Vita Black Ops Focuses on Multiplayer Above All Else

[MikeWehner]

Vita Black Ops Focuses on Multiplayer Above All Else

Developer Nihilistic doesn't care about wild cinematics, but hopes to finally hit a multiplayer home run on a handheld system.

The Call of Duty franchise has long hung its hat on fast-paced campaign modes with over the top action sequences, but it's always been the multiplayer suite that keeps players enthralled for months after release. With that in mind, Nihilistic wants gamers to know its upcoming Vita iteration of the beloved series puts the emphasis firmly on a quality multiplayer experience.

"The biggest difference is in terms of the game focus," Nihilistic Software CEO Robert Huebner explains, "Declassified is not about the big campaign storyline and huge cinematics, it's more focused on the multiplayer essence of Call of Duty and bringing that to a portable device as completely as possible."

Black Ops Declassified features 4-on-4 online multiplayer matches over wifi. That's not quite as epic as console gamers are used to, but when it comes to tackling multiplayer on a portable system, you have to start small.

Nihilistic is perhaps better equipped to take on this challenge than any other company, given its experience with Resistance: Burning Skies, which hit the Vita earlier this year. Of course, even with a reasonably competent multiplayer Vita experience under the company's belt, gamers are likely still hesitant to put all their chips on Declassified - and with good reason.

A first person shooter has never really broken through on a handheld console, with the main hang up usually being a lack of adequate controls. The Vita, for the most part, remedies this with its dual analog sticks, and if there's one franchise that could bring a robust multiplayer community to the Vita, Call of Duty may be it.

Source: One of Swords [http://oneofswords.com/2012/10/black-ops-declassified-update-with-nihilistics-ceo/]

Permalink

 

[mysecondlife]

Yeah.. Poor man's Black Ops 2.

Ironic considering entry fee for Declassified is much higher than Black Ops 2 for most people.

 

[Jhooud]

Huh, well I'll be interested to hear how that works for them. Personally, I've found myself getting further and further away from traditional deathmatch style multiplayer and more and more into co-op multiplayer. Modes such as Horde in Gears, Survival Mode in MW3, or MvM in TF2 (my current fav) are a lot more enjoyable (particularly played split screen) to me than what they're doing here.

Ah well, different strokes for different folks I guess. Still, given the whole Nazi Zombies focus of their iphone games, this is a little surprising.

 

[V8 Ninja]

Four-versus-four multiplayer seems a bit weak. I mean, Mario Kart DS had 8-player races when it was released in 2005. You would think that Nihilistic wouldn't have much of a problem getting at least a solid 12-person match, especially considering that the PS Vita is essentially a portable PS3.

 

[redknightalex]

They could just give up on the single-player campaign altogether, which appears to be what they would like to do anyway. Not entirely my sort of genre yet, in a way, the Vita is begging for a game that's MP only. They touted the ability to game wherever, whenever, with anyone and the only real game to be able to deliver something that matches those expectations of gamers is with a CoD game.

Either way, I'll skip on this one...like all other CoDs since MW... Can't believe they thought a 45 degree POV for the PC was a good idea.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Now if only they let you have it without having a certain NAT Type, like Resistance. EVERY other bloody game supports all NAT types, why didn't that?

Still, looks pretty crap. I'm looking forward to BO2, this much less so.

 

[DiamanteGeeza]

Four-versus-four multiplayer seems a bit weak. I mean, Mario Kart DS had 8-player races when it was released in 2005. You would think that Nihilistic wouldn't have much of a problem getting at least a solid 12-person match, especially considering that the PS Vita is essentially a portable PS3.

No it isn't. It's nothing like a PS3! In terms of overall power (across the board) you're looking at something closer to a PS2. Now, don't get me wrong - Sony have been very clever cramming all of that hardware into a portable machine, but it is nothing like a PS3. Don't fall for Sony's hype.

And regarding the 4v4 - my guess is that they're not having an issue with network bandwidth, it will be a frame rate issue of potentially needing to render more than 8 animated characters (plus all the ray casting and other CPU hits that come with adding a character). Eight sounds about the correct number of characters to render (and process) and keep a solid frame rate, bearing in mind the performance capabilities of the machine.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

This essentially removes the last bit of hope that I would ever buy this, but I see how it makes sense from their perspective. Almost everyone I know in RL who plays all COD all DAY has never tried the singleplayer, and bought the game to quickly get ahead in prestige and move on from the last one's multiplayer.

One thing I don't understand...it's not possible to play multiplayer using only the 3G internet, right? The whole "console experience in your hands" is making less and less sense to me, especially if you can only play this right when you're 10 feet from a PS3 with MW3,Blops and eventually Blops 2.

 

[DiamanteGeeza]

This essentially removes the last bit of hope that I would ever buy this, but I see how it makes sense from their perspective. Almost everyone I know in RL who plays all COD all DAY has never tried the singleplayer, and bought the game to quickly get ahead in prestige and move on from the last one's multiplayer.

One thing I don't understand...it's not possible to play multiplayer using only the 3G internet, right? The whole "console experience in your hands" is making less and less sense to me, especially if you can only play this right when you're 10 feet from a PS3 with MW3,Blops and eventually Blops 2.

You can play online on the Vita anywhere you have a WiFi signal (Starbucks, on a plane that has WiFi, and so on). I believe that only one of the members of the MP game can be on 3G due to a Sony and/or 3G network restriction (if the game you're playing even supports 3G - most don't because it's so unreliable compared to WiFi. I don't think CoD Vita will support 3G).

 

[Korten12]

Four-versus-four multiplayer seems a bit weak. I mean, Mario Kart DS had 8-player races when it was released in 2005. You would think that Nihilistic wouldn't have much of a problem getting at least a solid 12-person match, especially considering that the PS Vita is essentially a portable PS3.

No it isn't. It's nothing like a PS3! In terms of overall power (across the board) you're looking at something closer to a PS2. Now, don't get me wrong - Sony have been very clever cramming all of that hardware into a portable machine, but it is nothing like a PS3. Don't fall for Sony's hype.

And regarding the 4v4 - my guess is that they're not having an issue with network bandwidth, it will be a frame rate issue of potentially needing to render more than 8 animated characters (plus all the ray casting and other CPU hits that come with adding a character). Eight sounds about the correct number of characters to render (and process) and keep a solid frame rate, bearing in mind the performance capabilities of the machine.

The Vita has better graphics then the PS2, so it's not like that. I will say it's not completely on the PS3 side, it's sort of in the center of both the PS2 and PS3. Some parts of it I can see it coming close to PS3 (in Uncharted Golden Abyss this is evident) but then in other places it just drops the balls. Still a pretty powerful machine.