Tripwire President John Gibson holds an M1 Garand inside the team's studio, one of the guns carried by the Americans in Rising Storm.

Earlier this month I visited Killing Floor and Red Orchestra 2 creator Tripwire Interactive to play Rising Storm, the upcoming standalone expansion to RO2 (look for a preview on Monday). After the demo, Tripwire President John Gibson and I got talking about the state of first-person shooters, and Gibson laid out a detailed criticism about the way Call of Duty "takes individual skill out of the equation." Gibson also expressed frustration over how difficult it had been trying to design a mode for Red Orchestra 2 that appealed to Call of Duty players.

PCG: How do you feel about the state of FPSes?

John Gibson, President: I think that single-player shooters are getting better. I think they’re finally coming out from under the shadow of the Hollywood movie, overblown “I’m on a rail” linear shooter. I’m talking about Call of Duty-style shooters. In the late ‘90s, you had the original Deus Ex, which was an RPG-shooter. And those kind of games almost took an eight year hiatus. And I’m so excited to see them coming back with interesting gameplay. Like the Fallout games, even though their shooting mechanics could really use some improvement, just mixing a really cool story, but not a linear story, one that you create yourself. The melding of RPG elements and shooter elements has been great. I’ve seen this reflected in a lot of the reviews, it’s like, “Okay guys, we’re tired of this on-rails experience.”

On the flip side, I’m really discouraged by the current state of multiplayer shooters. I think that, and I hate to mention names, because it sounds like ‘I’m just jealous of their success,’ but I’m really, I feel like Call of Duty has almost ruined a generation of FPS players. I know that’s a bold statement, but I won’t just throw stones without backing it up. When I was developing Action Mode , I got a group of people that I know that are pretty hardcore Call of Duty players. And my goal was to create something that was accessible enough for them to enjoy the game—not turn it into Call of Duty, but try to make something that I thought was casual enough but with the Red Orchestra gameplay style that they would enjoy. And we iterated on it a lot. And just listening to all the niggling, pedantic things that they would complain about, that made them not want to play the game, I just thought, “I give up. Call of Duty has ruined this whole generation of gamers.”

Red Orchestra 2. Gibson says he's "discouraged" by the state of multiplayer shooters on PC.

What did they complain about?

Gibson: It’s the gameplay mechanics that they become used to. The way that players instantly accelerate when they move, they don’t build up speed. “The weapons really don’t have a lot of power” . They’re all very weak. The way they handle... They’re like: “I hate Red Orchestra, I can’t play it.” Well, why? “Because the guy doesn’t move like he does in Call of Duty. Call of Duty has great movement.” Why is it great? “Because it just is, I just like the way it works.” So you don’t like the momentum system in Red Orchestra? “Yeah, it sucks, it’s clunky, it’s terrible.” Well, why? “It’s just because I’m used to this.”

I make it sound like there was a combative conversation, probably because I get a little emotional when I think about it. But it was really a calm discussion of, “What don’t you like?” and “It doesn’t feel like Call of Duty.” Almost every element boiled down to “it doesn’t feel like Call of Duty.” And really, watching some of these guys play... one of the things that Call of Duty does, and it’s smart business, to a degree, is they compress the skill gap. And the way you compress the skill gap as a designer is you add a whole bunch of randomness. A whole bunch of weaponry that doesn’t require any skill to get kills. Random spawns, massive cone fire on your weapons. Lots of devices that can get kills with zero skill at all, and you know, it’s kind of smart to compress your skill gap to a degree. You don’t want the elite players to destroy the new players so bad that new players can never get into the game and enjoy it. I’m looking at you, Dota. Sorry.

"If there’s no fear, there’s no tension, the victory is shallow. We want there to be some fear."

But the skill gap is so compressed, that it’s like a slot machine. You might as well just sit down at a slot machine and have a thing that pops up an says “I got a kill!” They’ve taken individual skill out of the equation so much. So you see these guys—I see it all the time, they come in to play Red Orchestra, and they’re like “This game’s just too hardcore. I’m awesome at Call of Duty, so there’s something wrong with your game. Because I’m not successful at playing this game, so it must suck. I’m not the problem, it’s your game.” And sometimes as designers, it is our game. Sometimes we screw up, sometimes we design something that’s not accesible enough, they can’t figure it out, we didn’t give them enough information to figure out where to go... but more often than not, it’s because Call of Duty compressed their skill gap so much that these guys never needed to get good at a shooter. They never needed to get good at their twitch skills with a mouse.

