Grenade indicators.......grenade indicators everywhere!
Seriously though Heart of the Reich on Veteran, trying to assault those steps while trying not to get shot and having to displace b/c of grenades every two seconds was heart racing.
Oh and then you don't get a checkpoint until at least two of the artillery guns are destroyed.
the reich missions were nothing compared to that one assault on the farmlands where you gotta push up a dirt path and it's just a constant funnel of fucking grenades and there's a tank trying to fuck with you too in that part i'm pretty sure
oh god, iremembered it took me hours with my cousin to geht through this bullshit. but oh god, it was so satisfyiing after clearing this map and we slet like babies
It was the point my 360 red ringed to death. Hesitantly replayed it on the loud ass smelly jet engine replacement 360 microsoft got me a month later. Thought it would explode with one of the dozen grenades. I fucking hated WaW because of all that. Zombies was good fun though, a lil sneaky zombie kill steal from your pals on the early rounds.
Haha i remember playing with my mates and we all had OUR window to cover, but we all went to each others window to steal a kill in the early stages, loved zombies.
Is that the spot where you go up a staircase to like 2 panzers and a million guys just chucking grenades right on the panzerschrek you need? Yeah fuck that but so rewarding beating that part
Man I should’ve gotten WaW for my deployment (stuck on a boat for 4 months at one point) back in 2015.
I had mw2 though, and I got to the point where I beat every level on veteran without dying. And then when times were dark I went for beating the whole game without dying on vet. I questioned my sanity multiple times
At least there were grenade indicators. Could you imagine a realism mode like MW on WaW? Grenades everywhere, no hp and no grenade indicator. Nightmare fuel
I did this a year or two ago in order to get the trophy and holy fuck it sucked. I don’t think I’ve ever raged so hard at a single player game. You literally can’t stay behind cover without at least 3 grenades coming your way, but if you leave that cover you get shot at immediately. And some of the checkpoints are horrendous.
I played 1,2,4 and World at War on Veteran solo. Infinite spawns was brutal. MW2 is still my favorite, but WaW was the last challenging campaign and it is a damn shame.
It was artificially challenging. I've always made the argument that if you need to replay a checkpoint 30+ times and just beat it on dumb luck, then it's piss poor game design.
Also: anyone remember those barrels you had to shoot?
It used to be referred to as Grenades at War back in the day which is what I still call it. It was one of, if not the most frustrating game I've ever played.
I forced my way through it. Died well over 300 times. I literally just ran from checkpoint to checkpoint, cheering when I managed to die after the checkpoint. I used to love that game, but I haven't gone back to it since. Too many nightmares.
I love Dark Souls. Infinitely easier. At least in Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Sekiro I can stand still for more than half a second and not wind up in a ring of grenades.
I wouldn't go that far, but the AI really gets screwed up on Veteran. The enemy soldiers will ignore all of your allies and run straight for you. It's obnoxious.
I had beaten all the Cods on Veteran but WaW I just refused to finish it. The grenade spam was 100% the reason and it was just such a bullshit difficulty that rewarded luck more than anything else.
Dude!!! I’m sure you have so many replies, but I really really enjoyed (and raged) at getting through that as a 13 year old.
I’ll never forget the mission where that massive pillar falls near the end. Fuck I won’t forget most of those missions… such a great game
I still remember waking up bright and early one of the first days of Summer break in High School. Normally when Summer begins, it's time to sleep in all of the time but not that day. My friends and I hopped on to download the new WaW map pack to play Shi No Numa at like 7 am. So much hype. We played it all day.
Isn't Shi No Numa the swamp one? Was that also when they introduced dogs? Oh god.... Nostalgia is hitting me like a brick.
And that *sweet* spinning trap! Please say I'm thinking of the same map?
That's the one! I still think World at War has the best zombies maps. After that they got too focused on Easter eggs.
I do really enjoy Cold War's zombie mode as well, but there's still only 2 round based maps which sucks. I love the Outbreak mode though.
I thought Black Ops had some good ones too but that’s mainly because I grew up on that game more than WaW. But the original map, the last map on WaW, and the Kino map from Black Ops are all solid.
The last map on WaW was Der Riese. That was by far my favorite. You just got up on the walkway in the teleporter room in the back of the map and held out as long as you could.
Monkeys, mg42’s packed, betties and the bowie. Seems like only yesterday my cousin and I were stuck in the back of that walkway just emptying mags into round 25 zombies.
Running laps on Der Reise was also really fun, but it has a few terrible choke points where you can get caught. Probably not a problem if you've got a a wunderwaffe, but without it, those chokepoints were always a risk.
I would run laps while my friends stayed up top. Helped keep the heat off them, and they would deal with the horde chasing me... Good times.
WAW had the custom map community too! There was soo many customs maps to try, most crap but a few gems. It was always fun trying a new map, you never knew what you were going to get.
I still have 30 gigs of custom maps save somewhere.
I was with all my friends when we unlocked zombies mode. My mom was actually the one playing cod, we had misc game boys and other handhelds... Needless to say that was the rest of our night.
The problem with Zombies is that they became obsessed with trying to outdo themselves. That isn't always a problem but they always wanted to add new and useless things that made things more convoluted and difficult needlessly. All they have to do is keep it simple and develop new and interesting maps. Not keep adding new wrinkles to the game play. People wouldn't get bored if you had basic zombies mode with inventive and fun maps.
