How Shadows of Evil was both Misstep and Masterpiece
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- čas přidán 11. 07. 2024
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Shadows of Evil is probably the most polarizing map in Zombies history across the whole of the Call of Duty fanbase. Some fans say it's a masterpiece, the most immersive experience with the best balance of depth and game flow in history. Others say it's where they knew for a fact that the developers had lost sight of what made Zombies fun, and where they stopped playing forever. What made this map so polarizing? Were either of these groups right? Or, did it fall somewhere in the middle?
"A Zombies Retrospective" is a series in which I play through each Call of Duty Treyarch Zombies map chronologically, and analyze its place in the series.
Media:
Call of Duty: World at War
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty: Black Ops II
Call of Duty: Ghosts
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Xbox 360)
Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
Shadows of Evil Reveal Trailer
Mob of the Dead Official Trailer
Call of Duty: Ghosts - Extinction Reveal Trailer
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - "Havoc" Trailer
Call of Duty: Black Ops III - Reveal Trailer
Shadows of Evil - The Shadows Within
Color Out of Space (2019) dir. Richard Stanley
The Maltese Falcon (1941) dir. John Huston
"Cthulhu" by Max58Art
"Dagon, the Sea Emperor" by VladMRK
"Mountains of Madness" by Onychuk
"Yog Sothoth" by TRXPICS
"On Hold for You" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"The Ice Giants" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
00:00 - Intro
02:02 - Influences in Map Design
10:04 - Easter Egg Design Philosophy
12:37 - Twisting Those Influences
20:15 - Setting and Atmosphere
26:57 - Conclusion - Hry
When you uploaded this video yesterday it was also both a misstep and a masterpiece
Wait what? Does the “a” not belong? Why? How do I find out this mystery?
@@ibruceeasily1728 the "a" does belong. It would work without it, but in my opinion sounds better with the a / more formal. I think the "a" makes it more singular.
Shadows Of Evil. The map where I have no clue what to do. I don't think I've ever even seen that Pack-A-Punch fight with the Shadow Man. I just train zombies right outside that door and eventually it's open.
As a Super-Fan.
I know how to do it. I just dont fucking care to do it. When I know my 30 minutes of effort are going to be wasted immediately upon Game-Over.
@@TheBuster0926 Sounds like every Zombies Game tho. Spawn , do stuff, die. Acomplish nothing in the long run.
@@ZombieSlayerrrrr The difference is that, in those 30 minutes, you're having fun killing zombies instead of running around completing mostly unintuitive easter egg steps
@@moistmarsupial3528 And you have to keep Zombies alive during those pap steps? If anything SoE is probably way better then the holy grail of Origins and Mob in that Point since you dont need that much points + SoE has more space. Compare the washing room in Mob or the Generators on Origins to SoE Rituals. 1 Minute more Setup for SoE sure thats that. Can keep killing Zombies, your Screen doesnt shake like crazy due to brutus and the Panzer doesnt hook you across the map
And Mob and intuitiv? Mob does a shit job of explaing its Afterlive system while SoE has clues all over the place + if you have Sound on my Guy Shadow man is quiet in your neck about those Rituals(Just Like Samantha about the staffs and richtofen about the Generators and the PaP machine on the mountain, and i think weasel about the plane but i am not sure about that)
We dont even need to pull the Mob and Origins comparision. Is Ascension intuitiv ? Is Shang intuitiv? Everything but argueably CoTD and Moon after Kino wasnt intuitiv. So for a map that lets you do more however leads you into the somewhat right direction to be less fun than those systems is quiet a hairpull isnt it ?
I get that its more to do, totally with you on that end. But its not even an 30 min effort if people gave it a Chance and some Arguments are just restrictions people set on their own, like you not killing Zombies.
@@ZombieSlayerrrrr nacht der untoten better nhl
Can't forget that on launch, we were playing an especially unrefined version of the map that wasn't quite balanced to near-perfection and quality of life features like we see now.
