If rumour speak true, the next Call of Duty game will be another entry in the Black Ops series. It'll also, allegedly, take place during the first Gulf War across 1990 and 1991, in which a US-led coalition of countries including the UK, Saudi Arabia and Egypt invaded Iraq in response to the Saddam Hussein government's conquest of Kuwait.
]]>Welcome to The RPS Time Capsule, a new monthly feature we're putting together where every member of the RPS editorial team picks their favourite, bestest best game from a specific year and tells us why that game above all else deserves to be preserved in our freshly minted time pod. It might be that it's the best example of its genre, or it contains a valuable lesson for future generations. This month, we're travelling back to rescue eight games from 2010, and cor, what a good year that was. Too bad almost all of them will end up in the lava bin by the time we're done.
]]>Like a zipline descending into Verdansk, the quality curve of the Call of Duty campaign trends ever downward, year-on-year. Or so a casual observer might assume. But this is Task Force 141, soldier: we don’t do casual observation. Take my binoculars and you’ll soon see that the real story is far more complicated and compelling.
For every Ghosts in the graveyard of CODs past, there’s an unlikely space adventure to rival Titanfall. And no matter how many times Captain Price tells you to let ‘em pass, there’s always an experimental RTS mechanic or Hitman-lite stealth mission waiting around the next corner. Call of Duty has been far more brave and changeable than it’s given credit for, and while the best ideas haven’t always stuck, they’re still very much playable. What’s more, they rarely outlast a weekend - which counts for a lot in an age of life-consuming AAA releases.
Over 20 years of service, I’ve played every single COD campaign, and can share my intel freely with allies like you. So hop in for a ride through the ups and downs of the series. Just don’t take the helicopter - those things never land softly around here.
]]>Now that we've been introduced to the Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War campaign, Activision have also unveiled what to expect from the multiplayer side of the game. There are new maps and modes, updated slides and jumps, and changes to loadout customisation. Along with all the new bits, Activision announced when you'll get to take it for a spin. Open beta for PC players begins on Saturday, October 17th.
]]>After fannying about in the future for a few games, Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will bring the subseries back to the past with a direct sequel to 2010's Cod Blops. Treyarch last night gave Cod Blops Cow the ol' reveal-o, with a trailer showing some of this year's hot new war crimes. Along with a singleplayer campaign, the usual multiplayer modes, and cooperative Zombies action, yes it will continue the battling royale of Call Of Duty: Warzone. Here, check out the trailer.
]]>US President Donald Trump yesterday held a private meeting to discuss the issue of violence in video games, having suggested after February's murders at a school in Parkland, Florida that it "is really shaping young people's thoughts." This would clearly amount to nothing productive, given mostly industry representatives and conservative pressure groups were attending, but it is a surprise that Trump showed attendees a short video montage of video game deaths. The White House have released this publicly, so we can all see a sloppy montage of deaths from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Fallout 4, and more. Somehow it isn't a surprise that some clips are clearly ripped from YouTubers - watermarks and all.
]]>Call of Duty: Black Ops III [official site] looks just about weird enough to be interesting. Whether it's Jeff Goldblum's zombie-splatting magician, the introduction of full-on Chaos powers or the general rocket-powered leap into a robo-soldier sci-fi future, BLOPS the Third does not appear to be constrained by reason. Of course, it may still be restrained by corridors but on the server and modding side we can expect some freedom. Treyarch have announced that modding and map-making will be coming to the game sometime next year.
]]>I do hear mutterings from some of my similarly jaded contemporaries that, actually, Black Ops 2 doesn't look as hateful as the last COD, Modern Warfare 3. Given I did find CODBLOPS 1's singleplayer to be comfortably the least obnoxious of the post-COD4 games, I'm inclined to believe them, no matter how sure I am that this is a not a game I'll ever care about. Good to hear that the PC version appears to be doing the work, though - devs Treyarch have revealed that they've update the engine to include DirectX11 support and extra shinies, as well as "more “quality vs performance” options than ever before". The cost of this is no more Windows XP support, which will be bad news for the approximate 14% of Steam users who doggedly remain with Microsoft's most deathless OS. Ditching XP support is not at all uncommon for new games these days, but - good or ill - I suppose it should be taken as a sign of the times when essentially the biggest game in the world decides that OS's time has come and gone.
