The World at War Map Pack Bundle collects all three of Treyarch's expansion packs for the latest World War II iteration of Call of Duty, which could be very convenient for those players who are showing up extremely late to the zombie Nazi party. The pack retails for $24.99 on the PlayStation Network and 2000 Microsoft points on Xbox Live, which works out to a savings of $5 either way you look at it. Okay, technically it works out to a savings of $4.98 on PSN, but pennies aren't real money anyway.

The pack will be available worldwide today for the Xbox 360 and in North America for the PS3, going up on the European PlayStation Store on January 7th.

While the news outlet doesn't name the studio responsible for providing gamers with even more of the Call of Duty that they clearly crave, having a third team dedicated to pumping out future iterations could mean any number of things.

One possibility could give current Call of Duty developers Treyarch and Infinity Ward more time to produce entries in the core series, offering them a three year development cycle instead of the two year turnaround time in place now. Another is semi-annual releases, which may be pushing it.

Or, this third team could be focused on a different Call of Duty model. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has publicly expressed this thoughts on a massively-multiplayer online take on the series. Activision CFO Tom Tippl has also teased "additional online monetization models" for the Call of Duty brand.

Activision already has a handful of other developers working on Call of Duty content, including Nintendo DS developer n-Space, responsible for three portable entries, and multiplayer map specialists Certain Affinity, who helped Treyarch out with Call of Duty: World At War. The publisher owns plenty of other studios with first-person shooter experience, like Raven Software (Wolfenstein, Singularity) and High Moon Studios (Darkwatch), should it choose to tap one of its wholly-owned developers.

Or perhaps Activision has its newest studio, the recently announced Sledgehammer Games at work on a Call of Duty title. The ex-Dead Space developers could take the franchise in a more futuristic direction, if they dare.

We've reached out to Activision to see if they'd like to comment on the LA Times report, but have not yet heard back.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 video game gets Hollywood-scale launch [LA Times]

Call of Duty: World At War: Zombies consists, according to the official description, entirely of the 'Nacht der Untoten' map that Call of Duty: World At War fans are likely familiar with. For an asking price of $9.99 USD, that may be asking a lot. We'll be testing it out shortly to see how much content one gets for ten bucks.

In addition to single player Nazi zombie extermination, the iPhone version supports four players via Wi-fi and two players via Bluetooth connection, promising a "silky smooth 3D environment" in which to gun down rotting Nazi officers. Achievements, leaderboard support and downloadable content in the form of new maps are all promised.

Call of Duty: World At War: Zombies [iTunes]

The Treyarch developed Wii port doesn't offer anything new or significantly changed from the original Modern Warfare. Gameplay switches perspectives between a series of individuals caught on various sides of a global nuclear conflict. Primarily, you'll be a gun-toting military type following behind or leading a non-playable character strike force tasked with everything from "go here, kill this" to "find this guy and run for your life." The big selling points are the intricate story with its upsetting plot twists and the fact that this is the first Call of Duty game set in the somewhat current/near future time line.

Show of hands here – who's already bought, played and beaten Modern Warfare 2? No? Well, then maybe Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Reflex is for you.

Loved
Doesn't Dumb Down The Gameplay: You'd expect a few sacrifices in any port of an Xbox 360/PS3 game to the Wii, but Reflex doesn't skimp on the gameplay. It looks like all of the features, weapons and difficulty levels from the single player campaign made it onto the console with no major changes to story objectives or AI.

Solid Multiplayer: It's true that the Wii caps multiplayer at 10 per match—about half of other versions of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare—and only lets you have private matches with people whose friend codes you actually have (ugh, friend codes). However, it's got the same maps, same snappy pace and no discernible lag from what I saw. What more could you ask for from a multiplayer on the Wii? Besides Wii Speak, of course –- and frankly, I can live without that because I hate having strange men alternately hit on and swear at me.

Hated
Scaled Down Graphics: The one thing Reflex does skimp on compared to the original is visual quality. While it's true that looks aren't everything, they are definitely worth a lot where Call of Duty is concerned. The varied settings of the different levels -– mountains, desert, snow, nuclear wasteland -– are all pixelated and flat with none of the visceral edge that set Modern Warfare apart from other shooters in 2007.

