Earlier today, we had a brisk and information-dense presentation followed by some quick play sessions of the multiplayer features for Call of Duty: Black Ops. The easy assumption to make with Black Ops would be that it simply features “more stuff.” Take the current number of quantifiable items like killstreaks, perks, weapons, and levels, and crank out a bunch more. And that is indeed one aspect of Black Ops’ multiplayer.
Examples of the above include stuff like an expanded Killstreak list that includes Cold War-ized versions of popular Modern Warfare multiplayer tropes; the UAV has given way to the Spy Plane. The Napalm Strike replaces your typical airstrike. The gunship is an appropriately Cold War era helicopter rather than a modern behemoth. And there’re new Killstreak rewards, like the exploding RC buggy (affectionately referred as the “bomber buggy”) or the minigun called “Death Machine.” But once you get past the traditional, “here’s more stuff,” you can see that Treyarch is actually adding five major changes or additions to what we would traditionally associate as Call of Duty multiplayer.