The map on-launch was particularly awful to play with randoms (how many of us were playing due to the disconnect between generations and the lack of friends who owned the latest and greatest consoles). Ritual times were ridiculously slow unless all 4 players were present in the room. Ritual items were also player-specific and could only be held one at a time, meaning only the one who picked it up could place it down on its respective table. This meant that nearly every public match, you'd have a clueless random or an intentional troll with no mic/communication stumble along and pick up one of the items, leaving it forever in their inventory and soft-locking everyone else out of pack-a-punch and progressing the map.
And as mentioned in the video, the only other, simple map option was The Giant, a remaster of Der Riese locked behind an extra $50 paywall (much later on, they made the map available for a $5 purchase, but that was far too late, as the remaining community was pretty much just those accustomed to the more complex nature of zombies or already owned the season pass). So bo3 zombies, at launch, was a pretty miserable experience for most of us. I desperately wanted to enjoy the gamemode, as I was still on the bo2 high, but SOE was damn near unplayable unless you had a plethora of YT tutorials and very competent friends on the current console generation.
It is amazing in retrospect though, nowadays I regard bo3 as objectively the best game for zombies. Even Shadows in its modern state makes it to my top 5 or top 10 at the bare minimum. But back in 2015, I struggled to accept bo3 as anything but the start of the downfall for zombies, and one of the most dissapointing gameplay experiences ever.
Funny to think that shadows of evil suffered a reverse tranzit, a lot hated the map at the start, then the more they played it, the more they started to actually enjoy it and see how great the map was. I was one of those who hated shadows then started to love it
Same when i first time played shadow i was really hate it but after time it' become my favorite zombie map of all time but tranzit a still hate it XD
I like it over Der Eisnedrach cuz FUQ that Easter Egg
No matter how many Shadows of Evil video essays I've seen, ima always click on a new one🤣
Absolutely amazing video. Perfectly reflects how I feel about Shadows. It's an absolutely fantastic map, but it's also overwhelming for people that aren't coming in hot off the tails of something like Mob or Origins. Really I think the casual audience would have been much kinder if The Giant had launched alongside it to appeal to their needs.
the giant was available at the same time as SOE, it just *came with the season pass at the time, so people either didn't care enough to buy it or couldn't afford it at the time, i wish it were free on release but they were there to juxtapose each other
It did though
dude what you said about the setting change was on the money. I remember being so outraged by the shift in setting. I think it was just so unexpected and not really eased into either. BAM! now the entire world is tentacles. Especially when everyone was wanting answers for how Origins ended. Should not have been the map on disc.
Fantastic series.
I played Nacht, Shi No Numa, Der Riese and Kino and then took a decade break from zombies (stopped playing CoD entirely, but saw occasional videos), so these videos have been fascinating for me to slowly go through the journey. What sets these retrospectives apart is not only the detail, but the weighting of both the casual and hardcore audience. I distinctly remember looking at Shadows on release and thinking "that's so involved, I don't think I'd know where to begin'.
Recently rediscovered zombies for myself and while I haven't played much (I only have BO4 launch maps at the minute), I've been watching a ton of videos on it and this series is an insta-watch for me. Another certified banger.
I would like to personally recommend you try out Cold War if you can! It really revitalized the casual scene and it is now my favorite zombies mode ever. I stopped playing midway through BO2, only briefly playing Shadows on release and skipping BO4, and can confidently say I adore CW Zombies!
Bo3 zombies, without counting PC customs, has 14 maps with all dlc and chronicles. Imo it's the zombies entry where fun is prioritized a little bit over game balance and every map looks great visually. Bo2 and Cold War are really great too
@@Aigis31 played zombies since I was like 8 and completed waw the first time, and I couldn't agree more. During lockdown I stayed in a flat with friends like 4 of us just playing warzone and they saw me playing bo2/3 zombies and they never played but when cold war came out all of us got it I got them into zombies and they fucking loved it
I've been eagerly awaiting this one! WaW Nacht was my favorite map for many years. There's plenty of others I liked a lot, but nothing beat that simple "trapped in an abandoned building watching zombies stumble out of the fog" creepy factor. That "Night of the Living Dead" vibe.
