COD:Black Ops
 

Release date in less than 2 weeks, any reviews yet? I played the hell out of MW2, I hope this is similar.

I would guess this is more similar to World at War then MW2, since TreyArch is doing it. I have no idea though. I just know I will be at Wal-Mart at midnight picking it up.

Any word on the co-op aspects to this game?

I loved, loved loved the spec-ops missions in MW2. They are great. They need to make more of those.

Left my 360 at the house when I moved out so my kids could have it.

Looking at some of the specials I have seen...I might be buying me a new one and this will be one of the games I get with it.

I'm getting a bit hard.

No more dumb camping with a 9 killstreak, spawning a pave low and then getting a nuke. Killstreak rewards now work like care packages perks do. It's just a kill.

I've played MW and MWII, but as Cringer pointed out, those are done by a different development team than this one correct? I've never tried any of the even year offerings (my understanding is that they alternate so the sequel to MWII will be the next one after this) so not sure whether to be excited for this one or not.

Take this as nothing more then my personal taste, as I am sure there are sales and online numbers to suggest most people feel the opposite. I like World at War (between the two MWs) more then MW2 when it came to online playing. I burned out on MW2 online by February/March and traded it in.

I actually liked the online play of the regular Modern Warfare more then the newer one. The kill streaks and drop shot and other stuff mentioned in the above video are a few reasons why. The graphics and actual gameplay mechanics of MW:2 are legit, just some of the "extras" were bullshit. Really liking how Black Ops is looking.

Actually had a chance to play this game the other day. We have a worker at the winery who moonlighted creating maps/skins for this game. Seemed like a lot of fun, but only played for a hour or so.

Anyone pick this up yet?

I picked it up at midnight, but had to work on a paper all night. I figure to get a lot of play in during the next several days.

PSN: waldorfsalad

I do play quite a bit, primarily after 1am, and during the early afternoon.

Is the "zombie" mode the only co-op mode?

Why is there no playable demo for this game?

Because everyone will buy it anyway.

They're coming off the highest single-day sales of any entertainment product in history with MW2. Pre-orders for Black Ops have been described as "significantly higher" than 2 and it's expected to break the existing record.

And you're wondering about a demo?

I was just curious. I haven't picked it up yet, and was going to try to hold out for a little while...figured a demo would help me to do that.

Hey, I don't blame you, wasn't kicking dirt on the idea. Was just trying to explain why they didn't do a demo. Truth is, they didn't have to.

No worries. Didn't think you were coming down hard on me or anything.

Picked it up at midnight, played from roughly 1am until 8 am. I hear the storyline and solo play is good, haven't tried it yet though. First night is for MP for me all the way, especially since I traded in MW2 back in March and haven't had any real MP play since with any other game.

I am enjoying online play a lot, my only real complaint so far is they may have taken the "unlockable" features a little too far by even having to unlock some of your stats. Otherwise I love how they have done that aspect of MP, you earn COD Points that you can then use on stuff to upgrade (perks, player card, weapon add-ons). No more having to get "xx" kills with a weapon to unlock the silencer, or red-dot sight, you just purchase it. Maps are nice, although they will never cut out the camping no matter how much they talk about trying to do that by design.

Played one Zombies game with guys, was kind of hard compared to the WaW version. It also looks like they have matchmaking for zombies too, though I didn't try it. Still, nice addition there if I am not wrong.

Played about 20 minutes this afternoon, which equals one TDM of actual MP & one FFA on training

Absolute 1st glance impressions:
-- plays "faster" in MP
-- graphics looked smoother, more fluid, never saw a single rendering moment
-- Didn't hear any audible sign of the quickscope b.s.
-- Dropshots were still in play apparently, saw that crap almost immediately
-- Felt like I was dying more easily than usual. Higher fire rate? More damage? Effectively less health? No f'n clue which of those, or what else, might have caused it.

Now I wonder how long until someone hacks it & screws it up just like MW2.

Saw a post by an English gaming website's twitter account that someone already found an endless care packages exploit. Not long until that spreads.

Played through the first couple of missions of the campaign. A little bit easy on Regular difficulty, but fun for what they were. I like the graphics improvements quite a bit.

For the PC, does this still have the same format MW2 did - meaning, no user servers only the company's?

