Black Ops: Tips for Playing New Maps

While looking for information regarding the new Black Ops map pack, Annihilation, I found the following video by Matroix. He offers some good advice on how to play a new map pack. While this video was made for Escalation the advice he gives can easily be applied to any new map.

Black Ops: Annihilation

Annihilation, a new map pack for Black Ops will be available on June 28th. I’ve tried scouring YouTube looking for some decent analysis on it for you to no avail. Just people reiterating the glaringly obvious. There is this video with a fairly decent analysis of the zombie map at the end. Woody and pals talk a bit about it and a lot of other things in this podcast. But I found nothing with even a semi decent analysis of the multi-player maps. So, after viewing the footage I shall offer my own brief, semi-decent analysis:

Hanger 18: “Has a lot of Easter eggs.” Will these Easter Eggs be purely cosmetic or will they impact game play? Dominate the map by controlling the hanger and the “four main flow points.” Visually the map looks cool but I feel there is nothing ground breaking here, just another map.

Silo: A big wide open map. Reminds me of Array. “You need to stay on the move.” OK, making statements like that is only going to encourage camping. Find a nice little spot with your flank covered and wait for all those poor saps to pass by “on the move.” Spend some time in combat training on this one folks, you want to make sure you know all those nooks and crannies your friendly neighborhood camper will be hiding in. I foresee snipers doing fairly well on this map and everyone wearing their ghillie suits.

Drive-In: Inspired by Nuketown, but will it just be another frag fest that is voted to be replayed again, and again, and again, and again, and again? I’m curious about how the game play on this map develops. The middle of the map is wide open compared to Nuketown.

Hazard: “Focuses almost exclusively on long distance engagement.” A snipers, one overpowered shot-one kill, haven? We shall see.

Shangi-La: Zombies in paradise? I don’t really play zombies but I did notice the same thing Woody noticed about this map. It’s not so depressing, dark and dismal.

I’m kind of up in the air about getting this map pack. I have not been playing a whole lot of Black Ops lately. I don’t feel I’ve played enough to get my money’s worth out of Escalation. I’ll see.