Michael Myers Hits COD: Ghosts Onslaught With A Sign From The Future

If the devil is in the details, then Infinity Ward has summoned more than their fair share of demons in the creation of the Fog map for the first DLC for the game Call of Duty: Ghosts. This expansion goes by the name Onslaught, and in the gameplay map called "Fog", players are invited to dip into an environment that's the video game embodiment the 2012 film The Cabin in the Woods. Not that it looks the same – it quite different visually – but the same idea is there: here we've got every woods-based horror movie all bound into one.

Down the rabbit hole you go, literally – tunnels rest under cabins, near waterfalls and through the bog. Here you'll see the bones and carcasses of dead animals and stacks of grimy containers of who-knows-what. There's fog, of course – given the name of the map, one would expect – as well as a generally smelly-seeming ambiance throughout. Dimly-lit living spaces are strewn throughout this map with firm implications of the impending return of axe-wielding denizens.

And Michael Myers is here, too!

WARNING: SPOILER note – if you've not seen the 2012 movie The Cabin in the Woods, do not scroll down below the first video in this post. You'll get so spoiled, your head will explode.

Not just the implication of Michael Myers, nor a Halloween-themed mode alone. Instead you've got a real-deal Michael Myers – mask, jumpsuit, axe and all, along with the official Halloween music. To activate this character, a user must do the following:

1. Find a Field Order and collect it.

2. Complete said Field Order to earn a Care Package.

3. Find and collect that Care Package and cross your fingers.

While Michael Myers is one of the rewards in Fog, his appearance is still random amongst the Care Packages that could potentially appear. He does appear one whole heck of a lot more often than the other packages, on the other hand, but only once per match. So make with the special operations as quick as possible.

When a player transforms into Myers, they're essentially an amped-up "Maniac". This means they're able to out-run anyone and, in this case, can take one massive amount of damage. Being Michael Myers, one would expect nothing less. When Myers is activated, everyone on the map hears the Halloween theme music as well, and it's exciting, if not frightening if you're not all about being chopped to bits.

Back on the subject of The Cabin in the Woods – there was originally supposed to be a video game tie-in along similar lines to this one. Back in 2012 it was revealed by director Drew Goddard that The Cabin in the Woods was supposed to get a tie-in with Left 4 Dead 2, but MGM (handling the movie) went bankrupt and the delay it caused made for an end to the whole collaboration.

According to Goddard, though, "the people at Valve were still cool enough to let us use some of their monsters to fill the cubes in the background (I had a lot of cubes to fill)." This included the Tank, Witch, Boomer and a Hunter, as you'll be able to see here – if you know what you're looking for:

"By the way – the game was gonna be amazing. You were gonna be able to play in both the upstairs Cabin in the Woods world and the downstairs "facility" world with all the monsters. Believe me, I HATE all video games based on movies, they always suck, but porting Cabin into Left For Dead felt like the right fit. It pains me that it didn't happen." – Goddard

That bit comes from Reddit via Joystiq, and shows two things. The first is that movies don't generally make great video games. The second is that in the past few years, developers and studios have gotten smart about implementation, and movie implementation in video games has gotten better and better.

And don't forget the backwards transfer. Video games have been being made into movies for quite some time now too – albeit not always successfully. Perhaps instead of suggesting that the crossover point has finally arrived, we should consider suggesting that the time for retro horror movies to be brought to life in video games here in the present has arrived.

Now we've only to wait for the mods for all relevant movies for video games to keep rolling in. Horror films are more than welcome, say we, especially if we're going to see classic terror-wielders like Leatherface and Pinhead coming at us. Imagine the Oculus Rift virtual reality immersion version of Hellraiser, and we'll see you there.