- New Call of Duty Black Ops is set during the Gulf War, leaks claim - 22 November 2023
Call of Duty is one of gaming's most timeless series, dating back to the early 2000s with annual new releases since. Despite being over a decade old now, the CoD series remains popular among both long-time players and younger newcomers alike. Activision and Sledgehammer Games just saw the release of Modern Warfare 3, and it looks like a new Black Ops may follow suit. According to recent leaks, Treyarch is allegedly working on a brand-new Black Ops game set during the Gulf War. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is Treyarch's new Call of Duty - as revealed by Doritos Call of Duty: Black Ops 5 is a "realistic", "gory" reboot, according to huge leak
- Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is Treyarch's new Call of Duty - as revealed by Doritos - 26 July 2020
There are many ways the Call of Duty series has leaked over the years, from retail standees , to the South Korean ratings board , to the typical method of datamining . The latest is a new one on us - courtesy of Doritos, we now know the next instalment of the FPS games series is Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Revealed by Call of Duty fansite ModernWarzone , packs of Doritos are adorned with the next Call of Duty's logo as part of a promotion for players to earn some extra XP. Previous leaks suggested the next CoD from developer Treyarch would be a reboot , set during the Cold War - a prolonged period of tension between the United States and Russia, stretching back to the 1940s, that involved a lot of espionage and proxy wars. The rivalry was one of the driving factors around the space race, fueling scientific innovation from the two superpowers. Now we know this isn't just the settin…
- LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 preview: Time to Assemble - 23 May 2017
The opening credits roll by with a familiar song in tow. The developer logos roll by, accompanied by Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love" playing over the sight of the Milano flying through the skies. The LEGO-fied versions of the Guardians of the Galaxy are making a crash landing onto the planet Xandar. As they speed towards the planet's surface, different elements of scattered worlds from across time and space are popping in, creating chaos all over. That's the story behind LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2, as players once again take control of the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe. Taking place in the immediate aftermath of the first game, long-time Avengers bad guy Kang the Conqueror is messing with the space-time continuum, leading to the aforementioned madness. Shacknews got a chance to go hands-on with the latest LEGO adventure and do a little dancing along the way. The playable…
- Call of Duty “has almost ruined a generation of shooter players,” says Tripwire Interactive - 13 March 2013
Tripwire President John Gibson holds an M1 Garand inside the team's studio, one of the guns carried by the Americans in Rising Storm. Earlier this month I visited Killing Floor and Red Orchestra 2 creator Tripwire Interactive to play Rising Storm, the upcoming standalone expansion to RO2 (look for a preview on Monday). After the demo, Tripwire President John Gibson and I got talking about the state of first-person shooters, and Gibson laid out a detailed criticism about the way Call of Duty "takes individual skill out of the equation." Gibson also expressed frustration over how difficult it had been trying to design a mode for Red Orchestra 2 that appealed to Call of Duty players. PCG: How do you feel about the state of FPSes? John Gibson, President: I think that single-player shooters are getting better. I think they’re finally coming out from under the shadow of the Hollywood movie, o…
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Zombie Nuketown map will claw its way onto PC on Thursday - 14 January 2013
If you splashed out on a Black Ops 2 season pass you'll get access to the zombified Nuketown map this Thursday. Zombie Nuketown has been knocking around Xbox 360 playlists for a short while, and serves as a taster for this year's season of Black Ops 2 DLC packs (which will kick off with the recently spilled Revolution pack.) Zombie Nuketown is a haunted, skeletal doppelganger of one of Black Ops' most popular maps. It used to be a bright, breezy place where military sorts ran round shooting each other in the back for sport. Now it's grim, apocalyptic and full of crazed flesh-eaters and charcoal coloured mushroom clouds. Take a tour in the trailer below.
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 in development at IW according to Captain Price actor - 30 October 2012
The actor behind the most famous walking talking 'tache in gaming, Bill Murray (not that one), has made mention of a somewhat inevitable follow-up to Modern Warfare 3. "Yeah, on Monday I am off to meet Infinity Ward about the next game, Modern Warfare 4, I’m doing work on the sequel to Modern Warfare 3, it carries straight on and I only ever appear in the Modern Warfare games” he told This Is Xbox. It looks like Treyarch and Infinity Ward will continue to share the Call of Duty series year on year. I quite like the idea that Modern Warfare will continue as an ongoing 24-esque action series while Black Ops becomes steadily more bonkers. By 2022 Captain Price will have come back from the dead eighty times and killed every single terrorist in the world and Black Ops will be set on Mars. What would you like to see from Modern Warfare 4?