]]>WELCOME again to CALL OF DUTY CENTRAL! Yeeeeehaaaaw! As you know RPS is the number one CALL OF DUTY fansite on the internet, because CALL OF DUTY is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Today for you guys we have a TIMER counting down to when the world will discover the name of the next amazing CALL OF DUTY game and hopefully some surprises like what guns are in it. If I know CALL OF DUTY like I know CALL OF DUTY, the next game is going to be a REVOLUTION and UNLIKE ANYTHING WE'VE EVER SEEN BEFORE. EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it's going to be so viscerally visceral!
Oh man I just can't wait forever until MAY 1 for this timer to finish and tell me that the next game is Black Ops 2. Whoops I guess I shouldn't say that like it's a fact haha. In the meantime I'm going to check the COD site EVERY SECOND to see if another picture has been unlocked. Only one has so far, and it's AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!
]]>Elite, the social network/video-making/DLC-flogging wrapper for Call of Duty due to launch with Contemporary Fighting Techniques 3 next week, won't be turning up on PC at the same time as the game itself. Why? It's because you're so insecure. And so you should be, with that nose. Oh, sorry, I've got it wrong - it's because the devs think the PC's insecure. That's not an insult, calm down. They're just worried about cheaters hacking the system: the precious statistics must be protected!
]]>Look, I don't want this to be another groundhog day. I don't want the comments thread to fill up with people going 'Call of Duty is boring' and then some other people saying "that's just, like, your opinion, man." I just want you to only bother watching this video of Modern Warfare 3's 'Spec Ops' co-op mode if you honestly have a real interest in Modern Warfare 3. If you don't, stop reading. Why are you still reading? You don't even care! STOP READING. And don't you dare comment. I can delete your words with a single button-click, you know.
]]>The next instalment of Blops multiplayer cash-for-maps, Rezurrection, is to be set on the moon. Activision claim that the DLC will feature an "enhanced zombie soundtrack", whatever that means, but the core of it is a new "low-gravity" map set on Earth's favourite orbiting rock. So Moon Zombies, then. The Windows version of the DLC will be available after 23rd of August (although precisely when isn't clear) and the price isn't yet clear either. This is a terrible news story. Must do better.
]]>This trailer is like a metaphor for Call of Duty: Elite, Activision's new enhanced online premium service package for the CODs. Is it supposed to be funny? You won't be able to miss the best jokes, because "theLEGENDofKARL" says "Haha, get it?" after them all.
]]>Call Of Duty: Black Ops is getting some kind of multiplayer expansion thing! I know, I can hardly believe it either, but it's true. The trailer (below) shows off some elements of what to expect, and also a live action bit with some moustachioed dude in a diner. Why is that? I do not know. It makes little sense. But there are zombies, too. The zombies are from a fourth map, Shangri-La, which provides a supernatural alternative to the three standard multiplayer maps.
This expansion apparently turns up on the X-machine on the 28th and will then appear on our machine sometime thereafter. So that's the mainstream Action News for the day. Let's see if we can find an indie RTS to talk about. Aha, here comes one now!
]]>Activision boss Big Bobby K is unsurprisingly out on the campaign trail for Modern Warfare 3, and that means any journalists who manage to get past his Nazgûl guards inevitably attempt to ask him how he thinks EA's rivalrous Battlefield 3 is going to compare.
Here's what he said. It almost certainly won't make you say incredibly rude things about a man you've never met.
]]>Call of Duty Elite, the social networking/clan-organising thingy for COD multiplayer, got a whole lot of backs up when it was unveiled the other week - the prevailing, Chinese-whispered sense being that we'd be expected to fork out to get the full CoD multiplayer experience. With the waters very much muddied, Activision seem to be in fire-fighting mode - now explicitly stating just what will be free. Activision also reckon that "we believe that the free elements of Call of Duty Elite will be superior to any free service currently on the market."
