Controls, weapons and animations are “top priority” for Black Ops

By: Moses Abaortae

  |   October 5th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

Robert Huebner, the head of Nihilistic Studios, the developers behind Black Ops: Declassified for the PlayStation Vita, highlighted the two areas they were focusing on to ensure the classic Call of Duty experience is not lost translation on its way to the console.

Huebner earlier explained how the studio had done a lot of work in giving the game a visual upgrade and making the gameplay more fluid as compared to what the gaming community had seen at Gamescom.

However, that was not the end of his interview with the PlayStation Blog as he went on to highlight a number of areas that the studio was focusing on to make sure that Declassified fit into the Call of Duty world and emulated the series trademark feel.

The first area the studio is working on is “The feel of the controls and weapons,” which according to Huebner, “ is a top priority, because that’s a lot of what makes Call of Duty work so well on other platforms.”

The studio head also shared how spending time with the developers of the full console version allowed them to gain an appreciation of the task at hand and what was expected of them.

“We got a lot of great insight and advice from the franchise veterans on this, but also adapted things for the specific controls on the PS Vita.”

That was just one side of the coin though, as Nihilistic is also focusing on another important area that defines the Call of Duty series.

“The second thing probably were animations.” The studio boss went on to elaborate, “You don’t notice it all the time while you’re playing, but when you drill down, Call of Duty has an insane number of animations for each enemy and every little transition and  move feels really accurate and intelligent. So we invested a lot of time trying to capture that same feeling in Declassified.”

It all sounds promising at this point but one of the most important elements would be the multiplayer and the maps on which the various modes, including single-player and multiplayer will be played.

As it turns out fans will find a number of features that will make them feel at home and bring the Black Ops experience on to the Vita. The example given was that of Nukehouse, which is inspired by the fan favourite map, Nuketown.

The level is described as being a tighter, more compact version of the original map and should garner the attention of the franchise’s massive fan base. Whether or not the map is a hit remains to be seen and that is where the game could come together or fall apart for the developers and for the Vita.