call-of-duty posts

A retailer in Australia may have revealed the title, maps and release date for the next Call of Duty Black Ops DLC map pack. VG247.com reports that the GAME Australia web site posted a flyer (since taken down) for the Escalation Pack.

According to the flyer the map pack will contain five new maps for Treyarch's hit first person shooter, including one more new zombie themed map. The flyer hints that one of the maps takes place in a zoo. It says the map pack will be released on May 3 for the Xbox 360. It's likely the PC version will be released about a month or so later.

In their continuing legal fight against publisher Activision, former Infinity Ward co-founders Vince Zampella and Jason West have now added two more charges of alleged fraud against the publisher of the Call of Duty first person shooter game franchise. Gamespot reports that according to revised court documents, West and Zampella claimed they signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Activision in 2008.

The court documents claimed that the two signed the document to secure more creative control and a bonus plan for sales of future games in the Call of Duty series. However they also claimed they were skeptical over Activision's motives. West and Zampella now claim that Activision had no plans to honor the MOU. Activision has yet to respond to these new charges.

Another day, another revelation from Valve that its Team Fortress 2 in-game store can really generate a lot of money.

• Steam has new automatic updates for Painkiller Resurrection and a small update for Call of Duty: Black Ops.
• Valve's Doug Lombardi says, "We are not done with Gordon Freeman's adventures". We certainly hope not.
• A new gameplay mode has been added to the racing MMO Need For Speed World.
• (Not) Shocking news 1: Treyarch is hiring people to work on Call of Duty games.
• (Not) Shocking news 2: The next Call of Duty game could be officially revealed in April.
• AMD has released new versions of its Radeon Catalyst graphics card drivers.

PC players of the hit first person shooter Call of Duty Black Ops got a triple amount of news to digest. The biggest is the long awaited release of the first downloadable map pack for the game via Steam, First Strike, which adds four new multiplayer maps and a new zombie co-op map to the Treyarch-developed game for $14.99.

The second bit of news is a new patch for the PC version. The patch notes go over what's included which includes "mproved stability for Zombies, Multiplayer, and Dedicated Servers". It also fixes a number of exploits in both multiplayer and zombie modes and adds a Dolly Cam editing mod in the game's Theater feature.

Finally PC gamers are now in a double XP weekend, allowing them to double the amount of experience points in Black Ops their player characters can generate in multiplayer modes.

PC owners of Call of Duty Black Ops have been waiting for a while for the First Strike DLC map pack to come their way. Now the Steam PC game download service has revealed that the map pack for developer Treyarch's hit first person shooter will finally be released on March 25.

Normally the map pack is priced at $14.99 but if you pre-order it before March 25 you can knock 10 percent off that price point. Just a reminder: the First Strike map pack contains four new multiplayer maps for the game along with an all new zombie themed co-op level.

A judge in the ongoing lawsuit between Activision, Electronic Arts and the former co-founders of Call of Duty creators Infinity Ward has ruled that it can move forward to its next phase. Bloomberg reports that EA tried to get the lawsuit dismissed but California Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle thought otherwise, and only dismissed one of the counts and said that there was enough evidence on Activision's side to continue the case.

Just a recap (deep breath): Activision fired Jason West and Vince Zampella about a year ago from their posts at Infinity Ward, accusing the duo of "breaches of contract and insubordination". West and Zampella then filed a lawsuit against Activision, claiming the publisher didn't want to pay the large bonuses that they would claim from sales of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. Other former and current Infinity Ward team members filed their own lawsuit for similar reasons. In December Activision dragged EA into the lawsuit, claiming EA worked with West and Zampella "to derail Activision's Call of Duty franchise." Previous to that West and Zampella formed Respawn Entertainment and secured a publishing deal with EA (exhale).

It's a bit surreal to see a singing-and-dancing trailer for the best-selling game of last year. That's exactly what this trailer is, though, as it details to forbidden love between a Black Ops and Spetsnaz member at the Berlin Wall. Of course, it's an advertisement for the First Strike map pack, which contains the Berlin Wall as one of the playable areas. The developers did sort of exhaust most of the in-game footage and developer commentary with their previous trailers, but it's still a bit strange - and hilarious - to see a trailer like this!

Download Call of Duty: Black Ops 'First Strike - Berlin Wall' Trailer
Check out all Call of Duty: Black Ops downloads

As expected, the countdown clock on the Findmakarov.com web site was for a project that was Call of Duty related. However it wasn't an official Activision marketing effort but a fan made live action short film that's based on the Modern Warfare off-shoot of the first person shooter franchise.

The footage is pretty remarkable, as it replicates scenes and characters from the Infinity Ward-developed games. However it's still not clear what the short is supposed to be for. Is it just a stand alone video or a trailer for something more? Hopefully we will learn more about this impressive effort soon.

Last Friday we and many other web sites reported that a countdown web site had launched called findmakarov.com which seemed on the surfurce to be a teaser for the official reveal of Activision's next game in the Call of Duty shooter series. Activision later said it had nothing to do with the site.

Now GameSlice, the personal site of GT.TV host Geoff Keighley, reports that the countdown site has been put up by a Toronto-based group called We Can Pretend. He states that the group will launch what he is calling a "a project inspired by Call of Duty" on March 2. Details of what this project is about are still unknown although he does state, "Production sources who worked on the self-funded project call it visually spectacular."

So is it a movie? Is it a trailer for a game? Is it something else entirely? We will learn more on Wednesday.

[Via Joystiq]

It usually happens about this time every year and it looks like it may be happening again this year. No, not the start of spring training but the first glimpse of the next game in the Call of Duty shooter series. A new web site, Findmakarov.com, has been spotted with a countdown clock that would suggest something is going to happen on Wednesday.

The web site address suggests the reveal is linked to the Modern Warfare spin-off of Call of Duty (Vladimir Makarov is one of the series' main bad guys). That would also suggest the game that will be revealed on Wednesday will indeed be Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. At the moment publisher Activision has only officially said there will be some kind of Call of Duty game that is due out this fall.

[Via VG247.com]

Update: Activision is now telling our sister site Joystiq that it has nothing to do with the countdown web site, nor with the mailing of dogtags to members of the media. However the countdown clock is clearly for something; we just don't know what.