Oh, and they just called you a hater.
]]>It was always going to happen, and now it has. The nature of a corporation is never to sit still and be content with its lot - it's to forever look to ways to make more money from what it has. (If RPS had a scrap of sense, we'd have launched a couple of spin-offs by now, but a corporation we are not). Activision was never going to let the world’s biggest gaming franchise stay the same size - its duty to its shareholders, and to a far less extent to its employees, is to make its IP as profitable as possible. With several of its divisions and titles recently axed and even WoW subscriptions in decline (by an apparently tiny 5%, but the difference between revenues increasing and revenues decreasing is a fundamental one for shareholder confidence), the publisher is almost required to milk a little more out of its remaining cashcows. On the one hand, you can’t blame them for introducing Call of Duty: Elite, a premium subscription service (though its basic features are free) which adds various community and content goodies to its shooter series’ frighteningly popular multiplayer mode.
On the other hand, it’s hard to not to feel a little dirty about Elite, isn't it?
]]>So after waiting a few hours to scowl at the Wall Street Journal for breaking the embargo, Activision have now officially taken the lid off Call of Duty: Elite, which means its actual features, rather than a pithy, video-based glossing-over of them, can be listed. Here's the horse's mouth breakdown of what the service actually entails.
]]>The day has come: Activision has finally introduced Plan B. Plan B is much like Plan A, in that it also involves making an absolute crapton of money out of Call of Duty. This time, it's called Call of Duty Elite, and it's a social networking, clan-arranging, video-sharing, stat-analysing online service for COD multiplayer. Some aspects for it will be free; others will involve a paid subscription. The gaming world had a sharp intake of breath this morning, and you probably will too.
There's an *apparently* leaked YouTube trailer of Elite below, but as I believe the publications who Activision chose to show the service to are under some sort of embargo, you'd better hurry and watch it before it either gets pulled or just posted everywhere else anyway.
]]>I guess Activision have been pretty good at rolling with the hard punch they took when Kotaku controversially busted open most of Modern Warfare 3's secrets the other week. A selection of trailers has now been followed by a preview day for the press that Activision's prepared to talk to (sigh). Here's Eurogamer's and VG24/7's impressions, both of which suggest a pretty familiarly hyper-scripted experience, but a bigger, brasher, noisier approach to setpieces and a focus on urban combat and the explosive destruction of global landmarks in the UK, US and Germany.
You know! Anyway, some screenshots for you - and what I believe are the first official ones.
]]>I miss demos. I miss them so much. I wouldn’t be here, writing these words, if it weren’t for demos: how else could a sport-fearing, skinny young misery with only the slightest pittance for pocketmoney have found his way into playing video games? Once, my bedroom was littered with floppy discs, each and every one of which had at some point led to me standing outside a game shop, counting pennies with a quivering hand, praying I had enough.
Granted, magazines were the gateway drug back then, when there was no way to watch a trailer or scour Facebook for new screenshots, but later in life the web too seemed an infinite fount of sampled digital delights, and led to any number of purchases of those games that seemed the most absorbing - or simply because the demo ended, apparently expertly, at a point which left me urgently hungry for more. Those days are gone.
]]>Someone's getting a) bollocked b) fired c) executed tonight, I'm sure. If Kotaku's sources are right, basically everything about this year's Call of Duty has just been blown wide open and revealed to John Q. Public some six months before likely release. It's Modern Warfare 3 and it's...
]]>UPDATE: Our informants tell us it's some kind of stats tool. BORING!
]]>The Call of Duty: Black Ops map pack which Jim heard about last week has undergone extensive trailerisation. You can watch flythroughs of the five new maps and listen to the somewhat limp-wristed advice from the Treyarch developers (this map is pretty good for snipers, but it might also be good for people who are not a sniper) after the jump. The pack will be releasing on May 3rd on Xbox Alive, but still no PC release date just yet.
