Recent Halo: Reach and Black Ops news

Welcome to another week of news! With just 74 days until Battlefield 3 launching more details emerge including a new online pass system for consoles. A pass system is where consumers will have to fork up another $5 or $10 to be able to play online and to get the features of playing online. A good example is Xbox Live vs. PSN. Before Playstation Plus, PSN was completely free (unless your downloading DLCs) but now it seems that any thing online not just PSN or Xbox will be leaning towards having to pay for online services. Companies will be doing this because they lose so much on used game sales. The company that makes any game will not make any profit from a used game sale. In my opinion, Online, on the next generation of consoles whether it be Playstation 4, The next Xbox Console, the Wii-U or even mobile gaming will not be free.

Map Sizes for Battlefield 3:

Maps on Console will be 70-80% the size of PC maps and console maps will be around the same sized from Bad Company 2. The reason that Dice will be making the maps smaller on console is because there are only max 24 players on console compared to 64 players on PC. So the big question is, if a map is small how will jets be able to fly in such a small space?

“The biggest difference between the PC and console version of Battlefield 3 is that we have 64 players on PC and 24 players maximum on console. The rest is more or less the same: we use the same engine, the same technology, the same animation system, the same lighting system. Our aim is to give the player the exact same experience and not try to dumb down the console version.”

Call of Duty news:

If you haven’t seen it already, the survival mode trailer is out for Modern Warfare 3. I won’t go into much detail but I will just say it, it looks the same as Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2. It’s just a map pack in my opinion that costs 60 dollars. Here is the trailer if you haven’t seen it yet.

And the new Black Ops zombie map pack trailer

Thanks for reading, if you haven’t already, follow me on twitter and subscribe to my channel for Halo: Reach and other gameplay videos.

If you’re interested in seeing some Bad Company 2 gameplay, subscribe to my channel (link in the side bar). I will be posting many different games but mostly Bad Company 2 and Halo: Reach until the release of Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 and Halo 4.

The new suspected blockbuster Battlefield 3 will be adding many changes compared to it’s predecessor Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 2. Battlefield 3 will have unique environments, from wide open large expansive areas to tight “gritty” and small environments. In Battlefield 3 DICE will be bringing back Team Deathmatch and promises that gamers will be able to choose what they want to play, when they want to play it. DICE emphasizes that you will be able to “play your way.” Read the full story here.

A huge focus of Battlefield 3 will be the new Frostbite 2 engine. With Frostbite 2, it allows a much larger scale of destruction with buildings and other destructible objects. For example in the Fault Line trailer it showed the entire face of the hotel fall down when the squad taking out the sniper shot an AT4 at the building.

In Battlefield 3 there will be four classes: Assault, Recon, Support and Engineer. Assault is the new medic. It has more fire power than Bad Company 2 but it also heals on the battlefield.

The old Assault class is now Support, and comes with a light machine gun. This class has the option to suppress enemies. Suppression is much like when someone gives ammo or a health kit so the person using the suppress option gains points for doing so. When a player is suppressed, they will notice a subtle blurring of the screen that hinders their movement.

The recon class is had little changes so far, the player using this class must hold their breath when scoped in a sniper rifle to be accurate.

This is the list of confirmed things in the game.

• Players: 64 players on PC, 24 players on Xbox 360/PS3.
• No Commander. Commander feature won’t be included, as DICE will focus on “lowering the threshold” for players.
• 4 classes, just like in Bad Company 2. DICE feels this is the sweet spot for the game.
• Battlefield 2 maps, several BF2 maps will return in a DLC called “Back to Karkand”. The maps are: Strike at Karkand, Gulf of Oman, Wake Island and Sharqi Peninsula.
• New squad features. DICE plans to take the squad system to the next level, offering new features. According to the Game Informer interview, DICE says, “We have some really cool things that we’ll show later when it comes to dictating how you play with friends“.
• Weapons and unlocks. BF3 will have more weapons and unlocks than in Bad Company 2, which itself had the most weapons and unlocks of any Battlefield game to date.
• Deeper persistence, rankings. One of the issues with Bad Company 2 was that most of the weapons were unlocked before reaching half of the ranks. Says DICE in the GI interview, “we’re also making sure that there is a reason for you to reach the top rank. It doesn’t just end. There will be a lot of focus on persistence and how we present stuff to the player.”
• Jets will return, so far only the US F18 and Russian Mig 29 have been spotted in various trailers.
• Prone will return, DICE will counter prone will killcam, bullet traces and other ways in order to balance the gameplay.
• Killcam will be back and it will be a feature that can be turned on/off on server to server basis.
• DICE will have more focus on post-release content (DLC)
• Co-op for the single player campaign
• No mod tools at release.

Yes, it’s true. Treyarch and Activision are milking another map pack out of Black Ops. This is good and bad. The good part is that we get more maps including another zombie map. In my opinion I did not like Call of the Dead. It was too big and with George you can’t survive. You can kill George but then he comes back. Hopefully they won’t have a boss that just hangs around like George. The bad things about these map packs is that Treyarch and Activision just charge way to much for these things. $15 bucks or 1200 microsoft points? If I am going to keep buying these map packs, they should lower the price to $10 just like the Halo: Reach map packs. Here is some information about the new map pack.

The map pack includes:

–  “Hangar 18,” located in the highly classified military base of Area 51, where gamers will fight through experimental weapons labs, the SR-71 test hangar and a mysterious autopsy room.
–  “Drive-In,” where players experience close-quarters combat through a 1960′s American drive-in theater, complete with a snack shack and a classic arcade.
–  “Silo,” where gamers can infiltrate a massive secret Soviet nuclear missile site under construction within a multi-level battleground.
–  “Hazard,” located on the cliff sides of Cuba, where gamers can explore a coastal golf course fit for a Dictator, and where stocked clubhouses and
manicured fairways meet snipers hidden in sand traps.
–  “Shangri-La,” the all-new Zombies experience, transports players into a mythical paradise overrun with the undead. Players will come face-to-face with new species of zombies and navigate through a labyrinth of underground caverns, all set within a legendary shrine lost in an exotic jungle.

Here is the Trailer:

Want to see some Griffball action? Check out this video. I don’t just go for kills, I go for the win.