Call Of Duty Black Ops Zombies Not Working

[Charise Scrivner]

CallOf Duty: World War 2 is the first game in the series since 2008 to take place in the second world war. Back in 2008, Call Of Duty: World At War was a brief diversion from the franchise's turn to modern warfare, and eventually futuristic and even space warfare.

Now we return with Sledgehammer Games's second AAA Call of Duty release, following their excellent 2014 title Advanced Warfare, which was the first game in the series to really double-jump its way into the future.

It's an exciting return to the historical for many Call of Duty gamers, your humble narrator included. As much as I really do enjoy modern CoD multiplayer, it's great to have variety, and from what I've seen and played of World War 2 it's going to be a great game.

Of course, since it's Call of Duty it's bound to be controversial. The higher they come, the harder they fall, and so it goes year after year with the best-selling games in the biggest annual franchises.

The first is the decision to not include the swastika, one of the Third Reich's most ominous and prevalent symbols, in the game's multiplayer. That might seem odd, but it turns out Sledgehammer is walking something of a tightrope when it comes to this kind of thing.

Condrey says it was "the best way to represent history, which was very important to us." The developer even has a military historian on the payroll to ensure that this imagery is used in historically accurate ways throughout the campaign.

This means that for most countries, the campaign will still have the swastika and other Nazi imagery. In Germany, however, where there are strict censorship laws against this, the campaign will be censored accordingly. This is in keeping with pretty much every single other video game release in Germany that has even a hint of Nazi symbols, from Wolfenstein to Bionic Commando.

Multiplayer, however, is another beast altogether. In both competitive multiplayer and Zombies mode, the swastika was left out. In many ways, Sledgehammer has ditched historical accuracy and created something that they view as accessible to everyone, with the horrors of that specific war---and the Nazi's fascist, racist regime---left out altogether. It's an interesting approach, and a tricky decision to make. But Condrey says there were several deciding factors.

Condrey also notes that the online multiplayer experiences are "shared, global ones, so we needed to adhere to local laws and regulations, while ensuring that everyone has the same level and identical playing field." In other words, German gamers wouldn't see a different game in multiplayer than the rest of the world, which makes sense.

The other perplexing design decision is the inclusion of multi-racial playable characters on the Axis side in multiplayer. You can play as a black, female Nazi if you want to. As I noted above, there's a high level of abstraction going on in Sledgehammer's approach to multiplayer. They've taken everything historical out of the competitive side in order to make the game appeal to as diverse an audience as possible.

Condrey says that Sledgehammer "wanted our players, regardless of gender or ethnicity to feel they were represented in Multiplayer. The Call of Duty soldier you customize and play as should be a representation of you, your avatar in MP, and that soldier can look however you choose. Allowing players to take themselves into battle, whether assigned to the Allied or Axis factions, was a strategic decision which we believe strikes the right balance of fun and inclusiveness."

A lot of people will see this as blatant pandering to the "social justice" crowd. Women soldiers in World War 2 was already a point of contention, but having black Nazis seems to many like a bridge too far. After all, this was an army that prided itself on its whiteness and racial superiority. Hitler's entire philosophy was built around Aryan superiority, and while black people were never the subject of his most intense hatred (that was saved for the Jewish people) they were certainly never soldiers in the Nazi army.

I think that if this is the direction Call of Duty wants to go as a series then it makes sense. We've had gender and racial diversity for several games now in multiplayer and it makes sense to just stick with this approach with every game, bringing some uniformity to each Call of Duty entry.

Meanwhile, multiplayer is hardly an exercise in realism to begin with. After all, there are scorestreaks. If you score enough points without dying you're able to call down all sorts of terrors on your enemies. Oh, and when you die you miraculously come back to life to fight again, doing things like capturing A, B or C, or holding a random "hardpoint."

So if it's just policy now to have multiplayer function as an abstraction---almost a reenactment, in this case---okay. I'm fine with that. And I completely understand leaving swastikas out of multiplayer. I'm happy they'll at least be in the campaign and that Sledgehammer is really focusing on creating a historically authentic European theater of war.

