Members of Call of Duty Elite for both the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 have already started reaping the benefits of their yearly membership with the first content drop in January. As promised, Activision is intent on keeping up with their Content Drop schedule for Elite Subscribers to prove the value of the service.

This month, subscribers will be getting their hands on the new map Overwatch. Somewhat similar in aestetics to the rooftop multiplayer map of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, this one is much more dangerous as its central passage is one that provides little cover or protection from falling for the players crossing it. It does give some nice variety to the other maps that have already been released and it will be interesting to see how it plays out when more game modes are added as well.

Call of Duty Elite Drop 3: Overwatch drops you into a construction site atop a New York City skyscraper. The battle takes place along two levels in a near symmetrical layout, with the central bridge and side routes open to attack from multiple angles. Watch your every step, as a lack of safety barriers surrounding the perimeter leaves nothing between you and a 70 story fall to the ground below.

Overwatch is the third Content Drop in Modern Warfare 3′s Content Season, which will include more than 20 pieces of brand new content over the 9 month season. Elite Drops 4-6 will be available in March for Premium Members on Xbox Live and will include the multiplayer map Black Box and two brand new Special Ops Missions, Black Ice and Negotiator. The full calendar of content is outlined here.

Check out the screens after the jump and stayed tuned for more Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 news as it becomes available.

Continue Reading →

Playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and not sure if Elite membership is right for you? Check out the latest two trailers from Activision and Call of Duty Elite featuring Rob Riggle, the cop from the Hangover who had way too much fun with the taser in the classroom, as he explains the benefits of Elite as well as walks you through the first two maps from Call of Duty Elite’s nine month content drop.

As the Elite trailer goes to explain, the biggest benefit for Elite membership isn’t just getting maps first. They are actually cheaper if paid for up front. Instead of getting four packs at $15 a pop, players can pay for them all with the Elite membership for only $50 (or already have it free if they purchased the Hardened Edition of the game) and as mentioned, they get them much earlier than waiting for content packs.

As promised, Elite delivered its first two maps yesterday. In addition to new gameplay modes which will be coming soon, new multiplayer maps have been the biggest and most important DLC on XBox Live since Halo 2′s map packs.

This pack features Content Drop 1: Liberation which resembles a Central Park setting, complete with mounted miniguns (just like real life), long lines of sight for snipers and tons of tree cover and close quartered underground locales as well. Content Drop 2: Piazza takes players to an Italian seaside village filled with tight winding roads leaving lots of chances for close combat encounters.

Check out the January Content Drop trailer below as well as screens of both Liberation and Piazza. Stay tuned to The Flickcast for more on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty Elite.

Continue Reading →

A billion dollars in sales in just 16 days. An unprecedented release both for the video game and entertainment industry. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a juggernaut. It only seems fitting that along with the Call of Duty Elite mobile app going live this week, that the DLC announcements would start rolling out as well. Starting January 24th for premium Call of Duty Elite members on XBox Live (and later dates for other platforms) until September, there will be at least twenty content drops for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 including “brand new multiplayer maps, Special Ops Missions, new game modes and more.”

“The mammoth launch of Modern Warfare 3 and the breakout success of Call of Duty Elite were just the beginning. Call of Duty Elite provides an “always-on” connection to our fanbase, and the MW3 Content Season is the ultimate way to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to the Call of Duty community and provide tremendous value to Call of Duty Elite premium members,” said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. “With the Call of Duty®: MW3 Content Season for Call of Duty Elite we are delivering on our promise of more new content, more often, and with more variety than ever. With three studios collaborating on the first season, the breadth and depth of material on tap is truly extraordinary. It’s rare you can successfully execute both quantity and quality, but thanks to the expertise of our developers, the reach of Call of Duty Elite and the passion of our fans, we intend to deliver.”

Content drops will occur once a month for the nine month duration of the DLC season with the first three months from January to March promising five different content drops.

