Black Ops Annihilation Map Pack

Posted by: Bret

Today the PS3 will get a taste of the new DLC for Call of Duty: Black Ops. To help brief you on everything available in the Annihilation map pack, here is a quick video that should tell you all you need to know!

Oh and If you don't remember, my name is Bret and I am alive, glad to see you guys again.



See you guys on Black Ops!

Black Ops: From Casual to Professional

I found this pretty interesting, John Cabal posted a "tutorial" of sorts to explain how you can go from being a casual gamer to a competitive gamer in Call of Duty: Black Ops.

By John Cabal

Perhaps you're new to the Call Of Duty: Black Ops world and are looking for a quick path to the top.  You're like a young Luke Skywalker, desperate to leapfrog your training with Yoda and go straight into killing your Dad.  Or maybe you are stuck in that third prestige rut and want to take your game to the next level.  Wherever you are, here are five advanced tips that will tender quick results: no light sabers required.

 1.  Switch from semtex to frags! One of the biggest differences between playing public matches and using the MLG Variant Ruleset is that a lot of the explosive elements of the game have been removed.  You don’t have to worry about grenade launchers, claymores, or RPGs.  The only thing allowed that goes boom is your lethal weapon of choice.  Many players prefer the semtex grenade because it takes less precision and timing to throw than a frag grenade.  However, what most players don’t realize is that the frag grenade does approximately a quarter more damage than the semtex.  Under the Variant Ruleset, making the most out of your one explosive can make the difference between getting the kill (or double kill) and merely hurting your enemy and revealing your whereabouts to them.
 2.  Watch your radar like your life depends on it!  Because it does!  The more aware of your surroundings you are, the more effective you will be.  A sure sign of a noob is a player who stares intently at the action taking place directly on their screen and is oblivious to what's going on around them.  If you are new to the game, it may take some time to get in the habit of glancing at your radar every few seconds, but the initial frustration you will experience will be far outweighed by your eventual ability to have tingling Spidey senses about everything happening around you.  The most obvious information offered by the radar is of course when your enemy is shooting an unsilenced weapon, but there is much more information just waiting to be gleaned.  By using the radar to know where your teammates are, for example, you can often gain a general sense of where the enemy will be. 

If there isn’t a lot of action at the moment, and you see that your team is spread effectively over 3/4ths of the map, you can be pretty confident that a good portion of the enemy will be spawning in that unoccupied quarter. Then you can get yourself in a good position to pick them off or charge head first towards the enemy, catching them off-guard.  Your friends may have whined about screen-watching when you were playing split-screen Goldeneye on your 64, but now, it's radar-watch or be killed.  You should also keep a close eye on the bottom left corner of your screen, where it shows who is killing and being killed.  Whenever a teammate dies, it's in your best interest to glance around and take note of where the skull pops up; then you’ll know that there is at least one enemy in that direction.  In a close game of Search and Destroy, being the team that takes advantage of everything going on around you will make the difference between bitter defeat and triumphant victory.  So keep a close eye on your radar, and in no time, you'll be a rock star.
 3.  Learn the maps like the back of your hand!  There is no shame in spending time in a private lobby and doing your homework.  If you watch the pros play on the MLG Pro Circuit, one of the first noticeable things that sets them apart is their knowledge of the terrain.  Find those great vantage points.  Learn the angles, learn where to throw your grenades and have them land exactly on that bomb site.  Discover that car that you can lay undetected behind and still see across the whole map.  Learn the major choke points on each map where the majority of the action takes place.  Having equipped yourself with this knowledge, spend time making use of it!  Whatever you do, do not be the guy that just runs around mindlessly, map after map, always wondering why they are not seeing significant gains in their skills and results.
 4.  Watch your controller sensitivity!  When you feel ready to really step up and test yourself in the murky waters of elite, MLG Variant Settings tournament play, you must be ready to play with the big boys.  If you're still  wearing your training wheels, you'll be booted right back to public matches. When you are new to first person shooters, your fingers can only keep up so fast with the action going on around you.  No one expects you to have your sensitivity set on 10 by your third week of play, but if you want to be a pro, you must actively test yourself.  Set a goal for yourself; every week, or two weeks, or month, you are going to bump up your sensitivity one notch.  This will force you to adapt and will quicken your reaction times.  In tournaments, you cannot rely on your claymores and grenade launchers, so the best players are the ones who will win the most firefights because they can move and turn the fastest while being able to still accurately aim and kill.
 5.  Learn your play style and play within your limits!  A new player may watch a live feed of tournament play and see that a large contingent of pro players are using Lightweight and Marathon.  This same player may immediately equip these perks and a sub-machine gun and start dashing around the map at breakneck speed.  The problem is that this player may not be ready to do this.  They may be stuck on tip #4, and will need to build up their reaction times so that they are able to sprint around with their head and trigger finger on a swivel.  Conversely, you may have elite skills but be too comfortable sitting back and going 12-1 from your safe spot, when you could be a game-changer who’s running around going 25-5.  People have different personalities. These personalities will shine through in how they play video games.  Don’t try to be somebody that you’re not.  If you sit back and honestly evaluate your own skills and experience, you may find that you either need to slow down or speed up your game.
 
