DLC #137 - Call of Duty : Black Ops - Annihilation Map Pack

This one's been a long time coming and it's purely down to what is possibly one of the most frustrating Easter Egg experiences across the entire Call of Duty franchise.

Despite the fact I haven't had a terrible amount of exposure to these Easter Eggs, and since their introduction within Black Ops 1, I've only sampled them within 2 other Call of Duty games (Black Ops 2 and World War 2), so they may make my prior statement a little bit underqualified, but I still say it with enough conviction based on my own personal experience with this pack, and having also completed the Escalation Map Pack, whose Easter Egg related trophies were a complete breeze in comparison.

The Annihilation Map Pack adds a further 5 trophies to the Zombies mode within Blacks Ops 1, focused around the new Shangri-La map, an exotic jungle-themed setting with some interesting game mechanics, which are explored within the requirements of the trophies on offer here.

Out of the 5 trophies, 4 of these are fairly simple tasks, requiring you to obtain kills on the 2 new types of zombies (The Shrieker and the Napalm zombie), in specified ways, along with an additional trophy which requires you to use the new 31-79 JGb215, which will be referred to as the Shrink Gun from here on out, on each type of zombie. 

It is more than possible to obtain these naturally through normal play, but the final trophy is where the challenge of this pack properly kicks on;

Time Travel Will Tell - In Shangri-La, acquire the focusing stone.

The "Time Travel Will Tell" trophy, awarded for acquiring the focusing stone, is a complicated Easter Egg, which requires 4 people to achieve successfully, which is the first barrier to mention here. 

Within the previous Escalation Map Pack, you could achieve the Easter Egg trophy with just 2 people. This is also the same for the Rezurrection Map Pack, which I have yet to write up about, for which the Easter Egg trophy can be earned with just 2 people, making them much easier by sheer logic of requiring less preparation and co-ordination.

The frustrating thing is, the only reason you need 4 people is because you have to stand on 4 tiles simultaneously spread out around the map in order to activate the staircase in the spawn area which turns out the be the focal point for a few steps throughout the Easter Egg.

The completion of the Easter Egg is also subject to some classic RNG, requiring you to pull the Shrink Gun out from the mystery box, and then holding onto it long enough to be able to Pack-A-Punch it for a later step. The later you pull it, the more difficult the game becomes as natural progression takes you into higher waves, and if the person with the Shrink Gun dies, the weapon is lost to the void and will need to be pulled again.

My honest take, irrespective of anything else, is to hope to pull the Shrink Gun as early as possible. If you start getting into the latter rounds without still having it, you're going to struggle to fight off the hordes and the map is very small and compact, making it difficult to survive on for prolonged periods of time. With some groups I attempted this trophy with, we reached round 11/12 without having pulled the Shrink Gun and would call it quits under the belief it was just better to restart the game, which is a frustrating reality of this trophy.

Just incase that wasn't enough, you'll also be subject to some further RNG, because you'll need to spawn a Napalm zombie in order to help fulfil a step which requires some gas leaks to be lit by the fire he emits. This isn't anywhere near as bad as the RNG around the Shrink Gun, but the Napalm zombie will blow up if players get too close, or can just sometimes blow up seemingly after a certain period of time, which did cost us a run one time where the Napalm zombie just seemed to disappear and did not spawn again before we all succumbed to a higher round anyway.

I'm not too sure how many attempts this took me in the end, but just to share a final painful experience;

I should have had this trophy when I first went for it at the time I gathered the rest of the trophies in the pack, getting to the final few steps before realising that the person in the party who had the Shrink Gun had accidentally forgotten to save enough points in order to Pack-A-Punch the weapon, which meant we had to play on a few more rounds in order for this person to accumulate 5000 points. We didn't manage to and failed on the subsequent round, which is actually the main reason I left this trophy for so long.

I did re-visit it for a few attempts on a very irregular basis since then, but every failed attempt killed my motivation to spend more time going for this, but it did dawn on me recently how old this game was, and with a new console generation recently born, I figured now would be as good of a time as any to start completing some of these incredibly old Playstation 3 titles.

I'm slightly surprised I managed to finally unlock it, and had this game down as a very high risk one towards 100% completion, purely for this trophy alone, so I'm glad to finally have it. I can't really offer much more strategic advice, because you will mostly be at the mercy of RNG. If you want to attempt to play on through the higher waves and hold out for the Shrink Gun, it is still doable, but I always felt like it was time-efficient to just restart the game, rather than battle through the possibility of higher wave rounds. The fact you need a willing group of 4 people is also not to be understated, and something I would consider to be a concern at this point in the games life cycle too.

With my final 2 trophies within the Rezurrection Map Pack achievable on a solo basis, at least the pressure is off with the accomplishment of this pack, and that's always the main thing.