Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops - Escalation Map Pack

Good news for Xbox 360 players, bad news for PS3 people. We get a newly released map pack from Activision for Call of Duty: Black Ops. Since the entire DLC is 100% online based, it is a good thing XBL still works. Anyway, this is the second DLC for Black Ops and while the maps are fairly good and the Zombies is a new take, this is still a bit pricey for the same old DLC.

You get four brand new maps in Escalation and each one is different enough from what is already offered to hold its own. The maps included are Zoo, Hotel, Convoy, and Stockpile. My runaway favorite was Hotel. It takes place in a deserted and partially destroyed casino and reminds of the days of Rainbow Six: Vegas. You can also use the elevators which are fun but people will be waiting and they can and will shoot through the glass. Zoo takes place in an abandoned zoo. Makes sense. You can expect a lot of cover behind things one would expect to find in a zoo. Throwing semtex into a parked tram car to kill a camper felt oddly awesome.

The next map is Convoy which takes place in a destroyed village slash hotel parking lot place. The setting is weird and sort of generic but you can run around or hideout in the many buildings. I guess it is called Convoy because there are some convoy vehicles parked close by. The last map is Stockpile. The setting is a Russian town slash weapons stockpile so the name makes sense. It is a mixture of a town and the awesome Launch map. Again, fun but generic, but satisfying.

It’s a map pack for Black Ops. If you still play the game daily, which many of you do, you’re going to buy it. The Call of the Dead Zombie variant requires you to play online or local with at least one player. You cannot play Solo. So, either Co-op with a buddy or find someone online to play on your team who is not a total dick Rambo wannabee. For $15 bucks, the content is good not great. The zombie pack lets you play as the guy who played Freddy Kruger or the guy who played Machete or the chick from Buffy or Brandy’s father from Mallrats. I wouldn’t be upset if they added a few new single player missions next time, but why would that ever be considered?