A Fan's View of COD Black Ops

By Christopher Slack on August 4, 2014

Call of Duty Black Ops revolutionized gaming.

Released in 2010, Black Ops sold 5,7 million copies in the United States and Europe within 24 hours of its release.

Black Ops was the first Call of Duty game to provide an extended multiplayer mode called “Zombies,” where a gamer was able to connect with up to four friends and take on a new world with zombie creatures.

Fast-forwarding to today, Black Ops has become one of the best selling video games on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and is still sold in all major electronic and video game stores today.

While the game’s four-years-old, the main reason for its success is because of the ‘Zombies’ Mode in the game and its advanced graphic display.

Black Ops was the first Call of Duty game to provide an extended multiplayer mode called “Zombies,” where a gamer was able to connect with up to four friends and take on a new world with zombie creatures.

There are currently three Call of Duty series: Black Ops, Ghosts (formerly Modern Warfare), and Advanced Warfare. The Ghosts series, created by Infinity Ward, features an extended multiplayer mode called ‘Extinction’ where fans can fight aliens. Sledgehammer Games, the developer of Advanced Warfare, has yet to reveal its extended multiplayer mode.

Zombie Maps

To many fans, the map “Five,” is a fan favorite.

The map, which is free to all owners of the game, features former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Former U.S. President Richard Nixon, and Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro.

The game takes place at The Pentagon, where fans can also access a lab area on the basement floor.  The basement is also a holding area for experimental monkeys, a dead pig, and one of five DEFCON switches in the game.

If the player(s) are able to hit all 5 DEFCON switches, they are sent to the “Panic Room,” otherwise known as the 115 Clearance Room.  Once there, players can use a Pack-A-Punch Machine to upgrade weapons that are helpful in later rounds when trying to extinguish zombies.

There is also an ‘Easter Egg,’ in which the Eminem single “Won’t Back Down” is played.  In order to access it, one must find the three cassette tape players on the map.

Another map that is known to many people is the Shangri-La map.

The map features four characters: Tank Dempsey, Nikolai Belinski, Takeo Masaki and Edward Richtofen.  These four characters are the original zombie characters found in the first zombie map Kino der Toten.

While there is no clear objective for the map, it is known for having an ‘Easter Egg’ that makes the zombie mode “adventurous.”

The ‘Easter Egg’ that gives players the “Time Travel Will Tell” achievement or trophy requires four players to shrink a meteor and collect it.  Once the meteor is shrunken, one player can hold it and gets all of the perks that can be bought on the map.

When playing zombies, players have the ability to purchase perks such as ‘Juggernog,’ which decreases enemy hits by 25%.  Another perk is ‘Speed Cola,’ which enhances the players running ability in the game.

Online Multiplayer

It’s hard to explain a video game’s multiplayer because each gamer has their own style of playing and the controls of a game are something one must master overtime.

The online multiplayer in Black Ops is one of my favorites.  When I play it, it feels very smooth.

In online multiplayer, developers try to make the map in which the player is playing on feel like they are either playing campaign or on an open world with multiple areas to hide and shoot enemy targets.

In Black Ops, and in many other games, the maps that you play on are the ones available in campaign, so most people are very familiar to what they look like and the general basis of the maps’ layout.  If a gamer decided to bypass the campaign and skip right to multiplayer, their transition wouldn’t be any bigger of an adjustment.  Overall, it’s a matter of knowing what the opposition is going to do and you having to know how to counter and possibly escape enemy contact.

Weapons

Black Ops is just like any other Call of Duty title.  Each game has Assault Rifles, Sub-Machine Guns (SMG), Sniper Rifles, Heavy Machine Guns, and Rocket Launchers.

In addition to the guns, players are allowed to customize the appearance of and add ‘attachments’ to their guns that they choose to put in a ‘class,’ in which they use on the battlefield.

One of the many differences in Black Ops is the loss of the heartbeat sensor that was attached to the players gun in Modern Warfare 2.  In Black Ops, players have a heartbeat monitor that they can place on the ground to detect enemy activity.

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