Call of Duty Black Ops to Get Another Map Pack!

Image from shockblastmedia.

It has been less than two months since the  Call of Duty Black Ops map pack has come out. As you may recall the map pack that was released for PlayStation3 on Mach 1 of this year is to be followed up with a release of another map pack on May 3 this year. As you might recall from my March 17 blog about online content video game creators are always looking for new and innovative ways to keep players interested in their games.

The video below does a really nice job of explaining just what game players will get if they buy this new map pack. The highlights, for those of you that will not watch this video, are five new maps including four online multiplayer maps and one new zombie map.

 

Official trailer of new map pack Escalation.

 

According to an April 29 article from The Daily Blam,

Since launching last November, Black Ops has single-handedly swept the entire gaming industry, becoming the best selling game in U.S. history only four months after hitting store shelves. While gamers wait in anticipation for the next Call of Duty game, arriving this fall, Activision has announced the second DLC for Black Ops, titled Escalation.

The game that is referenced in the above quote is Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.  This will be the eighth installment in the Call of Duty line. There is no official release date as of yet, but it is rumored to come out in the fall of 2011, many fans believe sometime in November. Unlike most other franchise games that release a game every two or three years Call of Duty  will be releasing another game only a year after the release of Call of Duty Black Ops. 

The release of this new map pack for Call of Duty Black Ops just shows how important new downloadable content is to the gaming industry. I could not find information on how many of the first map packs were sold, however I did find that more than 20 million map packs were sold, for Call of Duty Modern Warfare2, making Activision about $300 million in sales.

So you may ask, what draws players into these new maps? First off the new maps only cost players $14.99 to download. Second the new maps are more interactive and new. In the first map pack that was released for Black Ops players could use zip lines in one of the maps. In the new map pack that is coming out soon, players can open and close garage doors something that was not possible in the original version of the game. 

Video of a player using the zip line mentioned above.

 

This is the same video as my first one but if you focus on the time between 1:35 to 1:50 you will see the usable doors I mentioned above. 

PlayStation Network Down and Out!

Picture from NewsToday article of PlayStation employee
working on network problem.

Anyone that plays videos games online, myself included, looks forward to turning on their video game counsel to play there favorite game online. After a long stressful day at school or work I look forward to coming home to play Call of Duty Black Ops online. Over the last three days however PlayStation users have not been able to play games online.

According to an April 24th article from newsgater.com by Matt Clark, the Sony PlayStation network has been down for three consecutive days. According to the article the network being down does not only effect those who want to play games online but also those who use the PlayStation network to stream video.

In a CNETNews.com article this is not the first time the PlayStation network has had an outage. At about the same time last year testing the patience of many users, but this problem was resolved in only day.  

To make matters worse, there is no clear timetable as to when the service will be back online, which is causing great frustration in the gamer community. The timing couldn't be any worse as the weekend approaches.

CNETNews also released a poll to find out PlayStation network users feel should be done to compensate for the long network outage (you can see the pole on the CNET site on the left side of the page). The poll has had 7,255 votes and 37% of users that voted said they deserve a free game from Sony. On the other hand 20%, including myself responded "Nothing! Outages happen." to the same poll. 

In a PCMAG.com article by David Murphy the shortage was on day four when Patrick Seybold, senior director of corporate communications and social media of Sony, wrote in his blog that Sony is taking this unexpected time to rebuild the PlayStation network infrastructure even better than before. The article goes on to later explain that even though there is no official time frame to have the network back up and running a source speaking to PlayStation Universe expects he network to be up in the U.S. on Tuesday.

With this weekend being Easter weekend I did not have many chances to play PlayStation so this outage did not affect me too much. If this outage had happened during the week however I would have gone crazy without being able to play online whenever I wanted. From time to time there are outages in the network and those can be annoying even though they last only a short period of time. It is hard to believe that in today's day in age that there can be an outage that lasts as long as this one has. I do like that PlayStation is taking this very long outage to correct and improve upon the current network that is in place.

Next Stop 3rd Dimension!

Sony warns that 3D my have side
effects to players. PS3Vault

This week I had a hard time coming up with a topic to blog about but that may be because I was simply thinking too hard. If someone were to ask me today what the next big thing in the entertainment industry is going to be I would answer 3D. One does not have to look too far to see all of the new 3D products popping up all around us. The most obvious industries jumping on the 3D bandwagon are the movie and TV industries, but where does the video game industry stand on this transformation?


 In a March 31, 2011 Wall Street Journal blog post Ryan Kuo explains that he got to play a section of SOCOM 4 in 3D, at the recent Sony showcase in New York, and was quickly enveloped in the world although the 3D glasses made the screen quite a bit darker. After reading Kuo's blog post he seems to be torn between 3D and 2D games. According to Kuo the best 3D game showcased at the event was Virtua Tennis 4. He accredits this success to the fact that already translates well into a video game. On the other hand Kuo says,

Then there were games like Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and Mortal Kombat, where the inclusion of 3D is like gluing twigs and wood chips to a painting of a forest. Mortal Kombat is a lovely 2D fighting game that doesn’t exactly make room for 3-D. And a prerecorded video of Uncharted 3′s gameplay looked decidedly better without 3-D glasses—blur and all.

 

This video explains what PS3 owners will need to do to be able to play 3D games and watch 3D movies.

The only problem I see right now in 3D games is the fact that gamers are required to wear glasses when playing. After reading Kuo's post he did not seem to mind the fact that the player has to wear glasses to play the games. I on the other hand am still on the fence on this aspect of 3D gaming.

.  

Not all 3D gaming requires glasses however! Nintendo recently released the Nintendo 3DS on March 27. The Nintendo 3DS is a glasses free hand held gaming device. The Nintendo 3DS retails for $250 and currently has about 20 games, which retail for about $40 each, that can be played on the device. Aside from playing games on the Nintendo 3DS owners can also access the internet, take 3D videos and even watch 3D movies.

 

This is the virtual tour of the Nintendo 3DS found on the Nintendo website. The part of this video that applies best to the post starts at the 4 minute mark.

 If you happen to be in the same boat as me and feel like the 3D glasses would be an inconvenience when playing games then the Nintendo 3DS is clearly your best option. As of right now I am interested in 3D gaming but I think I will hold out until it becomes cheaper and 3D glasses free. No matter how you feel about this next step in gaming one cannot deny that 3D is here to stay.