Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer revealed at Activision event
Activision revealed the Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer component at an event this evening in Los Angeles. We’ll have a full preview later on, but first we’ll just run you through the various features that Treyarch is adding to the latest iteration of Call of Duty.
Producers Dan Bunting and David Vanderhaar took the stage at the LA Coliseum to talk three pillars for the new CoD multiplayer game: “Compete, customize and create.” Competition was the first element — beyond the standard Call of Duty multiplayer elements, Treyarch has added a whole new mode called Combat Training, which brings AI opponents to the mix. Yes, bots have arrived in Call of Duty.
Currency, said Treyarch, is useless unless you can gamble with it, so Treyarch has created four new multiplayer modes that revolve around gambling CP, called Wager Matches. In these matches, only the top three players get paid at the end of the match, and everyone else loses their ante CP. “One in the Chamber” pits players against each other armed with just one pistol and one bullet — killing someone else earns you an extra bullet, but missing leaves you with just a knife. “Sticks and Stones” gives everyone a tomahawk and a crossbow, and hitting an opponent with a tomahawk automatically bankrupts them. “Gun Game” has players progressing through the various gun tiers — a kill moves you up to a stronger weapon, but dying drops you back down. Finally, “Sharp Shooter” gives everyone a series of random weapons, with everyone switching to the next randomly selected one after a certain point.
Treyarch has also implemented “Contracts,” which players can buy with CP and then pay off when certain criteria are met in the game within a certain time limit. Promise to kill 50 players in a certain amount of matches, and achieving the goal will pay back more CP — but failing will cost you what you paid in the first place.
Finally, the developer also created the ability to record and playback matches during development, so it added a video recording system into the game. Players can save, share and browse recorded videos — the system doesn’t look quite as in-depth as what Bungie’s put together in the past, but we’ll have to see it in action.
