call-of-duty posts

Call of Duty Black Ops players who have yet to unlock two of the game's zombie-based co-op maps will be able to play them this President's Day weekend. Activision just sent over word that the maps, Dead Ops Arcade and Five, will be made available to all players of the hit first person shooter from now through Monday.

Dead Ops Arcade lets players fight through traps and zombies while pursuing the Cosmic Silverback. The map known as Five has the players take on the role of the real life 1960s Cold War political/military figures John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Fidel Castrol and Richard Nixon as they fight off a zombie breach in the Pentagon. The PC version of the game has also gotten a patch update today that fixes a couple of minor issues.

[Via email press release]

First person shooter fans have become used to playing through short single player campaigns in the last decade or so but that won't be the case for Duke Nukem Forever. The long awaited and long-in-development game will have an average play time of about 16 to 18 hours, according to what Randy Pitchford, the head of the game's developer Gearbox Software, stated in the most recent episode of Spike's GTTV TV series. He added, " "It's like three or four Call of Dutys, right?"

In this week's press event, members of the media along with a few lucky fans only got to play the first six levels of the game. But will the final version of the game be consistently good with all of that single player gameplay? Pitchford says simply, "The game will speak for itself. I love it." We will find out if we love all that gameplay when Duke Nukem Forever comes out on May 3.

Activision Blizzard didn't mention anything about layoffs in today's financial press release but during today's Q&A with investors at its weekly conference call, execs for the publisher finally admitted that it would in fact be saying "good bye" to about seven percent of its work force. That means 500 people will soon be looking for work. The layoffs were caused in part by the decision to shut down its Guitar Hero division.

Activision execs tried to spin the bad news, saying that hiring was ramping up in other divisions of the publisher including its Call of Duty business and at Blizzard for its upcoming and still officially unannounced MMO game. The execs stated that by the end of 2011 its work force numbers will not be "materially different" than they are right now.

During today's quarterly conference call with investors, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick announced plans to launch a new development studio, Beachhead, that would in some way be linked to the company's Call of Duty shooter franchise. During the conference call Activision execs stated that Beachhead would be in charge of "the development of an innovative new digital platform and special services for our Call of Duty community."

Specifics about this new studio and the kinds of services it would bring to Call of Duty players have yet to be announced. If this service comes to the PC version of the game we wonder how it will affect Activision's deal with Valve to offer Steamworks features like achievements, leaderboards and more to the PC ports of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty Black Ops.

In the same conference call Activision announced plans to release a free-to-play Call of Duty game for China but details and a release date were not announced.

Activision Blizzard announced its latest financial numbers for its last fiscal quarter that ended on December 31 2010. Revenues came in at $1.43 billion for the quarter, slightly below the company's numbers of $1.56 billion for the same period a year ago. For the entire 2010 calendar year the publisher brought in $4.45 billion in revenue, slightly higher than the $4.28 billion in revenue that it brought back in 2009.

In the press release, which also announced the cancellation of True Crime Hong Kong and the shut down of the company's Guitar Hero business, Activision Blizzard announced that next week during Toy Fair it would announced a new franchise that it claims will "bring the world of toys, video games and the Internet together in an unprecedented way."

Duty Calls was created as a promotion for Bulletstorm but the free PC game that also is a parody of the Call of Duty games has turned into a hit all by itself. The game which was released out of left field has already racked up over 1.25 million downloads from its official web site, according to the official Bulletstorm Twitter page (that likely doesn't count downloads from third party sites like Big Download).

To celebrate the game's official web site have have posted up some new wallpapers that proudly show off the ultimate "rank up" award you can get in the brief five minutes (or less) game. Our question: Will there be a Duty Calls 2?

Download Duty Calls [Free PC Game] at Big Download

While Epic Games and People Can Fly didn't offer PC gamers a demo of its upcoming shooter Bulletstorm, they did offer something that's kind of cool all by itself; a full free PC game called Duty Calls. It's supposed to be a parody of the Call of Duty style of military shooter games while also promoting Bulletstorm's release on February 22.

You can download the game from Big Download right now. It's about a 750 MB title that Epic's Cliff Bleszinski has already praised, saying, "Wow. I'm blown away. This game will redefine military shooters for years to come." Uh huh. You can check out the system requirements after the jump

Update: We had a little issue with the download but it should be up and running now

Download Duty Calls [Free PC Game] at Big Download

Call of Duty Black Ops is without a doubt one of the most popular games in recent years and its many players have generated a ton of stat numbers since the first person shooter's launch last November. Today the game's developer Treyarch sent over an interesting image with a number of the stats that have been created in the game's three month run so far.

So far 1.1 trillion shots have been fired by players in the game. 3.4 billion crossbow shots have been fired as well and the fan favorite tomahawk has had over 28 million back shots. There are lots more stats in the image which you can see in full when you click on the image above. By the way, those stats are going to get much higher this weekend as Treyarch will host a double XP multiplayer weekend for Call of Duty Black Ops across the PC and other platforms.

While Call of Duty Black Ops remains one of the most popular games on Valve's Steam service, the PC port of Treyarch's recent first person shooter has come under attacks by a UK-based gamer consumer group called Gamers' Voice. Last December the group issued a open letter to the game's publisher Activision, stating that in its opinion there were numerous issues with both the PC and PS3 versions of the game. The letter states, "You have pushed out a game that is broken to the point of it not fulfilling its function as a piece of entertainment."

The group waited one month for Activision to reply but apparently the publisher issued no response. Now Gamers' Voice states on their web site that it will submit a more formal statement "to the relevant government agencies that protect consumer rights in the UK." The group continues to claim that "entire sections of the PS3 and PC gaming community are apparently being used as game testers for an extended period after a game's release, yet being asked to pay for the privilege."

[Via VG247.com]

It's been over a month since the last patch was released for the PC version of Call of Duty Black Ops. However late tonight the Steam service offered up the latest bug update for the PC port of developer Treyarch's hit first person shooter.

The new patch is mainly for fixing issues in the game such as closing up some exploits, improving the game's stability and fixing an issue where the audio in multiplayer was stuttering on some PC systems. It does add some new private match server settings (Team Change, Team-Up Period, and Keep Balanced Teams) and your friends on your team will now show up as blue on the game's mini-map.