Players like Elliot and I, back in the Quake and Unreal days, you know, we had to get good at aiming. These guys don’t have to anymore. The skill gap is so compressed that like, “The game makes me feel that I’m awesome.” These guys, when I actually watch them play, they’re actually very poor FPS players. And I don’t think it’s because they’re incapable of getting good, I think it’s because they never had to get good. They get enough kills in Call of Duty to feel like they’re awesome, but they never really had to develop their FPS skills beyond that.

And it’s a shame because when you do that, when you create a shooter like that, you’re very limited on the amount of depth that you can give the game. It’s all gotta be very surface level, like I’m sitting there eating cotton candy and I never get any meat and potatoes. And it’s frustrating for me as a designer to see players come in and they’re literally like “In Call of Duty it takes 0.15 seconds to go into ironsights. In RO2 it takes 0.17 seconds to go into ironsights. I hate this.”

Gibson fires an MP40 during an audio recording session for Red Orchestra 2 in the Nevada desert. Gibson is frustrated by the way that Call of Duty has "taken individual skill out of the equation" for many modern FPS players.

Do you think it’s a matter of patience? Have these players lost their sense of patience?

Gibson:I think that’s part of it. The game is kind of spoonfeeding them, and making them feel great when they’re not. And like I said, that’s smart business, and I don’t blame Infinity Ward for wanting to do that. They’re selling millions of games and they have lots of people enjoying it, but I think there’s a depth of enjoyment there that a lot of these players are missing out on. And when you try to get them to branch out, their knee-jerk reaction is “The training wheels have come off, I’m gonna fall!” And I hate to see that.

It’s this weird dichotomy between, you know, single-player is getting much more depth, and players are just eating it up. They’re loving that. They’re buying these FPS-RPG single-player games like crazy. But multiplayer, “Ooh, don’t take my training wheels off.” I hate that. So we’re trying... we’re giving a little bit of training wheels, but we’re going to take them off occasionally in the shooters that we’re making, and hopefully we’ll get some of those people to branch out. I think for me though, I wouldn’t say I’ve completely given up on all of those players, but I’m not gonna try to make a game that tries to be Call of Duty at the expense of having fun gameplay that actually has depth.

Elliot Cannon, Rising Storm Lead Designer: Or creating a game that feels like you might be in a war, and you might die?

"One of the things that Call of Duty does, and it’s smart business, to a degree, is they compress the skill gap."

Gibson: Yeah. That’s one of the things that we do in our games, and it’s fear. When you play... I know there are modes in Left 4 Dead that are more hardcore, but when you play Left 4 Dead, and I’m really friends with Valve, so I hope they don’t get mad at me, but you do get spikes of adrenaline. But eventually that wears off because you figure out, well, as long as we stick together we’re never gonna die. In Killing Floor, when the Fleshpound shows up, you could be screwed. Half your team is probably gonna die. Your heart rate goes up, you’re freaking out, like “I can actually lose this shooter.” And if there’s no fear, there’s no tension, the victory is shallow. We want there to be some fear.

What do you consider your tools for expressing fear?

Gibson: Vulnerability is a big part of it, lethality. The ability to lose. There has to be... it’s kind of like, you know, if you’re gambling. If you go to the penny slots, you’re like, “Okay, yeah, whatever, I lost a penny.” But you go to the Roulette table, you throw down a thousand bucks, and you spin the wheel—you’re nervous at that point.

So, having the players have to take risks. Risk versus reward. They risk more, but the reward is greater. There’s more depth, there’s a bit more of a learning curve, but when you get that kill at long range with that bolt-action rifle, while the artillery’s flying around your head, and mortar shells are falling and guys are Banzai-charging you in the face, and your guy’s shaking, but you still kill him anyway. That’s an experience. You had some risk there, but you got a bigger reward. The kill wasn’t just handed to you. It wasn’t like “I called in the helicopter and it flew into the level and mowed down half the enemy team while I wasn’t even doing anything.”

Check back on Monday for an exclusive hands-on with Rising Storm.