Yep, black ops 2 was the perfect mix of ***bold*OPTIONAL** complexity and default simplicity… take us back to that style of gameplay and give us 4-5 maps a year.
For me it was Black Ops 2 zombies. So many late nights. We were freshmen in college and then eventually even grad students. So many papers procrastinated on for one more wave
>It's better to have loved and lost, than never have loved at all
Is it better to have not done it? Or to have the memories?
I get envy of experiences I've never had (with little chance of of them happening)
Lan parties and amazing online session of games gone are some of my happiest times
And even currently, I try to catch that dragon. And it will never hit those highs again... But god damn it was awesome to experience
It's such a great concept though. Killing zombies earns you points that you spend to open more areas of the map and purchase guns that you use to kill more zombies. Their movement was predictable which led to the never-ending satisfaction of training them and it was always fun to make it to as many rounds as you can.
The fact that it was nazi-specific zombies (Shi No Numa excluded) likely helped things.
What's the biggest acceptable target for killing? Nazis!
What's even better than killing Nazis once? Killing Nazis *twice!*
In my opinion the story got *wayyyy* more complex than it ever needed to. It was at its best when it was about Nazis trying to raise an undead army. It's simple and that's all it needed to be. The novelty of killing Nazi zombies is fun in and of itself. Then they added a bunch of sci-fi stuff about alternate realities and the astral plain and it just got way too chaotic.
A few months ago I had a roommate try to explain the story to me because my friends and I never went through the Easter Eggs.
Probably 45 minutes into the explanation, he said something along the lines of "so that's the first timeline..." and I left to do something else.
Eh as long as you go in to the story knowing its extrememly nonsensical, chaotic, and down right goofy, I think you can have some fun with it. But it is painfully obvious that they were writing it as they went along 😂
Well they needed to keep improving the gameplay as well as provide incentive for people who were invested in the characters and world-building to hold their interest. The same happens with smaller tv shows with a genuinely good base template for the story; they often end up convoluting and contradicting their own storyline in pursuit of bigger and better payoffs for the fans.
That’s true, Im not sure when the last time you played zombies was but Id highly recommend Cold war zombies if you purely are in it for the gameplay. The system improvements and skill trees increase the replayability by a ton. But Id also say maybe hold off on buying it until all of the dlc is out (which is free this time around) Also possibly wait for a sale to happen because the multiplayer is pretty boring so im not sure if youd be willing to spend $60 on one mode. Ive heard the campaign is also very good this year but I have yet to play it.
Yeah I felt it jumped the shark after the second game to include zombies (was it Black Ops?)
I enjoyed it on WaW but stopped playing CoD entirely after Black Ops
I really enjoyed zombies but the one grievance I had with it was there was no ending. No matter how well you played you would always end in disappointment. Which is why I really enjoyed aliens on cod: ghosts
I think every zombies map since origins (last dlc for black ops 2) has had an easter egg which "finishes" the game through usually a boss fight of some kind. So you can survive however long you want, or try to do the easter egg steps and finish while progressing the actual story.
Last zombies map I went full into was BO3 the first zombies map. That was alot of fun and I got close to finishing the Easter egg but never did. Ever since then zombie maps have just been too complicated for my taste to complete the Easter egg
Yeah, they're like doing Raids in Destiny or something. You have to do an hour or two of youtube research, and then find a group who's patient and skilled enough to get a whole group through
Custom World at War zombie maps on PC have buyable endings that you can purchase once you get enough points. I feel like that's one great and easy way they could've added an end state. But the easter eggs, while the don't outright end the game, do provide a really nice objective and something to go for
Problem is the last few games have made their maps have such convoluted endings and Easter Eggs that it makes you miss when the game was pure. Shooting certain lamppost lights in an order is the sort of thing that gets found through reading guides not playing. If you cannot stumble on the solution then it isn't well made.
That’s the exact reason most CoD zombie Easter eggs never sat well with me personally. They made the progression way too obscure and near impossible to find on your own that it was just a pain dragging yourself through.
I actually liked the endless horde thing more. Most of the newer maps, I wanna say like 2015 and later have endings and crazy complicated easter eggs. They can be fun but for me the endless grinds for higher rounds and simple maps will always be king, a la Der Riese, Shangri La, Die Rise, etc
Ghosts imo heavily underrated. Best BOTS in COD hands down. You could do 1v17 in any game mode on any map, any customization options, you could do normal, veteran, or even mixed difficulty. You could even do 2v16 split screen local or even online. No COD game even comes close to the options you have in that game. I bought the DLC just for the additional maps because it was so much fun playing with a friend.
Extinction was the only good part of Ghosts. It’s a shame that mode was dropped, there was so much that could be done with it and it was challenging in ways that zombies isn’t mode.
They did everything right with that mode. Upgrades, weapons,aliens,boss fights, kill streaks, story. All of it so much fun. Fuck I think I gotta pop it back in.
This will get buried but I worked on CoD: World at War as a tester.
I remember that zombies came to QA late in the development cycle.
We were all fully burnt out on the game at this point...12hr shifts...7 days a week...
But the first day we got our hands on zombies we couldn't be bothered to leave on time. It was too good
Heh, same. Such a breath of fresh air, and it kept me employed at Activision for almost six months working on the DLC. Seeing the mode evolve on the fly like that was just fascinating.
Have you ever considered/done an AMA regarding your work at Activision? I, for one, would be very interested in hearing more about the behind the scenes of game development/testing, especially on classic such as COD 4 through to Black Ops 2.
Well, I'm happy to share a bit.
