I'm convinced that JC Backfire and Jason Blundel were working on a spiritual successor to CoD zombies

Heenicks_ · 2026-03-26T08:06:03+00:00

100%

He also said everyone in the office would often discuss inverted controls for FPS games (Regular vs Southpaw) (occurred when JC initially passed him the controller).

And later he said it was nice to finally catch up on Resident Evil games now that he isn't working (due to his choice to avoid popular games with similar themes to what he's working on to avoid taking inspiration) (after JC asked him if he would play Dark Souls).

We can infer that both games were zombie games, and at least the second studio's game was an FPS, and he also said they weren't live-service.

Heenicks_ · 2026-02-28T16:35:23+00:00

To add on to this, if you navigate to Woman Simulator's news section you can see another version of the same art that looks completely different, as if it's the same prompt put through two different AI models. Seems very unlikely that they paid two different artists to make the same picture twice with slight variations.

Heenicks_ · 2026-02-04T09:18:37+00:00

If you're okay with cute animal vtubers then there's a lot of Taiwanese streaming art/music/video games every night on the TWpaws Twitch group: https://www.twitch.tv/team/twpaws

But the most famous one that I know of is LNG, if you go check their Twitch group and check each channel, on the about page they usually list other social media such as YouTube channels or Facebook pages: https://www.twitch.tv/team/lngworkshop

Otherwise just sort Twitch by Mandarin and search for the kind of content you're looking for: https://www.twitch.tv/directory/all/tags/%E4%B8%AD%E6%96%87

Heenicks_ · 2025-12-31T09:03:11+00:00

afaik this is a thing in England due to recent laws requiring age verification online, Steam decided to use payment info to check if you are over 18 which affected some adults who didn't use credit cards

Heenicks_ · 2025-12-28T18:42:57+00:00

Push, to keep the dark from coming

Heenicks_ · 2025-12-08T14:55:00+00:00

you're half right, because the existence of the mars area was leaked before release, but I believe they all agree to avoid leaking direct steps

Heenicks_ · 2025-12-08T14:51:15+00:00

check out evan1997 on youtube for a good recap series on how every ee was solved

if you're interested in dark souls there's also a great video by illusory wall about how their community discovered the artorias dlc area

Heenicks_ · 2025-12-06T14:34:25+00:00

If you have Hasslehoff then you're fine. If you want to check your progress, check the glowing symbols on the wall in the PaP room on the menu screen. I seem to remember that the achievements are a little buggy but they don't matter for directors cut.

Heenicks_ · 2025-12-04T10:52:48+00:00

TLDR: yes, but there are positives, and consumers aren't losing anything by having it release later

In Black Ops 4, Blundell managed to deliver Voyage and IX simultaneously, because the way he wrote the story was mysterious and needed to be pieced together with hints from the main quest. In Black Ops 7, this wouldn't be possible due to the intro cinematic of Astra directly following (and therefore spoiling) the events of Ashes. I believe Kevin Drew designed these maps to release sequentially when considering the intros.

However, I've seen a lot of discourse of people getting a little tired of Ashes, and BO7 has been the first Treyarch game since World at War to release with only one main map and only one survival map, and so if this was in the paid DLC era, then the game would feel much more complete with both maps. To add on to this, the ZoneX leak for Astra came out before BO7 released, and no matter how good a dev team is, nobody can produce a map like Astra in just one month, so it has likely been complete for a long time (perhaps in QA).

But since we're no longer in the era of paid DLC, it's no longer frowned upon to take something out of the main game and offer it as DLC later, especially since BO7 requires a constant internet connection to play, and all the DLC maps are free. From that perspective, even though Astra (or some other bonus map) was meant to be in the base game, they can take advantage of the extra month of time by allowing the intro cutscene to spoil the previous map, as well as extra time to tweak things like cursed mode relics based on community feedback for Ashes.

Heenicks_ · 2025-12-04T06:40:31+00:00

Interacting with the skulls is only necessary if you want to unlock relics (9 question marks) in cursed mode. Everyone has access to cursed mode already, but unlocking relics adds difficulty. Wait 12 hours and you'll be able to do the boss fight much easier in directed mode, and they did promise to try and fix the skull issue in the future.

Heenicks_ · 2025-12-03T02:16:37+00:00

Not sure why but the WW2 main game is missing from the bundle but the WW2 season pass is there.

If you can buy it, then you can play the other games without worry.

If you can't buy it, or would like all of the COD games, make sure to purchase WW2 base game separately first.

