The popular Call of Duty zombies mode just got a whole lot bigger.
When Treyarch first added the Zombies multiplayer mode to Call of Duty: World at War, it wasn’t meant as anything more then a casual timewaster. Instead, Zombies quickly became one of the most talked about features for World at War and Treyarch’s follow-up Black Ops, to the point that fans even hoped it would be included in the Modern Warfare games. With the gameplay mode finally returning for Black Ops 2, it’s become abundantly clear that while Treyarch’s main focus is still on its futuristic Cold War campaign, the zombies will get more attention than previous outings with three whole gameplay modes and a massive open world.
The main focus of zombies will be on Tranzit mode, which features a single enormous city map that up to four players can traverse via a still-functioning bus system or by picking a direction and walking. The city and transportation options not only provide a variety of locations and defensive options, but also items that can be collected to craft weapons or tools. “Because it’s open and because there are multiple locations in this world where you can play and where the infestation is, there’s different strategies about how you can approach it,” Treyarch’s Mark Lamia explained. “It’s a much bigger world with much more going on.”
Of the other two modes, Survival is the closest to traditional Zombies gameplay, with maps that fix the players in specific locations in the Tranzit world. The final mode, Grief, deposits not one but two human teams into the map, each with the goal of outlasting their opponents. Players will not be able to kill each other outright in Grief mode, but they can use the environment to trap the enemy team with the zombie horde.
In terms of visual style, Black Ops 2 Zombies borrows heavily from Left 4 Dead with characters reminiscent of Zoey and Louis as well as the large-scale zombie hordes of the game itself. This isn’t a bad thing; Zombies mode has always been a tongue-in-cheek parody of gaming and pop culture tropes, so taking a shot at one of the most successful zombie games of all time actually makes a lot of sense. Besides, mixing up the zombies formula with huge worlds and new gameplay could make the inevitable DLC packs incredibly entertaining. The last Black Ops expansion put zombies on the moon. If huge worlds are a possibility, who knows where else Treyarch could place them?
Source: Joystiq
