It appears the kindly folks at Activision have learned at least one thing from the continuing success of recent Call of Duty games: fans will pay through the nose for extra maps.
Accordingly, they’ve officially announced the first downloadable content for Call of Duty Black Ops. The “First Strike” map pack will hit the Xbox 360 worldwide on February 1, and PS3 users will get their hands on the maps about a month later. Tough cookies for them.
Unsurprisingly, it’s going for $15. Gamers have proved over and over that we’re willing to cough up the cash for multiplayer maps, so it’s unlikely the price will drop now. The good news is the new maps sound like pretty beefy additions to the Black Ops hangar.
Here’s the details:
Berlin Wall: set around the Checkpoint Charlie crossing in divided Berlin.
Discovery: German research base in Antarctica, abandoned since World War 2.
Kowloon: on the rainy rooftops of Kowloon City in China, drawing inspiration from the single-player.
Stadium: a hockey rink in the North-Eastern USA.
There’s also a new Zombies map called Ascension, though they’re currently withholding any info about it. An interesting quote from Treyarch comes from the Major Nelson Radio podcast, via Gamezone: “One of the popular things we’ve added in several of the maps in the shipped game were the scripted moments, scripted elements and interactivity,†they said. “So that’s something we’ve made sure we wanted to bring to every single one of the new maps.â€
Between the added wait time for DLC and the persistent connection bugs plaguing PS3 gamers, there isn’t a lot of incentive for gamers with both consoles to choose the PlayStation version. How do you Sony fans out there feel about getting the snub from Activision?