PC has dedicates servers, but it has major performance issues right now so I'd hold off buying until they get a couple patches in.

I played a fair amount of MW2 online, but stayed away from message boards, etc..

so..

What is the quickscope bs? What are dropshots?

Quickscoping is a straight up exploit. Using a sniper rifle, you see an enemy & hold the aim button and pull the trigger then let go of the aim button when you fire. Basically you don't have to actually see them in the scope, there's a glitch where, before you see them displayed in the scope, the game has centered the shot on-target already. That's why you often hear the steady report of sniper rifles on a map that isn't sniper friendly, they're like a long range shotgun at that point. Treyarch made the official position on the technique very clear "Quickscoping is a cheap way to play. We're specifically going to gimp Quickscoping, sorry. Play straight-up!", and another post from the company described it as an exploit.

One forum gave a simple description of dropshots A drop shot is when you are engaged in a fire fight (usually in close quarters and at the start of the engagement.) You quickly fire and prone or, jump prone and fire. A very effective and simple trick.

The problem is that most dropshots aren't accomplished with skill but rather with modded controllers that make it a single button push combo move.

Gotcha on both.

This is where being naive is a good thing ;).

I've played exclusively multiplayer up to this point. I'm at Level 13. While I kinda like using the COD points to "buy" upgrades, I thought it was ridiculous that I had to spend the points to unlock my Player Stats. I was looking around for it, and finally think it is purchaseable at Level 10.

I'm enjoying the new maps. While I like the concept of Nuketown, it's a fricking campers paradise. Especially at the spawn points. Array is pretty interesting, in some ways similar to Estate from MW2. Once a team takes control of that central array, it can be tough for the other team to take. Especially if they aren't working together.

My son played a couple of Wager Matches. I haven't yet. He played "One in the Chamber". Basically it's a 6 player match where you only have one bullet. If you shoot & kill someone, I think you get another bullet. If you miss, you have to use your trusty blade. You each get three lives, and then you are out. The interesting thing is that you each pay a certain amount of COD points. And the top three split the points on a percentage basis (reminds me a lot of poker sit-n-gos). I'll spend some time with those wager matches in next couple of days.

At one point, it said over 2.2 million players on xbox live. And the cool thing is it shows a map and has areas highlighted where players are logged in from. US & Europe was very lit up. Parts of Australia. A small dot in southern part of Africa, and Japan as well. Very interesting to see that it truly is a world-wide game.

Haven't posted this yet but I am pretty sure of it now so I will. Treyarch sucks at working out proper matchmaking. In WaW is was pretty bad, MW2 (because it wasn't their game) was real good, and now Black Ops pretty much seems on the level of WaW. To many crap connection games, bad hosts.

edit: on PS3

Limited sample size for me, but so far it's seemed better on 360 than MW2 was, with the exception of FreeForAll mode which is still slow as molasses to find matches.

Small sample for me as well, but I'm having significantly better luck than I had with MW2.

I've been having mixed results, but I chalk that up to the release. It's mostly good, just sometimes it takes a minute.

Well, it's not the speed so much IMO, but the results. Whenever I played MP without a team on MW2 I isually would be matched up and put in a room with other people from Texas, or somewhat close if not. Especially early on when the game came out and playing numbers were at their peak, crap it even had me host successfully several times which doesn't happen at all with people from all over. With WaW, and now with BO, there are a ton of people online, 9:00 PM at night my time, and I am in a room with non-US players. It's just dumb, and leads to too much lag.

Hmm ... I wonder if there's something geographical about this. Even playing at like 2am yesterday I wasn't running into much non-US, certainly no more than I did with MW2.

Im glad they banned tactical insertion in free for all mode. That was a big way to cheat/boost in MW2.

4:30 PM and I am placed into a game with a bunch of French guys. No kids in the US playing right now I guess.

They didn't quit?

Flamethrower is kind of neat.

This Is What Nearly 3 Million People Gaming Look Like

That is fun to look at. I also wonder how much it gets updated.

I saw a little dot a couple hundred miles east of Madagascar and wondered who the fuck that was.

Maldivians?

Kinda cool, my son just discovered the access point for the various Easter eggs that were hidden in the game.