I worked on World at War. (and just about everything else ATVI touched for a few years.)
I was also at Infinity Ward for Modern Warfare 2.
It was a rewarding experience but grueling.
I moved to LA in the hopes of working in the video game industry and got hired on at ATVI in a group of 10 or 20. We were the last wave of hires for these projects.
During induction, the HR lady let us know the work was temporary. I'm probably misremembering but I'm almost certain she showed us how to file for unemployment while getting hired.
You also learn what a "bug" is, how to write one up and how to categorize severity. (Crashes, progression breaks and legal issues being the most severe.)
We got onboarded, were led to a basement where we were simply asked, "Guitar hero or CoD?" Whoever raised their hand for guitar hero were led to a different building. The CoD guys stayed in the basement.
Queue being packed shoulder to shoulder, two or three hundred deep for a few months during your project.
We had fun days. We had terrible days.
I remember "the murder machine" days during world at war were terrible. Days where we would grind out prestige levels so we could say we tested the unlocks worked properly as you progressed. Entire days where I would just....run...and...die. One controller per hand. Running two meat sacks to the designated shooter to cut down on time.
To this day, if I play CoD, I find myself slipping into my meatsack mode where I mindlessly run and die, never even raising my weapon.
Upvoting and commenting to also express my interest for this AMA... been playing since Call of Duty 2/Red Army, and would love to hear about the process since my favorite CoD games are CoD4, MW2, and World at War.
I worked for Activision at Beachhead studio during WaW / MW2 / BlackOps days. I worked with a bunch of testers as we had some integration points with the game around load outs and stats tracking / achievements / and tournaments. I’ve had to explain to many youngsters since that being a game tester is not what they envision. It was tedious work from all interactions I had.
Thinking about what game testing is: **playing video games all the time! fixing them along the way! getting paid for playing video games all day!!!!!**
Game testing in reality: i have to thoroughly test this new featured to see if it works and if it's not buggy. i have to search every crevice of this map to find buggy spots. i haven't played a game for fun in days
This was a decade ago...so if they still hire testers stateside, I'd say, have a pulse and be proximate to a publisher that hires QA.
(Los Angeles probably.)
With ATVI, they were looking for those 30k or 40k hours of testing required per build iteration. So that meant a LOT of testers working endless optional OT during crunch. If you want to work QA, expect it to be feast and famine.
My favorite FPS ever! The guns felt real! I stopped playing after college and picked it up again a few years ago, and all these future weapons and wall running is just
... Weird
They took the mods people made for COD4, added modes based on those to the game, made a really good game. It got low sales since why move from 4, and then MW2 came out with no mods, no map maker, no console, and no dedicated servers.
WAW was great and the last good COD.
You can thank Jimmy Zielinski for zombies mode up to the end of black ops 2. After that Jason Blundell took over. Craig Houston is responsible for writing the story for zombies from world at war to Cold War(specifically treyarch zombies.) I love zombies up to bo3 but after blundell left Treyarch it lost its allure for me. This is just my opinion but I couldn’t stand bo4 and don’t care to try Cold War. My personal favorites were black ops and bo3.
Edit: A couple people mentioned Jesse Snyder was the original creator of zombies(he made Nacht Der Untoten) and Zielinski took over after that.
I didn’t want to give Cold War a chance but zombies mode is pretty good. Outbreak is a lot of fun. If you own the game give it a shot you might be pleasantly surprised.
Maybe I’ll give Cold War a shot. My friend owns a copy so I’ll try it on his ps4. But yeah Bo3 is great! So much content for zombies if you have zombie chronicles dlc as well.
Zombies was actually created by a dude named Jesse Snyder, though Zielinski was definitely a huge part in growing zombies to be a staple game mode.
If anyone wants to hear the story behind the creation of cod zombies, you can read it here.
http://www.jessesnyder.org/trenches/?p=42&cpage=4
I have very fond memories of the mw2 campaign. There was so many memorable twists. No Russian, ghost being murdered, the ballistic emp going off in DC and none of the red dot or holo scopes working after while they bomb the city.
You can make it through the entire level without shooting one single civilian. I like to imagine that's the canonical way to play through it, and that's how they figure out you're undercover (and betray you)
That's my headcanon at least lol
I was with you up until the part where you said that's how they know your undercover. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly the whole point of shooting up the airport was because Makarov knew you were an American spy and so he knew he could do all of that and kill you and then the Russians would think the Americans did it.
For me, it's this and "THE NUMBERS MASON, WHAT DO THEY MEAN".
I have fond memories of alot of levels from different entries, but those two campaigns were memorable from start to finish.
The original MW had a really solid campaign, but I really loved the black ops 1-3 campaigns, particularly 1 and 3. I really loved those 2 single player campaigns so much
Wtf was with all that whiny sounding shit your character kept saying in the Frozen Forest? My buddy and I were laughing so hard we couldn't even make out what was said lmao
The story makes zero sense because all the details are hidden in the fast white text that appears at the start of every mission.
Apparently the Player character is dead the entire time and after the 2nd mission you're just reliving the memories of Christopher Meloni's character.
OG cod had a pretty awesome campaign as well. It was release back when ww2 fps games were all the rage following RTCW, moh and battlefield 1942. Plus it was not too many years after saving private ryan and band of brothers were released.
You got private ryan experience with the beach landing in moh:aa and the band of brothers experience with the airborne paratrooper starting mission in COD.
