Call of Duty: Black Ops - Your questions answered

With only a few days left until the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops we sat down and answered all of your most frequently asked questions.

Here they are.

Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer was so nearly ruined by its insane number of unbalanced killstreaks and perks. What steps are Treyarch taking to ensure history doesn't repeat itself?

The most important change is that killstreak kills no longer count towards your killstreak total.

That's a lot of 'kills' in one sentence, but the gist is that if you require seven kills to unlock an attack helicopter, you'll need to rack them up on the field.

There are plenty of perks both new and old, we notice. Any key omissions this time?

Yup - perks which alter the player's statistics, such as 'Stopping Power' and 'Painkiller', have gone out the window.

Let's draft in Multiplayer designer David Vonderhaar to explain: "We want our players to fight on an even keel as much as possible.

We don't want newcomers coming away from the game wondering why the enemy can withstand more hits than they can."

Interrrrrrresting. So they're pushing Black Ops as a 'My First Multiplayer' experience, are they?

That's right. Activision's research bods have deduced that as many as 40% of people who bought Modern Warfare 2 have never even touched its online components.

In Activision's eyes, that's a hell of a lot of players who could be splashing out on slightly overpriced DLC, but aren't.

That's why they've cooked up a new offline mode designed to steer them online: Combat Training.

Combat training? Just a wild guess, but is that Deathmatch with 'bots?

DING! That's exactly what it is. Treyarch believe that the reason many fail to enlist online is because they find the idea a wee bit intimidating.

With Combat Training, lily-livered soldiers can experience the entire glorious multiplayer package in a 'safe' online environment.

Is there any point playing Combat Training if you're an experienced answerer to the Call of Duty?

We shouldn't think so. Although it shares the same levelling-up system as the multiplayer game, the XP earned in Combat Training doesn't transfer over to multiplayer, meaning you can't grind away at it to gain an advantage online.

It also doesn't look like the 'bots will put up much of a challenge from what we've seen, but there will be three levels of difficulty to choose from, so we shall just have to see.

Right. Now tell me all about this new 'CoD Points' currency, and how it works alongside the existing XP system...

That's more of a demand than a question, but we'll answer anyway, as there's been a bit of confusion about it all.

XP still unlocks new weapons, perks and attachments as before, but you now have to manually purchase each item with your CoD Points (CP) before they become available for selection.

That sounds like a bit of an itchy ball-ache. Why do you have to do that then?

It allows Treyarch to fit a lot more content into the game than they otherwise might - if it ran with the old XP system on its jack, levelling-up would have to go up to something obscene, like level 200.

So how do I get myself some of the 'good stuff'? I'm talking CoD Points, of course.

Two different ways. You can take out a contract before a round - these are challenges that require you to play a certain way or achieve a set goal during play (finish on top of your team's leaderboard, get three kills during a Search & Destroy round, etc).

After you've got yourself some moolah, you can gamble it away in one of four Wager Matches.

You mean Wager Matches such as the 'Gun Game', where your weapon ranks up with every kill. Where do these Treyarch types get the ideas from, eh?

Er, Counter-strike mods.

Oh. But moving on: why are Wager Matches free-for-all only? And why can I only play randoms? Man, I hate random people. They're so random.

Treyarch toyed with the idea of team-based Wager Matches during development, but found that there was far too much potential for collusion between teammates.

Same deal with friends playing against each other. You only have to look at Modern Warfare 2's 'booster' phenomenon (where two players squirrel themselves away on a hard-to reach spot of a map and chalk up huge score chains between them) to see how pointlessly easy it would be for scammers to muck things up for everyone.

Cheeky eleventh question coming at you! But it's an important one. Is it possible to draw a great big penis and set it as your emblem?

It'd be a bit weird, but yes you can. The emblem editor lets you flip, scale and combine numerous different preset shapes, so with a lot of time and effort it would indeed be possible to craft yourself the penis emblem of your dreams.

It probably wouldn't last long before the online community flagged it up and you ended up on the sex register, though.

Cheeky twelfth question! Will I be able to carve the word 'KNOB' into my gun?

(Sigh) Yes. Should you wish to, you can carve your clan tag into the side of your gun, no matter how rubbish or puerile it may be.