Wednesday, November 10, 2010

R/C car from Black Ops is sick



Ok, so you had a blast in Call of Duty: Black Ops. You aren't into the Prestige, Legendary and Special Editions of games. I understand. It's a lot to ask for gamers to pay $80 for extra swag. I will do a blog post soon on that. However, if you don't mind the extra, oftentimes you'll get some way-cool stuff that if you are a fan of the game or the series, you don't want to let pass you by.

Take for example the Prestige Edition of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Sure, you can buy the game and never miss it. But if you did buy the game, you get this sweet car. It has a built-in video camera as well as a microphone. I don't think you can capture the video, but it would be awesome if you could.

The video camera does a very good job of showing what's in front of the car. It's smack dab in the middle of the bumper. It looks sharp to be a toy.

The audio is pretty good too. You could buy some dampening material and make it uber quiet. If you did, wow. You could sneak up just about anyone. The whine is cute but gets annoying way fast.

The car is pretty sturdy and look painfully authentic. No, I have never seen a real R/C car that doubles as a moving bomb, but the metal scratches look awesome. It has a fake piece of plastic explosive on the rear of the car with the name of the studio, Treyarch - and Call of Duty printed on the back. Get some paint thinner, remove the logos and it looks eery.

You can navigate via the LCD built into the remote controller, and steer it with the wheel on the right side of the controller. You can even adjust audio and car speed on the handy controller. The LCD shows what's ahead of the car's camera. It also have the range meter - to let you know if it's out of range - battery life for the car and the controller - and the microphone volume setting. You can also adjust the trim of the front wheels on the controller.

I have searched the Web to find anything that would be remotely related (No pun intended) but haven't seen anything yet. I'm sure you can buy one off eBay, but don't expect it to be cheap.

There is one negative drawback to the awesome R/C car. The batteries. While it has a ton of features and one of the coolest pieces of video game swag I've ever seen, it's a battery hog. The remote - and the car - both take six batteries each. I know very few people who have six batteries in their house they can use. But 12? You have to remember to snag them the next time you are out and about. I was able to find some batteries in the office - and can tell you, at my crib, I don't have 12 fresh batteries unless I buy a 20-battery pack.

Treyarch would have done better running this R/C car off 87 octane.

The verdict? 4 (out of 4 stars). Even with the 12-battery requirement, this car is so much fun to play with. I can see co-eds using this car to keep tabs on other co-eds. I can see kids using these to see what parents are up to. I can even see nosy co-workers using these to hear the latest gossip. Even if you don't care for the game, the R/C car is by far the coolest piece of video game swag since the Halo Reach briefcase press kit.

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