No co-op for Call of Duty: Black Ops' campaign

by Griffin McElroy on Jun 3rd 2010 4:00PM

Though Call of Duty: Black Ops' Cold War setting is a new feature for the series, one element of the game will stay true to the franchise's norms: the game's campaign will only be a single-player experience. Speaking to MTV, Treyarch studio head Mark Lamia explained, "single-player is the epic, cinematic, seat-of-your-pants thrill ride that you star in," while the game's cooperative offerings will be packaged in completely separate "unique co-op modes."

Sounds fairly reminiscent of Modern Warfare 2's Spec Ops missions, though Lamia quickly clarified that Black Ops' co-op mode will be "different" from that of the last game in the series. Could we possibly see more zombies added to the mix? Hopefully, we'll find out more when we check out the game at E3.

Source

Tags: activision, Call-of-Duty, call-of-duty-black-ops, co-op, fps, Microsoft, treyarch, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (82)

/snore

Nothing ever pleases Daria. :/

Careful with the snoring.....I here it attracts zombies

*hear

Seriously... is anyone here actually looking forward to this?

MW2 was alright, but the multiplayer got stale pretty quickly for me. And who wants to spend hundreds of hours working through prestige after prestige again anyway?

Too many CoD games coming out too quickly is ruining the franchise.

I wonder why Joystiq left off the Nintendo tag on this game, seeing as though it was confirmed for Wii as well....

Good.

Oh, were the people playing co-op affecting you negatively?

Because a studio making a game, and then wasting time tacking on some silly co-op mode, won't create a campaign below their capability?

I'm looking at you Lost Planet 2.

Right, because MW2 really had an amazing campaign.
/sarcasm

wanna co-op with your avatar

@uncontrol

so u wanna help her do sandwiches?

It's embarrassing how few people get how diluted the campaign experience is when you shoehorn co-op into it, or how you almost always loose any and all cinematic immersion when you play these solo campaigns in co-op. You wanna have separate cooperative campaigns and gametypes I'm all for it. I love co-op. But not when it dumbs down my single player.

If you all are really going to pass on this game because you can't play a shitty version of the campaign with three other friends, then I feel really sorry for you.

I personally enjoyed the campaign for Halo 3, as well as Gears 1 & 2; those were co-op . . .

How does it dumb down the campaign? Halo is perfect example of how it should be done: all the cinematics you want, but multiple players when you want to play co-op. You don't need to explain their presence, you don't need to include them in cut-scenes, just let them be extra shooters in the game. If you want to play campaign solo, then you lose nothing. If you want to play co-op and don't care about the story, then you aren't forced to play stupid one-off mini-sections.

IW tried to claim that MW2's campaign would suffer from co-op, but every damn scene had multiple characters fighting in it, and not even Player 1 was the same character through the game, so jumping around made no difference.

If your engine can't handle rendering split-screen action, that's fine. Just say it. Don't try to feed me this bullshit about how you want to make it "cinematic," because it's an empty argument.

I wouldn't say it dumbs it down, but I understand his quam. Playing co-op, during cut scenes my friends won't stop with the jibba jabber. But that's easily fixed with a click slide of the headset's volume control.

@Kenny

How do you feel about Gears of War 3's take on Co-Op?

How was LP2's co-op "tacked on"? That was the entire point of the game.

Are you playing Left 4 Dead solo too?

I'd buy it just for some zombiezzzzz

Except Treyarch's last game had 4 player co-op in the campaign..

Zombie tits or GTFO!!! Oh wait, nevermind.

LOL@ Treyarch - the one feature that peaked my interest in Black Ops was when co-op (4 player co-op) was announced, and now they turn around and give us the "fine print".

For me, it's time to give the Call of Duty franchise a rest. I'll spend this winter playing Medal of Honor and Halo: Reach. I'm pretty sure my wallet will thank me, since I won't have to spend $15+ for extra DLC!!

piqued*. sorry, couldn't help myself.

I do agree with your post though.

yep medal of honor for the win, it will kill black ops

Call of duty is dead. Long live the king!

I'm pretty sure your not using that in the right context. Joking or not.

*you're

http://upperfifth.co.uk/keybrood/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/bush_doing_it_wrong.jpg

Yeah it was a poor attempt. My deepest apologies to all.

