Yesterday we hit Treyarch Studios in Santa Monica to witness a Battle To the Death between NFL superstar running backs Maurice Jones-Drew and Arian Foster. Of course it involved no actual physical violence, it was instead the reveal of the first new series of “First Strike” maps for Treyarch’s mega-hit Call of Duty: Black Ops (which this past fall shattered records by raking in $650 million worldwide). To be frank, Mo-Jo has been one of my favorite backs in the NFL since he left the greatest school on Earth, UCLA, and it doesn’t hurt that his nickname is Pocket Hercules. How you gonna hate on that? And Arian Foster is a total beast — the first undrafted running back to lead the entire NFL in rushing and scoring — which he did just this year, with 1,616 yards and 16 TDs (and he also came in 3rd on the MVP voting behind Brady and Vick — not too shabby for a guy no one in the NFL wanted). Both players are noted no-shame Gamers (MJD won the 2010 Madden Bowl), so this wasn’t a mere publicity stunt for the “First Strike” maps but a chance to witness two NFL titans duke it out in a completely neutral, non-football related environment. Let the games begin.

Hit the Jump to continue reading plus see a couple more pics of Maurice Jones Drew & Arian Foster Battle To the Death in Call of Duty: Black Ops “First Strike”…

Each player led a team of 5 in a “Grudge Match”, all the players battling it out in a large room decked out with giant screens and headsets. Players on the teams included Call of Duty developers, engineers, and even an LIAS undercover agent (me) on Team MJD. I ain’t gonna lie, it hurt when Foster kept coming out of nowhere and taking me out with a couple headshots. As for the game, the First Strike pack adds five all new multiplayer maps that span the globe: “Berlin Wall,” surrounds the iconic barrier, giving players access to both sides of Cold War Berlin; “Stadium” which is set in the backdrop of a sports complex; “Discovery” in an abandoned coastal Antarctica outpost; and the best of the bunch, “Kowloon” which spans the tiered levels of high-rises and rooftops of Hong Kong. “First Strike” also features an all new Zombies mode level, “Ascension”, with hoards of vicious, flesh eating zombie monkeys. We never played Zombie mode but the others certainly allowed for plenty of bloodshed… and shit talking. Much like the NFL. The highlight for me personally was chatting with Jones-Drew about his Madden obsession, and finding out the complexity of the game is so robust that it’s helped he and other players segue into the pro game from college. Who woulda thunk Madden could actually help your professional career? All it did for me in college was eliminate about 10,000 hours of studying. All in all an interesting event, I just wish I could’ve kept up, instead of continually finding myself clutching my gut as another Arian Foster gunfire hail took me out in a spray of bullets. I need to get my practice on…

Two premier NFL backs trying to lay claim on Black Ops superiority…

The “Grudge Match” room inside Treyarch Studios, where Maurice Jones Drew & Arian Foster led their 5-man teams…

Leave a Reply