Didn't even know those existed, I hadn't kept up with the pre-release hype that closely I guess. From there, a little Googling & we had the unlock codes but I really don't feel bad about getting those the easy way, he found the access to them on his own.

The Dogs are like raptors. Fn ridiculous. Although I'm sure I will figure out how to dispense of them easily at some point.

Performance patch went out today. The game runs a hell of a lot better now and is actually playable.

$360m in day one sales, up $50m from MW2, 5.6 million units, up from 4.7 million last year.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Proclaimed Biggest Entertainment Launch In History - G4tv.com

Got this yesterday - was trying to stay away from it as I have to many games I want to play and not enough time.

I still feel the same frustrations I did with MW2 - I suck and my kill/death ratio is around .25-1

I like to play domination and last night I probably played 10 games. 8 of them wwere on the same map - the nuke one.

I think I'm going to play and hopefully finish the single player this weekend as I heard it's only 6 hours to get through it.

Only 6 hours of single-player? Really??

Meh.

I suck too much and usually multitask too much to play much multiplayer.

I think that's probably a little low unless you're an uber player. On Regular, I'd guess it's going to take me around 8-10 hours based on what I've seen so far. If I tried it on Hardened (which I believe is the approximate equivalent to the MP settings) I imagine it'd be more like 10-12.

One of the few advantages of not being very good I guess ;)

Well that sounds better.

I'd be much better at multiplayer, but I just don't have the undistracted time for it anymore.

Back in college I was in a R6 clan, and i wasn't the best in my clan by any means, but I could hold my own...

Hmm ... you might enjoy the new Combat Training mode. It's MP style but with AI opponents, so afaik you can pause as needed just like campaign/single player play. According to the splash screen when you start, it levels & unlocks independently of MP as well, so there's some sense of progress included as well (Fair warning though, I haven't checked to make sure the two are totally independent of each other, but that's definitely what it indicated on screen)

I got like 200ish hours out of MW2. I'll probably get less out of this version, but only cause I'm in college.

I'm around the same ratio. But as long as I feel like I am improving, then it's all good to me. I don't take it as personally as some might. But along those lines, we played Nuketown like three times in a row, and in all three cases, my ratio was over 1, and my best performance was something along the lines of 15/6. So I'm thinking to myself that maybe my trusty Famas & I are finally improving. It only took the next game for me to pull a 3/11 to knock me back down to reality.



I can confirm that the unlocks for Combat Training are in fact separate from actual Live. I'm now Level 16 on Live, and in Combat Training only a Level 4 or 5, and I definitely do not have access to the same weapons.

Try a 2-19 like I had on one of the snow maps last night & it's downright depressing. I mean, I suck, but I don't often suck that bad.

re: Nuketown -- Ah yes, the Black Ops equivalent to the Rust map from MW2. I'm a camper by nature, but the pure run & gun aspect of those maps is a fun change of pace & hard not to enjoy. Unbelievably, I got my first tomahawk kill on it last night, and it was an unintentional bank shot to boot :)

Thanks for the tip - when I pick it up i'll try that out.

Nuketown is just terrible...awful.. can't stand it.

Something weird, though. My favorite game type of the past two versions was Search and Destroy. For some reason I'm not enjoying it as much in this version.

I just hit select while at the menu of multiplayer. It has an option for your matchmaking to search for the best match, with a preference on locale, or locale only. Maybe that will help some of you?

Was sitting here messing around with the RockMelt browser testing it out but am getting onlilne to play now just to test this out. Never saw it, so hopefully it works for me. Thanks.


As for the game itself, I started a solo campaign the other day. My 1 yr old started button mashing when I was out of the room and wrote over my saved game. First 5 chapters gone, talk about killing my motivation to get back to the storyline right now.

As for MP, the crossbow is the greatest MP weapon ever. I love taking guy out with that from across the map. You get it close and BOOM. What is even better is when you stick them from far away though. I always have it equipped. I should prestige for the first time tonight though, so I will miss it for a bit.

Before my son erased it I had finished 5 of the 14 chapters in roughly 2-2.5 hrs, so I would guess it will be around 8 hrs for me. I was playing on Hardened. Of course my kid erased it, so supposed that is one way to extend it. :)

prestige already?! are you on xbox or ps3?

if anyone wants to play, my xbl gt is: the hot tip v2

PS3. And yes already. :) The problem is I am somehow behind a few people I am "friends" with. I am pretty sure one of them had the game a few days early because he is already about to go to the second prestige level, so roughly a week ahead of me. When playing I have seen a few others like that.

