Call of Duty: Black Ops – First Strike DLC

Due out the beginning of next month is Call of Duty: Black Ops’ first DLC Map Pack titled First Strike. The pack contains four new multiplayer maps and a zombie map for 1200 MS Points ($20 AUD).

“We’re committed to supporting Call of Duty: Black Ops fans with continuous updates to the game and exciting new content that will keep our community engaged” – Mark Lamia, Treyarch Studios

The four standard maps that ship with the DLC will focus on adding a unique element to each map, with Zip-Lines, Collapsing Bridges and Auto-Turrets all featuring in the new maps.

First Strike will be available on the 1st of February for Xbox 360 users, whilst PlayStation 3 and PC users will have to wait just that little bit longer.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops – $1 Billion in Revenue

Last week Activision announced that the Treyarch produced hit shooter “Call of Duty: Black Ops” had hit the $1 Billion dollar revenue milestone in less than 2 months, totaling more than 600 million hours played since its November 9 release.

In the first 24 hours of release it had sold 5.6 million copies earning around $360 million in sales, and within its first week it had reached $650 million – $100 million more than Modern Warfare 2′s profits a year ago.

According to Activision the only other producer to break this milestone so quickly in all other forms of entertainment was James Cameron’s film Avatar.

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Black Ops will have dedicated servers

Lamia revealed his thoughts on dedicated servers with the following comments in a recent interview:

“I think dedicated servers are excellent. I don’t see any reason not to see them unless … well, I just don’t see any reason not to…”

“We do work very hard to reconcile the desire to manipulate and modify those dedicated servers with offering them the persistent experience and benefits that the console system provides … so people can run dedicated servers and also participate in the communal experience the console players get to have, given they’re all on first-party servers.”

So PC gamers rejoice, as long as Treyarch don’t bugger up the game, then it sounds like Black Ops could be a new worthy multiplayer game to get stuck into.  The game is due out in November, and will have stiff competition from the new modern day Medal of Honor game being released in October, with no word on whether the Battlefield series will see another outing later in the year as well (BF3 maybe?).

Via:  Joystiq

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Black Ops to include flyable planes, co-op play

The details you can see in the trailer that you can grab as Freezone here don’t give away a lot about the gameplay and what will be included.  But it does show vehicles apparently being flown, which has been confirmed in other reports now that they will indeed be flyable (rather than AI/cut-scene controlled).

Another interesting addition to the game for multiplayer, and something that is probably more console orientated, is the inclusion of co-op gameplay through the single-player campaign.  The co-op will allow 2-4 players to play together to complete the missions, but there aren’t any details on how the difficulty and/or AI will scale with more players as yet.

The game which is being set in the Vietnam war era will have you playing through missions in Vietnam, Cuba and Russia.  So expect to see jungle, tropical environments and snow featuring no doubt.

Via:  Kotaku

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Call of Duty 7, aka Black Ops

At the moment details are thin on the ground, with the only hint as to what the gameplay is all about being the teaser trailer that was released late last week that you can grab here.  Most rumours pointed to the game being set in the Vietnam War period, which would be somewhat of a relief from World War II that Call of Duty seemed to get stuck on for quite a few games (there really is only so many WWII based games you can play).

As to whether we’ll see a dedicated servers or not for multiplayer  is yet to be seen and is something that PC gamers will be eager to find out.  Treyarch did at least goto the trouble of doing it for World at War, but then again Infinity Ward might have set the precedent now with their last contribution to the series – Modern Warfare 2 – that lacked dedicated servers.

Via:  Shacknews

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Activision seeking another Call of Duty developer

The franchise started off with Infinity Ward, with development house Treyarch brought in to produce alternate releases of games within the franchise.  The latest game in the series, Modern Warfare 2 (aka Call of Duty 6) was developed by Infinity Ward, with the last game being Call of Duty 5: World At War being developed by Treyarch.

The general consensus from most gamers is that they have preferred the Infinity Ward developed releases over the Treyarch ones, but if Activision brings in a third development house to work on a title from the franchise, it could be interesting to see where this goes.

As always I’m a skeptic, and I think its probably more an effort by Activision to try and milk the Call of Duty franchise harder than anything else.  Be interesting nonetheless to see what eventuates.

Via:  Shacknews

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