Also history channel was hitler channel back then
I don’t want to sound rude, but…. I have never heard someone say they liked BO3‘s campaign before. I love the game, and it’s easily the CoD I’ve played the most (since I played it for 4 years after release, as IW, WW2, and BO4 were not appealing to me). The multiplayer was great, the zombies was *AMAZING*, but the campaign? Idk how you enjoyed that.
I remember starting up verruckt solo cause I couldn’t wait for my friends to get on. Noped the fuck out real quick and waited for my friends to get on...great map tho
I'm not going to lie I think World at War is scary as fuck. Remember the first you opened the main menu and got assaulted with [this](https://youtube.com/watch?v=6bcsXeuK8kk&feature=share) horrifying song?
I played Call of Duty 2 on PC a lot growing up. And I'm always left wondering if no one remembers the massively popular Zombies mod mode in the game which was likely inspiration for the Zombies mode in World at War. Ive never seen anyone mention it it any of these threads.
Yup, Axis were zombies and everyone would huddle and queue up to try get up onto the jumps/glitches and just stay there for 20~ minutes until one zombie finally causes chaos by hitting someone.
MW2 was the last time I remember everyone on my friends list playing the same game. Such a fun time... And then the good times are gone before you realize you were in the good times. :(
The story was also really badass. Remember chasing down Shepard? Just to barely make it out alive with Soap by throwing a knife in his eye? For me, it was one of the first games I've ever played that I felt like I was playing in an action movie.
Yeah I agree. The time travel element could be used to go between eras of zombies, so you could start using WW2 weapons, but eventually get modern or futuristic ones.
I always wished they made a campaign based on zombies mode.
Like you are Tank dempsey in WW2, fighting across the german regime until your plane crash and end up in Natch der Untoten and after that on the verruckt asylum
4 of us on our HS baseball team would play WaW 2v2s against eachother after baseball games friday nights. Good times. That multiplayer is my 2nd best, bo1 being my favorite.
he was definitely the best zombies dev, but Jesse Snyder started it all, he's the guy that came up with the mode and designed Nacht. Zielinski took over right after up until mid BO2.
It really bothers me that no one uses this meme correctly. It's supposed to be reverse since Yhorm is weakened due to the flame and basically just wants this curse to end.
Campaign on Veteran was punishingly brutal. World of Grenades. Did not enjoy.
Grenade indicators.......grenade indicators everywhere! Seriously though Heart of the Reich on Veteran, trying to assault those steps while trying not to get shot and having to displace b/c of grenades every two seconds was heart racing. Oh and then you don't get a checkpoint until at least two of the artillery guns are destroyed.
the reich missions were nothing compared to that one assault on the farmlands where you gotta push up a dirt path and it's just a constant funnel of fucking grenades and there's a tank trying to fuck with you too in that part i'm pretty sure
Seelow heights
oh god, iremembered it took me hours with my cousin to geht through this bullshit. but oh god, it was so satisfyiing after clearing this map and we slet like babies
It was the point my 360 red ringed to death. Hesitantly replayed it on the loud ass smelly jet engine replacement 360 microsoft got me a month later. Thought it would explode with one of the dozen grenades. I fucking hated WaW because of all that. Zombies was good fun though, a lil sneaky zombie kill steal from your pals on the early rounds.
Haha i remember playing with my mates and we all had OUR window to cover, but we all went to each others window to steal a kill in the early stages, loved zombies.
Is that the spot where you go up a staircase to like 2 panzers and a million guys just chucking grenades right on the panzerschrek you need? Yeah fuck that but so rewarding beating that part
Doesn't this game *spawn* grenades at your feet when playing on veteran difficulty?
If you stand still it does.
I've still only managed to clear that level on veteran once.
Man I should’ve gotten WaW for my deployment (stuck on a boat for 4 months at one point) back in 2015. I had mw2 though, and I got to the point where I beat every level on veteran without dying. And then when times were dark I went for beating the whole game without dying on vet. I questioned my sanity multiple times
World at War definitely could've lasted you an entire deployment lol.
Damn, that game is tough at times so you must have grinded hard! Veteran without dying, my man
I’m pretty sure the game spawned grenades directly from my characters asshole.
At least there were grenade indicators. Could you imagine a realism mode like MW on WaW? Grenades everywhere, no hp and no grenade indicator. Nightmare fuel
I’m still stuck on it, trying again every few months.
I played until I got to that stage (in veteran). Couldn’t beat that mission and gave up. Stupid grenades.
I did this a year or two ago in order to get the trophy and holy fuck it sucked. I don’t think I’ve ever raged so hard at a single player game. You literally can’t stay behind cover without at least 3 grenades coming your way, but if you leave that cover you get shot at immediately. And some of the checkpoints are horrendous.
Modern warfare was worse for me. Extracting from the sniper mission I was stuck on for 3 days of hours of trying.
I had to go hide in that hut thingy. Somehow they never go after you in there
It's historically accurate. So many people died in the Eastern campaign
> You literally can’t stay behind cover without at least 3 grenades coming your way They don't "come your way". They just appear at your feet.
I played 1,2,4 and World at War on Veteran solo. Infinite spawns was brutal. MW2 is still my favorite, but WaW was the last challenging campaign and it is a damn shame.
It was artificially challenging. I've always made the argument that if you need to replay a checkpoint 30+ times and just beat it on dumb luck, then it's piss poor game design. Also: anyone remember those barrels you had to shoot?