]]>Treyarch's community manager Josh Olin has let slip that their PC team are aiming - as previously promised - to release mod tools for the blockbusting man shooter in May. It'll be interesting to see how busy the mod community for this becomes. I can see multiplayer maps being a fairly popular target, but general tweaky gameplay type mods? What would the motivation be? Anyone enough of Black Ops player to see where obvious modding routes might lie?
]]>The Black Ops map pack, Escalation, has now been officially confirmed by Activision. It'll feature five new maps, of which four are multiplayer maps and one if a zombie shooter thing.
]]>Hello! Back in the 21st century actual video gaming is happening, and it's taking a spin this weekend with the Major League Gaming circuit, which commences play in just over an hour. This is a big old pro-gaming tournament happening right now in Dallas, with Starcraft 2 being the big draw for PC types. More information and streams of the events are embedded below, for your viewing pleasure.
]]>While you lot have made absolutely no secret of your contempt for latter-day Call of Duty games, as I understand it they're pretty big business on PC nonetheless. Despite others' best, sneery comment-based efforts, people still buy them. So there will be a large and enthuastic audience for the news that DLC map pack First Strike has been given a PC release date, having already been available on 360 for some time. You may well not be that enthusiastic audience, but I'm going to tell you anyway - knowing what the biggest, most aloof publisher is up to in terms of PC gaming is always useful.
]]>While there's still no official date for the PC release of COD: Black Op's first DLC, First Strike, images of it have finally appeared. The 360 gets the content tomorrow, while us second class citizens must wait in confused sadness that we bought the wrong Microsoft product to win their approval. But it is coming to PC, and it was the biggest selling games of last year. Some of you bought it. Admit it. So you're probably interested to see what's happening with the new content. Which is five new maps, three relatively traditional, one set against a hockey stadium, and another giving you another reason to play as a zombie. I've put the better images (i.e. the ones that aren't of empty scenery) below.
]]>Gamers' Voice have confirmed that they will be reporting Activision to the trading standards authority over ongoing bugs in the PC and PS3 versions of Call Of Duty: Black Ops. In this article the UK-based gaming advocacy group said that: "a formal complaint will be submitted to the relevant government agencies that protect consumer rights in the UK on the week commencing 23rd Jan 2011. We will keep people updated as to the progress of this complaint."
]]>One of my main criticisms of the mediocre Medal Of Honor was the lack of feeling involved. Indeed, I felt similarly playing the Modern Warfare games, whenever it became apparent that my actions weren't exactly crucial to progress (I followed behind on No Russian, without firing a shot). This is something "T2DMrBungle" discovered when playing Call Of Duty: Black Ops, specifically the first mission, played on the disturbingly named "Hardened" difficulty level. It's a fifteen minute video during which he doesn't fire his gun once. It's below.
]]>When I close my eyes, I see exploding limbs. More so than usual, I mean. There’s only been one story in gamesworld today, and while RPS is a site that celebrates and promotes the wildest outliers, it would be remiss of us to ignore this most mainstream of all games. So: after a day mainlining Black Ops’ campaign, I’m ready to KILL YOU SHOOT YOU MAIM YOU DIE DIE DIE. Uh, I mean tell you my thoughts on it. Yes, that's it.
]]>My instruments are giving me mixed reports. Today sees Call of Duty: Black Ops, the year's biggest release, dropping onto international markets like a continent-spanning commercial panther. Now, I'm hearing that some Steam pre-order customers have had their game unlocked already, but Americans are having to wait until 10am Eastern time, our own Alec is having to wait until between 3pm and 8pm [Alec Update - no I'm not. If you buy it in the UK it seems to unlock just fine; my problem was related to my account apparently having US review code applied], and apparently although shop copies go through Steam, they'll work right away. Buh. Are you playing it, readers? Any impressions?
If you can't yet play Black Ops, and you're livid, and your existence has shrunk to a world containing only, Black Ops and sharp objects, I have a temporary solution. Below, courtesy of VG247 you can watch the first 13 minutes of the game. Spoilers, obv, but I will say this: It looks like a somewhat different beast from Modern Warfare.