If you splashed out on a Black Ops 2 season pass you'll get access to the zombified Nuketown map this Thursday. Zombie Nuketown has been knocking around Xbox 360 playlists for a short while, and serves as a taster for this year's season of Black Ops 2 DLC packs (which will kick off with the recently spilled Revolution pack.)

Zombie Nuketown is a haunted, skeletal doppelganger of one of Black Ops' most popular maps. It used to be a bright, breezy place where military sorts ran round shooting each other in the back for sport. Now it's grim, apocalyptic and full of crazed flesh-eaters and charcoal coloured mushroom clouds. Take a tour in the trailer below.

The actor behind the most famous walking talking 'tache in gaming, Bill Murray (not that one), has made mention of a somewhat inevitable follow-up to Modern Warfare 3. "Yeah, on Monday I am off to meet Infinity Ward about the next game, Modern Warfare 4, I’m doing work on the sequel to Modern Warfare 3, it carries straight on and I only ever appear in the Modern Warfare games” he told This Is Xbox.

It looks like Treyarch and Infinity Ward will continue to share the Call of Duty series year on year. I quite like the idea that Modern Warfare will continue as an ongoing 24-esque action series while Black Ops becomes steadily more bonkers. By 2022 Captain Price will have come back from the dead eighty times and killed every single terrorist in the world and Black Ops will be set on Mars.

What would you like to see from Modern Warfare 4?

Black Ops 2's future setting moves its gruff warrior sorts into a world that's used to drone warfare, but hasn't invented awesome laser cannons yet. That lets Treyarch weave a pleasantly paranoid plot in the single player campaign without jeopardising the great golden goose that is CoD's multiplayer mode. I imagine Call of Duty devs are quietly terrified of messing around with that world-winning formula too much, which is why the eight minutes of multiplayer scooped by IGN look so darn familiar. The appearance of a little robot 5:44 in livens things up a little, though.

What do you think? Has Black Ops 2's new setting, zombie campaign mode, polished up PC version and open character design system convinced you to give it a try when it comes out in November?

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is getting an expanded co-op mode called "Tranzit" that'll send four survivors on a zombie road trip across the US. As one of those survivors you'll get to bus from place to place, mounting heroic stands against the zombie army at each location. IGN mention "buildables" that con be constructed to furnish you with new weapons, or open up extra areas, which are probably full of more zombies.

The latest Black Ops 2 zombies trailer shows a fuel stop, a diner, a farmhouse reminiscent of Left 4 Dead's Blood Harvest finale, a power station and a town center blighted by lava pools. Zombies AND lava? It's the doompocalypse alright. You'll find the video stamped into the page below.

Parts of the video show a tiny snippet of someone shooting zombies of the roof of the bus in first person, suggesting that we'll have to defend against legions of zombie marathon runners as the bust travels between locations.

As well as "Tranzit" there will be a versus mode that will put two four-player teams into the zombie apocalypse and encourage them to compete for zombie kills without killing each other. There will be a more traditional survival zombie mode for fans of Treyarch's previous efforts.

Treyarch could probably spin zombies into a separate release if they wanted to. It's been a fan favourite since its cheeky first appearance in World at War. Is the zombie mode your favourite part of Treyarch's CoD games, or just a fun distraction?

Some cheeky blighters have obtained what Activision are calling a “development demo build” of Black Ops 2, and uploaded a vid to prove it. It’s an extremely short snippet of action, and overlayed with a superfluous dev interview and some dreadful music, but it does show off the capabilities of the engine.

Spotted on Kotaku, the video sees the player activate a no-clip mode, allowing the camera to zip off, around and above a rather pretty hillside township - which the player then proceeds to fill the the bodies of his foes. A crossbow makes a brief cameo and the video ends with the player running about making 'finger guns' at the enemy - a returning weapon from previous CoDs accessible via the 'giveall' cheat.

The original video has been removed, as you’d expect, but it came from the channel of Call of Duty modder iHc James. Kotaku still have a working version at the time of writing, if you are that needy of your BlOps fix.

Treyarch have upgraded the DirectX 9 Black Ops engine to a "leaner" DirectX 11 edition that promises "significant improvements" for us PC players. The updated engine should make more efficient use of GPU power, and will have "more quality vs. performance options than ever before." The upgrade means that it won't run on Windows XP, however.