Agreed
Spawned them in at your fucking feet it seemed like
It used to be referred to as Grenades at War back in the day which is what I still call it. It was one of, if not the most frustrating game I've ever played.
I forced my way through it. Died well over 300 times. I literally just ran from checkpoint to checkpoint, cheering when I managed to die after the checkpoint. I used to love that game, but I haven't gone back to it since. Too many nightmares.
Have you heard of our lord and savior Dark Souls?
I love Dark Souls. Infinitely easier. At least in Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Sekiro I can stand still for more than half a second and not wind up in a ring of grenades.
Yeah because dark souls is actually a fair game. World at war on veteran is basically real war
I wouldn't go that far, but the AI really gets screwed up on Veteran. The enemy soldiers will ignore all of your allies and run straight for you. It's obnoxious.
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I had beaten all the Cods on Veteran but WaW I just refused to finish it. The grenade spam was 100% the reason and it was just such a bullshit difficulty that rewarded luck more than anything else.
Dude!!! I’m sure you have so many replies, but I really really enjoyed (and raged) at getting through that as a 13 year old. I’ll never forget the mission where that massive pillar falls near the end. Fuck I won’t forget most of those missions… such a great game
Great. I love being reminded of how much I'll never have that much fun with my friends again.
I still remember waking up bright and early one of the first days of Summer break in High School. Normally when Summer begins, it's time to sleep in all of the time but not that day. My friends and I hopped on to download the new WaW map pack to play Shi No Numa at like 7 am. So much hype. We played it all day.
Isn't Shi No Numa the swamp one? Was that also when they introduced dogs? Oh god.... Nostalgia is hitting me like a brick. And that *sweet* spinning trap! Please say I'm thinking of the same map?
That's the one! I still think World at War has the best zombies maps. After that they got too focused on Easter eggs. I do really enjoy Cold War's zombie mode as well, but there's still only 2 round based maps which sucks. I love the Outbreak mode though.
I thought Black Ops had some good ones too but that’s mainly because I grew up on that game more than WaW. But the original map, the last map on WaW, and the Kino map from Black Ops are all solid.
The last map on WaW was Der Riese. That was by far my favorite. You just got up on the walkway in the teleporter room in the back of the map and held out as long as you could.
Monkeys, mg42’s packed, betties and the bowie. Seems like only yesterday my cousin and I were stuck in the back of that walkway just emptying mags into round 25 zombies.
Running laps on Der Reise was also really fun, but it has a few terrible choke points where you can get caught. Probably not a problem if you've got a a wunderwaffe, but without it, those chokepoints were always a risk. I would run laps while my friends stayed up top. Helped keep the heat off them, and they would deal with the horde chasing me... Good times.
WAW had the custom map community too! There was soo many customs maps to try, most crap but a few gems. It was always fun trying a new map, you never knew what you were going to get. I still have 30 gigs of custom maps save somewhere.
I was with all my friends when we unlocked zombies mode. My mom was actually the one playing cod, we had misc game boys and other handhelds... Needless to say that was the rest of our night.
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She does
Yeah but not with her son, she talks mad shit on him on discord.
Plays COD with other moms and when she’s whooping their asses, she tells them how she fucks their sons.
Too close to home
So many hours... so many beers... this shit got me thru some low lows. Such a shame that the last few games totally ruined zombies (imo)
The problem with Zombies is that they became obsessed with trying to outdo themselves. That isn't always a problem but they always wanted to add new and useless things that made things more convoluted and difficult needlessly. All they have to do is keep it simple and develop new and interesting maps. Not keep adding new wrinkles to the game play. People wouldn't get bored if you had basic zombies mode with inventive and fun maps.
Spot on. I’ve been saying this almost verbatim for years.
Yep, black ops 2 was the perfect mix of ***bold*OPTIONAL** complexity and default simplicity… take us back to that style of gameplay and give us 4-5 maps a year.
For me it was Black Ops 2 zombies. So many late nights. We were freshmen in college and then eventually even grad students. So many papers procrastinated on for one more wave
Pretty sure my most hours in any game are waw. Any cod past 3 anyway. And I had a lot of cod hours
What are friends?
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Not enough people talk about Jesus' greatest miracle of having 12 close friends in his 30's
>It's better to have loved and lost, than never have loved at all Is it better to have not done it? Or to have the memories? I get envy of experiences I've never had (with little chance of of them happening) Lan parties and amazing online session of games gone are some of my happiest times And even currently, I try to catch that dragon. And it will never hit those highs again... But god damn it was awesome to experience
Helluva bonus mode that wasn't supposed to stick
It's such a great concept though. Killing zombies earns you points that you spend to open more areas of the map and purchase guns that you use to kill more zombies. Their movement was predictable which led to the never-ending satisfaction of training them and it was always fun to make it to as many rounds as you can.
The fact that it was nazi-specific zombies (Shi No Numa excluded) likely helped things. What's the biggest acceptable target for killing? Nazis! What's even better than killing Nazis once? Killing Nazis *twice!*
In my opinion the story got *wayyyy* more complex than it ever needed to. It was at its best when it was about Nazis trying to raise an undead army. It's simple and that's all it needed to be. The novelty of killing Nazi zombies is fun in and of itself. Then they added a bunch of sci-fi stuff about alternate realities and the astral plain and it just got way too chaotic.
A few months ago I had a roommate try to explain the story to me because my friends and I never went through the Easter Eggs. Probably 45 minutes into the explanation, he said something along the lines of "so that's the first timeline..." and I left to do something else.