On the other hand, this has to be a first, having black Nazis in any game, or in any media at all. How can it not be a bit jarring and unsettling? How can it not spark some incredulous chuckles? I don't think this is necessarily pandering to "SJWs" (social justice warriors) but it is, in some ways, the result of diversity for diversity's sake. Sledgehammer wants everyone to be able to play and identify with their characters, which is fine, but I just can't make it work in my head. Black Nazis!

It's my honest belief that people of all races and creeds would understand if they could only play as white people on the Axis side. There might be some fringe elements out there who complained, but most people would get that when it came to racial quotas, the Nazis had a very different notion about what that meant. So while I think Sledgehammer's heart is in the right place here, and while I think it's ultimately not that big of a deal at all, I also think being a little more historically accurate would have been an okay direction to take. I mean, how much do we really identify with our toons in CoD to begin with? You're in first-person the entire time anyways.

Like I said, it's actually not that big of a deal in the long run, but it's stirred up some unnecessary controversy, and I think most people would have understood if the Axis side were limited to scumbag Aryan jerks who wanted to eradicate Jews, gypsies, black people, gay people, handicapped people and so on and so forth from the face of the earth.

Finally, there's Zombies mode, which Condrey says "gives us a tremendous amount of creative freedom across the board." Yeah, you pretty much toss historical accuracy and authenticity out the window when you develop anything with the word "zombies" in it, so I'm not too worried about swastikas or anything else in this mode. I mean, as long as there's giant robots we should be okay, right?

Zombies are deceased humans that have been reanimated or infected by various means and serve as the primary antagonistic force of the Zombies, Exo Zombies, Infinite Warfare Zombies and Nazi Zombies game modes. They also appear in the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare game-type Exo Survival as a bonus wave on the map Riot, and are playable in Call of Duty: Warzone in the limited-time mode Zombie Royale. In the original Zombies mode, they are created by Element 115; in Exo Zombies, they are the product of an Atlas program gone wrong, and in Infinite Warfare Zombies, they are used by Willard Wyler with the intention of killing four actors for a snuff film. They also appear in the Call of Duty: Black Ops III campaign level "Demon Within", and in Nightmares mode, controlled by the Demigod Deimos, and are playable in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Warzone in the modes Infected and Zombie Royale respectively.

Though the origin of the zombies remains mostly unclear, various incidents leading up to the creation of the zombies can be found via radio messages found in various maps. It was caused by Element 115 an element found in meteors that can reanimate dead cells. A meteor fragment containing Element 115 is shown in the map Shi No Numa outside in the storage hut area. Meteor fragments can be seen on Kino der Toten, Call of the Dead, Shangri-La, Origins, Der Eisendrache, Zetsubou No Shima, and Revelations. Meteors can also be seen on the Moon whenever it is visible.

The earliest sighting of zombies was in France, during the First World War, sometimes between 1917 and 1918, where the Germans first uncovered Element 115. However, zombies have existed since the Middle Ages, as seen by both the Crusader and Templar Zombies found in France.

While working with Element 115 to power new weapons and the teleporters, Dr. Ludvig Maxis, a German scientist, discovered it could also reanimate dead cells and created an undead army. Unfortunately, this army could not be controlled as the zombies would always go berserk when tested. Edward Richtofen, Maxis' assistant, believed Maxis was not acting quick enough and decided to betray him to further the research.

One day, Maxis used his daughter Samantha's dog, Fluffy (who was pregnant), as a test subject for his teleporter. Unfortunately, something went horribly wrong and Fluffy transformed into the first Hellhound. After this event, his assistant, Richtofen, set his plan into motion when he locked Maxis and Samantha in the teleporter room with the mutated Fluffy.

After the discovery of Prima Materia, a group only known as "the Nine" created the Sentinel Artifacts to harness and contain the powers of Prima Materia. These Sentinel Artifacts, upon activation, will create a Trial to prove an individual "worthy", transforming people into Zombies and various other undead creatures as enemies to fight within their Trial.

In the Dark Aether Saga, Zombies are caused by prolonged exposure to the Dark Aether. In Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, it is specifically caused by prolonged exposure to the Dark Aether-originating element known as Aetherium. "Revenants" can also be caused by the use of the Scepter of Kortifex, which allows the user to raise corpses from the dead.

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