The prop hunt mode is a Weekend Warfare game mode that was featured in several games of Call of Duty franchise, including Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Call of Duty: World War II, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Remastered). The mode was first made popular in the PC version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
It can be seen as an alternate version of hide and seek in the military game's universe. One team of players enact hunters while another team just assumes the role of inanimate props like a cardboard box, a bicycle, a trash can, or a chair, and so on. Since 2019, the prop hunt was added as a mode in Black Ops 4. Fans of the series often refer to it as a 'fun party mode'.
Multiple Rounds
There are multiple rounds in each game of Prop Hunt. Each round ends either when all the Props have been found and destroyed, or when just one Prop survives by the end of the time limit. With each round, the team switches roles. The first team to attain three victories emerges as the winner. A draw can be reached after four rounds.
With every 10 seconds of being alive, the Prop team gains 100 XP. This however doesn't imply regeneration of health for the Props.
Mission As A Prop
Props aren't granted any weapons. So, stealth and strategy are of utmost priority to hide as a Prop. Coming to scores, not all the objects are sized equally. Bigger props are riskier options as obviously, they can be found by the Hunters more easily.
It's this risk of survivability that automatically makes large objects of higher score value. As the Props are given a headstart to hide, they can wander around the map to find a hiding spot.
Shapeshifting Abilities
Props can easily change from one form to another, but only for limited times in each round. Shapeshifting is a good move just for confusing the enemy but also to gain high scores as larger objects.
There are moments in the game when the enemies wouldn't be nearby. This proves to be a good opportunity to commence such shapeshifting and find new hiding spots.
Decoys
Decoys are nothing but copies of the Prop the current player assumes. While hiding, the Prop team can figure out obvious spots that might allure the Hunters to shoot. It's a wise move to place these decoys at such spots. The decoys also have lesser health than the Props.
Needless to say, decoys make for good distractions for the opposing team. But setting too many decoys can prove to be risky as eventually, the Hunters would shoot down all of them, leaving the Prop alone and vulnerable.
Concussing Hunters
For close-range duels, an effective attack for the Props is to concuss the Hunters. This helps in buying time as the Hunters would take a few seconds to regain their senses. Concussing Hunters should be used as a last resort in emergency situations as otherwise, it would give away the Prop's location.
While shapeshifting and decoys are present in other versions of prop hunt, concussing hunters is replaced with flashbang grenades if we are to compare Black Ops 4 with WWII. The latter features flashbang grenades that have a similar function in diorienting the Hunters and running away to a new hiding point.
Treyarch's Ad Campaigns
The video game developer Treyarch (under Activision since 2001) that serves as the brains behind the Call of Duty games teased the arrival of the prop hunt mode for Black Ops 4 through a sudden change of their Twitter profile picture. The image features a metal box with two brooding eyes, indicating the inanimate Prop to be resurrected to life.
A video ment by Treyarch last August featured two employees casually walking in their office and greeting objects like a pot of plants and a water dispenser as their colleagues.
Whistling Noises Of The Props
Involuntarily, each Prop makes a whistling sound every 20 seconds. This helps the Hunters in assessing their distance from the Props. The sound's direction can further guide the Hunters. The duration of this sound used to be between 25 and 30 seconds in other versions like World War II. The reduced time in whistling is advantageous to the Props.
These sounds can be faint depending on the player's distance, so it would be advisable to turn the headset or sound system's volume higher if one is playing the role of the Hunter.
Maps Create Confusion
Part of the fun in Prop Hunt is the unpredictability of the Props' hiding places, making the maps slightly tricky. As mentioned above, following the whistling sounds is the most effective strategy to hunt down the props.
The map might show several objects but shooting them down randomly might not be the best option as this gives audiovisual warnings to the actual Props who are in hiding.
Featured In Weekend Warfare
Prop Hunt mode was introduced as a part of the Weekend Warfare playlist, a set of mini-games introduced in January 2017. These games were weekly challenges that seen as a fun-filled getaway from the conventional styles of warfare.
Weekend Warfare was first featured in the Remastered edition of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The featured game modes include fan-favorites like Shotguns & Pistols, Oldcore, and Snipers Only.
Mad Props
Mad Props is another campaign from Weekend Warfare that plays out as a twist to the usual Prop Hunt mode. In it, the chief goal is for the Props to hunt the human Hunters. As each subsequent round starts, the Props are blindfolded to allow the human players to hide.
The props have three lives while the human characters bear only one. The Mad Props mode however had a limited run as it was removed from Weekend Warfare on August 25th, 2017.