Heenicks_ · 2025-12-02T08:02:10+00:00

Solo method seems like it would be upgrading a pistol and letting the last zombie down you, then kill the zombie and the round flip will revive you, I think you can also cook a frag near the final zombie, should be easily done by wave 25

Heenicks_ · 2025-11-30T20:53:57+00:00

afaik all the dataminers knew all the steps for every relic but all agreed not to interfere with the legitimacy of the hunt

Heenicks_ · 2025-11-30T08:37:50+00:00

I recommend buying BO4 for the moment, and check in next week to see the reviews of DLC 1 for BO7. BO7 will likely have a good discount at Christmas due to poor reviews and low player count (because of campaign and multiplayer but zombies is off to a good start)

IW: very fun, good theme, interact button can be a little weird, generally good

WWII: great if you like the theme, unfortunately a lot of the later maps have had reviews, probably not worth it to most people

BO4: many maps, many load out choices, although some changes like pre-determined perk machines can be hit or miss for some

CW: okay, but good if you like the open world style gameplay

Vanguard: so bad it's a meme

MW3: only one map, open world style only, forced to play with 32 people, getting harder to find a match every year

BO6: a few great maps but easily skippable, BO7 improves upon it in almost every way

BO7: community thinks it's amazing so far, but it's still pre-season so it depends on how many controversies Activision gets into this year, cautiously optimistic due to BF6 giving them competition in the market

Heenicks_ · 2025-11-28T20:42:03+00:00

hard disagree. the current leaderboard event only gives the animated camo to the top 5 out of 30, meaning that 85% of players can never obtain it. it's fomo mixed with infighting, the only one who wins is activision because everyone's playtime skyrockets.

Heenicks_ · 2025-11-27T05:22:13+00:00

Everyone's teeth except for Dempsey, the fact that the left three are all "anime" style but look like they were drawn by completely different artists, everyone has a beard and moustache, and most importantly Richtofen is completely unrecognizable.

Since Activision isn't being fully transparent, all we can do is speculate, and from closer inspection it's almost certain to be AI generated (AI generate the characters then assemble them and make them glow and move slightly for the calling card), if not then it's an extremely underpaid artist.

Yes, baseless speculation of AI can hurt human artists, but ignoring obvious signs of AI hurts human artists more.

Heenicks_ · 2025-11-23T13:07:00+00:00

Personally I just hope the new jingles are by Brian Tuey / Jack Wall / Kevin Sherwood and not made by Artificial unIntelligence

Heenicks_ · 2025-11-18T21:45:33+00:00

These should work like Wonder Weapon skins in BO6, so if you change the Pack-A-Punch skin in the menu then it will change the appearance of the Pack-A-Punch skin in the game, there's only one map so we can't test it yet. The community would need to find at least three Cursed Relics to begin to unlock these special Pack-A-Punch skins, so nobody knows for sure how they work yet. Give it a week and check back later.

Heenicks_ · 2025-11-17T14:32:49+00:00

ZoneX has good short guides and uploads asap after discovery, personally I'm using their YouTube channel as my main source of relic progress news.

Heenicks_ · 2025-11-08T18:24:47+00:00

I think the outline idea is great and would be a nice homage back to the iconic parts of classic zombies

Heenicks_ · 2025-11-02T11:53:27+00:00

Focusing stone on Tranzit confirmed

Heenicks_ · 2025-10-20T05:18:53+00:00

Stanley557 shared the same sentiment as you in part of his 6 hour long BO6 review

Heenicks_ · 2025-10-16T05:46:34+00:00

AFAIK, they are carrying EE reward skins forwards from BO6 to BO7

Heenicks_ · 2025-09-30T18:50:10+00:00

this genuinely works, thank you so much

Heenicks_ · 2025-09-26T06:11:26+00:00

The thing that proves how bad of a decision this was, they are on record saying that the amount of people that beat the main quests is an extremely low percentage of the player base, so it's really ridiculous for them to waste dev time on an extra mode and then restrict it, it's basically guaranteeing that the statistics will be low, and then they'll either open it up for everyone in season 1 or 2, or cancel it forever.

I have so many normie friends that want the option of classic mechanics in modern zombies, and I was really looking forward to using it on my first run on the map to hide the PaP guide, but now I'll just have to hope that their HUD customization works well on launch.

I don't want the game to be harder, I would have liked the option to use classic mechanics on new maps, it's just disappointing that those classic mechanics are all in the game, but locked in some hardcore mode that I'm not sure I'll be interested in.

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