Now, with a little over a week to go for the Escalation map pack to drop, Treyarch finally lifts the veil over the zombie map Call of Dead. This piece of DLC looks to be their most ambitious yet. Seeing the video, it looks like they got zombie horror master George Romero to help make the intro for Call of Dead and then they got other veterans of horror type movies or TV shows; Robert Englund from Freddy Kruger, Danny Trejo from Dusk Til Dawn, and Sarah Michelle Gellar from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s a pretty interesting cast I think.
The atmosphere looks really exciting, haunting and interesting, with wide open skies and claustrophobic corridors and icy caverns. Snow falls creating a foggy near-sighted experience which only adds to the creepiness. Treyarch said for this map, they wanted to focus it on long-range shooting and sniping. I find the contradiction amusing. They want sniping as a focus, yet the character’s signature weapons are double barrel sawed off shotguns, a pitchfork, machetes, and martial arts. That’s a big hmm from Treyarch. Well it’s not known whether any of these new weapons will actually be playable in the map but the pitchfork does seem cool to use, or Buffy’s martial arts would be cool if I could jump kick a zombie off a cliff.
Added in the last map pack in Kowloon was the zip line and in Call of Dead, they reused it for easier transportation in lieu of transporters. However, unlike the zip lines in Kowloon, in this zombie map you’ll be able to turn 360 to watch your back and presumably shoot. Watch out though as the zombies are smart enough to follow you on the zip line. Treyarch also added their own version on Bungie’s mancannon that they call “the flinger”. Use it to move, use it to kill (again) zombies.
A previous zombie map that shipped with Call of Duty Black Ops had the boss zombie that my friends and I called the mad scientist. I’m not sure if that was the official name but that’s what we used. Call of Dead has a boss zombie the developers call George (hmm, wonder why?) who carries a big hammer which may or may not be electric. Treyarch hints on at the possibility of more ways to skin the cat that is George besides shooting him up. The video doesn’t show what george does to you if you’re caught by him.
All in all, Call of Dead looks like its ready to be the best zombie map to date that my friends and I will play four or five times and then go back to multiplayer. Escalation comes out May 3rd, 2011 and as always, is first for Xbox 360.
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Source: Inside Xbox
