SpawnPoint - Where Game Begins

The Call of the Dead zombie experience in the new expansion pack announced for Black Ops is looking pretty promising.  If you’ve seen the trailer (shame on you if you haven’t; it’s featured in the press release here

At 0:56, you see Sarah Michelle Gellar wielding a sickle. 1:02, and multiple times after, Robert Englund has a pitchfork.  Sawed off shotguns at 1:10. GE M-134 at 1:13. At 1:28 there’s a spring-loaded platform catapulting the players off the ship. Danny Trejo wielding dual machetes. The father of modern zombies himself, George Romero, looks to be some sort of miniboss. And there’s ziplines. Ziplines that the zombies can use to follow you, despite their deteriorating muscles and diminished mental capacity. But, hey, it’s not my job to ask questions. There’s also supposed to be a unique weapon for the map, similar to the Winter’s Howl and Wunderwaffe.

Each character seems to have their own personal weapons related to their prior zombie/undead/villain slaying experience. I mentioned each before; but for example, machetes for Machete and a sickle for the Vampire Slayer. The prospect of having one character whose special weapons or moves fit your gameplay style seems like it could either be really awesome or really awful. If you get to pick your character, then it could be cool, but you might get stuck with someone you don’t like if a teammate picks that character before you. And if it’s randomly assigned then it’s a shot in the dark for everyone.  But it looks like melee is going to have an enhanced role in the game, which is going to add a nice twist.

I watched the trailer at least 35 times to soak up as much zombie-slaying goodness as possible. Zombies is one of the game modes I enjoy most, especially after I’m tired of playing on bad connections in multiplayer. It’s a welcomed break from the sponges and the insane cross-map tomahawks that are enough to make anyone rage. So as soon as there’s new content for zombies, I’m all over it. I’m just wondering if the custom melee weapons will be Pack-A-Punchable. And if the PaP room will be safe or unsafe. I loved the two new colas in Ascension, and when it first came out, the lifts proved to be a nice little brain-teaser to figure out the best way to use them to your advantage. I’m hoping the spring-loaded platforms and ziplines will be similar. I’m not a big fan of the ziplines in Kowloon, But zombies is most definitely a different experience to multiplayer.

Hopefully most of the content in the trailer is included in the gameplay, and not just cinematics for the sake of making the trailer more movie-like. If anyone’s got it already, tell me what it’s like in a comment!