Call of the Dead

Overview

Call of the Dead is the Zombies map of Escalation, the second map pack of Call of Duty: Black Ops. It takes place on March 17, 2011, at an abandoned Group 935 outpost on the Siberian coast, near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, around a shipwrecked freighter, a lighthouse and a bare coast. It was the first map with real celebrities as playable characters, and it brought the V-R11, the Scavenger, Deadshot Daiquiri, the Electrified Zombies and George A. Romero as a zombie who hunts the players from round 1. Its official description: “A shipwrecked crew of fearless explorers is hopelessly stranded in an abandoned Siberian outpost.”

George A. Romero is shooting a zombie film, also called Call of the Dead, at the lighthouse, with four actors. The intro shows the take going wrong: a real zombie climbs out of a prop window and carries Romero off. The actors are left to fight a real outbreak, while Dempsey, Nikolai, Takeo and Richtofen, sent too far in time by a teleporter, are locked in a dark room below the PhD Flopper room, next to the lighthouse. The map was first planned for a fourth World at War map pack, at the Cliffs of Dover, before it was moved to Siberia for Black Ops; a photo of a ship wrecked by a lighthouse already hangs on a notice board in Der Riese.

Characters

The four playable characters are horror actors playing themselves, each voiced by the actor:

Sarah Michelle Gellar

The star of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her player colour is white.

Robert Englund

Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street, the calmest of the four. His player colour is blue.

Danny Trejo

From From Dusk till Dawn, who fights with two machetes in the intro.

Michael Rooker

Then a guest star of The Walking Dead. His player colour is green.

George A. Romero lent only his likeness: he did no voice work and no motion capture for the map. Samantha Maxis is the announcer, Richtofen is heard on five radios recorded in 1945, and the four original heroes are heard behind a locked door during the Easter egg.

Enemies

Zombies

Russian soldiers, sailors and scuba divers. They rise from the frozen ground and the water, and can climb along hanging objects and drop from ceilings.

George A. Romero

The director, turned into a zombie. He replaces the special round: no Hellhounds come on this map, George follows the players instead.

Electrified Zombies

Zombies struck by George’s stage light. They shock the player on contact.

George’s roar turns the zombies around him into sprinters, and water calms him down. Insta-Kill and Nuke do nothing to him; he laughs at a Nuke.

How George behaves, and how to beat him

Perks

Call of the Dead was the first map with seven Perk-a-Cola machines, and an update added an eighth. All of them need the power, except Quick Revive in solo.

Double Tap Root Beer

2000. On the deck of the ship, back after its absence on Ascension.

Stamin-Up

2000. In a ruined house behind the lighthouse.

Deadshot Daiquiri

1500. The new perk of the map, at the top of the lighthouse, next to the zipline.

The eight perks and the Pack-a-Punch that moves

Weapons

Every game starts with an M1911, the knife and frag grenades. Twelve things are bought off the walls, two of them on the shore:

The Mystery Box holds the rest, with two Wonder Weapons new to this map: the V-R11, which turns a zombie back into a human, and the Scavenger, a sniper rifle with explosive bolts. The Wunderwaffe DG-2 comes back as a power-up, the Lightning Bolt, for players who finished the Easter egg.

Every weapon, its price and its place

The ship, the lighthouse and the ice

The map is built around two places, the stranded ship and the lighthouse, with free ways to cross between them:

Ziplines

Two of them, free, one from the top of the ship down to the coast of the starting area, the other from the top of the lighthouse to the ship. Zombies and George ride them too.

The Flinger

A platform one floor below the power switch that throws players from the ship onto the lighthouse platform. It needs the power and the lighthouse platform open, and rests ten seconds after each throw.

The Ice Slide

A free, one-way slide from the back room of the lighthouse down to a pool with Speed Cola and the Sickle. Zombies use it, and George surfs down it.

Freezing water

Every pool and shore covers the screen in frost, then freezes the player until a zombie hits them or a teammate shoots them. Zombies left in it end up frozen in blocks of ice that shatter.

The weather

A heavy snowstorm with fog alternates with a light flurry, and the characters comment on each change.

Pack-a-Punch

The Pack-a-Punch rises out of the water on one of three spots: the pools near Stamin-Up, near Quick Revive and near Juggernog. Once the power is on, the lighthouse beam turns; after a lightning strike it swings wildly and stops on the machine, which then rises from the pool. It sinks again after a while, but not while a weapon is inside. With the power off, it never appears in a First Room game.

Mystery Box

950 points a spin, on six spots. The Box never starts in the starting area, so it is never within reach of a First Room game:

Easter egg

The main quest helps the four original heroes, locked in a room under PhD Flopper, get to “Paradise”, Shangri-La. The players fetch the Golden Rod, the Vril Device Richtofen needs for his plan. The quest comes in two versions with their own achievement: Stand-in, which can be done alone, and Ensemble Cast, for co-op only. Both start with the power on, so neither fits a First Room game.

The fuse and the four generators

Bring a fuse to the box by the door, then destroy four generators with explosives.

The submarine

Set the wheel and levers of the power room to call a submarine, whose green light shines into the lighthouse.

The Golden Rod

Shoot a zombie with the V-R11 so that it floats up the lighthouse in the green light, kill it before the top, and carry the rod back to the door.

The reward

A Wunderwaffe DG-2, as a Lightning Bolt power-up. From then on, George drops Lightning Bolts instead of Death Machines.

Stand-in and Ensemble Cast, step by step

Secrets

The Avenged Sevenfold poster

The band, dressed as Soviet soldiers, on a wall of the room of the locked door.

Not Ready to Die

Activate three meteorites, one on the shore, one in the ship’s mess and one in the PhD Flopper room, to play the Avenged Sevenfold song written for the map.

Richtofen’s radios

Five audio diaries from 1945, in which Richtofen turns against Maxis.

The song, the radios and the poster

Achievements

Escalation added five achievements for Call of the Dead, worth 150 Gamerscore: one Silver trophy and four Bronze.

Only Quiet on the Set can be earned in a First Room game: it asks to beat George, which the players do on the shore with the weapons of the walls. Stuntman needs the upgraded V-R11, and Shooting on Location the Scavenger, both out of reach.

Trivia

• The name plays on both Call of Duty and Romero’s Dead films, and the game files call the map zombie_coast.
• The Tunguska River is where a meteor struck in 1908, the Tunguska event.
• The loading screen shows the Ascension loading screen in one corner and an early version of the Shangri-La one in another.
• Only the Sickle from the intro can be used in the game; Rooker’s sawed-off shotguns and Trejo’s machetes cannot.
• The poster tagline, “There’s a zombie killer in all of us”, plays on the “There’s a soldier in all of us” Black Ops commercials, and the AK-47 Rooker holds on it is not in the map.
• The deathsong of the Game Over screen is “Pareidolia”, heard in full as an Easter egg on the next map, Shangri-La.
• A mobile version, Call of the Dead: Director’s Cut, came out in July 2012 with the original four heroes instead of the actors, and the map was reimagined in Black Ops 4 as Tag der Toten.