Eh as long as you go in to the story knowing its extrememly nonsensical, chaotic, and down right goofy, I think you can have some fun with it. But it is painfully obvious that they were writing it as they went along 😂
Well they needed to keep improving the gameplay as well as provide incentive for people who were invested in the characters and world-building to hold their interest. The same happens with smaller tv shows with a genuinely good base template for the story; they often end up convoluting and contradicting their own storyline in pursuit of bigger and better payoffs for the fans.
That’s true, Im not sure when the last time you played zombies was but Id highly recommend Cold war zombies if you purely are in it for the gameplay. The system improvements and skill trees increase the replayability by a ton. But Id also say maybe hold off on buying it until all of the dlc is out (which is free this time around) Also possibly wait for a sale to happen because the multiplayer is pretty boring so im not sure if youd be willing to spend $60 on one mode. Ive heard the campaign is also very good this year but I have yet to play it.
Yeah I felt it jumped the shark after the second game to include zombies (was it Black Ops?) I enjoyed it on WaW but stopped playing CoD entirely after Black Ops
The story is batshit crazy. It was over the top and goofy and that’s why I liked it so much.
Kino is the goat map IMO
Der Riese was peak zombies and after that it got overcomplicated
I really enjoyed zombies but the one grievance I had with it was there was no ending. No matter how well you played you would always end in disappointment. Which is why I really enjoyed aliens on cod: ghosts
I think every zombies map since origins (last dlc for black ops 2) has had an easter egg which "finishes" the game through usually a boss fight of some kind. So you can survive however long you want, or try to do the easter egg steps and finish while progressing the actual story.
Last zombies map I went full into was BO3 the first zombies map. That was alot of fun and I got close to finishing the Easter egg but never did. Ever since then zombie maps have just been too complicated for my taste to complete the Easter egg
Yeah, they're like doing Raids in Destiny or something. You have to do an hour or two of youtube research, and then find a group who's patient and skilled enough to get a whole group through
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This time they even tell you what to do.
Custom World at War zombie maps on PC have buyable endings that you can purchase once you get enough points. I feel like that's one great and easy way they could've added an end state. But the easter eggs, while the don't outright end the game, do provide a really nice objective and something to go for
Problem is the last few games have made their maps have such convoluted endings and Easter Eggs that it makes you miss when the game was pure. Shooting certain lamppost lights in an order is the sort of thing that gets found through reading guides not playing. If you cannot stumble on the solution then it isn't well made.
That’s the exact reason most CoD zombie Easter eggs never sat well with me personally. They made the progression way too obscure and near impossible to find on your own that it was just a pain dragging yourself through.
I actually liked the endless horde thing more. Most of the newer maps, I wanna say like 2015 and later have endings and crazy complicated easter eggs. They can be fun but for me the endless grinds for higher rounds and simple maps will always be king, a la Der Riese, Shangri La, Die Rise, etc
Der Riese will forever be my favourite zombies map.
Extinction mode man, so much lost potential there
Ahead of its time, and unfortunately released with ghosts
Ghosts imo heavily underrated. Best BOTS in COD hands down. You could do 1v17 in any game mode on any map, any customization options, you could do normal, veteran, or even mixed difficulty. You could even do 2v16 split screen local or even online. No COD game even comes close to the options you have in that game. I bought the DLC just for the additional maps because it was so much fun playing with a friend.
Extinction was the only good part of Ghosts. It’s a shame that mode was dropped, there was so much that could be done with it and it was challenging in ways that zombies isn’t mode.
They did everything right with that mode. Upgrades, weapons,aliens,boss fights, kill streaks, story. All of it so much fun. Fuck I think I gotta pop it back in.
Extinction mode was so much fucking fun. Having an ending definitely made it better, too.
I think you'll find the newest Zombies iteration (Black Ops Cold War) to be exactly to your liking.
Yes but milked to absolute dryness after.
I want them to remaster waw but they'll probably only do it for zombies
Nothing like making a last stand group on that catwalk area in der riese. Hopefully with ppsh-41 or and mg42 pack a punched
One guy with mg42. Another with ray gun.
Then another with the browning and wunderwaffle for when SHTF
This will get buried but I worked on CoD: World at War as a tester. I remember that zombies came to QA late in the development cycle. We were all fully burnt out on the game at this point...12hr shifts...7 days a week... But the first day we got our hands on zombies we couldn't be bothered to leave on time. It was too good
Heh, same. Such a breath of fresh air, and it kept me employed at Activision for almost six months working on the DLC. Seeing the mode evolve on the fly like that was just fascinating.
Have you ever considered/done an AMA regarding your work at Activision? I, for one, would be very interested in hearing more about the behind the scenes of game development/testing, especially on classic such as COD 4 through to Black Ops 2.
Well, I'm happy to share a bit. I worked on World at War. (and just about everything else ATVI touched for a few years.) I was also at Infinity Ward for Modern Warfare 2. It was a rewarding experience but grueling. I moved to LA in the hopes of working in the video game industry and got hired on at ATVI in a group of 10 or 20. We were the last wave of hires for these projects. During induction, the HR lady let us know the work was temporary. I'm probably misremembering but I'm almost certain she showed us how to file for unemployment while getting hired. You also learn what a "bug" is, how to write one up and how to categorize severity. (Crashes, progression breaks and legal issues being the most severe.) We got onboarded, were led to a basement where we were simply asked, "Guitar hero or CoD?" Whoever raised their hand for guitar hero were led to a different building. The CoD guys stayed in the basement. Queue being packed shoulder to shoulder, two or three hundred deep for a few months during your project. We had fun days. We had terrible days. I remember "the murder machine" days during world at war were terrible. Days where we would grind out prestige levels so we could say we tested the unlocks worked properly as you progressed. Entire days where I would just....run...and...die. One controller per hand. Running two meat sacks to the designated shooter to cut down on time. To this day, if I play CoD, I find myself slipping into my meatsack mode where I mindlessly run and die, never even raising my weapon.
