New month, new drops! I really can’t wait to… meh, I don’t think I can fake my enthusiasm anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I love MW3 still, but the season of content has officially gotten old for me. I even forgot about the new drops until I was reminded by a more enthusiastic friend on AIM. I just wish they would release the same old map packs. Give me 3-5 maps in one DLC. One map a month just doesn’t get me excited. Give me a lot of maps at once I have to play all day just to enjoy them all. Give me one map at a time and I’m tired of it in an hour. I play a lot of non-map pack lobbies too and I don’t see the new maps. I’ve also been getting into infection lately and none of the new maps are available there either. Anyway enough complaining, I’ll get on to my impressions of the new map and two new spec ops missions.

If you see a moving bush, then it is probably a sniper about to drop you.

Black Box Map

This is easily my favorite new map of the DLC. Even though I am getting tired of the season of content, it does seem like the maps are getting better. It reminds me a lot of Estate from MW3, but the wreckage of Air Force one and multiple large houses allow for a lot of interesting battle areas. The large open area in the middle of the map makes sniping a lot of fun, but there is enough cover to allow for all kinds of gun play. Your best bet is to go with either a Sniper or Assault Riffle. Black Box is a largish map so you’ll need both mobility and range to preform best. Watch out for claymores and betties if you are headed into the houses. I can tell you with experience that they get littered with them. The best playlists for this map will be objective type. Domination, S&D, and Capture the Flag will be a lot of fun. If you are playing Kill Confirmed watch out for dog tag traps. After a few rounds I started to notice that snipers like to shoot people and leave their tags for bait for the next unsuspecting victim.

Make sure the designated driver can actually drive because some of us drive off cliffs.

Black Ice Mission

The first of the new spec ops mission this has two parts. You first start off in a snow mobile before you head into a base that you have to destroy. One person drives while the other person shoots. Overall I found this mission pretty easy, although I did fall off the cliff once while driving the snow mobile… I am a terrible driver. My partner and I cleared the mission quickly, but running from the exploding base did prove to be quite fun. There are new Achievements to watch out for, this mission you have to run over 13 people on your snow mobile. You probably will barely see that many people so it might take a few times. I did find out that if you stop your vehicle enemies on theirs will stop too and get off, giving you more targets.

Just make sure you shoot the people with the guns.

Negotiator Mission

This mission starts off pretty cool. You are tied up with no weapons and you have to steal one to start off. Make sure you do this quickly, because you have to get to your partner before he is shot. I was goofing off a bit too much and lets just say I failed the mission the first time I tried it. Although, it was funny having my partner scream at me, “HURRY THE F**K UP!” There is a lot of breaching in this mission, but you have to move quickly because to earn the achievement for this mission you have to save all the hostages and if you don’t sprint from points quickly you’ll fail it. We tried it a few times, but gave up after I blew the hostage’s face off in a poorly executed breach toward the end of the mission.

Next month two more maps will drop and I will give my impressions on them. Maybe then my enthusiasm will return, but don’t get your hopes up. At the very least Rob Riggle is doing a good job keeping the commercials fun.