Review of call of duty Black Ops
If you have been living under a rock, call of duty
is the unstoppable selling machine that rivals
activision’s other franchises like guitar hero,
world of Warcraft or Starcraft. Following up to
one of the most acclaimed games of all time Call of
Duty Modern warfare 2 is no mean feat, but does
black ops take the torch and lead the way? Or
does it fall flat on its face in the middle of combat?
STORY
Some pretty crisp textures on the
body and background.
If you are a veteran of the call of duty franchise or just a recruit you
will feel right at home here, the story has some nice pacing with
brilliant scripting and set pieces weaved in and out for good measure,
one second you could be fighting out of a Russian detention centre
and the next blowing through foxholes in Vietnam. With all that said
there are some minor annoyances with the whole campaign in
general such as when I’m playing veteran it is not “hard” per se but is
artificial difficulty they have cranked up the enemies ability to hit you
at 100% and their eyesight rivals something that I can only describe
as rage inducing
There is never any downtime. (Apart from one mission which ties the
story together) speaking of which, the story is a step above the usual
“this is your gun this is your enemy you must kill him because he is a
<insert terrorist organisation here>”, and although it may become a
little bit convoluted towards the end it keeps you more interested
than any other Call of Duty title to date.
My highlight without giving anything away is fighting through a
chemical weapon facility covertly. The one thing I do find annoying
with the campaign is Treyarchs’ decision to try and make the story
seem “deep” and “thoughtful” this wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t
make the twist so painfully obvious that it jumps off the screen and
uppercuts you in the jaw. Though the twist through me off a little I
can honestly say this is one of the better Single player FPS titles out
there with very dynamic action packed set pieces and very high
values
DESIGN
The controls can’t be faulted since they work well and are very
comfortable, you don’t have to be quick on the triggers to score the
kills in the single player although the game design is slightly flawed
on the higher difficulty by giving the enemies what seems to be x-ray
and binocular vision, however it’s Definitely a step up from World at
war though, since I spent my time playing dodge ball with Nazi
grenades throughout the whole second world war.
Whilst the IW engine still looks very aesthetically pleasing,
Treyarchs decision to work on an older engine is very noticeable
compared to modern warfare 2? Textures in general are slightly
worse and not as crisp or refined, this looks noticeable up close and
in a select few cases a medium distance away. At some point I found
myself stopping and actually saying to myself “wow that car looks
horrible” and not in the desired war torn kind of way.
The sound is a very bipolar element for me. I am a big fan of great
soundtracks in games and feel Black Ops has some very nice pieces
written for it. My beef is with the gun sounds and explosives. The
guns all sound underwhelming. The explosions sound like popping a
plastic shopping bag and having a silencer on EVERY gun makes it
sound the EXACT same which sounds like a taser being shot. It feels
almost as if they ran out of money when it came to developing the
gunshots and explosive sounds and spent it all instead on voice
actors (All of which were very good although when you hear bowman
speak you can tell it is ice cube and this breaks the immersion).
There is plenty of content packed on to this disc with something for
everyone, from arcade shooting single player, Multiplayer teamwork,
Co-op Zombie shooter and a top down smash TV style game which
actually is really well done and great fun with a few friends. I salute
trey arch for listening to its community too and adding a lot of
features and taking some of the lesser loved ones out. All in all
Treyarch keep their design very nice and current from simple menu
design to the animations on characters faces, which I know the word
“realistic” is thrown around a lot but their faces are almost real
enough to touch from your couch.
MULTIPLAYER
Of course with a call of duty game most of you will skip the
campaign and jump straight into shouting racial slurs over the
microphone, But really Black Ops was always going to have a good
multiplayer, that’s a fact. The real question is how good? and for a
start the first thing I noticed and laughed heartily with happiness was
that they reintroduced party chat into game modes other than search
and destroy, no longer will you have to listen to how much a bad
person you are from your own team, and just talking into the
microphone won’t spark a trans-Atlantic battle of wits.
The modes are your standard Team death match, Headquarters,
free for all etc. and that’s all good and fine, it will keep people playing
for weeks, months and maybe years to come but you don’t want me
to tell you about something you already know, if you never liked Call
of Duty before I’m afraid this will not spark your love of it, you
already know if you love it or hate it.
The online play is I would say on par with MW2’s, it takes a little bit
more skill for you to score a kill in Black Ops and you will not be
constantly barraged by the obnoxious drone of “PREDATOR MISSILE
INBOUND”! The kill streaks in general or balanced better and are not
as cheap as the ones in MW2. A definite plus is the removal of the
nuke which ended a game with a dramatic blast.
The icing on the cake in the competitive multiplayer for me was the
introduction of “wager matches” these modes allow you to step back
from competition and have a good mess about. Sticks and stones was
a particular favourite me and my friends found fun and interesting,
where you had a crossbow, ballistic knife and a tomahawk. You get
points for killing enemies but if you get tomahawked your score’s
reset. This led to many fun rushes at the end of the game to knock my
friends off of the leader boards where one actually went ballistic
himself and exploded in a burst of colourful language.
The real highlight for me is the Zombie shooter thrown in. In this
mode you play as one of four 40’s stereotypes from America,
Germany, Russia and Japan. This mode is fun. Fun, fun, fun. I said of
world at war one time “they should take the zombies and make it a
new series”. And with some more beef I honestly think they could.
This Co-op element will cheer you up on any bad day and keep you
coming back for more, what can be better than protecting the
Whitehouse as JFK or Fidel Castro from an endless horde of mindless
drones out to eat your innards.
THE CONCLUSION
Gameplay
Its call of duty in all its gun toting glory, whether fighting through khe
sahn or Vorkuta you will never get enough of shooting cold war era
soviets. It’s a generous 8 for game play
Design
A very tight game with great control scheme and a content packed
FPS with great graphics to boot, however some annoying design
flaws, like invisible checkpoints and some questionable gun sounds
let it down. It’s a great 7 for design.
Multiplayer
One of if not the best Call of duty games for the multiplayer
capabilities, zombies, bombs, dogs and helicopter pilots help keep it 9
for multiplayer.
To conclude our breakdown of Treyarchs best call of duty effort I
would have to reward the amount of content put into this disc and
say it is definitely the best in Treyarchs library, but sadly gets sent
home wounded by call of duty modern warfare 2 but definitely a
worthy choice for any would be gamer to keep occupied for a while.
Overall worthy of an 8 / 10
Disclaimer: all opinions expressed are OPINIONS only and should not be mistaken as
fact. Antony Foster