Call of Duty: Black Ops Message Board

Here are the best loadouts and strategies for Kill Confirmed, courtesy Vikkstar123.

The Sympathy for the Devil sequence from the Black Ops campaign.

Glu Mobile, the developers behind mobile versions of Guitar Hero and Call of Duty: Black Ops, has announced that it is closing its San Paulo, Brazil office and laying off employees in Kirkland, Washington, and San Francisco, California.

A statement from the company says that it needs to hold its research and development investments flat over the next year, and to do that, changes are being made. Twenty-five percent of the Kirkland office and 5% of the San Francisco office are being let go today as part of the restructuring process.

Glu's plan is to add "the necessary monetization and server-side research-and-development resources" to the company's existing titles, and "focus on increasing average revenue per daily active user company-wide." More monetization and more revenue per daily active user should help turn the company's financial future around, though game quality often suffers when those two elements are focused on. Joystiq hopes affected employees land on their feet soon.

Before you pick up Black Ops 2, catch up on the characters and events of the first game (you just might need it).

Today, Bobbya dishes out some borderline illegal activity on the opposing team and deconstructs the Halloween movie franchise. Prepare to get your mind blown.

Today, Bobbya1984 shares a subject very near and dear to his heart: should you tip waiters at restaurants? Controversy is running high, so weigh in with your opinions in the comments!

Today, Bobbya1984 goes bananas in Black Ops' Jungle. As he's dealing out horrible death, come hear about his favorite movie genre (and a terrifying near death experience).

We're not going to say the above video offers a more realistic representation of dogs in combat than the actual canine killstreak achievement in Call of Duty: Black Ops, but with all those grenades flying, we'd expect to see a ton more of these "Sgt. Nibbles" scenarios.

#callofduty You already know that the antagonists in the next Call of Duty will be turning America's robot drone army against us. And Los Angeles gets blown the hell up. But who's got the cojones and brains to even to do such a thing? Watch the trailer and find out. More »

#callofduty Who do you call when you want electro-tinged, industrial-inflected rock for a world gone wrong? Trent Reznor, of course. Along with groundbreaking work as a recording artist in the 1990s, Reznor's done film for both The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. More »

Today, Bobbya1984 heads back to Black Ops. See him light up Hotel with Hollywood Cole while talking about his new favorite show, 24. Jack Bauer wishes he could do this #!$*.

The PlayStation Network Ultimate Editions bundle games with all their existing DLC packs, and nine of these titles will be on sale tomorrow, May 29, through June 4. The Ultimate Editions are 30 percent off for normal PSN users, and 50 percent off for Plus members.

Titles on sale, bundled and ready to roll, include Red Dead Redemption for $28 ($20 for Plus members), L.A. Noire and BioShock 2 for the same price, Mortal Kombat for $35 ($25 for Plus members) and Black Ops for $66 ($48 for Plus members). Check out the Ultimate sale list on the PlayStation Blog.

#callofduty When we say "Dubstep" most people think of hard drops and grinding wubs. But there is a lot more to the genre than that. More »

#callofduty Here it is, folks—the first trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops II. More »

So. Many. Drones.

As perhaps was expected, we now definitively know what the next Call of Duty game is, many hours before its scheduled reveal. If you thought this year was going to be different, that the NBA Playoffs would be just that much sweeter thanks to the exclusive, all-encompassing reveal planned for tonight's game on TNT, sadly, once again you are disappointed. More likely, however, you don't care at all, and just want to know about the frigging game. Understandable.

Well, thanks to Activision accidentally putting up the game's UK promotional site a smidge early, we now know this year's Call of Duty is, as expected, the sequel to the mega-successful Treyarch-developed Black Ops. Black Ops II is coming to all the expected platforms, and it's doing so on November 13.

But wait! There's more! In addition, we now know a few basic details thanks to some plot and screenshot leaks. Here's the premise of the game, according to the website:

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 propels players into a near future, 21st Century Cold War, where technology and weapons have converged to create a new generation of warfare.

So, basically, hey, remember how the Cold War setting of Black Ops was kind of neat and slightly different from all of the other modern shooters out there right now? Yeah, well, screw that. They're doing their own future guns and modern-ish imaginary conflicts, just like all the other games with future guns and modern-ish imaginary conflicts. Oh, and drones. There are a lot of drones, if these screenshots are to be believed. So that's something, I suppose.

We won't be seeing any video until tonight's TV reveal, unless of course someone decides to leak that too. We'll keep an eye out for that.

#rumor Evidence continues to mount that a Call of Duty: Black Ops sequel is oscar mike. More »

Someone needs to just get this partnership over the hump and create a game featuring basketball players shooting each other in the face. I call dibs on Metta World Peace.

I don't want to blow anybody's mind right now, but it appears as though Activision is, in fact, working on a new Call of Duty game. Not only that, the publisher plans to announce it. Soon.

Activision is currently teasing a May 1 reveal for whatever it plans on calling the expected new entry in the Call of Duty franchise. As this year's title falls on the portion of the bi-yearly release cycle assigned to developer Treyarch, the current smart money seems to be a direct sequel to the developer's insanely successful 2010 title, Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Whatever it ends up being, we'll all find out about it together on May 1--provided, of course, that we're all watching the NBA playoffs on TNT, as that is where the reveal will appear. That is, of course, provided Activision is able to keep stuff under wraps until then. We all remember what happened last year, don't we?