Frustrating Controls: Switching from game pad to Wii Remote is always a tough adjustment, but Reflex suffers from a particularly rough learning curve because there's just so much to fiddle with in Options menus order to make the motion controls feel "just right." Movement is controlled with the analog stick on the Nunchuck, but both your aim and the camera are fixed to the pointer which can lead to wild, crazy-panning or sluggish sitting-duck turning depending on your sensitivity settings. Worse, a lot of the secondary things you need to do (like putting on night vision goggles or triggering a UAV in multiplayer) require you to hold down a direction on the D-pad and mash the analog stick in a specified direction on the Nunchuck. Very frustrating indeed.

Frame Rate Drops During Scope Mode: The is the worst possible time for the frame rate to drop. Totally hosed me on the sniper mission with Captain MacMillan.

Pretty Late To The Party: Part of what made Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare such a massive hit was the freshness of the experience. We were in a new setting with a somewhat edgy plot in a way we'd never seen Call of Duty before. That feeling of newness doesn't hold up as well after two years –- even if you somehow did dodge all the spoilers.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Reflex is a good game by itself. Once you tweak the controls, the gameplay is solid and the story really is intriguing. Wii owners looking for real first person shooter experience instead of something on rails owe it to themselves to pick this up.

The downside is that Reflex isn't really ever by itself. Many of us can't think of it and not think of the original Modern Warfare experience from 2007. Also, given that Reflex came out the same day as Modern Warfare 2, you can't not think of that either. So as far as Call of Duty fans are concerned, what would normally be a good first person shooter on the Wii is instead reduced to an exercise in settling for something less, instead of getting the absolute best.

In other words, Modern Warfare Reflex is a good game... as long as you really don't know what you're missing.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Reflex was developed by Treyarch and published by Activision for the Nintendo Wii on November 10. Retails for $49.99 and is compatible with the Wii Zapper. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed single-player campaign and logged three solid hours of multiplayer — also had previously played Modern Warfare on Xbox 360 in 2008.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Map Pack 3, of course, includes the multiplayer settings Battery, Breach and Revolution, plus the Nazi zombie map Der Riese. Unlike the consoles, however, PC players get this for free.

There are some other exploit fixes and issue correction. Additionally, Olin says Treyarch does "expect a concurrent release of the Mod Tools 1.4 package, Linux dedicated 1.6 bins, and the Steam 1.6 day-of-date with this patch." Full details at the link.

Patch 1.6 Details [Call of Duty Community Forums, via Blue's News]

The seven-figure weekend brings to 6.5 million the worldwide downloads of World at War map packs, Activision said in a news release. At $10 a pop, roughly, that's some nice jing in their pockets.

The statement didn't break out the number of free downloads of PC versions of Map Packs 1 and 2, or specify whether they're included in that 6.5 mil total.

Map Pack 3, in a story last week in which I royally screwed up community manager Josh Olin's first name, has been confirmed for the PC, along with a version 1.6 patch. No word yet on when that arrives.

It's kind of like a shooter's version of Co-Star Mode, the cooperative two-player option in Super Mario Galaxy that had one gamer playing while the other fired off stars to help out the main gamer.

"It's like Super Mario Galaxy's support mode," said Daniel Suarez, executive producer for the game. "I can drop in and out at any time during the entire single-player campaign. I can pick up weapons, reload and support the main character."

While playing as a Squad Mate, the main player's gun remains jutting from the center of the screen. The secondary player has a different colored reticule that can be used for aiming and shoot. During scenes where the screen is zoomed in, such as for sniping or when using a mounted weapon, the secondary player can't shoot.

There are very few other differences between the Wii version of the title initially released for consoles two years ago.

"Everything that was in Modern Warfare is in here," he said. "We have not left anything out, it's undiluted. All of the single player maps down to the number of AI are there."

Online multiplayer includes all of the same maps and modes, the same experience system and ranking and the unlockables. The Wii version will have some changed in online play, including a decrease to a maximum of ten players online.

The online mode will also support host migration, which means that if the host of an online match disconnects the game won't end. Suarez said the they've also included the ability to import your list of friends from the Wii into the game so you can see if they are playing the game when you are and invite them into a match directly without having to reenter their friend codes.

"Our hope is that it will have the same addictive nature of playing online on the Wii as the original does," he said.

To bring the game over from the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 to the Wii the team at Treyarch had to spend a significant amount of time optimizing and improving the engine last used to create Call of Duty: World at War.

"We did lots of optimization," Suarez said. "It improved the overall experience of the game. It has better texture optimization, optimized fire effects and explosions."

The Wii title also supports the same sort of fully customizable controls first seen in Wii shooter The Conduit.

"Since Conduit people want to be able to customize their controls," he said. "So we've given them the developer's tool box. You can change everything."