Then not long ago I played this map after my best friend gave me their copy of Blops 3 (they got a digital only PS5 and didnt need the disc anymore).
As someone who is both a huge fan of Lovecraftian horror and classic Film Noir? This was the map that finally gave me a new contender for "favorite". I'm still not wild about how complicated the map is for a casual zombie fan like me, but the 1940's era city is gorgeous, the jazz music is perfect, the classic Noir character archetypes are great and the Cthulhu monsters are the cherry on top. I just fell in love with Shadows!
You'll get used to it. I remember how painful it was at launch (especially due to the broken Zombies AI) but now, me and my friends can literally have casual matches on Shadows.
We know what to do so we do it while killing Zombies and it feels like an adventure. Constantly moving across the map, killing zombies, doing rituals, fighting Margwas, picking up parts etc...
Absolute incredible map that ages like fine wine.
Shadows of Evil is my most played map by far, and it will always hold a special place in my heart.
I hated this map, wtf dude you've changed my perspective to a somewhat positive one. Stella work yet again, makes me miss those 3am Kino sessions with the boys.
Listening to the entire retrospective at work and just seeing now this just got uploaded made my day way better
Just binge watched this entire series, and I can't wait for the next video already. Amazing content bro.
Dude, your production value and scripts keep getting better and better; this is easily the best video in your entire series yet
Love your youtube channel, gives me so much joy and nostalgia to see some great throw back zombies content and break down
Your getting better and better with each upload man. Keep it going 👍
Fun Fact when you look up “Dear god, he’s British” most of the results are fnaf memes
Fun fact, I tried this and only had one fnaf meme come up
@@plus_one_hundred9817 huh.. for me my top 5 were fnaf meme vids titled ah he’s British and dawko meme review
This is the new one.
Another great video as always! I really look forward to them.
You said you were going to do it and you did it, love a guy who keeps his promises
welcum
I love these videos so much. Please keep making them! Keeping zombies alive
shadows of evil is lowkey one of my top 5 maps oat. the easter egg grind is pretty fun, the vibes are immaculate, and it set up the story very well. had me excited to continue playing. esp since the map right after was a top 3 map oat. i wish The Giant wasnt paid DLC tho. only having Shadows wo having to spend more $ is def polarizing
When you look at BO1 and 2 they both launched with a map which was fairly small, simple and easy. And the second map which was larger, more complicated and harder. And that worked very well in both games. So I did always wonder why BO3 launched with only one map that was very large, complicated and difficult as the only option. Because it would just turn the casual audience which is most of the playerbase off to zombies immediately. Especially when they had a second casual map right there and they didn't put it the base game.
Let’s be real, Tranzit was a complicated map aswell. If you’d played BO2 mob of the dead you’d instantly understand shadows of evil. Yes it would take a bit of learning but in my opinion wonder weapons and pack a punch shouldn’t just be handed to the player.
@@DBFARuler @Ismail Mod was the second DLC so the people still playing zombies when the second DLC came out were people that were invested in the mode. So in BO3 when the casual audience's only option is a big, complex and difficult map they'll hate it. Your base game map has to cater to the casual audience because the casual audience is the vast majority of the player base. So if they don't like the first map then they aren't going to pay for another one.
Nigga called tranzit fairly small,simple and easy 💀💀
@@byrite8112 No genius. Town is the small simple map Tranzit is the opposite
@@Chrisey96. Bruh, ain't nobody considering Town, Farm, or Bus depot the BO2 launch map
Watched the first minute of this yesterday ;) great video as always!
I don't know why but when SOE released I hated it it may have been me being young but now I see the masterpiece it is
I used to hate SOE. It's now my favourite map of all time. And Jeff Goldblum as Nero is absolutely perfect. My favourite celebrity character
Yooo I found you yesterday and binged almost every episode!
amazing video man! keep making bangers cliff
Amazing video, great analysis and spot on criticism! 10/10 as usual my friend!
Amazing vid
Love the map so much
Thank you
much love man
The quality of this video made me think you had like a million subs. Keep up the great work!
