Survival Mode Demo Analysis

[electricpenguin7]

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This video showcases a clip of the first wave of the new survival mode in MW3. Some thing to note:

- Co-op (obviously)

- Wave number on the right, times how long spent on a wave

- Starts of with a pistol, just like zombies (don't know what pistol exactly)

- Has 2 lethal and 2 tactical grenades

- Symbol on the bottom, yellow with black stripes, seems to say Armor to the left of it, and 100 to the right of it

- Players have names above them (duh)

- Pistol has 90 ammo plus current clip

- Mini map from multiplayer in top left corner

- Two bars on left of screen, the one on the top is labeled "Kill Streak", and has $500 to the right of the bar. The other bar is labeled "Headshots" and also has the $500 to the right of the bar

- Another symbol to the left of the first one, looks like a long stick?

- AI is pretty stupid, barely hitting the players, obviously going to be an increase in AI as game goes on

- You see a +100 in green as the player kills an enemy, like multiplayer

- When the player got a kill, you could see +$100 in green displayed in the bottom left corner

- Both bars progress at seemingly equal rates as the player gets kills

- The 2nd video jumps a little, and the Killstreak bar was empty, but the headshot one remained where it was

- Got a kill afterwards, and killstreak bar rose a little bit

- Underneath the mini map, displays "Enemies Left: " and decreases as the players get kills (obviously)

- Enemies fall to ground and struggle to get up, maybe only in the early game?

- Able to pick up weapons from dead enemies, like campaign, spec ops, and multiplayer, in this case a Model 1887 shotgun

- All enemies seem to have Model 1887s

- Enemies use the gun to melee player, enemies don't knife? (maybe later on)

- Players seems to have large amounts of health, maybe to balance the fact that enemies can attack from distances?

- Hitmarkers, from multiplayer

- Game announces when a wave is over, "Wave 1 Cleared" on screen

- Displays a "Combat Performance" box on the left after the wave is over

- Box has three columns, one labeled "You" in yellow, one that's not labeled, and one labeled "Teammate" also in yellow

- On the left, the categories are: Time, Wave, Kills, Headshots, Accuracy, Damage Taken, with number values for both players, and money values in the middle column

- Their time was 61.3 and got +$58 for it

- Their wave was 1 and got +$25 for it

- Their kills were "You" had 6 and "Teammate" had 4 and got +$180 for it

- Their headshots were "You" had 1 and "Teammate" had 2 and got +$40 for it

- Their accuracy was "You" had 21% and "Teammate" had 17% for it, but no money was added

- Their damage taken was "You" had 180 and "Teammate" had 90, and got +$40 for it

- Below the box was "Wave Bonus: $343", which is what you get if you add up all of the money from the combat performance box

- After the box disappeared, the players were running around, and on the right of the screen it sayed "Press A to ready up: " and was counting down from 14 or so

- Player got random money like +$20 on bottom left corner, maybe for assists?

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Ok, that was the gameplay, time for what I noticed about the map:

- Starts of in what seems to be the bottom of a broken down house

- Players exit through a hole, and emerge onto a desert landscape with buildings in the background and many cars and fences around

- The AI was ducking and hiding behind the cars

- Map was MUCH more open than a zombie map, it's been said you play survival mode on multiplayer maps

- At the end, you could see the other player run towards a big wall/fence thing, maybe a door you could open with the money?

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Ok, now my thoughts about all of this. One of the big reasons people say this will fail in comparison to zombies, is because the enemies have weapons, and can attack you from a distance. But there were a few things that made me question this.

One: that dude was getting shot all over the place, and blood was barely starting to show up on the screen

Two: the armor symbol on the bottom. It had a 100 next to it, which means it may take some of the damage for us, and once it hits 0, it disappears. Maybe we can buy armor upgrades and be as tough as Juggernaughts?

Three: the "Damage Taken" category in the combat performance box. Maybe the devs thought about the fact that the enemies having weapons would be super hard, and made it so you could see that your character is capable of taking a hit

Now, onto arguably the most important thing about zombies, and most likely the survival mode, MONEY.

Money seems to be rewarded at a similar pace as zombies. You get 100 money for killing the AI, but 50 from killing zombies, plus all of the +10s you get from the zombies. The match bonus was only 343, similar to getting a Nuke or Carpenter. The bars on the right looked as if once you fill it up, you get the $500 bonus, and the bar was filling up quickly. It's hard to tell with these videos, but it seems like your money is displayed on the very lower left hand corner. So does this mean we can't see our allies money? Maybe not, hopefully we'll be able to just press Select. In the third video, the guy talks about buying "bonuses, upgrades, different weapons" kinda vague, but sounds very much like zombies. Bonuses = perks, Upgrades = Pack-a-Punch, Weapons = Weapons (duh). Maybe we can upgrade armor, health, damage dealt, etc. In the third video, there were a bunch of sentry guns, you could see air support coming in, the weapon had a red dot, stuff like that. I remember reading somewhere that you can give you money to another player. This could lead to more teamwork maybe?

In the third video, I saw a yellow outline of a pistol, and an arrow pointing to the right on the edge of the screen. It was moving like the Revive symbol in zombies does. Hmm..

I also saw a bunch of symbols just like that on the edge of the screen, maybe showing you where to buy weapons?

The player took down an enemy copter. I don't think this will be easy.

There seemed to be A LOT of action on wave 8, so getting to round 20 might not be as easy as it is in zombies.

That's it, what do you guys think? At first, I thought it was a cheap rip off of zombies, but after watching these videos in depth, I'm looking forward to it. I think it will take a lot more to kill you in this mode than in campaign or multiplayer, so the enemies having guns won't be so bad. So, what do you think of this?

[Technicuddle]

I can tell this is going to be fun already!

But it will never replace Zombies but if they make New maps for the Survival Mode i think i could start to like MW3 allot more.

[way2g00d]

It actually sounds boring.. just like old mw2 co-op. (I have not watched the video yet)

No game can replace multiplayer mode from MW2..

[General Dempsey]

survival looks pretty boring i think i might have more fun on black ops combat training..