Posts Tagged ‘Treyarch’

RPS Feature Do mention the war

Editorial: It’s great news that Call Of Duty is returning to World War 2

If the rumours are true, and they most likely are, this year we’ll be seeing Call Of Duty: WWII. People have reacted with concern, but I’m here to argue it’s the best possible news.

There was a time when learning a game was set in World War II was deserving of the heaviest of sighs. Not only did it mean that it would be one of seven thousand other games that year plundering the past for an excuse to bob a gun at the bottom of the screen, but it was more likely to be crass and ignorant than a tribute to the bravery and miserable deaths of our ancestors. We got well and truly sick of WW2 games. Then to save us, the march of the zombies began. We had a whole new theme to groan at, and the Second World War has had something of a break.

The temptation of hearing the rumours that the all-conquering shooter series is to return to its own origins is to start sighing once again. But there are some really good reasons not to. In fact, if there’s anything that could save CoD from itself, it’s heading back. Read the rest of this entry »

RPS Feature It's brighter and more colourful than you realise

Have You Played… Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3‘s multiplayer is fun. I know, right? You’re waiting for the but, in which I’m going to remind you that its willy-waving jingoism is uncomfortable, its level design is brown and dull, its killstreaks reward the best players with frustrating special abilities… but mostly those things aren’t true.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cod Blops 3 Mod Tools Launch Into Open Beta

The next Call of Duty may be only five weeks from launching, but last year’s model is about to get a new lease on life. Developers Treyarch last night launched the long-awaited Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 [official site] mod tools into open beta, letting people create and play with custom levels, weapons, and modes – y’know, mods. Treyarch still have a bit of work to do, but now the tools are available to all players, rather than a handful of testers. Get cracking!

Read the rest of this entry »

Arma 3 And COD: Blops 3 Free On Steam This Weekend

Maybe you think you’ll like shooting things, but you’re not sure what flavour of shooting. Are you the type who likes tense, simulated military manshoots you can play with dozens of friends in wide open areas, with missions you make yourself and vehicles you can pilot and drive? Good news! Arma 3 is free on Steam this weekend.

Or are you the type who likes slightly-silly, rapid paced, run-and-gunning against chums and zombies? Good news! Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 multiplayer is free on Steam this weekend.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cod Blops 3 Releases Nuketown Map For All

Call of Duty doesn’t really have time for ‘classic’ maps, given that a new game comes jumping across time and space every year (smart money says 2016’s CoD will pit World War 1 Tommies against robotic Visigoths from the future). CoD’s Black Ops subseries has run long enough to establish Nuketown as a staple – though since Blops 2 it’s been held back as a pre-order bonus. Well, now all and sundry can visit that old nuke-testing model town in Cod Blops 3 [official site], as it’s finally free to all players.

Read the rest of this entry »

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3’s Free Multiplayer Weekend

Call of Duty: Black Ops III – Multiplayer Starter Pack is a big mouthful for a simple idea: it’s Cod Blops 3‘s [official site] ranked multiplayer sold separately as a cheaper standalone game. It’s an interesting experiment in selling CoD’s many modes separately and a short one – Activision will stop selling it on Monday. But until Sunday evening, you can check out this substantial slice of CoD for free. This handy link should fire up Steam and start installing it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cop A Load Of Cod In Blops 3’s Multiplayer Standalone

Activision are finally trying splitting Call of Duty’s many modes into separate games, for folks who are only interested in part or want a cheap way in, though they’ve started in a baffling way. Last night they released a standalone version of the Cod Blops 3 [official site] ranked multiplayer which costs only £11.59/14,49€/$14.99 – about a quarter of the full game’s price. I’d hoped for a standalone Zombies mode, but what’s odd about this release is the restrictions. For starters, Activision will only sell this version until the end of February.

Read the rest of this entry »

RPS Feature RoboBlops

Fail Forward: Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

Fail Forward is series of videos all about the bits of games which don’t quite work and why. In this episode, Marsh Davies discusses how Black Ops’ segue into sci-fi marks new mechanical innovation in the military shooter – and suggests how it could go even further.

Read the rest of this entry »

RPS Feature Better than ever, but maybe some issues can't be fixed

Call Of Duty Black Ops 3’s Multiplayer Has An Insoluble Problem At Its Core

There are times when Call of Duty: Black Ops III‘s multiplayer feels like a scratchcard from which you’re scraping the dull metal grey surface of a military shooter to reveal the three matching Quake symbols below. Your prize: a game that’s increasingly difficult to stereotype, which is fast and often fun, which has found solutions to many of its ancient frustrations, but which still has an annoying and possibly insoluble problem at its core.

Read the rest of this entry »

RPS Feature Morbid Symptoms

Wot I Think – Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Singleplayer

Call of Duty: Black Ops III [official site] takes place in a future setting not quite close enough to describe as “near-future”. It’s somewhere in the middle distance, and while the concerns of military and intelligence organisations don’t appear to have changed very much, the cyber-modifications available to soldiers promise to make the battlefield a place of superpowered clashes between robots, humans, and operatives caught somewhere between the two. With an arm full of not-plasmids and a sniper scope at the ready, I plunged into the campaign.

Read the rest of this entry »

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3 Is Out, But A Bit Buggy

The Big Blopper, The Blopster, The Codchop, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 [official site] launched last night, and it’s the first in the FPS series to really interest me in a while. Campaign co-op, customisable cyborgs filled with cyberbees, and Jeff Goldblum are right up my alley and oh! supposedly it’s a wee touch less corridor-y too.