]]>That is all. (Source).
]]>In his round-up of Black Ops videos earlier today, Quinns forgot one very important clip. Very, very important. Crucial, as far as I'm concerned.
It concerns the player characters in one of the game's two Zombie modes - something that, quite frankly, is the first time to date that I've felt even a flicker of personal (i.e. not purely professional) interest in Treyarch's franchise-nicking shooter. Spoilers below. But if you feel a similar level of disinterest in Black Ops, you should probably take a look.
]]>Imagine you're standing in front of a large piñata, shaped like your favourite handgun. I am giving you a heavy stick. Go on! Whack the piñata. Don't be shy! It probably won't explode.
BAM! What's inside? What's falling out? Why, it's four new videos of Call of Duty: Black Ops, which hits shops next Tuesday. The first of these videos is the launch trailer, then we've got two singleplayer walkthrough videos and a video of the zombie multiplayer mode. Go on, gorge yourself.
]]>Gosh, with all the Medal Of excitement I'd clean missed that the other manshooter, Call Of Duty: Black Ops, (you know, the one you are 76.5% more likely to spend your money on) has been flexing its pixels and playing at references to The Deer Hunter with a single-player trailer. Stuff explodes! Men fall down! Oh, this is what they want. Right, guys? Guys?
It's out November 9th, and we'll probably write about it or something.
]]>Let's recap. The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 didn't have dedicated servers, and there was much pulling of hair and spontaneous internet howling. More recently, Treyarch confirmed that Call of Duty: Black Ops (out November 9th) would have dedicated servers. It was Infinity Ward that abandoned the PC, not them, they said. In an interview with C&VG, Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia said "I think dedicated servers are excellent." Things were looking rosy.
]]>A lot of people have a problem with Twitter. They think it's meaningless, reductive, frivolous. This I say to them: what if it was a tower defence game? Oh-ho, now you're listening.
]]>Last night saw some new information about Call Of Duty: Black Ops appearing, along with a selection of new trailers. Formerly "the one in-between the Modern Warfare games", this title is presumably of an awful lot more importance since the Infinity Ward debacle. Most importantly, last night Treyarch revealed the multiplayer mode for the game.
]]>I have very rarely played Modern Warfare 1 or 2 online, so pray forgive me for not knowing which bits of this video specifically-prompted the internet-wide squeeeee! earlier today. Looks broadly like I would expect it to look, and as I suspect it should look if it's not to create titanic outrage - although I did particularly like the exploding crossbow. (Even though Timeshift did it first.)
]]>So, this Call Of Duty game looks like something... familiar... Hmm. Nope, I can't place it. Maybe you can? Whatever the likeness, it seems that some stuff may explode, while certain dudes may, in fact, get shot.
]]>The best-selling game of 2009, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, caused all manner of uproar, none of which managed to impede its steamroller progress in the slightest. Still, it's good to hear that franchise-inheritors Treyarch have paid at least some attention to the complaints. Specifically, the lack of dedicated servers, which both denied us the modding and customisation we're so used to and complicated online games hugely. Things will be different in COD: Black Ops, aka Not-Quite-Modern Warfare...
]]>As reported earlier-yesterday, later-yesterday lead to the unveiling of Call of Duty: Black Ops on gametrailers. Very fast flashing imagery, so be warned strobe-fearers and be excited obsessive-panel-pausers. Also, the release date is on the site. 9th of November, this year. So - er - the trailer, yes? It follows.
]]>Now this gets interesting! Despite sites claiming that the game definitely was Call of Duty: Vietnam earlier, PC Gamer reveal that the site for Call of Duty: Black Ops is now live, though impossible to actually get into. And they claim that when the "Black Ops" rumour originally broke, it was a Cold War game with missions from all across that period culminating "in the famous 1980 storming of the Iranian Embassy in London by the SAS". Who is right? Who is wrong? We'll know tonight when the trailer rolls. My money's on Call of Duty: Shaking That Booty, where Activision cross two of their biggest franchises in a shooting/rhythm-action game.
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