Missed you buddy, great video keep it up cant wait for der eisendrache
Man i when i first saw your channel i thought that you would have like 500k subs but only 16k? What im trying to say is that you have a really bright future here on youtube mate
All my friends hate on this map and I used to not like it either but then I LEARNED IT and let me just say I count myself as a casual and learning this map was actually pretty easy the more you do it the more it becomes as easy as just killing zombies the whole game and it becomes so much fun just killing margwas and unlocking more shit, this map introduced me to getting wonder weapons and Easter eggs and for that alone I praise it
So its easy and shit then cool.
28:38 ur friend getting chased by a meatball is so cartoony to me lol
Here before you reach 20k! Fantastic series
Starting here and working back. The buried video brought me to your channel
20:00 theres a custom mapper named Verk0 thats giving TranZit the details it deserved, i would encourage everyone to take a look!
I love everything abt SOE since the beginning just the look had me playing it for hours
I remember watching this video, when it was released yesterday.
In Shi No Numa you can hear the correct perk jingle before opening the door.
Not on the original
The Widows WIne transition was inspired. Bravissimo Sir.
Shadows of Evil made me give up on BO3 Zombies when it first came out, which is a shame because now Der Eisdendrache is probably my favorite map ever. But I've been interested in learning it and giving it another chance. Looking forward to the DE video.
I think the only thing that holds the map back for me is that there is no “fun” weapons in the box
The wonder wepond not that fun to mr either.
Another great video! Keep it up!
Off topic... How do you draw those lines on the map about 4 minutes in? After effects?
Davinci Resolve, Fusion, Paint Node Polyline, keyframes on the Write-On property. Maybe not the best way, but very quick and easy!
I hated shadows when it first came out but once you really get into it you begin to love it
Zombies at its peak for me!
LETS GOOO SHADOWS OF EVIL VIDEO
Time to order some food
I cant wait for IX, IX was my fav map, to this day I play on it without taking any damage, it completely changes the entire game, it took me 2 YEARS to get from round 16 to round 18 through mastery of training and spawn points and wit
another cool detail is im pretty sure that those perk bottles that help you figure out which district has which perk are the bo2 perk bottle design and not the bo3 bottles
24:01 to be fair.. Jackie f***** Vincent calls them meatballs too
On paper, this map should've been my younger selfs wet dream. Lovecraftian elements? Better graphics and more zombies? Yes! Only when I loaded up shadows of evil, and played it more and more, I found myself liking it less and less and less, despite really wanting to love it. I adore the aesthetic, but the map design to me was absolutely garbage, maybe I'm biased because I'm not a fan of black ops 3 in general. I was also not a fan of the growing complexity added to zombies, to me, origins and mob of the dead was the perfect balance of having lots to do, without feeling overwhelmed. To add to that, I always hated the gobblegum system which was just another nail in the coffin for me. All around, I wish I could love bo3 as much as some do, It does have some of the best zombies maps in the franchise, but I just can't bring myself around to loving, or even liking it. This began my distancing from the franchise, with advanced warfare being the last cod I sinked a lot of hours into.
Sucks that you're missing on the best maps zombies has to offer because you can't take the time to learn them. Oh well
@@user-jw6np4fs2btriggered
New vid, new awesome vid
I never knew you could tell where the perk machines were by the bottles in the Junction! Holy shit, learn something new every day.
just wanna say, for me and the boys, soe is still our go to bo3 map
Honestly if the giant was included without being a bonus zombies
Shadows would have really benefitted
Jackie V at a glance can be pegged as a noir detective but personality-wise he’s more of a beat cop
It must have been awful at first not being used to shadows and having no easy maps, but shadows is imo the best map ever made. When you do good on shadows it is actually satisfying
Babe wake up. A new zombies content creator just dropped
Imo shadows of Evil is the best map ever made. Once you understand everything it’s extremely fun and challenging. Not too hard but not too easy
Post more man love the content keep it u o
Up
babe wake up, white cliff games posted a video
I'm surprised the Margwa head wasn't mentioned.
