Black Ops 3 Reveal: Official!!

The trailer for Black Ops 3 is finally here everyone! Time for you guys to bury your eyes into this video!

So now that you've watched it, you're going to find that Exos are returning, at least for Campaign. The exo system seems to work a little differently than Advanced Warfare, and has some pretty cool uses, such as surrounding people in killer robots. But a lot of people are pretty pissed. It's still a Treyarch game, so I'm very excited. Let's look at a few details I picked out.

This clip is taken from the trailer. It seems as if Treyarch has left it's root and added the slide feature, effectively removing the dive from Call of Duty most likely forever. While the dive was fun and certainly was a trademark of the Treyarch games, it was rarely if ever effective in a combat situation online. 

Now, about the setting. Everyone is getting pretty sick of Call of Duty being in the future, but I feel they are going to do one more pull for it and fix it's reputation. Technology and robots run rampant everywhere. Some people wear exos, and some people don't. Maybe the game won't be completely solidified on the exo suits like Advanced Warefare was. We'll see. Rolling Stones accompanies with it's famous hit "Paint it Black", which may be some homage to Black Op's Vietnam war roots, and may even have sections of the game where it bounces back in time, similar to Black Ops 2.

There isn't many details in general, so make of it what you will. 

But time for the REAL news! ZOMBIES.

There is VERY little about it, except for a teaser at the end, which we shall break down. Here is some images from the video. 

For starters, gold eyes! This means that Samatha is still in control of Zombies, so it might be before the events on the Moon, or might even be in another dimension. Second, look at that goddamn hat! Does that look like a Nazi officer hat or what? Could this be Nazi Zombies yet again? Could this last Zombie game follow the story from the beginning, all the way up to the end? Could the original crew be back?

WE NEED MORE INFORMATION. MORE AS IT COMES.

Why Black Ops Zombies is better than Advanced Warfare Exo-Zombies

Call of Duty Zombies has been a huge hit ever since it's arrival in World at War. From that point, Zombies was revived in every Treyarch game since, even earning it's role as a major part of the game. Following in the giant's footsteps, Advanced Warfare added their own take on the much-loved zombies mode. While it is fun to play with friends, and is takes an interesting spin on the Zombie theme, I have a few problems with it. Here's a few:

Maps - While obviously the graphical capabilities of the newest generation of consoles are better than the last, there is something missing. First off, what's with the person-to-map ratio? While playing, it feels like cars are huge, buildings are huge, walls are huge (and I'll elborate more on why I hate those walls) everything is just BIG. This is obviously because everything in the game needs to be raised in order to compensate for the exo-suits jump abilities. While the exo-jump can be fun, Sledgehammer didn't make maps have more places to go, or more content to find, they just made everything higher. They gave us the ability to span great distances quickly, and less space than even some of the smallest Treyarch maps. And to add insult to injury, the zombies themselves seem to small compared to the character you play as. Buildings too big, with the zombies being smaller and in greater numbers. In Black Ops, zombies just feel bigger, scarier, and when just ONE got up in your face and trapped you in a corner you couldn't help let out a girly little scream and hope you didn't have to reload before you could shoot. 

Now, about those walls. Since the Exo-Suit jump capabilities gave us room to jump up high, if there would just be a short fence in out way, say, like the bridge from Shangri-La, you would kind of have to call bullcrap. You'd be like "I can jump 20 feet in the air but I can't clear this?" And obviously you can't go over there because that area isn't part of the game, it's just the background with and invisible wall. With Advanced Warfare, there is no background. That's one of my main issues. The whole map is enclosed in one texture of grey, steely metal that goes up 200 feet around EVERYWHERE.  In Moon you could look out across the vast lunar landscape. In Call of the Dead there was a mountain shooting high into the sky, with the ocean spanning along it. Origins even took up a good portion of my game time because I'd stare off into the distance, wondering what lie ahead. Shangri-La, in my opinion, had the most gorgeous scenery of any map with rain forest, bridges and waterfalls. Is Sledgehammer just afraid to give the players a more enriched, better looking, maybe even dynamic environment?

Weapons - I've felt this way about all of the Infinity Ward games, and now again with Sledgehammer's. The guns are just too washed out, and too similar. There is no major defining characteristic of any guns to be found. In Black Ops, each gun is wildly different looking, and each has extremely different capabilities in terms of power and ability. Each person you meet online has their own combination of weapons they preferred to use, and even playing now 2 years later it's hard to get bored. 

