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‘Call of Duty: Ghosts’ introduces Blitz, the next generation of Capture the Flag

Adam Rosenberg
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call of duty ghosts blitz multiplayer mode hits refresh on capture the flag screenshot arctic lumber

Gamescom kicks off with news from Infinity Ward of yet another new multiplayer mode in Call of Duty: Ghosts, called “Blitz.” In Blitz, each team has a “portal” of sorts at their home base that players must defend. If you manage to step into the opposing team’s portal, your team scores a point and you’re immediately warped back to your base spawn. Every time a team scores a point, their target portal is locked for additional scoring until a timer ticks down to zero.

If you read our recent Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer preview, you might have caught a reference to a mysterious third mode that we tried but were asked not to talk about until Gamescom. Blitz is that mode. It’s meant to offer a fast-paced alternative to fans of “Capture the Flag.” Activision VP of production Daniel Suarez offered a few additional bits of insight about how Blitz works, in our chat with him.

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“It’s basically an adaptation of Capture the Flag, except there’s no concept of returning the flag,” Suarez explained. “So each group has a hold point or an HQ, we call it a portal, that they are trying to defend. You’re trying to rush, or blitz, into that other group’s side. Once you’ve landed in [the portal], there’s a delay before the next person can go in. So it’s basically a much more frenetic Capture the Flag. 

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“There’s a lot of strategy that goes into this. People set up Trophy Systems and all these different kinds of things around it so they’re just trying to blow everybody up before they can get there. It’s more fast-paced.”
 
The description that Suarez offered rings true with our hands-on time in Blitz. The pace is fast, but there’s a definite ebb and flow as you rush in to attack and then pull back to defend as you wait for the timer to zero out. A respawn delay also helps to keep the flow of a Blitz match in check. It’s thrilling to leap into the portal and suddenly find yourself zapped back to home base, ready to defend what is sure to be a heavy push as the opposition realizes that they’ve now got a window in which there’s no need to worry about base defense.

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