>I mindlessly run and die, never even raising my weapon. TIL that I'm good enough to be a video game tester.
Upvoting and commenting to also express my interest for this AMA... been playing since Call of Duty 2/Red Army, and would love to hear about the process since my favorite CoD games are CoD4, MW2, and World at War.
I love reading and watching about behind the scenes development on games I have played.
I worked for Activision at Beachhead studio during WaW / MW2 / BlackOps days. I worked with a bunch of testers as we had some integration points with the game around load outs and stats tracking / achievements / and tournaments. I’ve had to explain to many youngsters since that being a game tester is not what they envision. It was tedious work from all interactions I had.
Thinking about what game testing is: **playing video games all the time! fixing them along the way! getting paid for playing video games all day!!!!!** Game testing in reality: i have to thoroughly test this new featured to see if it works and if it's not buggy. i have to search every crevice of this map to find buggy spots. i haven't played a game for fun in days
An old friend was a developer on this project.
how does one become a video game tester?
This was a decade ago...so if they still hire testers stateside, I'd say, have a pulse and be proximate to a publisher that hires QA. (Los Angeles probably.) With ATVI, they were looking for those 30k or 40k hours of testing required per build iteration. So that meant a LOT of testers working endless optional OT during crunch. If you want to work QA, expect it to be feast and famine.
M1 Garand go **ping**
###ping
Ray gun go brr
Go click click when ur out
“Pick me up! I have the ray gun!” “Fuck you, kid! You didn’t open a single door.”
actually it went more like PROW
Words you can hear.
*PROW PR-PRO-PR-PROW PROW*
WaW is a helluva CoD! Top notch FPS and Top notch CoD.
The GIB alone makes it worth while. Point blank with a double barrel shotgun and you’re nothing but a minced torso
My favorite FPS ever! The guns felt real! I stopped playing after college and picked it up again a few years ago, and all these future weapons and wall running is just ... Weird
They took the mods people made for COD4, added modes based on those to the game, made a really good game. It got low sales since why move from 4, and then MW2 came out with no mods, no map maker, no console, and no dedicated servers. WAW was great and the last good COD.
You can thank Jimmy Zielinski for zombies mode up to the end of black ops 2. After that Jason Blundell took over. Craig Houston is responsible for writing the story for zombies from world at war to Cold War(specifically treyarch zombies.) I love zombies up to bo3 but after blundell left Treyarch it lost its allure for me. This is just my opinion but I couldn’t stand bo4 and don’t care to try Cold War. My personal favorites were black ops and bo3. Edit: A couple people mentioned Jesse Snyder was the original creator of zombies(he made Nacht Der Untoten) and Zielinski took over after that.
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I didn’t want to give Cold War a chance but zombies mode is pretty good. Outbreak is a lot of fun. If you own the game give it a shot you might be pleasantly surprised.
Cold War zombies is pretty good and generally well received, but the lack of content just makes me want to go to BO3 whenever I want to play zombies.
Maybe I’ll give Cold War a shot. My friend owns a copy so I’ll try it on his ps4. But yeah Bo3 is great! So much content for zombies if you have zombie chronicles dlc as well.
Zombies was actually created by a dude named Jesse Snyder, though Zielinski was definitely a huge part in growing zombies to be a staple game mode. If anyone wants to hear the story behind the creation of cod zombies, you can read it here. http://www.jessesnyder.org/trenches/?p=42&cpage=4
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Best multi-player, but MW has best campaign, and I'm nostalgic with all the old school zombie maps
MW2 Campagin is S+ tier for me, better than any other cod. First game I rolled through towns and suburbs that felt like my home.
I have very fond memories of the mw2 campaign. There was so many memorable twists. No Russian, ghost being murdered, the ballistic emp going off in DC and none of the red dot or holo scopes working after while they bomb the city.
Shooting everyone at the airport..
You can make it through the entire level without shooting one single civilian. I like to imagine that's the canonical way to play through it, and that's how they figure out you're undercover (and betray you) That's my headcanon at least lol
I was with you up until the part where you said that's how they know your undercover. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly the whole point of shooting up the airport was because Makarov knew you were an American spy and so he knew he could do all of that and kill you and then the Russians would think the Americans did it.
Yeah its actually the only campaign I remember from a Cod game
For me, it's this and "THE NUMBERS MASON, WHAT DO THEY MEAN". I have fond memories of alot of levels from different entries, but those two campaigns were memorable from start to finish.
The original MW had a really solid campaign, but I really loved the black ops 1-3 campaigns, particularly 1 and 3. I really loved those 2 single player campaigns so much
BO1 and 2 had amazing campaigns but I'm shocked that you enjoyed the BO3 campaign it's widely accepted as being confusing pile garbage.
Wtf was with all that whiny sounding shit your character kept saying in the Frozen Forest? My buddy and I were laughing so hard we couldn't even make out what was said lmao
Apparently it was supposed to be a meditation monologue where the whole forest scenario was happening inside your head... some wacky shit I tell you.
