Call of Duty Season 6 is ready to get spooky with the Haunting event for Black Ops Cold War and Warzone on Tuesday, October 19 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. Activision has released an event trailer that shows a look at Warzone’s Verdansk map in a limited-time night mode, as well as horror-themed operator skins like Scream’s Ghostface.
Black Ops Cold War
Black Ops Cold War’s Nuketown map gets a temporary Halloween-themed reskin for the Haunting event. This limited-time version of Nuketown is a nighttime setting with pumpkins and other holiday décor.
The Haunting will also include three limited-time multiplayer modes:
- Infected: Eighteen players spawn into a match, and the Zombie team is tasked with turning the human “Survivors” players into the undead. The remaining Survivors win if they beat the time limit, or the Zombies win if they turn every survivor. In a new twist, Survivors will earn a bonus with each zombie they kill: specifically, bonuses to reload speed, ADS speed, movement speed, and slide speed.
- Prop Hunt Halloween. A holiday-themed Prop Hunt will let players hide around the map as skulls, jack-o’-lanterns, black cats, bats, skeletons, and more in Call of Duty’s hide-and-seek mode.
- Scream Deathmatch. In this brand-new mode, two players will each become Ghostface with a single mission: find and eliminate all Survivors. The Survivors team won’t have any weapons, so they must hide and try to survive as long as possible. Throughout the match, screams of the Survivors will give away their position to the killers.
Zombies
Pumpkin head zombies in Outbreak
For Zombies, the event adds the new All Hallows’ Eve Outbreak mode, in which players will need to survive for 10 minutes and exfiltrate from a single Outbreak region. This is made more difficult than standard Outbreak mode, as the difficulty of the region will increase very two minutes. This means more zombies and greater difficulty to kill them.
When the 10-minute time limit is reached, the exfil point will spawn at the farthest possible position from the players, and the maximum number of zombies will have full awareness of their position. A successful exfil will reward players with a legendary weapon charm and XP.
Warzone
The Haunting event roadmap
For Warzone, Verdansk returns to nightfall with a new event that Activision describes as a successor to last year’s Zombies Royale Halloween event. Instead of zombies this year, players can expect to battle against hostile spirits with the Ghosts of Verdansk limited-time mode.
In Ghosts of Verdansk, death won’t send players to the Gulag. Instead, players will become ghosts after being eliminated for the first time. Ghosts won’t have any weapons, but they’ll have some supernatural abilities:
- Super Jump: Similar to the jump ability from Zombie Royale, ghost players can charge up and “leap” through the air to cover more ground.
- Teleport: Another movement option, but with a slower cooldown, ghosts can teleport a short distance to help immediately close gaps between them and non-ghost players.
- Spectral Blast: This area-of-effect stun attack slows down players and disables vehicles.
In terms of dealing damage, ghosts can only swipe at players until they are dead, at which point they’ll drop a soul. If a ghost player can collect three souls from fallen opponents, they can immediately spawn back in as their original operator. Additionally, a ghost player can respawn by successfully completing a finishing move on an opponent.
Human players only have one safe space from ghosts, which is called the Sacred Ground. Activision describes this as a glowing blue circle and beam of light, which is protected by a supernatural magic that prevents ghosts from crossing over. However, ghost players can damage the area by throwing their spectral bodies at it, and if they ram themselves into it enough times, they can destroy the Sacred Ground.
To further add to the horror elements, Ghosts of Verdansk adds a fear meter to each player’s HUD. This meter ranges from 0 to 100 points, and every operator starts as fearless with zero points of fear.
If a player’s meter reaches 50%, the player may start to experience hallucinations. Fear level increases naturally over time and when the following events happen:
- Being shot at, being hit by enemy equipment, or having their killstreaks in the area
- Camping
- Seeing dead bodies or ghosts
- Having squadmates downed or eliminated
Outside of experiencing a hallucination, the fear level decreases when the following happens:
- Eliminating a player or ghost
- Reviving a squadmate
- Completing a contract
- Remaining within Sacred Ground
The blog post doesn’t mention what happens if the fear level gets to 100%, but it can’t be good. Players will need to keep their fear in check to survive the hallucinations and win.
Horror-Themed Operator Bundles
Donnie Darko’s Frank the Rabbit
Tomorrow, players can purchase the Scream Ghostface operator bundle, which comes with the character’s iconic stabbing finishing move. The bundle also includes a weapon charm, watch, an animated emblem and calling card, and three legendary rarity weapon blueprints.
Starting on October 24, players can purchase the Donnie Darko limited-time bundle, which features the movie’s iconic Frank the Rabbit character as an operator skin. This bundle also includes a finishing move, three legendary rarity weapon blueprints, weapon charm, a calling card, an emblem, and a watch.
The Haunting runs until November 2 and marks the final event for Black Ops Cold War, as Call of Duty: Vanguard is set to release on November 5. Vanguard will launch as Activision Blizzard faces a lawsuit from the state of California over alleged harassment and discrimination against women.
Source: Gamespot