"Performance has been a top priority for Black Ops II PC from day one" say Treyarch in a post on the Black Ops 2 site, spotted by Eurogamer. "Black Ops II PC features enhanced lighting, shadows, antialiasing, bloom, depth of field, ambient occlusion, and other enhanced effects that are still in the works. And the game can run at higher resolutions and higher framerates on the PC."

There's no frame rate limit either, so we'll be able to cram even more Call of Duty into our eyeballs every second than ever before. Treyarch also released some minimum system requirements so you can plan an upgrade if you need one:

Black Ops 2 PC system requirements

OS: Windows Vista SP2 or Windows 7
CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E8200 2.66 GHz or AMD Phenom X3 8750 2.4 GHz
Memory: 2GB for 32-bit OS or 4GB for 64-bit OS
Gnomes: Four hardened micro-gnomes with front line combat experience
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512 MB or ATI Radeon HD 3870 512 MB


The extra polish should help to sell Black Ops 2's future setting a little better on PC but with Warface, Battlefield 3 and Planetside 2 kicking around, it'll be going up against some big engines this winter. If only there was a way to put them all in some sort of thunderdome and make them fight for our love.

It's the future that's for sure. The riot shields all have lights on them, someone's finally realised that those quadrocopter toys could quite easily double as deadly recon drones, and humanity has become warped and warlike in its relentless quest to capture flags. The latest Black Ops 2 screenshots from Gamescom offer us a glimpse of this grim but probably quite fun dystopia. Absorb them below.

It's impossible to tell from looking, but there's an interesting "pick 10" character builder behind the loadouts of these futuristic soldiers. Treyarch have been talking about the highly customisable system at Gamescom.

When you shoot someone in Call of Duty, there’s a noise. It's positive feedback—a fwip-fwip-fwip to let you know that your bullet, knife, claymore, or phoned-in helicopter is hurting someone. While visiting Treyarch I asked the Black Ops 2 sound team about the creation of the simple-but-essential effect.

PCG: Why does it sound the way it does when I shoot someone in Call of Duty?

Brian Tuey, Audio Director: So... The sound has impact and it has meaning and it's useful and all that, but it's not a particularly pleasant sound, especially in isolation. There was a time recently where I was like, "You know? I'm gonna redo this with something else." So I kinda went a different direction, and it felt like this was going to be good. I checked it in, and within three hours, my email box was full of, like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY SOUND?" I'm like, "But it's so much better!"

Chris Cowell, Audio Lead: The other thing that you might not actually know, it's different every game.

Really?

Cowell: It has to be. They're all very similar, and they serve the same purpose, but the actual content and the creation of it is redone every game, because our guns sound differently, you know? The music's different, the situation's different...

Tuey: Our whole DSP chain in the engine is completely different. The same stuff doesn't sound the same anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHs1sOdcuEE

Cowell: Little things like that can be a really difficult sound to make. The last game, it took me weeks to get that little thing right, because you have to fire it, get the tick and hear it and know what it means.

Tuey: But it has to cut through the guns, the explosions, and give you the same exact feeling you had when you heard it last game.

Cowell: Yeah. It's the same experience. That experience needs to be consistent across all of them, but not the sound.

Tuey: And that's what the problem was with the new one I dropped in, it sounded different. So the experience was different, so people who were playing the game didn't even know I'd changed it, right? It's not like we make a big production about, "Hey, I changed this sound!" Well, sometimes we do. But usually we just want to see what people's reactions are.

What did it sound like when you changed it?

Tuey: I made it sound more like a bullet hitting somebody, as opposed to a tick. But it's more important for us that the gameplay aspect of it is supported, versus "Hey, now it sounds more real."

Shawn Jimmerson, Sound Designer: You want to know that your bullet has hit someone, especially in MP. You're firing and you want that immediate feedback that I am actually scoring hits. There's a lot of expectation, you know, even in films, when somebody punches somebody else, it's not a realistic sound...

Cowell: Whpssh!

Jimmerson: But people have that expectation. Within our community, there's that same sort of thing. There are certain things that you just don't want to mess with too much, because you just upset people who are playing your game.



About a year ago in Team Fortress 2 I changed my hit sound to the Sonic "ring." It’s pretty Pavlovian, it's a good incentive for shooting people.

Cowell: Yeah, that's a good one. That's another good classic sound that has a lot of meaning behind it. When you hear those sounds, that tink-tink-tink-tink, and you're like, "Yeah!"