Continue Reading →

Call of Duty Elite is a service that allows the most hardcore Call of Duty players to lose themselves in some pretty advance stat tracking and multiplayer progression. Now those gamers have even less of a reason to spend any time away from their account with the launch of the iOS app for the service.

The new app will be free for all registered users, and is available on all iOS platforms today. An android version is going to be hitting soon as well.

Immerse yourself in Call of Duty® wherever you go with the Call of Duty® ELITE mobile app. Evaluate your multiplayer progress with in-depth stat analysis. Formulate new strategies based on your recent performance and remotely incorporate edits to your loadouts. Push your changes directly into Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 3 so you’re always ready to play.

Check out a list of features and some screen shots after the jump.

Continue Reading →

You may have heard of a little game called Call of Duty: Black Ops. In fact, before the more recent Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, it was the best selling first person shooter game of all time on the XBox 360, PS3 and PC.

But what if you didn’t have and XBox or were on the road and wanted to play it on your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch? Well, up until today you were out of luck. Fortunately, your luck is changing . . . for the better.

That’s right kids today Activision has released Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Here’s all the scoop from the official press release:

Adapted from Treyarch’s best-selling console hit, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and built specifically for Apple mobile devices, Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies delivers a Zombies experience never before seen on mobile along with 50 levels of cult-favorite Dead-Ops Arcade, providing the ultimate undead challenge for fans of Call of Duty’s signature Zombies mode. Featuring Voice Chat for a true Call of Duty style multiplayer experience, the title allows gamers to play solo or join a team of up to four to take down hordes of zombies.

Continue Reading →

A game that racks up sales of three quarters of a billion dollars in just five days of release is something anyone should take notice of. With the records Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has been smashing, the video game industry has been in near upheaval. Is it Call of Duty vs. Battlefield?

Is the game a cheap cash in for what should be just an expansion? Are services like Elite necessary for players? Regardless of what controversies may arise or what questions you may ask, the answer is really quite simple: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the definitive military shooter of 2011.

Gameplay:

There is a reason that Call of Duty has been at the forefront of military shooters since the inception of the series. The control is crisp and tight. Players move and react as close to they should in actual combat (with the exception of regenerative health of course).

Continue Reading →

Welcome back to another episode of The Bitcast, our very own video game only podcast hosted by JC and WallE. The boys hit lots of big news this week including the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 sales records, Activision’s multimillion dollar charity donation, Limbo hitting its millionth sale and discuss the upcoming Dead Island DLC.

In the Topic of the Week, the two discuss the ever decreasing distance of video games and reality and when that line is crossed. In their Now Playing Section, JC talks more about his experience with Modern Warfare 3 as well as his $0.99 download of Scribblenauts Remixed for the iOS.

WallE takes an unexpected turn and talks about the Flash “game” from PETA that tries to target Mario for the reintroduction of the Tanooki suit in Mario Bros. 3D Land for the Nintendo 3Ds.

Don’t forget to subcribe to The Flickcast’s iTunes feed to get your weekly dose of The Bitcast!

We like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, you like it and so, it seems, do a whole bunch of other people. How can we be sure?

Well, Activision on Tuesday announced that week-one sales of Modern Warfare 3 were 12.3 Million units, making it the biggest launch of all time. That number of units sold also brought in about $738 Million in revenue. Not bad for the first week.

The Xbox 360 version of the game was in the lead with sales of more than 7 million units, a record for game sales on a single console that was previously held by Call of Duty: Black Ops and its 5.8 Million units sold. 4.8 Million copies were sold for the PlayStation 3.

But what of the Wii? It had about 500K copies sold for it along with the PC version of the game, which also had about the same. In addition, in case you hadn’t heard, Activision announced late last week that COD:MW3 sold 6.5 Million copies and made $400 Million during its launch weekend alone. That’s also a record, by the way.