Just out of curiosity, are you playing Headquarters much? If not, check the weekly leaderboard and see if they have been. Seems to me as though that's the way to quickly level, the points it gives out versus something like Free For All is just ridiculous.

I don't play it at all, I stick with Ground War, Domination, and sometimes Team Deathmatch when it is late and most people play hat so it makes it easier to get better matchmaking. I play something else once in a while, but Domination is my favorite with these last two versions since the bastards left out War. Most of my friends are the same way (the reason they are friends), though friends-friends I couldn't say. I am sure you are right though, MW2 and WaW was similar to BO in that respect.

Went ahead and Prestiged tonight. I will continue to do it, but I like it less in this game then past versions. Losing everything in this game hurts more (to me) then it used to, mainly because I really don't like any of the guns very much until you get into the 20's. Stopped playing at 11. Although going through the second time is easier since I know what perks and equipment I want to focus on buying right away.

Finished the campaign last night and

I give up on this game... it has become more frustrating than fun for me. People are stupid good at it and I don't think I could even compete with them.

So I just sold mine on CL for $55

Might wanna spoiler tag that

Had my first real bad experience with the game tonight. The party system was a joke. Couldn't keep me and my buddy together. Then the menus kept freezing.. Something that if it consistently happens will make me sell my game. Wasted half my time playing trying to join the game.

Played NukeTown about 10 straight times the other day. I love that level. Except when it respawns you into quick deaths

I probably could have put this in the NBA thread but as soon as I saw this commercial, I knew there was going to be some backlash

Kobe Bryant is featured with a gun in a commercial for the new "Call of Duty" video game, and it sends exactly the wrong message - ESPN

Should prestige for the second time this weekend. Had a crap night though and cut my playing short. I am putting myself on a schedule starting next week though, and have only allowed myself a maximum of 2 hrs a night, then in bed by 2 am. I have already cut back almost 100% on any daytime playing. I have other things I want to focus on, mainly expanding my web design knowledge, so I need to get back to that.

Not a bad week's worth of news:

Today the publisher announced that Call of Duty Black Ops, the recent first person shooter from developer Treyarch, has generated over $650 million in revenue in just its first five days of its release worldwide.

Sucks that there is no co-op campaign for this game.

I was wondering if anyone with the PS3 has been experiencing some awful disconnections and loss of host recently? It is possible it is my fault since I switched to a new router, but I'm unsure. I could play for hours before, now almost every game drops.

Recently updated my FPS to Black Ops on the 360 when it was on sale for $40. If anyone wants to fire it up and play together let me know. I haven't seen many of you on recently since I have been playing. Be warned though I suck from a reflex standpoint.

I waited a day or two to be really sure I wanted to start over, and I guess the thrill of having a shiny new emblem by my name convinced me to prestige over the weekend. I hated starting over. I missed my beloved Famas assault rifle. I missed the Pro versions of a couple of perks. But it hasn't taken me long to get back into the low 20's. Now that I am back in relative familiar territory, I'm glad I did it. But I will not do it again. Once is enough.

I guess the new map pack drops next week.

And a question: In order to get Flak Jacket Pro, you have to do three things:
1. Survive certain number of blasts while wearing the Flak Jacket. No problem there.
2. Plant or Defuse 10 bombs. I haven't done that yet, but I understand what needs to be done.
3. Throw back 5 enemy frag grenades. What the heck? How do you do that? I didn't even know it was possible....

What I want to know is, why can I revive a AI teammate, but, I can't revive a human teammate???

What happens when you try to revive an actual teammate?

When an opponent grenade lands near you something pops up that lets you throw it back by hitting RB. Video shows it pretty clearly toward the end.

Nothing. You stand next to them and you don't get the 'X' or 'A' (I don't remember exactly what button it is) to revive icon on the screen. I played this on a PS3 and it's the same thing, can't revive a human teammate.