It has a few problems at launch, though, with many folks reporting unreasonably poor performance. Developers Treyarch are looking into it, and have a few ideas for fixes.

Read the rest of this entry »

CoD: Black Ops III To Receive Modding And Map Tools

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Watch More Jeff Goldblum In Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3

JEFFFFFFF

Alright, so we’re not the sorts to post every Call of Duty: Black Ops III [official site] trailer, but we are the sorts to post things with Jeff Goldblum in. We’ve known he’s going to be in Black Ops 3 since July, but now there’s a new trailer explaining the set up for why he, playing a magician, is going to be fighting alongside a boxer, an actress and a cop in its co-op Zombies campaign mode, Shadows of Evil. Watch it below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3’s Bans And Protects

I like the Ruhanga multi-animal logo

Massively jetlagged as I am, I decided to ease back into the post-International real world by catching up with Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 [official site] announcements from Gamescom. Either I am stuck in a MOBA fever dream or Blops 3 really is introducing a protect and ban phase to competitive play. Tell you what. I’m going to cover it as if it’s real and then you can just let me know (gently) whether it’s all just a big hallucination. I’m also going to put a wodge of new screenshots in.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jeff Goldblum & Ron Perlman Star In Cod Blops 3 Zombies

I would buy the heck out of Call of Duty: Black Ops III‘s [official site] co-op Zombies mode as a cheaper standalone game. The mode has developed into such silly schlock horror, and draws an increasingly impressive cast of folks from cult movies while going weirder places.

This year’s offering, named Shadows of Evil, will see Jeff ‘Jeff Chuffing Goldblum’ Goldblum, Ron ‘War Never Changes’ Perlman, Neal McDonough off Band of Brothers, and Heather ‘How’s Annie?’ Graham teaming up to fight zombies and tentacled monsters in a noir-y ’40s world. It looks absurd and I like it so much. Come watch the trailer to see Jeff Goldblum as The Magician, chewing the scenery as if it were made of delicious buttery Marmite toast.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cyberwizards & Robobees In 13 Mins Of Cod Blops 3 Co-op

I'm a mechanical- I'm a mechanical- I'm a mechanical man.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 [official site] turns soldiers into cyberwizards with dominion over cyberbrains and robobees, but does that make the game much different from any other CoD, Blops or otherwise? For the first ten minutes of a new thirteen-minute gameplay trailer showing off four-player co-op, the answer appears to be no. Soldiers run along corridors in a sandy city and shout and shoot and there’s a cinematic where a man dies and oh it’s so very tragic. The final three minutes, however, venture into one of the boss battle arenas, and that looks a whole lot more fun.

Read the rest of this entry »

I Guess CODBLOPS Is Basically Unreal Tournament Now

Wall-jumping and robo-soldiers and crazy weapons and teleporters and OTT awards for doing almost anything: whatever would Captain Price think? Me, I’m sort of relieved that Call of Duty Black Ops III [official site] has given up all pretence of military realism and entirely embraced science-fictional absurdity: it’s as though the series is finally allowing itself to be what it’s wanted to be for years. This trailer is focused on the hectic-looking multiplayer, which conjures up Titanfall as well as UT, but I sorely hope there’s a healthy dose of deliberate silliness in the campaign too.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cod Blops 3 PC Tweetdeets: FOV And Dedicated Servers

Bang-o.

Tweets from developers dumping details are a bit like bubble gum wrapper trivia facts, aren’t they? You won’t be fascinated and enthralled, you won’t learn the deepest secrets of the darkest beings, but you might raise your eyebrows a little, but approvingly, and at the back of your mouth grind out an approving throaty vocalisation like “Mmh!” or “Hhhoh!” or “Hmm!” or “Hrmmm!”

Now we’ve chewed the Cyberbazooka Joe gum of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 [official site] in that trailer, it’s trivia time, with wrapfacts on dedicated servers, field of view, and other touchy issues.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cod Blops 3 Campaign: Co-op, Corridors, & Cyberbees

3, 2, 1, let's jam.

The Icarus ‘jump from rooftops and land like it’s no big deal’ augmentation from Deus Ex: Human Revolution may be ousted as my favourite cyberupgrade. Activision gave a peek at Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 [official site] over the weekend, and you guys: you can have a cyberarm containing a cyberhive of cyberbees that swarm enemies. I shall name my arm The Buzzness.

Along with dropping a new trailer with snippets of gameplay, Activision started talking about its campaign. With customisable characters (including ladies!) and perks, it’ll support co-op and gosh oh golly won’t always be in such restrictive corridors. So they say, anyway.

Read the rest of this entry »

A History Of The Near-Cyberfuture In Cod Blops 3 Trailer

One detail I enjoy in the world of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is that once cybernetics truly take off, the Paralympics eclipse the Olympics because cyborgs are way cooler. The cybered-up future envisioned in Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 [official site] is a bit more boring. 2028 for the milestone of a lady with robolegs winning a gold medal against two with meatsticks seems unimaginative, not to mention unfair to the lowly meatbags.

Anyway, anyway, if you’re wondering about the path to cyberfuture, cybersoldiers, and genome soldiers that Blops 3 will follow, here, this new trailer’s a spot of speculative cyberfiction that might entertain until this year’s CoD is given its big reveal on Sunday.

Read the rest of this entry »

« Older Entries