- Call of Duty and Guitar Hero servers affected by Hurricane Sandy - 30 October 2012
Hurricane Sandy-related power outages are to blame for a variety of tech issues today. Gaming has not been spared the weather's wrath, and Activision has announced that online play for select Call of Duty and Guitar Hero titles will be problematic while data centers attempt to restore power. Players will have "some trouble connecting" to all versions of Call of Duty: World at War and all online-enabled versions of Guitar Hero. In addition, the PS3 version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and the PS3, PC, and Wii versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops are also experiencing service outages. Activision's One of Swords advises that the company is "working on restoring full functionality as soon as possible," but notes that they do not know precisely when that will be.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 video shows eight minutes of multiplayer blasting - 3 October 2012
Black Ops 2's future setting moves its gruff warrior sorts into a world that's used to drone warfare, but hasn't invented awesome laser cannons yet. That lets Treyarch weave a pleasantly paranoid plot in the single player campaign without jeopardising the great golden goose that is CoD's multiplayer mode. I imagine Call of Duty devs are quietly terrified of messing around with that world-winning formula too much, which is why the eight minutes of multiplayer scooped by IGN look so darn familiar. The appearance of a little robot 5:44 in livens things up a little, though. What do you think? Has Black Ops 2's new setting, zombie campaign mode, polished up PC version and open character design system convinced you to give it a try when it comes out in November?
- Call of Duty: Black Ops zombie co-op campaign teased by trailer - 27 September 2012
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is getting an expanded co-op mode called "Tranzit" that'll send four survivors on a zombie road trip across the US. As one of those survivors you'll get to bus from place to place, mounting heroic stands against the zombie army at each location. IGN mention "buildables" that con be constructed to furnish you with new weapons, or open up extra areas, which are probably full of more zombies. The latest Black Ops 2 zombies trailer shows a fuel stop, a diner, a farmhouse reminiscent of Left 4 Dead's Blood Harvest finale, a power station and a town center blighted by lava pools. Zombies AND lava? It's the doompocalypse alright. You'll find the video stamped into the page below. Parts of the video show a tiny snippet of someone shooting zombies of the roof of the bus in first person, suggesting that we'll have to defend against legions of zombie marathon runners as t…
- Call of Duty: Black Ops hits Mac this week - 25 September 2012
Mac gaming has come a long, long way over the past few years, but apparently not everyone has received the memo yet. While Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is mere months away for launching on PC and consoles, the original Cod Blops from 2010 is only just making its way to shiny white Apple things this week. Cod Blops will launch for Mac OS X on September 27, porting specialist Aspyr announced last week, priced at $49.99 and including the originally $15 'First Strike' DLC pack. It'll be available on Steam but won't be a SteamPlay title, so you won't receive it if you already own Cod Blops for Windows on Steam, and vice versa. Aspyr will release the other two Cod Blops DLC packs on Mac as a bundle "later this year." Check the system requirements this-a-way .
- Black Ops 2 multiplayer leak video shows ‘finger guns’ - 10 September 2012
Some cheeky blighters have obtained what Activision are calling a “development demo build” of Black Ops 2, and uploaded a vid to prove it. It’s an extremely short snippet of action, and overlayed with a superfluous dev interview and some dreadful music, but it does show off the capabilities of the engine. Spotted on Kotaku, the video sees the player activate a no-clip mode, allowing the camera to zip off, around and above a rather pretty hillside township - which the player then proceeds to fill the the bodies of his foes. A crossbow makes a brief cameo and the video ends with the player running about making 'finger guns' at the enemy - a returning weapon from previous CoDs accessible via the 'giveall' cheat. The original video has been removed, as you’d expect, but it came from the channel of Call of Duty modder iHc James. Kotaku still have a working version at the time of writing, if…
- Black Ops Zombies now available Android-wide - 7 September 2012
If you're an Android owner and a fan of capping the undead, you might have been a little disappointed by last month's news that Black Ops Zombies was only available exclusively on Sony Xperia devices. Unless you happened to own Sony's Xperia S or Xperia Ion, you were out of luck. Fortunately, that exclusivity window has closed and now any Android player can get their zombie fix. The game is now available on Google Play , and will cost you $6.99. It features an upgradable perks system like the console title it's based on. It also includes a handful of maps for single- and multiplayer modes, and a gauntlet "Dead Ops Arcade" mode.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 system requirements and enhanced PC features detailed - 4 September 2012
Treyarch have upgraded the DirectX 9 Black Ops engine to a "leaner" DirectX 11 edition that promises "significant improvements" for us PC players. The updated engine should make more efficient use of GPU power, and will have "more quality vs. performance options than ever before." The upgrade means that it won't run on Windows XP, however. "Performance has been a top priority for Black Ops II PC from day one" say Treyarch in a post on the Black Ops 2 site, spotted by Eurogamer. "Black Ops II PC features enhanced lighting, shadows, antialiasing, bloom, depth of field, ambient occlusion, and other enhanced effects that are still in the works. And the game can run at higher resolutions and higher framerates on the PC." There's no frame rate limit either, so we'll be able to cram even more Call of Duty into our eyeballs every second than ever before. Treyarch also released some minimum syst…
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 screenshots show tight multiplayer scraps on futuristic maps - 15 August 2012
It's the future that's for sure. The riot shields all have lights on them, someone's finally realised that those quadrocopter toys could quite easily double as deadly recon drones, and humanity has become warped and warlike in its relentless quest to capture flags. The latest Black Ops 2 screenshots from Gamescom offer us a glimpse of this grim but probably quite fun dystopia. Absorb them below. It's impossible to tell from looking, but there's an interesting "pick 10" character builder behind the loadouts of these futuristic soldiers. Treyarch have been talking about the highly customisable system at Gamescom.
