Five Awesome Additions to Call of Duty: Black Ops Multiplayer

Call of Duty: Black Ops set the world of online multiplayer ablaze today. The latest trailer provided us with the first ever look at what combat over Xbox Live and PlayStation Network would entail for Treyarch fans come this November. There's a lot of stuff to be excited about, so if you haven't watched the actual trailer for yourself

, be sure to do so. Then, once you're done with that, we've got a new Rewind Theater that breaks down the video piece by piece. If you're still not clear what all the hubbub is about, we're here with an easy-to-read bullet point list. Doesn't get much simpler than that, does it?

customize everything

Customization is a big deal for any massively popular multiplayer game. Players need to look as different as possible so their personalities can stand out amongst the millions of other character models online. Well, Black Ops not only lets you customize things like your emblem and title (both of which pop up on your opponent's screen when you kill them) as Modern Warfare before it, but it now allows you to customize the appearance of your red dot sight. The guy in the trailer used an adorable little smiley face, but there's sure to be massive amounts of other options to make your soldier your own.
Kickass Replay Editor

This is gonna be awesome.
Now anyone can hop into Black Ops and create their own sequences that will surely be better than the trash that was Far Cry. The system seems similar to what Bungie did for Halo in that the game stores entire rounds for your perusal. You can stay in your first-person camera angle or hop out and free roam to (presumably) anywhere on the map, decide what footage is worth keeping, then save it to your sequence. It also appears that these clips can be pulled from different games and put into the same sequence with simple transitions between pieces of gameplay. You'll then upload your sequence (or screenshot) to somewhere on the web. Whether that's an Activision community site, YouTube or something else entirely remains to be seen.
Dive, Dive, Dive!

Note the guy on the right side of the screen.
Much like Kelsey Grammer in Down Periscope, gamers will now have the ability to dive to the ground in-game. We're not exactly sure how this is going to work control-wise, but we think it'll either be a button re-mapped to new functionality or some sort of jump-to-prone combo move. Either way, the implications are huge in the land of multiplayer. It could either ruin the experience if people can exploit the mechanic (diving under levels or into objects) or it could change the entire series for the better. It's just up to Treyarch to solidify the mechanic so there isn't a bug in sight (good luck, guys).
Spy Technology

Spy technology at work.
The camera spike might've seemed like a needless accessory in its short time in the multiplayer trailer, but I think the implications for the new piece of surveillance equipment are huge. Sure, you can plant it in a secluded corner of a room and just watch, but when that room contains a flag that your team needs to guard, the camera's abilities become a perfect fit. Not to mention the fact that you can have eyes in the back of your head so you can guard that open door without having to continuously rotate to check on it every few seconds. Now I'm just hoping you'll be able to detonate your camera and kill any enemy who approaches.
New Things That Go Boom... And Some That Don't

Those guys are screwed.
There were quite a few new armaments shown in the first multiplayer trailer. The ballistic knife was probably my favorite. Perhaps not for overall usability, but the cool factor of being able to toss the knife into an enemy's back, then run up and double-stab his buddy's face is pretty great. But then there's also the new sticky grenade, the napalm kill streak ability that brings fire from the sky, the remote control bomb car kill streak ability, and the user-controlled rocket (we're not sure if it's a perk, kill streak ability or a simple weapon).

i'm sure i'm going to get this games it's sick!