There are no shortcuts to becoming an advanced Black Ops machine of death.  It takes practice.  However, players that make a conscious decision to improve their skills by implementing some of the tips discussed above will get there a lot faster than the lab rat who repeatedly rams his/her head into the same wall over and over again.  And nobody likes headaches.

Source: MLG Network News

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Call of Duty Black Ops - New Map Pack Leaked?

Dear Australian Gaming Industry,

thank you for your secret keeping fails.

Sincerely,

VGL

Once again the Australian gaming industry has failed to keep a lid on a huge secret relating to the release of a new video game.  On Game Australia’s website there was a flyer that was accidentally posted relating to a new DLC pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops.  The flyer has since been removed, of course, but it was up earlier this morning.  The map pack is going to be called Escalation and it is due to be released on May 3rd, 2011.  It will be released on Xbox Live first due to the three year exclusivity deal that Activision and Microsoft have.

The map pack will include 5 new maps including a brand new zombie map named Call of the Dead.  The other maps are titled: Zoo, Hotel, Convoy and Stockpile.  

With the ongoing trend of the release of CoD map packs and the release of the games themselves, we can be looking forward to receiving new content within 3 month intervals.

As of right now, there isn’t an exact price on the game but if there will be any similarity in price compared to First Strike we can be expecting a $14.99 charge or 1200 Microsoft Points.

We've reached out to Treyarch & Activision for a comment on this and we'll keep you updated!

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Best Selling Video Game of All Time?

Word is spreading around that Call of Duty: Black Ops is officially the best-selling video game of all time! I mean it makes sense right? When you go to your friends or families house there is more than likely Call of Duty laying around somewhere wheather it is being used to play or be eaten by your dog.

13.7 million is the number of Black Ops copies that have been sold in the United States ALONE. So when you add up all the numbers, it is estimated that 1 in 8 households own a copy of the game. That right there is ridiculously unheard of. I'm having trouble taking that in myself. Treyarch... go to hell!!!!!  But seriously, job well done.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops - Double XP Weekend!

What’s one thing that you always wish you had more of when playing Call of Duty: Black Ops?  More attachments would be nice, yes, but Activision is hooking all of us up with a special “winning weekend” starting from 10 PM PST today and will continue going on until 8 AM PST on Monday, March 7th.  They will be rewarding all of us with double XP for this entire weekend.

So remember to pop the disc in your console (it’s for all platforms) and play your hearts out for the next 48 hours, make the best of what we can get our hands on!

As for all of you GBers (Game Battles), they will be rewarding all those who participate in the Black Ops Arenas (360, PS3, and PC) with double XP as well.

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501 spawn kills...now I remember why Black Ops is a pain in the ass.

Aside from camping, there's one other fault to Black Ops that always makes me rage quit.  Spawn camping.  Basically when opponents from the other team deem it fit to camp right near your spawn and repetitively kill you over and over again, making it difficult to finish out a round.  This seems to be a big problem throughout any shooter that you can possibly get your hands on but the below video explains it all too well.  This is just proof as to why spawn camping can be a legitimate pain in the ass.  This one guy absolutely obliterates the opposing team, getting 501 kills and less than 10 deaths.

Real or fake?  You decide.  We know the truth.

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Black Ops First Strike hits PS3 and PC March 3

Hey guys, this is just a very quick update for you. On March 3 Black Ops gamers, for the PC and PS3, will  finally be able to download the First Strike map pack. I personally cannot wait to get on this zip line I have been hearing about!

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Call of Duty: Black Ops receives patch on PS3

Last night, Treyarch released a new patch for Call of Duty: Black Ops. The most noted fix is the freezing issue that arises on the loading screen before a match starts. Other updates that have come with this patch include gun tweaks to the PSG1, RCXD and AKU47, a pre-match timer for LAN multiplayer, and new Contracts to complete.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops - First Strike

All of you Call of Duty fanatics quite obviously allowed Black Ops to grace your shelves within the first week of its release and I know that we've all been waiting for a map pack to be released. Thanks to Treyarch and Activision we're going to be able to bask in the glory of having added maps to our beloved game.

The entire map pack will cost you $15, just a fragment of what the original game will cost you and Dan Bunting, Treyarch’s online director has promised that there will be ‘more verticality’ and more ‘sniping opportunities’ for these brand new online multiplayer maps.




The pack includes four maps titled Kowloon, Discovery, Berlin Wall, and Stadium. Kowloon has a brand new feature that I have yet to see in any of the Call of Duty games, zip lines. Discovery has a collapsible bridge (which I’m sure all of you can have fun with), Berlin Wall is pretty self explanatory and Stadium will be for run and gun, I’m assuming that it will be more like Showdown (a map from the first Modern Warfare). Alongside those 4 maps there will be an added zombie map called Ascension.



Of course the added content will be available for all of the platforms that Call of Duty: Black Ops is compatible with, though there are rumours of separate release dates. Some are saying that those of you who use the Xbox 360 will have first dibs and our sources are saying that all DLC will be able for download at the same time for every platform.


The DLC/map pack will be available for download on February 1st, 2011.

Here’s a little trailer that Activision was kind enough to put out to satisfy your needs to see a little bit of what you’re getting.

Enjoy!

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