Halloween Is Coming To Call Of Duty: Warzone With Zombies Royale, Free Rewards And Much More – Forbes

Zombies, classic horror villains like Leatherface and night mode are all coming to Call Of Duty: ... [+] Warzone this Halloween.

Halloween is coming to Call Of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare in The Haunting Of Verdansk event which starts tonight at 11pm PT and runs through November 3rd.

UPDATE: Activisions email to press was confusing. It stated the 11 pm start-time but this was apparently only for the Halloween Bundles in the Item Shop. The rest of the event kicks off today, Tuesday the 20th.

That email stated:

We wanted to share a blog post on the exciting content updates coming toModern WarfareandWarzonetonight at 11pm PDT:

Two iconic villains from popular horror franchises SAW and Texas Chainsaw Massacre will be dropping intoVerdanskto haunt and spook players for the Halloween season.

Players will be able to experience this fright fest in Warzone and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, along with new weapons, and a limited time Trick or Treat rewards system.

This was followed with links to the Activision blog post and trailer and no mention of any other start-time.

As you can see, this email made it sound very much like things kicked off at 11 pm PT on Monday evening, when in fact the event begins at 10 am PT on Tuesday. As I note later in this post, the email also made it sound like the SAW and Texas Chainsaw Massacre villains would be terrorizing the Warzone map, which is also not the case.

Now back to the original story...

This years Halloween event is actually pretty awesome sounding, with new game modes, Item Shop bundles, a Trick-or-Treat rewards system and cool stuff like Night Mode in Warzone and Zombies Royale. Also a fully automatic shotgun, the JAK-12, which apparently packs enough firepower to pulverize an entire enemy squad into head cheese.

Heres the full roadmap:

The Haunting Of Verdansk Roadmap

In Zombies Royale, players wont go to the Gulag when eliminated. Instead, theyll turn into a zombie with super speed and thermal vision. When players die, they drop a syringe, and if a zombie picks up two of these, they can redeploy into the map.

Zombies Royale will take place at night, but there will also be normal Night Mode for battle royale. Infinity Ward recommends using thermal optics on weapons for this mode, and equipping the Cold-Blooded perk to avoid thermal detection.

New store bundles include Leatherface as part of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre bundle and Billy the Puppet in the SAW bundle. Theres also the Dr Karlov bundle. Hes apparently a local Verdansk legend, though I think theyre playing off of Boris Karloff here. Im not sure.

Leatherface

Ill be honest, when I first read Activisions blog post announcing this event, it made it sound like Leatherface and other horror characters would actually be out in Verdansk hunting players as AI enemies. Read for yourself:

As Halloween draws near, a squad of operators drops in for what seems to be a normal infiltration into Verdansk though theres been back-channel chatter about some unexplained and odd occurrences across the remote areas of the map. Operators have been briefed about reports concerning a serial killer who wears his victims faces on his own. Theres scattered intel about strange sounds emanating from various locations within the warzone; and not least the piercing, creepy laugher of a ventriloquist doll.

It isnt long before hell breaks loose: One by one, the squad is brutally picked off until there is just one survivor, who after a confrontation with Verdansks own urban legend, vows to return under the cover of night and avenge his brothers in arms.

This sure sounds like players are being hunted by these horror movie villains. Alas, its too good to be true, and all three are just Operator Bundles. Maybe next year.

Meanwhile, you can earn free rewards from Trick or Treat boxes you find on the map that include weapon blueprints and other treats as well as trickswe dont know what but Activision describes them as brief scares so prepare yourself.

In Modern Warfare well get new modes like Snipers Only, a special Juggernaut Onslaught-er mode where teams fight to control Juggernauts duked out with pumpkin heads, and a new Gunfright mode.

Heres the trailer:

Thats actually a damn good trailer. I love the Soundgarden cover. And its genuinely frightening.

The Haunting Of Verdansk Halloween event starts tonight at 11pm PT and runs through November 3rd. The Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War beta is ongoing, running an extra 24 hours until tomorrow morning at 10 am PT.

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Halloween Is Coming To Call Of Duty: Warzone With Zombies Royale, Free Rewards And Much More - Forbes