Watching Suarez and another developer play through the Sins of the Father level, the game certainly captured the feel of the original Modern Warfare and included all of the audio and cut scenes.

The colors seemed a bit washed out, but Suarez later told me that he though that was a product of the television not the game. I did notice that many of the straight lines in the game were jagged.

The game's explosions and weapons fire looked fantastic. Suarez says the game runs at a consistent 30 frames per a second.

"Our goal is for people who own a Wii and have never played this game on another console before to buy it," he said. "We think there is a large group of people who haven't played Modern Warfare."

This is what he had to say:

As with the previous two Map Packs, Map Pack 3 will indeed be coming to the PC – the team is hard at work on it and I'll let you know when it's in test.

As such, there will be a Patch 1.6 as well, which will address some additional game issues. When I have details on what else will be included in the patch I will be sure to post them.

We appreciate your patience as always, and look forward to its release as much as you do!

Map Pack 3 & Patch 1.6 Details [Call of Duty: World at War Forums, via VG247]

Honestly I haven't had much time to play World at War outside of the initial launch and our video podcast with the developers, so I might be a bit late in saying this: all games should include explosive monkeys. I'm not sure how the monkey figures into the three new multiplayer maps and one new zombie map dropping in tomorrow's Map Pack 3, but it's reassuring to know it's there.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will be a port of Infinity Ward's blockbuster hit Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, originally released in 2007 on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. The Wii version of that game is planned to arrive on November 10 of this year, the same day that Modern Warfare 2 ships to retail.

Activision will announce the Wii port of the original Modern Warfare tomorrow. Call of Duty: World At War developer Treyarch will be handling development duties on the port.

Treyarch's entries in the series, Call of Duty 3 and Call of Duty: World At War, have already seen Wii iterations, with the latter moving over a million copies since its release. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare skipped Nintendo's console in 2007, something publisher Activision seems more than happy to remedy.

Activision announced a Nintendo DS entry in the Modern Warfare series, dubbed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized, earlier this week.

The app, which can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store as of yesterday, offers Call Of Duty: World At War who take these things seriously on-the-go access to game related news, World At War career stats, leaderboard access and more. That fun statistical data is carried over from the official Call Of Duty: World At War site, should you be a registered player.

Details on the Companion, straight from Activision, are as follows.

• Stat-Tracking: Check your rank on key stats like K/D ratio, win/lose record and more.
• Performance Tracking: Gain quick access to all of your weapon usage.
• Link with Friends: Monitor online activity, and the stats of friends with linked accounts on www.codwaw.com to compare progress.
• News: Access the latest news/blogs, Treyarch's community Twitter feed (Twitter: @JD_2020), as well as the latest on new maps, double XP weekends and contests.

Sounds like a nice freebie, something we hope other developers and publishers latch on to.

Grab the app from iTunes for your iPod Touch or iPhone, should you crave this sort of constant contact with your virtual WWII vet.

Call Of Duty: World At War Companion [iTunes]

"Acquire Waffle Weapons!" is earned once you pick up the "Ray Gun," "DG-2" and "Monkey Bomb" at the same time. There's also a mention of a teleporter. I haven't played CoD:WaW in a while, but this is the first I've heard of any ray guns. Sounds like the game's getting a little pulp science-fictiony with secret weapons of the Third Reich.

The full list is below. They went up on the official site July 23.

• 40 Knives!:
Kill 40 zombies with the bowie knife.
• Acquire Waffle Weapons!:
Obtain the Ray Gun, DG-2, and the Monkey Bomb at the same time in a game.

• Der electrican!:
Link all teleport pads before round 7.

• Frequent Flyer!:
Use the teleporter 8 times.

• Locksmith!:
Open all doors in the map.

• The Might of the Monkey!:
Use the Monkey Bomb.

• Perkaholics Anonymous!:
Survive untill round 20 without buying a single perk.

• Pack Addict!:
Upgrade 5 weapons at the Pack A Punch Machine.

• Wacker Packer!:
Upgrade any weapon in Pack A Punch.

• Elevate Your Senses!:
???

The 10 New Achievements/Trophies for Map Pack 3 [Call of Duty.com, thanks The Whitedwarf]

The pack is expected to be priced at 800 Microsoft Points.

Three screens accompanied today's announcement, showing off the three regular multiplayer maps coming as part of World at War's third dose of downloadable content. Battery, Revolution, and Breach were co-developed by Treyarch and partner Certain Affinity, each providing lovely new places for players to mercilessly slaughter one another.