Well the player has to have Last Stand Pro. If they just have Last Stand, they survive for a short while, but can not be revived. If they have Last Stand Pro - you last longer and can be revived (you are correct that it is the 'X' button). A message pops up in window that says something like "PlayerName needs to be revived". There should also be a symbol above the player as you approach him. I haven't had any problem with it.

Ah that must be it then. At first I thought it was because we didn't have that selected and when it still didn't work, my friend and I thought it must be a bug or something. So get the pro level and that should fix it. Sweet!! Thanks man.

I still haven't even finished this game. In fact, I haven't played it in weeks.

The fact that you reference "finishing" the game means you aren't playing it right.

Ah cool. I've never seen that indicator pop up (but I almost exclusively play Hardcore Team Deathmatch). Time for me to throw back some grenades...


:lol:

well...finished the single-player mission one time through.

If it wasnt for the lag/rendering/compensation issues this game would be near impossible to put down.

I thought I just wasnt cut out for COD (this is my first experience in the series) but now it is frustrating, one day I will get a connection that is "right" and go ona string of 22-3 24-7 ratios even in multiple lobbies with different opponnts etc....the next day it "feels slow" and I am back at 12-32 8-27 matches....

I feel your frustration CU. Sometimes you just feel invinceable, and roll off several killer games in a row. It's like you win the first 2 or 3 heads up confrontations and you're like, wow, I normally die there.

Then it lets you down.

Anyways, new PS3 update
Supposedly they nerfed the AK74u, which is welcome. I'd bet anyone like a grand that their top gun they were killed by is a AK74u by a large large large margin. I'd guess Famas #2, and Galil or AK47 #3. Could just be a ps3 thing tho.

Also, in a team game, if you put someone into Last Chance, you get the kill and the person who "kills" him gets an assist. This is a welcome change IMO.

Please please please no nerf for my Famas. I love my Famas...


Do you know if this is game-wide or just PS3? I think I really like that change! Whenever I put someone in last stand and get killed, I'm always looking at the side bar to see if I got the kill, or someone stole it from me. This one makes great sense!


***

Found this on an xbox website about possible notes for 1.6 update:

Heres some info from Tryarch

The few changes discussed are about tweaks to gameplay, and there is little mention of bug fixes. Below the gameplay tweaks are summarised, with explanation from David Vonderhaar.

The AK74U grip variant re-center speed will be adjusted: “We think the AK74U grip variant re-center speed is too quick. Although the tuning is in line with other grip variant weapons, the gun itself has a very perfectible kick and other attributes or attachments that make it a popular weapon to use. We have slightly de-tuned the AK74u grip for version 1.06.”

Changes to kill credits: “We are considering giving full kill credit to the guy who drops someone in Second Chance and Assist credit for someone who finishes them off. We are also considering allowing you to only be revived one time. We are even considering increasing the revive time.”

Second Chance perk complaints: It turns out that the invulnerability period experienced when someone is dropping into the ‘Second Chance’ is linked to the game code. This problem gives the player entering into second chance a 0.5 second invulnerability.

“We need to think about this one clearly,” explains Vonderhaar. “I went through the revision history. Any attempts to remove the "0.5" seconds of invulnerability mean the guy with Second Chance will likely never be given his Second Chance. Removal of this entirely will all but remove the perk from the game (which I know many of you would prefer in the first place, but it's something we are not yet ready to do). This "0.5" seconds is consistent with the previous games and is not any longer or shorter.”

Revision to RC car: “We are evaluating the RC-XD minimum and maximum damage and damage radius and its movement speed. Changing the kill requirement isn't feasible at this time.”

Sniper rifles and knives: “We are largely okay with the sniper rifle and knife tuning at this time. No changes are currently planned for either of these for version 1.06.”
The team also says that bugs, connectivity, party, and matchmaking issues are a heavy focus for their day to day workflow.

twas apparently double XP weekend. Also, PSN is running a Nuketown 24/7 level, but Xbox wasn't.

How are the new levels?

You mean the new maps? If so, I'd call them ... okay, maybe a little better than just okay.

Kowloon is kind of a mess where falling off the rooftops is a bigger threat than your opponent, Arena is pretty good for most of the common game types IMO although I think they kind of blew it by making so little of the actual arena playable, Berlin Wall is decent for TDM, the other one (the snowy German base) is kind of weak IMO & probably a little too big, absurdly so for FFA unless the game is full.