Activision once again pulled out all the stops for the Call of Duty franchise. This time around, the California Science Center in Los Angeles – a museum loaded with objects d'war – was the site where Call of Duty: Black Ops' multiplayer was debuted. But before attendees got their mitts on the game, there was a presentation from Treyarch Studio head Mark Lamia. He set the stage by promising an “entirely new multiplayer experience”, and left Treyarch multiplayer designers Dan Bunting and David Vonderhaar to prove it.

Bunting and Vonderhaar outlined the three pillars of Black Ops multiplayer - compete, customise, create. With an estimated 30-40% of COD players playing single player only, their job is to drag more fresh meat into the game. To that end Treyarch created the Combat Trainer - a bot deathmatch tool. Players can play co-op against AI or stack each team with a mix of human and bot players of varying levels of ability. The mode features its own experience, ranking and rewards system. You can’t stomp bots for a week and hit the online level cap that way. And besides, you'll want to play online for COD Points.

This guy played nonstop - clearly using Marathon and Sleight of Hand perks

What tha? COD Points?
One of the big new features of Black Ops are the in-game currency, COD Points (CP). You'll gain these playing online, leveling up, and mastering certain in-game achievements. CP can be spent on gear customisation, weapon unlocks, enhancements and as gambling currency against other players.

One example of the new customisation arecustomised target reticules for weapons, with different colours as well as different shapes. Players will also be able to design custom emblems via an editor, then apply them and a clan tag to their weapons.

More adventurous souls will gamble for more CP against others. This works in two ways; the more passive method is called “Contracts”, a task system running parallel to the existing Challenges section. Contracts come in three forms: Merc (straight up killing/killstreak related objectives), Operations (specific objective or teamplay based goals) and Specialist (crazy feats of bravado).

Vegas baby, Vegas
The other way players can gamble CP is more direct. In the game’s new Wager Matches, players will put up their CP in four different types of six player, free for all deathmatch. There are no killstreaks or unlocks here. The top three (designated as “In the Money”) rake in the CP, the rest lose their points. Presently, there are four Wager modes on offer:

The one and only Hip Hop Gamer Yes, his belt has a spinning logo

One in the Chamber
Every player spawns with a knife and a pistol with one round. Hit someone, and you get another slug. Miss, and you’re reduced to running around trying to stab somebody. You have three lives. Not too many people were willing to back their judgment from long range - it’s a pistol after all - so darting and weaving about with the knife became commonplace.

Sticks and stones
Deathmatch where players are equipped with a Crossbow, Ballistic Knife and a Tomahawk. Hurling the Tomahawk into a player “bankrupts” them - dropping their score to zero.

Sharpshooter
All players start with a same randomly selected weapon which gets replaced with a different one periodically. Every kill you make gives you a new Perk, and ultimately a scoring multiplier.

Gun Game
All players start the game with a pistol. Every kill you make progresses you to the next more powerful weapon tier. The first player to get a kill with every weapon wins. The catch? Every time you get knifed by someone, you drop back a weapon. The higher you get, the more players will be trying to ram a knife into your back.

Classy
Black Ops multiplayer isn’t just about gambling on objectives and small scale FFA. When looking at available game playlists, the only ones missing from Modern Warfare 2 was the third person perspective mode and the paid DLC modes.

Playerswill have a lot more reason to mess about with customising their player. Treyarch has incorporated a Battlefield-style level of stat tracking in the game via a “player card”. Players can access “heatmaps” specific to their body (showing where they’re most being shot) as well as by map - indicating where kills are being made.

The custom loadout feature remains, but has been tweaked heavily. Now your appearance will change depending on your tier one perk used. The options available: Lightweight, Scavenger, Ghost, Flak Jacket, and Hardline. Treyarch wants this first perk selection to be more of a defining choice for the player.

The valets were extra careful parking this one

Killstreaks too have been revisited. The RC car we already knew about. Helicopters got equal love and hate here. A Gunship puts players in the cockpit and allows them to hose down enemies, but there’s also a SAM Turret unlock which can be set up to blow cheap aerial harvesters out of the sky.

Napalm Strike and Mortar Team do what the name suggests. The biggest cheers were for the Grim Reaper - a rocket launcher with a massive sight - and the Death Machine, which looks like the Quake 2/Team Fortress 2 chaingun on steroids. We don’t know if the Death Machine’s rockets were the steerable ones we saw later on, but we hope so. In this case, the player view switches to the rocket, allowing them to fly it around the level looking for targets. It’s extremely reminiscent of Unreal Tournament’s Redeemer, which was a truly epic (no pun intended) weapon.

Also on the “not quite sure where this goes” category we saw an underslung flamethrower attachment, something that sadly wasn’t available in our play sessions.

Playtime
While Wager Matches were gripping and fun, they probably weren’t the best way to gauge how the game typically plays. So we spent considerable time in team deathmatch on the two maps provided, the rubbished city that is Cracked and the industrial complex that forms Radiation.

Radiation was popular amongst attendees thanks to an interactive killing field in the middle of the map. Two large doors in the ground can be activated and allow easy access to a small chamber below. This area can only be otherwise reached from ladder, so expect it to be a focus for objective based modes.

Cracked is another wartorn town with plenty of ruins to lurk in. Grenades can be lethal here, and your skills with the RC Car killstreak unlock will be tested - plenty of buildings for players to duck into, and plenty of vantage points for players to blow up the car.

MP designers Bunting and Vonderhaar, preaching to the faithful

Both maps had a lack of really open ground. Players will be expected to be quick on the trigger finger, and blade-happy maniacs with the Marathon perk will cause knifemares on both. Treyarch has increased the spread of bullets from Modern Warfare 2, making the action a little less lethal. Yet recoil and dispersion were noticeably less than the Infinity Ward game across the board. As a result, savvy players were mainly relying on shotguns and submachine guns to do the dirty work.

Speaking of dirty, six video slots per player card are available to store bragging clips, team strategy reels, whatever - presumably from content created using the in-game Theater editor. These video slots - hosted by Treyarch - will also will be a part of the anti-cheat structure the team are building. Players will be able to report cheats - and videos can be used as evidence.

Platform-specific
Once again Microsoft has pulled out the chequebook and secured some exclusive concessions around a Call of Duty title. In this case, DLC for the game on PC and PlayStation 3 will be released 30 days after it goes live on Live.

When talking to Cesar Stastny, Treyarch’s Director of Technology who doubles as Black Ops’ PC lead, he was adamant the PC version would stand alongside the console versions (and vice versa) with no compromises.

Stastny wouldn’t be drawn on preferential treatment for ATI or NVIDIA video chipsets, saying the team prefers to steer clear of supporting any card-specific functions or libraries in favour of presenting a unified experience across PC and console.

Black Ops on PC will not have a multiplayer lobby, rather a server browser. There will be a “quick match” style option which can pick an appropriate server as well. Players will still be able to play peer-to-peer in custom, private games, Stastny added.

In the end
We left the event very impressed with the new modes Black Ops includes; the Wager Match will have legs, and the player card feature, stat tracking and custom options all deserve praise. Moreover, PC COD fans will have been looking forward to Treyarch’s dedicated server supported multiplayer after the disappointment of last year. Whether it breaks the records set by Modern Warfare 2 - in a three month window that also will also see Medal of Honor’s return and Bungie walk away from Halo with Halo Reach - remains to be seen.