Call of Duty: Black Ops Message Board older than one year ago

Just like we saw through retail outlets. Looks like retailers got the jump on this one!

Activision has just dropped the Call of Duty: Black Ops box art in our laps, and it's ... mysterious. Rather than represent an actual game character in Treyarch's latest Call of Duty title, we're guessing the shadow-faced soldier above represents the player, a quad-gunned triggerman in the shady world of stealth operations.

Oh, and one of his pistols is named Sally. Check out box art for all of the various platforms in the gallery below. Call of Duty: Black Ops is due out November 9, 2010.

Here it is.

#madcatz Shots of MadCatz' new line of Call of Duty: Black Ops peripherals have surfaced and well, yes, the controllers are in fact black. More »

Wow, I actually kind of like it. Too bad I don’t have much faith in Mad Catz projects. Thanks to Giga Bowser for the heads up!

Pre-orders for new Call of Duty heating up.

One fantastic looking game.

Okay, so only two of these new screenshots from Call of Duty: Black Ops are actually taken from a gameplay perspective, but there's no denying that they look pretty fantastic. (Which isn't surprising, given how great the game looked in motion at E3.) Our favorite is the one where the guy is shooting at something off-screen. Wait -- that's pretty much all of them. What's your fave?

#screens Can you spot the dragonfly in this picture? Treyarch and Activision have released 20 new Call of Duty: Black Ops screens brimming with nice little touches, from snow-speckled facial hair to insects thriving in the jungle heat. More »

#clips When Call of Duty: Black Ops hits this November, it could be the most helicopterest game of all time. All time! Just going by the game's debut trailer, we're expecting a new chopper less than every four seconds. More »

#clips Jimmy Fallon played Call of Duty: Black Ops on Late Night last night, proving once again that video games are much more enjoyable in front of a live studio audience. More »

#callofdutylegalwarfare Infinity Ward, the studio behind Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, may have lost founders Jason West and Vince Zampella. Nearly 30 employees may have left in a mass exodus. Parent company Activision may be entangled in lawsuits, but that won't keep the studio down. More »

#e3 Call of Duty: Black Ops benefits from a large screen. The bigger the screen the better, I learned last week. That is because Call of Duty games are giant acts and detonation. More »

Fighting from cover and helicopter cockpits.

Video game fans love putting footage on YouTube, remixing gameplay with the sounds of Linkin Park and/or Eminem. Activision has outdone the fans, making their own official Call of Duty: Black Ops E3 trailer, featuring Eminem's "Won't Back Down." Much of the footage has been seen before, but you'll see a few frames of brand new footage of Treyarch's latest.

#e3 Microsoft struck a deal with Activision guaranteeing all map packs and game add-ons for Call of Duty: Black Ops will release first for the Xbox 360. The agreement, just announced at Microsoft's E3 news conference, runs from 2010 to 2012. More »

Following up on their partnership with Modern Warfare 2, Activision and Microsoft have announced a new agreement at E3 that will make Call of Duty DLC timed Xbox exclusives for at least the next three years, until 2012. Call of Duty: Black Ops DLC will be available first on Xbox Live, with PSN and PC releases likely to follow a few months afterwards. Considering the overwhelming demand for Modern Warfare 2 DLC, this is undoubtedly a win for Microsoft.

Microsoft signs multi-year deal with Activision.

Following up on their partnership with Modern Warfare 2, Activision and Microsoft have announced a new agreement at E3 that will make Call of Duty DLC timed Xbox exclusives for at least the next three years, until 2012. Call of Duty: Black Ops DLC will be available first on Xbox Live, with PSN and PC releases likely to follow a few months afterwards. Considering the overwhelming demand for Modern Warfare 2 DLC, this is undoubtedly a win for Microsoft.

#tattoos This might sound nitpicky, but it's not to veterans who game. And those who served in Vietnam might wonder why Call of Duty: Black Ops personnel in "denied" areas would want to advertise an American military unit on their forearm. More »

Though Call of Duty: Black Ops' Cold War setting is a new feature for the series, one element of the game will stay true to the franchise's norms: the game's campaign will only be a single-player experience. Speaking to MTV, Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia explained, "single-player is the epic, cinematic, seat-of-your-pants thrill ride that you star in," while the game's cooperative offerings will be packaged in completely separate "unique co-op modes."

Sounds fairly reminiscent of Modern Warfare 2's Spec Ops missions, though Lamia quickly clarified that Black Ops' co-op mode will be "different" from that of the last game in the series. Could we possibly see more zombies added to the mix? Hopefully, we'll find out more when we check out the game at E3.

We were less than impressed with the lineup of Modern Warfare 2-branded controllers and accessories released by Mad Catz last year, with their first-party price and less-than-first-party features. So, it's with something between hesitancy and mild interest that we tell you the controller company will continue the relationship with officially branded Call of Duty: Black Ops peripherals.

The press release doesn't go into specifics but, considering the game's milieu, we're hoping for a wireless Berlin Wall you can smash apart at the end and then sell parts of to unsuspecting tourists.

But it'll probably just be controllers and mice.

Call of Duty games on the Nintendo Wii have been far from spectacular. But developer Treyarch promises that the Wii version of Call of Duty: Black Ops "will blow you away." More »

Five reasons why Treyarch could be crafting the best Call of Duty game yet.

Treyarch is no stranger to the Call of Duty franchise, having created Call of Duty 3 and World at War, but, up until it began work on this November's Call of Duty: Black Ops, it was stuck in the past -- World War II, that is. After getting our first look at its take on more modern combat, we spoke with Black Ops producer Dan Bunting to find out what to expect from the series' move into the Cold War and the world of deniable operations. Oh, and zombies -- we had to ask about those.

Joystiq: Black Ops seems to me to be "modern warfare" -- with s lower case "m" and lower case "w." It's a lot different than the Call of Duty games that Treyarch has made in the past. What's it like going from World War II to a more modern setting?

Dan Bunting: It's a completely untapped era; there's been a small number of games that have covered that in the past. It's a really rich time frame to draw inspiration from for creativity. The team is completely jazzed about the theme of the game, and taking more of a special ops angle to it. The Cold War era, there are so many stories there that people don't even know about. A lot of people don't even know what the Cold War is, but there was a kind of birth of these special operations happening during this time frame.

We start with Studies and Observation Group in Vietnam, which was SOG, basically the predecessor to the Black Ops, in a lot of ways. These guys were behind enemy lines to do covert missions. They were given carte blanche; these were deniable operations so nobody really could know. It was classified, so they had free reign to do whatever they needed to do to get the missions done. That means that you can have some really great game design elements and story elements to draw from there. In the beginning it was just an explosion of creativity. We've been working on World War II games for so long, it was just a completely fresh, new era for us.

A portion of a TVG interview with Treyarch’s Mark Lamia… TVG: One of the early Call of Duty: Black Ops rumours that surfaced before the game was announced linked it to a level featuring the Iranian Embassy Siege in London. That rumour turned out to be correct on a number of other factors… Mark Lamia: No, actually, [...]