Tuey: It probably took a sound designer weeks to make that just right.

Cowell: To get it just right, that stuff's really hard.

Tuey: Just for nobody to ever go, "Whoa, that's a really awesome sound."

Cowell: But then you know you love it, you know, when you put it in there. It's the same thing, you know? It's giving you that... "I know what that means" feeling.

Jimmerson: I was just going to say, one of our sound designers had a great observation the other day, that there's no correlation between the time it takes to work on a sound and the significance of the sound in the game in a visual sense. Like, a helicopter can crash, and I'm like, "Okay, I know this is going to have metal, an explosion, a fireball, all these different elements," but what does it sound like when you interface with this thing and say "Yes”? Or you push that button? What does that sound like? The simplest sound can take you so much longer to work on. And again, usually if you get it to a place where it's right, no one will ever think about it, necessarily. And that's good. People should be like, "Oh, of course it sounds like that when I interact with this future thing that I've never seen before and doesn't even exist."

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 details have been oozing out of Gamescom. VG247 have details of an updated "build a class" mode that will let us occupy ten gear slots with any combination of weapons, perks and killstreak rewards. Levelling up will mean choosing one of seven new pieces of kit to unlock. If you want to grab the six you missed, you'll have to prestige and reset your character.

You're not restricted to having to occupy certain slots with weapons, and other slots with perks. You can forgo your primary gun in favour of an extra perk, or a "wild card" ability that changes the way your weapon behaves, adding an alternative fire mode or letting you slot an extra attachment onto your weapon. Treyarch refer to the system as "pick 10."

It's not too far off Diablo 3's sideways levelling system that lets you slide any unlocked skill into a limited number of slots. Levelling grants you new tools with which to customise your loadout, which can then be swapped in for another skill whenever you fancy a change. It should introduce a significant element of choice to CoD's levelling system, and bring a bit of chin-stroking build pondering to the lull between Black Ops' frenzied fire fights.

There are more than a hundred kit items and powers to choose from, and VG247 have grabbed a handy list to give us an advanced look at the range of abilities on offer. Given that you'll need to prestige to get hold of all of them, we'll have to shoot a lot of men before we get access to the full weapons locker.

Guns

Assault rifles

Type 25
M8A1
SA-58
SIG556
SCAR-H
AN-94
SMR

 
Shotguns

 
M1216
Saiga-12
R-870 MCS

 
LMG

LSAT
QBB LSW
Mk 48

 
Sniper Rifles

DSR 50
SVU-AS
Ballista

 
SMG

MP7
Chicom CQB
PDW-57
Skorpio EVO III
MSMC

 
Specials

Assault Shield (Metal riot shield that can be planted into the ground as makeshift cover)

 
Secondary

Launchers

FHJ-18 AA (Vehicle lock-on, two rockets)
RPG
SMAW

 
Pistols

KAP-40
Tac-45
Executioner
B23R

 
Lethal Slot

Grenade
Semtex
Combat axe
Claymore
C4
Bouncing Betty

 
Attachments

Reflex sight
ACOG sight
Target Finder (Paints red squares around hostiles)
Hybrid Optic
Suppressor
Fast Mag
Fore Grip
Laser Sight
Adjustable Stock
Quickdraw
Millimetre Scanner
Grenade Launcher
Select Fire Mode
FMJ Rounds
Extended Clip

 
Tactical slot

Black Hat PDA (Get close to enemy equipment and point this data pad at it to hack it and turn it against enemies. Takes ages to hack though!)
Smoke grenade
Sensor grenade
Flashbang
Concussion grenade
Shock charge (a throwable stick that emits an electric shock across a surface, rooting targets to the spot)
Tactical Insertion

 
Wildcards

Perk 1 Greed (Lets you choose a second perk from tier 1)
Perk 2 Greed
Perk 3 Greed
Primary Gunfighter
Secondary Gunfighter
Overkill
Danger Close
Tactician

 
Perks

Tier 1

Ghost (Now only hides you from UAVs when you are moving)
Lightweight
Flak Jacket
Blind Eye
Hardline
Lightweight

 
Tier 2

Cold Blooded
Hard Wired
Scavenger
Toughness
Fast Hands

 
Tier 3

Dead Silence
Engineer
Tactical Mask
Extreme Conditioning
Awareness
Dexterity