell us what you think to the new maps below.
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Black Ops Demo available on Xbox 360 and PS3
Call of Duty: Black Ops has been available since 9th November. It’s sold and made millions. But that is not enough for Treyarch nor Activision.
Only today has Treyarch released a demo to further promote this mammoth of a game, on both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.
It’s only a single-player campaign mission, but one of the finest. You start off in the cockpit of a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Yeah, that most advanced, strategic reconnaissance and Mach 3+ world record holding fastest manned aircraft. Yeah, you kinda fly it. With use of the Blackbirds sensors, you assist ground commandos through low visibility conditions as they progress towards a Soviet base, dodging convoys and killing enemies as they go.
This is a demo worth getting if you are yet to experience the excellence of Black Ops single player outing. So, leave your thoughts and comments of the demo below if you’re contemplating the full game. Or even if you have it and love the choice of mission selected for this demo.
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Black Ops Zombie Mode – official soundtrack available…
You’re probably spending any cash you have on the First Strike DLC today if you’re an Xbox 360 owner, but while you’re investing in Call of Duty, you can always pick up the Black Ops Zombies soundtrack, no matter which gaming platform you prefer.
That’s right, the original Treyarch compositions which accompany your battles against the undead are now available to purchase in an official collection. It costs $11.99 for the complete collection, or $0.99 per tune, and is just the thing to relax with when you’re not able to be playing online.
Well, unless you go to Amazon, who obviously skipped that part of the press release, as it’s $7.99 for the album at the moment. Or Activision, when they uploaded it to iTunes for $9.99. It’s also available from other digital retailers, including Zune, although we couldn’t find it via a quick search just now…
CoD:Black Ops – now PC owners have theatre mode problems
The problems encountered by Playstation gamers looking to connect online in Call of Duty:Black Ops have long been known, but now it appears PC gamers are experiencing problems when attempting to connect to the Theatre Mode included in the game to view previous matches.
Numerous owners of the PC version of the game have been experiencing connection errors when trying to access the Treyarch server to view old game replays, and the problem has been acknowledge by Treyarch. Community Manager Josh Olin has confirmed that the PC team is looking into the problem.
A patch was released for the PC version of the game recently to fix various bugs and stability issues, and also included new private match server settings. The full change log is:
- MP Audio stuttering on certain systems.
- Playercards sometimes not showing properly.
- Added three Private Match Server Settings: Team Change, Team-Up Period, and Keep Balanced Teams.
- Added Alternate Color Scheme for accessibility: Settings / Multiplayer / Player Name Indicator.
- Changed Team-Up Period countdown interval to 10 seconds.
- Combat Training sessions are no longer counted in Server Browser Unranked tab.
- Friends on your team will now show as blue on your minimap.
- Prevention of various exploits.
- Objective markers localized for all languages.
- Various stability improvements
- Recognize new “invalid password” server response
Hopefully the theatre mode problem will be fixed shortly, and you’d imagine Treyarch are keen to allow PC gamers to continue sharing their best moments on video sharing sites such as Youtube – particularly with a new map pack about to arrive.
CoD: Black Ops – Double XP weekend to celebrate First Strike DLC
The eagerly-awaited First Strike Map Pack will be available to download on Xbox Live from tomorrow, February 1st, 2011, and to celebrate, both Xbox’s MajorNelson and Treyarch Community Manager Josh Olin have confirmed that February 4-6th will be a weekend of double experience points.
Due to a deal with Microsoft, the map pack will be available exclusively to Xbox gamers for a limited time, and it costs 1200 Microsoft Points. But the double experience weekend will run across all platforms, including the troubled Playstation 3 gamers who have suffered with online connectivity problems.
The maps included in the new map pack are Kowloon, which is recognisable from the single-player game, but now features multiplayer action with zipwires allowing quick movement. They also have the downside of leaving you vulnerable.
Discovery is a deserted Antartic research station featuring ice bridges which can be destroyed, whilst Berlin Wall is a larger map to give snipers more of a chance to rack up some kills, with auto-turrets also adding to the challenge. Finally Stadium takes place in an ice hockey arena, and should be suited to those preferring close quarts combat.
Included in the pack is the new Ascension map for zombie mode. And Xbox gamers will have already received a mandatory update which includes a new Store menu option, including an empty space for map packs, and the ability to buy both Call of Duty avatar items and dashboard screens from within the game. If you really want.
We’ll all be downloading the map pack as soon as possible and sharing out impressions, so check back tomorrow and Wednesday, and now’s a good time to register in the forum if you want to share some tips and find out what is working for us before the double XP weekend kicks off on Friday.