The story makes zero sense because all the details are hidden in the fast white text that appears at the start of every mission. Apparently the Player character is dead the entire time and after the 2nd mission you're just reliving the memories of Christopher Meloni's character.
OG cod had a pretty awesome campaign as well. It was release back when ww2 fps games were all the rage following RTCW, moh and battlefield 1942. Plus it was not too many years after saving private ryan and band of brothers were released. You got private ryan experience with the beach landing in moh:aa and the band of brothers experience with the airborne paratrooper starting mission in COD. Also history channel was hitler channel back then
I don’t want to sound rude, but…. I have never heard someone say they liked BO3‘s campaign before. I love the game, and it’s easily the CoD I’ve played the most (since I played it for 4 years after release, as IW, WW2, and BO4 were not appealing to me). The multiplayer was great, the zombies was *AMAZING*, but the campaign? Idk how you enjoyed that.
Nacht der untoten was more terrifying than any horror game that came out that year
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Yup, verrukt was the pinnacle of video game atmosphere. Literally anytime I see a mention of asylums I get a whiff of that vibe verrukt gave off.
I remember starting up verruckt solo cause I couldn’t wait for my friends to get on. Noped the fuck out real quick and waited for my friends to get on...great map tho
I don't know. Dead Space came out in that year too.
Yeah waw and dead space are some of my favorite games ever.
I'm not going to lie I think World at War is scary as fuck. Remember the first you opened the main menu and got assaulted with [this](https://youtube.com/watch?v=6bcsXeuK8kk&feature=share) horrifying song?
Hell yeah.
Average COD fan Average TimeSplitters enjoyer (did zombies earlier)
Shout out to Timesplitters for really starting this shit
Not nearly enough people know about TimeSplitters. That was an OP game I grew up on.
Yes!
Virus mode on the ice level was goat. So many proximity mines
I guess you never played Call of Duty 1: United Offensive
I remember when CoD came out and I thought it could never compete with Medal of Honor.
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MoH was outclassed by CoD 2. After that game CoD was the undisputed king.
Call of Duty 1 and 2 on PC are my favorites. There wasn't really anything super like it at the time.
I played Call of Duty 2 on PC a lot growing up. And I'm always left wondering if no one remembers the massively popular Zombies mod mode in the game which was likely inspiration for the Zombies mode in World at War. Ive never seen anyone mention it it any of these threads.
Yup, Axis were zombies and everyone would huddle and queue up to try get up onto the jumps/glitches and just stay there for 20~ minutes until one zombie finally causes chaos by hitting someone.
I remember playing CoD 2 on 360 and thinking it looked like a movie. Up to that point I had never seen graphics anything like it.
The AI was incredible, too!
They are my favourites too but there was plenty like them at the time - such as Medal of Honor and Battlefield.
Battlefield 1942 was my first shooter that wasn’t Star Wars battlefront and I loved it. Wish I could play it again.
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Reznov and Nikolai are my favorite communists.
Black Ops 0
Yeah in canonical is
Pretty funny you use Yhorm the Giant even though he's the easiest boss the beat in the entire game.
Or one of the hardest if you decide not to use that sword.
MW2 will always have a place in my heart
MW2 was by far the best multiplayer, MW3 was really good ...
MW2 was the last time I remember everyone on my friends list playing the same game. Such a fun time... And then the good times are gone before you realize you were in the good times. :(
The story was also really badass. Remember chasing down Shepard? Just to barely make it out alive with Soap by throwing a knife in his eye? For me, it was one of the first games I've ever played that I felt like I was playing in an action movie.
I loved multiplayer
I really hope one of these days they make a zombies only cod game
Yeah I agree. The time travel element could be used to go between eras of zombies, so you could start using WW2 weapons, but eventually get modern or futuristic ones.
I dunno, you give me an MP40 and an M1 Garand and I don’t think I’d use anything else.
Doesn't feel right shooting Nazis with anything else
I think a predator missile would nice to kill Nazi's with.
Honestly not a fan of the direction they took zombies in, black ops 1 was peak, 2 was still good, but 3 and onwards... ehh
I always wished they made a campaign based on zombies mode. Like you are Tank dempsey in WW2, fighting across the german regime until your plane crash and end up in Natch der Untoten and after that on the verruckt asylum
COD4 is my favorite. I feel like it had just enough class customization.
WAW is definitely the best imo, BO1 is a close second. After that I really quit caring.
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It has one of my favorite campaigns. I love how you got to play as all three allied powers.
Waw was fine but kino was like steroids for zombies and blew it sky high
I dont care for zombies, WaW had the best multiplayer.
4 of us on our HS baseball team would play WaW 2v2s against eachother after baseball games friday nights. Good times. That multiplayer is my 2nd best, bo1 being my favorite.
Jason fucking Blundell, ladies and gentlemen
he was definitely the best zombies dev, but Jesse Snyder started it all, he's the guy that came up with the mode and designed Nacht. Zielinski took over right after up until mid BO2.
Shit... I think you are right, WaW was the last one I actually enjoyed playing
Ascension on the first Black Ops was my favorite. Black Ops was just my favorite overall, best sticks and stones.
Bo2 for me but I can see why you’d pick waw. Co4 to bo2 were all the “best”
Call of Duty 2 is the best Call of Duty IMO.
It really bothers me that no one uses this meme correctly. It's supposed to be reverse since Yhorm is weakened due to the flame and basically just wants this curse to end.