- The origin of Call of Duty’s most-heard sound - 14 August 2012
When you shoot someone in Call of Duty, there’s a noise. It's positive feedback—a fwip-fwip-fwip to let you know that your bullet, knife, claymore, or phoned-in helicopter is hurting someone. While visiting Treyarch I asked the Black Ops 2 sound team about the creation of the simple-but-essential effect. PCG: Why does it sound the way it does when I shoot someone in Call of Duty? Brian Tuey, Audio Director: So... The sound has impact and it has meaning and it's useful and all that, but it's not a particularly pleasant sound, especially in isolation. There was a time recently where I was like, "You know? I'm gonna redo this with something else." So I kinda went a different direction, and it felt like this was going to be good. I checked it in, and within three hours, my email box was full of, like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY SOUND?" I'm like, "But it's so much better!" Chris Cowell, Audio…
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 MP to have Diablo 3 style unlock system, guns and perks revealed - 14 August 2012
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 details have been oozing out of Gamescom. VG247 have details of an updated "build a class" mode that will let us occupy ten gear slots with any combination of weapons, perks and killstreak rewards. Levelling up will mean choosing one of seven new pieces of kit to unlock. If you want to grab the six you missed, you'll have to prestige and reset your character. You're not restricted to having to occupy certain slots with weapons, and other slots with perks. You can forgo your primary gun in favour of an extra perk, or a "wild card" ability that changes the way your weapon behaves, adding an alternative fire mode or letting you slot an extra attachment onto your weapon. Treyarch refer to the system as "pick 10." It's not too far off Diablo 3's sideways levelling system that lets you slide any unlocked skill into a limited number of slots. Levelling grants you new…
- Modern Warfare 2 designer explains the thinking behind No Russian mission - 9 August 2012
Modern Warfare 2's No Russian mission asked players to choose to take an passive or active role in an airport civilian massacre. It caused quite an uproar back when it was released, but a lot of time has passed. A legal battle has been fought, a new studio has been formed, and many of the designers who worked on Modern Warfare 2 at Infinity Ward are now working for Respawn Entertainment. Mohammad Alavi is one of them. The designer responsible for one of Call of Duty 4's most memorable levels, All Ghillied Up, also had a hand in creating Call of Duty's most controversial moment. With the legal NDAs surrounding his attachment to Infinity Ward expired, he's spoken to Matthew S. Burns on Magical Wasteland about the intent behind No Russian. "We were trying to do three things" he explains, "sell why Russia would attack the US, make the player have an emotional connection to the bad guy Makar…
- Black Ops Zombies now available for Android (sort of) - 3 August 2012
Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies, the mobile undead-centric spin-off from the console Black Ops title, has now hit Android. The bad news? If you happen to own any Android device but Sony's Xperia S or Xperia Ion, you'll have to wait another 30 days to get it on your device. Yes, even open platforms are getting hardware exclusivity deals now. Like the iOS version, the Android version costs $6.99, and approximates the zombie-hunting action from the console game. It features a handful of maps, a gauntlet "Dead-Ops Arcade" mode, and solo and multiplayer complete with a perks system. "We're delighted to bring the blockbuster Call of Duty franchise to Android smartphones and Xperia for the first time. And what better way to make this introduction than with the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies," said Sony Mobile's Tim Harrison. "There's nothing else in this world or the underworld lik…
- Call of Duty DLC on sale for charity - 4 July 2012
Hey, remember how we always say Call of Duty DLC is overpriced? Well VG247 are reporting that Activision have just launched a great big sale, offering 50% any Black Ops or Modern Warfare 3 Map Pack for the next week. That takes the price down from an exorbitant £11.49/$14.99 to a much more reasonable £5.74/$7.49. There's something else to, a portion all sales will go to the Call of Duty Endowment, a charity launched by Activision back in 2009 that helps veterans find jobs when their tours of duty are over. The full list of discounted DLC is as follows: Call of Duty: Black Ops First Strike Call of Duty: Black Ops Escalation Call of Duty: Black Ops Annihilation Call of Duty: Black Ops Rezurrection Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Content Collection 1 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 content collection 2 Activision have long been seen as the 'Evil Empire' by gamers, but this is a good thing. £…
- Call of Duty Online on its way to China - 3 July 2012
The money printing behemoth that is Call of Duty just got even bigger. Activision have announced Call of Duty Online, a free to play multiplayer version of CoD aimed at the lucrative Chinese market. Chinese law requires that any Western studio wanting to release a game work with a local business partner, so Activision are partnering with Chinese publisher Tencent to make it happen. But why should we care about a game destined for the Chinese market? Well dear readers, what happens in China no longer stays in China. Games like Crytek's Warface have used a successful eastern release as a springboard to enter the western market. Exactly what effect a free to play multiplayer Call of Duty would do to the gaming market is an interesting question. The vast majority of Call of Duty's playerbase seem to be in it for the mutiplayer, would they prefer a free version that focused exclusively on th…