Babe wake up, new White cliff games video
On the map to do the symbols for me i related them to food my friends lost it when I started doing this as it was completely random but I remembered them that way. It’s stupid but that’s how I did it.
10:18 take that L
This the only map Ik every setup steps
The giant saved bo3.
For the casual of course but the whole game nah
This map rewards you for learning it, once you do it’s one of the easiest maps to set up
you can fully open each area with 1 beast mode,
your able to pap on round 1 without spawning in with rk5 or grabbing Sals 500 laundry Ticket (another reference to mob) , your able to see the sword symbols with beast mode jumps and not need the tram at all, saving you time and points when skilled enough, upgrading the sword or getting it is fun, since you get to kill margwas and zombies, rituals are really fun and easy you get points, and they spawn Margwas which give more points and are balanced but fun, and ww is easy to get but you have to be round 15+ which is also balanced, there’s only 1 ww but there’s aats, the wall weapons are great for Easter egg using civil protector and making an actual strat rewards you in flag step, like everyone watching a different area, not standing next to flag, and not shooting ww on the flag etc
It shouldn't have been the launch map.
I think the thing that hurt shadows the most was it being a launch map. But it was needed so the players could get accustomed to the new formula of zombies
As a person whose first map was SoE. This map definitely had quite a veneer to it which I found especially captivating, especially in terms of optimizing beast mode to be able to do each district utilizing only one beast mode and having Pack open on as low a round as possible (either round 2 or 3 depending on double points in spawn and other drops). Also the aesthetic of the map definitely aided in captivating my interest and had me straight addicted to playing the map. I must be an outlier but as my first map I didn’t find it to be that unintuitive that it would ultimately turn me off, quite the opposite.
Cuz it was your first and you're not an adult now that was a kid when it all started.
@@dougashby5679 actually I was,I just didn’t play zombies until BO3, I started with COD4 and didn’t buy COD every year so I missed a good chunk of Treyarch’s games barring BO2’s multiplayer until BO3 went free back in 2017
I really like SoE and I miss the good old days of Zombies community around the BO3 era
I fully agree.
Shi no Numa feels like the start and Der Riese feels like a DLC. I love the Zielinski take. So much more than the Blundell take. Zielinski made it feel like DnD
I love your content this shit is my crack
So many maps will consist of a few spaces you can actually be, and the rest of the map is narrow death traps that you sprint through as you move from location to location. That's really not the case with Shadows. Basically anywhere you go you're going to be in a location that has had so much thought and care put into it's design. And no matter where that downed teammate is there's a way of getting there on time. The 4 districts really should have been released as stand alone challenge maps like they did with Tranzit - the ritual rooms are iconic and it's kind of sad the high round community has never had any reason to make use of them cause each one (okay only a masochist is going to grind boxing gym) are masterfully crafted training spaces. Each of the 3 branches offer enough viable training spaces to support 4 players. The aesthetics and all that are the cherry on top, but to me it's the map design itself that makes Shadows the best map we've ever gotten. No map has had as much time and effort put into it, and it really does show.
This was definitely the end for me. Hard to get invested in the story when u can only progress from external sources.
I hated this map on release but it’s honestly a favorite now for me, the run of mob of the dead and origins at the end of bo2 then followed by shadows, the giant and then der eisendrache in the beginning of bo3 was the best run of the whole series
NEW UPLOAD W
I completely agree shadows being the only launch map was a mistake, and either the giant should have been on disc too or an original and more simple map should have been there in the mould of a kino or der riese. Personally I can't get into the complexity on my own much, if other people tell me what to do for an ee, I'll try but mostly my map knowledge goes to hitting pack a punch and the music ee. I think a side effect of the maps getting more complex with the potential for a more powerful player is the devs tried to met this challenge which to me is kinda misguided to an extent. While it keeps the game challenging and fresh to the experienced player, new players can be totally left in the dust at times and my biggest example is origins (I've not done too much shadows sorry), but the panzer at round 8 is such a huge skill check unless you have got to pap or got a staff which is pretty hard for new players to do that fast, and things like that keep me away from most of black ops 3 unless im grouped up with friends which barely happens, and going online on pc now is a massive security risk, because hackers are everywhere and they sometimes just cheat the fun out the game by turning on godmode for everyone or unlimited powerups, or they max level you give practically unlimited divinium and level up all the guns removing the grind of outside the game too. It's super frustrating, b03 is a game I wanna love it plays well and the weapons are mostly very fun, but i only tend to have fun on bo3 maps with friends, or zombie chronicles.