#crime A preteen who killed a friend inside a Georgia home was playing Activision's popular first-person-shooter before the fatal shots were fired. More »

Earlier this week, France's Gameblog posted a screenshot of Amazon France's premature listing for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, a story that we and other gaming sites picked up immediately. We later found further support for the claim in a Treyarch employee's resume.

A new Call of Duty title -- or a second Black Ops -- wasn't particularly surprising, but apparently Activision wanted to keep the news quiet, and it called the site to take down the story, Gameblog wrote in a follow-up post. Gameblog said the reporter refused and that Activision took a strangely extreme route, "blacklisting" the site, uninviting it from events, declining to send it any more review titles and removing all advertisement.

Activision has now publicly responded to Gameblog's claim: "Activision doesn't blacklist journalists. We believe this was a misunderstanding and are working towards a resolution." That sounds like a more reasonable response than the all-out journalistic warfare Gameblog reported; then again, this is all about a Call of Duty title, so maybe "warfare" was the angle they were comfortable with at first.

#callofduty Yesterday, reports that a sequel to Call of Duty: Black Ops would hit this year circulated all over the internet, sourced to a product page that went live on Amazon. Gameblog.fr reported on this apparent slip-up, as did other French websites, but they refused to pull the story when asked by Call of Duty publisher Activision. More »

#callofduty French game site Gameblog.fr reported earlier today that Amazon's French digital storefront leaked details about the next installment in Activision's blockbuster FPS series. More »

#callofduty When the S.W.A.T. arrived at a North Texas home in Lewisville, there were told a shooter was in the house. There was, but it wasn't the shooter the police expected. It was a kid playing Call of Duty: Black Ops. More »

Activision, by proxy, has bought BlackOps2.com. Fusible did the detective work on this, which posits Activision bought up Black Ops domains last year -- up to Black Ops 6 -- through brand protection company MarkMonitor. Black Ops 2 domains were missing from the previous list, but it appears that's being rectified.

Now, none of this guarantees that Black Ops 2 is on the way as this year's Call of Duty, but it does mean that MarkMonitor is under orders to protect the brand for the future.

Call of Duty: Black Ops had a record-breaking debut of $650 million in sales during its first week at retail in 2010, which it held for one year until Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 crushed that with $775 million.

You're not going to believe what the most popular games on Xbox Live were in 2011. OK, maybe you'll believe it. According to Microsoft's count of worldwide unique users for the year, Call of Duty: Black Ops topped the list of retail titles, followed by Modern Warfares 3 and 2, Halo Reach, and Battlefield 3.

On the Arcade side, the top seller was Pinball FX 2, followed by Full House Poker, Castle Crashers (which came out in 2008), Fruit Ninja Kinect, and From Dust. Beyond Good & Evil HD hit #20 on the list, which seems good, but too close for comfort, for those of us hoping it would be a strong indicator of interest in the sequel.

You can find full top twenty lists for retail, arcade, and XBLIG, along with Games for Windows Live and Windows Phone (Surprise! Angry Birds!) at Major Nelson's blog.

Gary Oldman is a respected actor with decades of awards and critically acclaimed roles on his resume -- but we don't care about all that. Oldman was the voice of Viktor Reznov in Call of Duty: Black Ops, and he told Conan O'Brien all about that magical, extremely loud experience.

#callofduty Treyarch's 2011 Christmas card is also a neat little Call of Duty: Black Ops ornament, all ready to be hung in a tree. More »

Google published its annual "Zeitgeist" report of the most popular searches and topics in 2011 this past week and for the first time ever, a game was included in the top ten fastest rising search terms of the year. Yes, as you've probably already guessed, it was "Gem Keeper." Wait, no, it was "Battlefield 3." EA's big shooter stirred up some interest, apparently, landing it right in between "Casey Anthony" and the "iPhone 5" in biggest gains in search popularity of the year.

When it comes to video games in North America, however, there's another title on top of the heap: "Black Ops" was the most searched-for term in the category, with "Call of Duty" coming soon after that. "Battlefield 3" didn't even make the list in the category numbers, so its overall search volume was actually lower than the Activision series. Don't count "Halo Reach" or "Super Mario" out either -- they show up at the third and fourth spots on the list in the gaming category.

And Google even shows us what 2011 searchers are most interested to play next year: "Diablo 3" and "Mass Effect 3" sit at the bottom of the list already for the most searched-for terms in gaming.

The most recent Xbox Live activity list (for the week of October 31, the first covering a full week of Battlefield 3 availability) sees EA's successful new shooter move up to second place on the list. Based on unique users Battlefield 3 is more popular than Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox Live, although more people are still playing 2010's Call of Duty: Black Ops online than DICE's latest...

The latest Xbox Live activity list—the first covering a full week of Battlefield 3 availability—shows that more people are still playing 2010's Call of Duty: Black Ops online. BF3 is second, then Modern Warfare 2</em, then Gears of War 3. More »