Another aspect lacking in Exo-Zombies is the upgrade station. The upgrade station was in effect supposed to be like Pack-A-Punch, if PAP was extremely dull. Sure, it's cheaper, but you definitely get what you pay for. Each upgrade just swaps the camo, and increases the damage marginally, and NONE have any special abilities, such as the Crossbow or Ballistic Knives after a well spent 5000 at Pack-A-Punch. The upgrade station lets you upgrade 20 times, which in total points costs 50,000 after you've upgraded all the way. Nobody ever has this money early on, so you have to slowly upgrade your weapons as the rounds go on. (Or never buy anything else, ever.) What ends up happening is the weapon ends up getting a power boost, at around the same intervals as the zombies are getting strength boosts, resulting in what looks like little to no change in damage output. 

In simpler terms, Sledgehammer got a little lazy with some of the aspects that I believe Treyarch happens to be good at creating. If you have a different opinion, feel free to leave a comment or post on my Facebook page.

If you are someone who works for Treyarch: NO EXO SUITS IN ZOMBIES.

Black Ops 3 Zombies Official!

Searching around for information is a hardcore fan must in the gaming world. But it looks like a group of tech-savvy CODheads beat us to the mark, looking into the source code on the Call of Duty website for the official, yet not quite yet released description of Black Ops 3. Here it is: 

“Call of Duty®: Black Ops 3 is the first title for next-gen hardware in the critically acclaimed Black Ops series. Developed by Treyarch, the award-winning creator of the two most-played games in Call of Duty® history. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 deploys players into a dark, twisted future where a new breed of Black Ops soldiers emerges and the lines are blurred between our own humanity and the technology we created to stay ahead, in a world where cutting-edge military robotics define warfare. With three unique game modes: Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies, providing fans with the deepest and most ambitious Call of Duty ever.”

So Black Ops 3 Zombies is OFFICIAL. And with 3 years production time, I am foaming at the mouth with excitement about what may be in store. 

This image was also found in the code.

(A futuristic take of the pose from Black Ops 1)

Please visit my Facebook page, located on the left sidebar, for updates as they come!

Black Ops 3: Official Reveal!

Well, speak of the devil. A day after talking about whether or not it will be a 3rd Black Ops, they send out the final, swift answer: IT IS!

As much as I would like to go on and on about this subject, why don't you guys just watch the teaser trailer for yourselves?

As you can see, it will most likely follow the story line of the previous games, starting from World at War on up to Black Ops 2. Now I don't know about you guys... but I am very ready for this game. 

Full word reveal on April 26th!

More information as it comes!

New Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, or World at War 2?

Everyone is on edge as it grows closer and closer to May. After the previous Call of Duty's 2nd DLC, hype for the next game usually begins. I was in major disappointment last year in finding out Sledgehammer would be making the game for 2014. But it was a bittersweet moment, because I know now Treyarch got 3 years to make their new game.

Now there are two theories floating about on the internet as of the moment: the new game will be either Black Ops 3, or World at War 2. Here is a few reasons why I believe it to be a mix of both. We know previously in COD history, developers have loved their trilogies. Although Treyarch has been a little off-beat from some of the other developers, I believe this format will stick. I don't believe this means there will a huge future jump, though. I think the game is going to jump back and forth, similar to Black Ops 2. Instead of visiting back to the Cold War, we'll be going back a few more decades to WW2. But I imagine the title will stick to Black Ops 3.

Now, what does this mean? Hopefully, what this means that the game will be a little but more flexible in several respects. Hopefully the Campaign will have some seriously varying, visually intriguing locales. Of course, Treyarch has always held up in this arena. Now, as a Zombies fan, this hopefully means the holy grail of Zombie Survival. As a cult classic, Nazi Zombies grew into it's own half of the game by the time Black Ops 2 came out. It featured customizable settings, large maps with deep, complicated easter eggs interconnected between games. My worst fear is that Treyarch thinks that Sledgehammer has the ball now, and that Treyarch is going to do something drastically different. But we don't want Sledgehammer Zombies. Do you hear me?! WE WANT GRITTY, DARK, TREYARCH ZOMBIES. Although I doubt this would happen, as Zombies is so popular. But with 3 years of production, I am expecting a lot. In my opinion they should continue with the time-travel aspect of Zombies. This allows for greater map, weapon, character, and perk variation. To create the best flow, there should be a few maps similar to the first WaW, with gritty maps and old-style weapons. Then they should throw in Cold-War era and Future zombies, with the flexibility of the settings in Black Ops 2.

Another great aspect of the last Treyarch game was the combination of the Multiplayer and Zombies. You played multiplayer for a while, if you got bored, you switched to zombies. When you got bored of zombies, you played multiplayer. They satisfied each other in a vicious circle of addiction and gamer rage. Everything needs to compliment each other in a ying and yang fashion. No matter how much the game changes, if they can pull this off again, I believe we'll be looking at a game that will sell as well as Black Ops 2 did, the highest selling Call of Duty ever.