Call of Duty Black Ops 4

Battle royale games are played between a large number of individual players, or a number of small squads (typically up to four or five players). In each match, the goal is to be the last player or last team standing by eliminating all other opponents. A match starts by placing the player-characters into a large map space, which may have random distribution or allow players to have some control of where they start. All players start with minimal equipment, giving no player an implicit advantage at the onset, though games allow players to customize the appearance of their character. Randomly scattered around the map are weapons, armor, vehicles, and other items that are beneficial for combat and survival. Players need to search the map for these items while avoid being killed by other players. Equipment from eliminated players can be looted as well. The "safe area" of the map decreases in size around a randomly selected point throughout the match, forcing surviving players into closer quarters and increasing the chance of player encounters. Those caught outside this safe area take damage and will eventually die if they do not re-enter the so-called "safe area". The match is over when only one player or team remains, and the game typically provides some type of reward (in-game currency for more cosmetic items) to all players based on how long they survived.

The random nature of starting point, item placement, and safe area reduction lends the battle royale genre to challenge players to think and react quickly and improve strategies throughout the match as to be the last man/team standing.

In addition to standalone games, the battle royale concept may also be present as part of one of many game modes within a larger game, or may be applied as a user-created mod created for another game.[7]

There are various modifications that can be implemented atop the fundamentals of the battle royale. For example, Fortnite introduced a temporary mode in an event which is 50-versus-50 player mode in its Fortnite Battle Royale free-to-play game; players are assigned one of the two teams, and work with their teammates to collect resources and weapons towards constructing fortifications as the safe area of the game shrinks down, with the goal to eliminate all the players on the other team.

The fan-favorite Call of Duty Zombies map Mob of the Dead is getting remastered treatment for Black Ops 4 and the Zombies community is losing their collective mind.

The Black Ops 4 reveal on May 17 showed a brief teaser for a visually enhanced Mob of the Dead map, now titled Blood of the Dead, and it took no time at all for YouTube to become saturated with hyped-up trailer reaction videos. This catharsis was a long time coming: When the massive Zombies Chronicles DLC was first teased for Black Ops III back in 2017 the community was so sure that Mob of the Dead would return. Many became severely disappointed when the fan-favorite map was missing from the remastered Zombies collection.

Mob of the Dead was originally released in 2013 as part of the Uprising DLC map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and quickly became a beloved part of Treyarch’s Zombies mode. It’s been five years, but I still remembered it being a personal favorite of mine as well. So I decided to venture back to Blacks Ops II to remember what made this map so special.

Mob of the Dead takes place on Alcatraz Island, putting players in the shoes of an intriguing cast of characters. You wear prison blues as you control one of four organized-crime types (using the voices and likenesses of well-known movie mobsters Ray Liotta, Chazz Palminteri, Joe Pantoliano, and Michael Madsen) locked up on the Rock during the Prohibition era. Of course, this is a twisted Zombies story, so it turns out that these characters are already dead and reliving the nightmare of prison on a loop. Their purgatory is also filled with tons of undead, obviously.

The Zombies community craves complex Easter eggs, and Mob of the Dead really delivers a rewarding questline to end the mobsters’ afterlife cycle. This is also the only Zombies map where completing the main Easter egg can actually end the game. Normally Zombies matches just go on forever or until you die, but Mob of the Dead changes the game here. This is also the only map where you can kill one of your four playable characters.

However, the return to Alcatraz in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will likely feel different this time. Unlike the previous remastered Zombies maps, Mob of the Dead isn’t just a visual update. One major difference noted in the Blood of the Dead teaser trailer is the character reveal. The main cast of Treyarch’s ongoing Zombies storyline (Tank Dempsey, Nikolai Belinski, Takeo Masaki, and Edward Richtofen) are featured in Alcatraz instead of the mobsters, so we’ll likely see a completely new vibe as Treyarch continues to weave a complex storyline that ties the mobsters to the main storyline characters. Blood of the Dead will be available at Black Ops 4’s launch on October 12, and I can’t wait to tear into it.