
Last week saw the release of Escalation, the second Call of Duty: Black Ops content pack, on the PC. Escalation includes four new multiplayer maps (Hotel, Zoo, Stockpile and Convoy), alongside a new zombie survival mission.
What’s most immediately noticeable is that the new multiplayer maps, thankfully, offer a range of new visual styles—especially refreshing after all the browns and greys of Black Ops proper.
Zoo and Hotel are both distinctly colorful, offbeat maps that serve as decidedly unusual combat grounds. Meanwhile, Convoy takes place on a broken roadway that feels distinctly urban and familiar, while Stockpile features a farming village that’s actually a lot less humble than it seems.





It’s not difficult to imagine EA sitting down with Crytek, somewhere in the indeterminate space between Crysis and Crysis 2, fingers tented carefully and asking “Can you make it more like Call of Duty?” I don’t mean “It’s a funny joke to think about,” I mean I believe this happened. I believe it occurred in our discrete reality.