...

can't these people get it right for once?

i mean god damnit, seriously? why would you ever remove a feature?

what sense does it make to remove an optional feature?

Occam's Razor.

What the hell does "optional" mean in this case? Optional for them to include it or optional to play it? Because freaking everything is optional in either case. I can think of a billion reasons to remove a feature; time constraints, quality issues, funding, understaffing, not fitting with the overall game. Sure, maybe none of these apply to Black Ops, and maybe they really should have included it, but what a stupid thing to say.

Optional in the sense that if people had a problem with it, all they had to do was ignore it.

Don't make it seem like it was that hard to understand, i don't think anyone is that stupid to not get it.

And obviously none of those things really apply here, i mean seriously, it's the same engine as the past 3 call of duty games (mw, waw, mw2), and W@W (made by treyarch) had co-op (at least on the PC), so i see no reason why a studio that has had Co-op before, cannot have it in a new game which uses the same engine.

@Brian
Maybe during the campaign there is a plot point that you are all by yourself on a stealth mission or something. If it enhances the storytelling and campaign aspect by being single -player I don't see why they wouldn't do it. Anyway, they only said it won't have co-op in the main campaign. There is still a possibility for co-op in an other mode.

Dark Wayne +1

Sorry Brian but you're missing the point. It's not as simple as checking a box and putting co-op in. It takes time and resources to do, and in many cases may have its fair share of sacrifices that come along with it.

Even if you "ignore" co-op, that doesn't change the fact that time and money was spent on it, thus meaning less was spent on making the solo experience that much better. Likewise, in order to get co-op into the game there are certain design choices that have to be made and certain things you can't do in both solo and co-op.

There's a reason why Half Life is and always has been a single player only experience, and it's that much better for it. You want co-op? Buy Left 4 Dead, a game made for co-op and crafting for cooperative play.

@Grey_Ryuk

People said the same thing about MW, and MW2 to try and justify the fact there is no co-op. No one questioned it there. It is especially pathetic when you find out that they are working with the same engine they have been working with for quite some time.

Treyarch will become as arrogant as IW once/is.

Call of Doody is dead. Get out while you can unless you want to pay $20 for map packs.

@kenny goo

Meh... your comments are far too broad. Plenty of games work fine with co-op campaign, W@W was one of them. I'll not argue that it doesn't take resources, but then you could argue for stripping anything out using that argument.

zombies or GTFO

I keep thinking of hot shots part deaux and tropic thunder. Both need sequels.

Zombies and Spec Ops please!

This game looks like it could be good, but at the end of the day they're still making somebody elses game. It seems like Treyarch took a gander at Modern Warfare 2 and said, "um yeah, we'll do that too.". That could still translate to being a great game, but it's probably not going to help move the genre forward.

*sadface*

No Coop ?!

Epic Fail .... :(

I love Coop more than multiple player and I've been looking forward to this game!
Can't believe this.

yeah, there IS co-op. just not campaign co-op...

I'm highly disappointed in this decision. Campaign co-op was one of my favorite features of W@W and one of the key things (in terms of gameplay) that differentiated their game from the IW MW games. After playing through solo, co-op is what added the reply value for my friends and I. We had a blast playing with the competitive scoring enabled.

Well that's a step backwards.

No chance I pick this game up now.

talk about throwing out whatever!

http://instantrimshot.com/

Good. I don't want a gimped single player campaign experience.

Make an exclusive co-op campaign if you want that "Co-Op Campaign" bullet point on the back of the case.

Splinter Cell Conviction is the only game I can think of where there was a separate co-op campaign that was arguably on-par with the main campaign. However, I can think of plenty of games with campaign co-op that worked perfectly fine and didn't gimp the single player experience (W@W, Gears, Halo, Resistance 1, etc...).

lol.

It is hilarious that Treyarch fanboys always talked crap about MW not having co-op, and now look what happens! Back-peddling to the extreme.

And by unique co-op modes, they mean Spec-ops rip-off.

Call of Doody is dead, anyways. Bad Company 2, and Halo: Reach are much better games anyway.

That IW engine is only going to last them so long.

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No co-op for Call of Duty: Black Ops' campaign

Reader Comments (82)

Posted: Jun 3rd 2010 4:03PM SolaceInSound said

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