Black Ops News 26/01/11

Recently received a glimpse of the game play involved in the new map pack for Black Ops. Pretty excited, even though I'm not a sniper myself I'm hoping the maps will give more scope (*snigger*) for long range combat to keep the whiny snipers happy. I'm also hoping that the darkness in the Kowloon map will give a greater viability to infrared scopes, which have seen little to no play since the game was released (compared to Modern Warfare 2, where they were relatively common for snipers).

I have to say I was hoping that the "stadium" map would include the ability to fight across the large plain of the hockey rink. There are no maps with large open plains (again, unlike Wasteland and Derail in MW2) in Black Ops - the closest, in my opinion, being the central street in Havana and the Snow field on Grid. Still, can't wait to get to grips with the new features such as the zip line and the collapsible bridge.

Other Black Ops news: the 1.06 patch came out last night.
Notable changes:

• When you down an opponent into Last Stand, if your team mate finishes them off you will be credited with the kill and they will get an assist, this was sorely needed. It doesn't remove the pain in the arse that is Last Stand from the game, but it does at least make it less frustrating.
• Adjustments to the AK74u and RCXD - both sorely needed, although I'm not sure which changes have actually taken place.
• Changes to PSG1 sniper attachments.
• Tweaking the Silenced Sniper rifles.
• Numerous fixes to connectivity problems - although I believe I still crashed a number of times last night...

Full list can be found here: Gamrfeed on Black Ops 1.06

Finally, Wired.co.uk tells me that Gamers' Voice are reporting CoD to trading standards for not delivering a stable online gaming platform for PS3 and PC gamers. I have to agree, it is incredibly frustrating being kicked out of a game when you are doing well, and probably even more frustrating being kicked out when you are doing badly and so are given no chance to redeem your K/D ratio.

From wired.co.uk: http://cdni.wired.co.uk/620x413/a_c/bloppy.jpg

Whilst I'm hoping the latest patch will fix most of the problems; I don't believe the problems are game breaking. For the most part I can play full games and get a decent connection; but that won't stop me trying to twist my controller into a turkey twizzler if I d/c in front of 3 angry enemy players.

I'm still thoroughly enjoying the game and am improving my play style with every day. I'm at 5th prestige now! Wooo!
Next weekend I have some friends coming over and we will be partaking of some "Buzz! Music Quiz!" action, I'm quite looking forward to it. Seeing as, with the exception of Becky and possibly Sam, they are all completely clueless about popular culture - I'm quietly confident.

Anyone tried Buzz? What do you think of it?