Call of Duty: Dead Ops Arcade Mode Included With Game

Kris Erickson • Nov 4, 2010 • Comments ()

When Call of Duty: Black Ops launches on November 9th, players will get a lot of value for their money. As well as standard single-player, cooperative and multiplayer modes, Black ops contains two tongue in cheek zombie-invasion challenges. The first is a standard zombie mode, that will allow players to square off in normal game environments against waves of marauding undead. But the zombie thrills don't stop there: a special mode called Dead Ops re-imagines the game as a 2D arcade-style shooter, with the player controlling a retro-looking avatar as he guns down more of the zombie horde (screenshot below). It appears that the mode is included no matter which edition of CoD: Black Ops you order.

The game looks to be a fairly humorous and lighthearted lampoon of glorious days of video games gone by. In the special mode, players can control historical figures like John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro, or Bob McNamara as they fend off waves of undead. Comparisons have been made to Smash TV, another twin-stick arcade shooter from the 1990s. The Dead Ops game is played on a slightly smaller game area, which is framed on both sides by colorful overlays meant to mimic an arcade cabinet. It looks really nice!

A number of sources have confirmed the rumored mode, from leaked Xbox 360 achievements, to people playing illegal pirated copies of the game on YouTube. In Dead Ops arcade mode, players can earn the Achievement 'Easy Rhino' by using a Speed Boost to blast through 20 or more enemies at one time.