So while the DMZ and Zombies elements sometimes work against each other, when they do come together Operation Deadbolt can be a lot of fun. Add the panic that comes with the fear of losing everything you've earned in a run, and Operation Deadbolt can get even an undead heart pumping. Planning your forays across the map becomes essential, but all the different enemies, weapons, upgrades, equipment, and random short-lived Zombies power-ups you can find along the way combine to make sessions exciting and unpredictable. Having the right Perk Colas and seeking out Pack-a-Punch machines becomes the difference between a successful session and a painful defeat, and the extraction mechanics of DMZ add exactly the right kind of dread as you fight to protect your exfiltration helicopter from huge zombie throngs of anywhere from tens to what feels like a hundred or more. You're still able to choose which activities to engage with as you move up in difficulty, but they're all more challenging, and just crossing the map in these areas requires you to pay much more attention to keeping yourself and your team alive.Īnd once the challenge starts to ramp up, the traditional Zombies gameplay elements are much more important. Things are, as you’d expect, even tougher in Threat Level 3, where giant boss monsters maraud freely and even low-level zombies are decked out in strong armor. The Urzikstan map is divided into three areas, or “threat levels,” and the differences in the zones is stark - Threat Level 2 has zombies that you can barely deal with using weapons you haven't upgraded with a Pack-a-Punch machine, for example, and it's rife with bigger creatures and special zombies that show up at random much more often. The more difficult locations (it gets harder the closer you get to the map’s center) increase the intensity of battles, the ambient dread that any encounter could go sideways, unexpected complications, and the risk of losing all your great gear - all the things that make both DMZ and past Zombies modes exciting. The lack of a pressing threat in Operation Deadbolt means you can spend a whole session on low-difficulty, relatively boring activities, just to prepare for something more interesting.īut the two different gameplay approaches start to gel much better as you get deeper in and venture into tougher areas. The slower and more thoughtful gameplay of DMZ contrasts with the usual setup of Zombies, which is all about the mounting tension of finding better weapons, setting up defenses, and exploring the map while constantly fighting off ever-tougher waves of enemies. In the early going, apart from the zombies themselves and a few familiar temporary power-ups and Perk Colas, this Zombies mode doesn't feel much like Zombies at all. You and two squadmates head into the map, search for cool stuff and complete activities called Contracts to earn money to buy upgrades and items, and call a helicopter to escape with your loot before you're either overwhelmed by enemies or the 45-minute match timer expires. Instead, the moment-to-moment gist of the mode is almost exactly what you encounter in DMZ. Gone are the usual wave-based battles through smaller, dedicated maps that you explore and unlock as you go. Operation Deadbolt, the name for Modern Warfare 3's Zombies mode, takes place on a version of the upcoming Warzone map of Urzikstan. But its huge size, and the slow pace created as a result, often makes it feel at odds with what was fun about Zombies in the past. If you can stick with it long enough to reach high-difficulty areas and top-level content, it can take you to some excellent, intense moments. This is less a new take on Zombies than it is a DMZ reskin, with disparate elements cherry-picked from both modes mashed against one another and made to kiss. But as popular as the Warzone side of Call of Duty (or in this case, the extraction shooter mode, DMZ) might be, mixing it together with Zombies has had the effect of diluting both. Like a lot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, this year’s Zombies mode has undergone what might be described as a "Warzone-ification," forcing its traditional PvE elements into a larger, more open map.
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