Sorry for the rambling long comment, great video series keep it up.
Totally agree, I actually mentioned the same thing as you in the Origins video; the fact that the player can *theoretically* get very powerful means the developers have to balance the game around that power. But then if you don’t do all the little secrets, that means you end up way *behind* the power curve!
@@whitecliffgames yeah I definitely feel it's a flaw of modern zombies I've played (not done black ops 4 yet I've only got into zombies in the last year). Thanks for the reply
I remember in the beginning that people loved this map, then they hated it for a little bit when Eisendrache came out, then everyone now loves it again
I didnt like shadows at launch due to the complexity but playing it now its easily one of my favorites of all time and can have pack a punch of an upgraded sword by round 10 its super easy if you put the time to learn the map
Shadows is still my favorite map of all time next to Origins. ❤
I hate how much Zombies took off as a mode. Don't get me twisted, I LOVE Zombies for some casual fun, and hardcore grinding for whatever it is I'm trying to do. But every fucking CoD keeps trying to make Zombies modes instead of what their games used to have. What made MW2 and MW3 so good was the fact their Spec Ops had a mix of campaign style missions, co-op missions and survival missions. MW3 even took it a step further and had one of the best survival type gamemodes and even had Chaos Survival which was dumb fun. But now it's all about ZOMBIES, ZOMBIES, ZOMBIES.
They should just leave it to treyarch games only
Now watchout for the infinite meatball spawn
HAPPY PIE DAY EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🥧 10:14p.m. 3/14/2023
I LOVE REUPLOADS I LOVE REUPLOADS!!!!
I think the zombie community sometimes forgets how poor ghosts and aw really were for the rest of cod, it brought a lot of mp players back to bo2 until bo3 came out and a lot of us came back and played zombies. Treyarch knew this, they released the first ever camo dlc’s during a different games life cycle which was huge back then and it was based of zombies! They also had so much pressure to get every aspect right, they didn’t but bo3 is still the last cod game a truly put my life into. Since then it’s only been downhill in my personal opinion
Shadows of Kino
King.
This map would’ve been cooler if it took place in a carnival type setting
10:18 wtf was that L
I have every bo3 dlc , but I always play SOE, for some reason the way the map looks is soo pleasing too look at , the most annoying thing is doing the rituals each game
The amount of rounds you had to survive in MW3 depended on the map difficulty, but it was nowhere near infinite.
Been sick the last three days, saw your buried video in my feed, this is good series for bench watching
ain’t no way u could get a free gobble gum whaaaat
Shadows is a great balance
What happened to the first video? I think you took it down while I was halfway through and I didn't notice anything wrong
I watched the whole thing I didn't notice anything either
Shadows of evil was the black sheep map that they make for every zombie game.
It's just usually one of the DLCs not the starting map.
The aesthetics were good enough that I disregarded that it was completely different from the feeling of normal zombies (I love the classic Sci-Fi stuff, But the Margwa was my favorite boss enemy)
Ahh shadows of evil. I have a love/hate relationship with this one. I love the noir style and the jazz. The characters are also great. The apothican servant kicks ass too and I was able to figure out how to get it without looking up a guide. However, I can’t lie, I don’t like the introduction of the apothicans, the shadow man is writing at it’s worst, and I just don’t like it when maps cater so much to those who love opening CZcams guides. But once you do bite the bullet and learn how to set up, it becomes second nature and it’s actually a bit engaging. Shadows I love now more than I did when it came out, but I don’t find myself coming back to this one often