Here's a shot of Revolution:
And here's a shot of Battery: As for the new Zombie map, Der Riese...well we're just going to have to wait and see. It does sound like the undead are once again Nazi's at least, so all is right with the world as far as I am concerned.

Attribute it to rampant zombie madness or just plain love. The second map pack for Call of Duty: World at War saw more than one million players forking over cash or points to download the four new maps to their PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. Of course they are counting the weekend as June 11th through the 14th, and my weekend certainly didn't start on a Thursday last week, but still, mighty impressive numbers.

So who here picked up the pack, and how many of you only did it for the new zombie map?

The game got off to a damn good start during the pre-Christmas season, selling more than 1.88 million units in its first month on sale, adding another 1.86 million sales the following month. Sales appear to have held pretty steady after that, averaging about 1.2 million copies of Call of Duty: World At War sold each month in 2009. None too shabby!

World At War's first downloadable map pack is also helping to pad the publisher's coffers, having been snapped up some 2 million times.

Clearly, Activision sees some worth in these crazy Call of Duty games, as the next iteration, Infinity Ward's more current Modern Warfare 2, is penciled in for a November 10th release. We're sure some Activision publishing executive is desperately hoping for a proper World War III to break out by 2011.

CoD:WaW Surpasses 11 Million Units! [Call of Duty: World At War HQ]

Dead Rising. Left4 Dead. Nazi zombie mode in Call of Duty: World at War.

More Nazi zombies in the first World at War map pack.

And next, in June, Imperial Japanese zombies in a swamp shamble through he second map pack for World at War.

Gamers love their zombies, but maybe they've been smothered by one too many? Enough with the zombies?

At 6:56 seconds of the 5/12 Giant Bombcast gaming podcast, Treyarch community lead Josh Olin, who is hyping the June map pack, says:

"Out of fear of showing my zombie nerd-ism I will contend that zombies aren't saturated at all. I could play zombies for the rest of time. But people thought that about the World War II genre, right — that that was saturated? And I think that with World at War at least our hope was that we would come out with something that was new and different that people haven't been used to playing before. Hopefully that's been proven by the success of these map packs."

Zombies are forever?

05-12-2009 Giant Bombcast

With Activision currently focusing on the next Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game from developer Infinity Ward, we aren't expecting any sort of official announcement on the next Treyarch version of the game any time soon. Still, it's pretty much a no-brainer, especially considering the success Call of Duty: World at War and its downloadable content have seen. A LinkedIn profile for Treyarch Senior Animator David Kim indicates that Call of Duty 7 is indeed in the works. He lists the game twice in his profile, once under his summary and again under experience.

Again, not really a surprise. We've reached out to Activision for confirmation of the listing, but aren't expecting much more than a no comment.

David Kim's LinkedIn Profile [LinkedIn via Shacknews]

Released in March, the first map pack for Call of Duty: World at war contained three multiplayer maps players could care less about and one Nazi zombie map, which players went crazy for. So crazy that the pack sold its first million within one week of release. Treyarch is all sorts of ecstatic.

"This is a huge milestone and we are so appreciative of our incredibly supportive community who continue to play and enjoy the game," said Mark Lamia, Studio Head of Treyarch. "We're hard at work on Call of Duty: World at War Map Pack 2 and look forward to delivering that in June."

The second map pack, announced last week, ups the ante with three new multiplayer maps that players could care less about and one Japanese zombie map, which should drive another two million sales easy.

TVGB says that Noah Heller is involved with this supposed CoD 7; he was the senior producer on World at War, which is taken to mean that Treyarch will be back in the saddle. Sounds about right, as Infinity Ward is developing Modern Warfare 2, with a release date about six months out.

Of course, TVGB points out that, last year, Heller told Official Xbox Magazine that "we are showing the final battles of the Pacific and the European Theatre and that lets us put a close to the war," and "we're happy that we put the war to bed," meaning no more World War II-era shooters for them. But around the same time, he also said. "I can't say that there won't ever be a WWII Call of Duty game again."

The rumored music genres are intriguing. I'm not intimate with the history here, but if we're talking about Cuban and African music, could that mean someone's envisioning, or at least considering, CIA-type secret war operations of the 1960s and 1970s? That might expand this to Call of Duty: The Cold War as opposed to just Vietnam or Southeast Asia.

Per our policy, we've asked Activision for comment. But it's useful to remember that they and many other big publishers have a standing policy of not commenting on rumor and speculation.

Call of Duty 7 in Vietnam, Cuba? [That VideoGame Blog]