I’m sure Hollywood must be salivating pretty hard right now wishing they could get these kinds of sales figures for some of their movies. Of course, that would mean they would have to make good movies first. And let’s face it, most of them aren’t.

Look for our review of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 very soon. We know John is working on it and it’s going to be great.

With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 , hitting this week the anticipation is almost palpabile. People across the internet are clamoring for just about any information available to the game. We know we at The Flickcast are anxiously looking forward to tonight at midnight to get our hands on it. But, until then, we are going to share this behind the scenes video from our friends at Activision that explains both the Facebook and Elite integration in to the game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will tie directly in to player’s Facebook friends list. This is the first triple A title to allow for this level of social networking communication that will allow players to look directly at their friends list from the game browser and hop in to games using their Facebook friends. This is going to be a great resource as not a lot of people post their gamer tag to Facebook but almost certainly everyone on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer is going to link their game to their Facebook so they can partied up that much easier with all their friends.

We also get to take a look further into the three pillars of Elite with Connect, Compete and Improve. One of the most drastic improvements looks to be the 100 person clan structure which has been added to the game. Clans can take on Clan Operations and level up the entire clan as a whole. Competition looks to heat up as well with the inclusion of both real and digital prizes in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Keep your eyes peeled for any last minute news before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3′s midnight release tonight and check out the full behind the scenes video below.

Continue Reading →

Awesome. That’s the only word to describe it. The Call of Duty franchise just keeps getting better and better.

And now, with the latest installment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, hitting stores next month we’ve got even more to be excited about. To keep the excitement going until the release, we’ve got a behind-the-scenes trailer featuring weapon proficiencies. Yes, it continues the awesome trend.

As always, by clicking through you certify you are 18 years of age or older. If you are, check out the trailer after the break.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 hits store shelves on November 8. Can’t. Wait.

Continue Reading →

What can a series do after destroying Washington DC? Attacking New York City, Paris and London might be a good way to kick things off. Russian Ultranationalist Vladimir Makarov is at it again with his master plan in full effect. After sending the world to the brink of chaos two years ago in Modern Warfare 2, Makarov is back as he kicks off the third world war. Captain John “Soap” MacTavish and SAS Captain John Price must come together again to stop him in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

To say Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is the most anticipated game of all time may sound like hyperbole but after what happened with Call of Duty: Black Ops, the game that people expected would sell less than Modern Warfare 2, the level of hype behind this title is unreal.

After its predecessor set worldwide entertainment sales figures, the rest of the video game world has its sights set on Call of Duty’s spot at the top. Even its closest competitor, Battlefield 3 has directly stated its intentions with a tag line to their advertising campaign trying to knock Call of Duty down a peg.

Take a peek below at the trailer for what could be again the biggest entertainment launch in history on November 8th for the XBox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS and PC.

Continue Reading →

A few days ago, we brought you a peek at the first screen shots for the Rezurrection map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops. As we discussed last time, the Rezurrection pack is an all Zombie mode map pack featuring the brand new Moon level alongside four remastered classic zombie mode maps which were featured in the Hardened and Prestige Editions of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Players who purchased these special editions will receive the Moon map for free while new purchasers will be paying the standard $15 (1200 Microsoft Points) price.

When looking at the trailer below, players will ask themselves what Treyarch can do to add something new and special to the Zombie world of Call of Duty and the answer isn’t some special weapon or trap. It’s Zero G. Players have become so accustomed to games always feeling and moving the same way for years, but now they have a whole new environment that not only looks different but controls and reacts differently as well.

Not only do zombies run slower and players have the ability to jump throughout levels but, conversely, players will be running away slower while zombies will be bounding at players from across the level as well. The map pack brings an entirely new dynamic and play style not possible in previous levels ever in the series.

Check out the full trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops Rezurrection zombie Map Pack below. Stick tight for the pack’s August 23rd release date on the XBox 360 before headed to PlayStation 3 after.

Continue Reading →