Call of Duty: Black Ops
by Activision Publishing
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Product Summary
Brand: ActivisionAudio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Published: 2010-11
Release Date: 2010-11-09
Platform: Xbox 360
Model: 84003
Publisher: Activision Publishing
Product features:
- Wide array of play modes including single player, local multiplayer versus and online co-op and multiplayer
- Seventh installment of the Call of Duty series, based on the live fire conflicts of the Cold War era
- Diverse variety of play setting ranging from urban air and ground combat in SE Asia, to snow combat in Soviet region and jungle combat
- Blending of traditional COD, and new first-person character scenarios designed to both retain the essence of the COD gaming experience
- New arsenal of weapons and vehicles tied to the Cold War era, including the SR-71 Blackbird and sited explosive-tipped crossbows
- And ensure constantly flowing and varied action
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Video Game Reviews of Call of Duty: Black Ops
Customer Review: Big dumb mess
Summary: 2 Stars
And I actually really like World at War. This one is nowhere near any of its predecessors (except maybe Call of Duty 3).
The Zombies thing is standard affair, and the multiplayer takes a lot from Modern Warfare 2, adds a lot of new things, but overall still feels the same as World at War's multiplayer (which isn't really a bad thing; my biggest problem with WaW's multiplayer was that bolt-action rifles were made virtually pointless against machine guns) including identical menus and perk icon designs.
It may definitely be a troublesome task trying to pick between this and MW2 for casual multiplayer gaming.
The single player campaign, however, is a total disaster, by the standards set in every Call of Duty game since COD4, or perhaps even COD2.
The story:
- The story doesn't even begin to come into shape until mid-way through the campaign. It starts with Generic Loner Badass Alex Mason, the guy with virtually the same name as the guy from Red Faction: Guerrilla, and so badass, John F Kennedy tells him directly he's the best they've got, in a pretty non-Cold War looking room full of television screens, apparently strapped into a chair and being questioned angrily by a distorted voice. Every mission save for the last are in the form of flashbacks from this location.
Alex Mason is painfully unlikeable, with no personality and no real redeeming traits, and the acting done by Sam Worthington with him is so painfully dull, or painfully overacted, it makes his "Avatar" performance look Oscar-worthy. At no point in the game did I care about what he was doing or what was wrong with him.
In fact, I realized he was pretty stupid for a CIA agent and BEST FIGHTER GUY IN THE EVAR, given not only the poor decisions made for the control interface (such as taking twice as long now to throw back grenades, or being unable to pilot a Hind to have it rise up or down, while being able to do everything else in it). The plot twist at the end involving Reznov was alluded to, which helped in making the preceding scenes not seem stupid in hindsight, came about quite confused and unclear, and Alec Mason's brutish reaction to it is the sort of thing that, given that there is a TIMER RUNNING on the DESTRUCTION OF THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND PERHAPS THE ENTIRE WESTERN HEMISPHERE, makes him cartoonishly buffoonish, especially given that this plot twist has virtually NOTHING TO DO with the very ending in stopping this aforementioned destruction.
The story is so convoluted, that I honestly don't even remember what the first five or six missions were, and why. It just seemed like they were there solely for the action. Which you'd think would be a given for a video game, but this is not exactly commonplace in the Call of Duty franchise. Considering the Jason Bourne-style rapidfire incoherence they approach it with, it might be a short stretch to say they were intentionally attempting to fill the game up with confusing early missions filled with nonstop action.
When it finally gets to the story itself, it involves the Soviet Union attempting to wipe out the United States using a nerve gas called NOVA-6 that causes quick death, and is planned to be launched on the US mainland in several dozen spots, to pretty much destroy the entire country and its entire population. Such a direct, apocalyptic action, given the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction, with both the US and USSR posessing over 9000 nuclear weapons each, the sanity, or even basic common sense of such a plan is... pretty nonexistent. I know the Soviets were villainized harshly by the Americans, but I highly doubt they and their leaders were suicidal, homicidal, genocidal cretins
The Missions:
- The first few missions are a scatter-brained assortment of big set pieces with obscenely copious amounts of gunfire and explosions. While scenes like the Bay of Pigs are surprisingly accurate with regards to scope, it still feels excessive with the sheer amount of gunfire that gets poured into you, and the enemy, in just the few minutes the level lasts, which amplified over the course of three days, would become excessive; the actual Bay of Pigs had between 100-200 dead, and 500+ wounded (not including civilians); the way it's depicted in the game, this all would possibly fit into the few minutes depicted.
Virtually every level is a colossal mess of hundreds of soldiers (endlessly respawning, of course), constant explosions, a cacaphony of nutty weapons that I often question even existed in the 1960s (such as a proto-version of the Thermal Scope in MW2, or gun-mounted flamethrowers that somehow don't melt the gun's barrel after constant use, or high powered assault rifles with five different attachments on it), and gore that gets so copious, it becomes cartoonish; like shooting a soldier in the hand with a pistol, and having his ENTIRE HAND AND WRIST be blown off. Or worse; shooting once at a soldier on a motorcycle, while also on a motorcycle, and having him literally explode into a vapor of small pieces of gore.
- But the single worst, most frustrating thing about the missions is the legendarily thick AI. I have NEVER seen AI this atrocious in the Call of Duty series since only the last mission of Call of Duty 4 (on Veteran Mode) with Ssgt. Griggs rushing out into the open, standing in front of an enemy, and shooting wildly in random directions.
At least 70% or 80% of all missions will be You vs an Army, because your allies rarely, if ever, hit anything, and they ALWAYS take a few seconds before even RECOGNIZING an enemy soldier; I could not count the times a friendly unit would simply RUN PAST an enemy unit, and that enemy unit of course ignoring them and targeting ME exclusively.
This sort of stupidity is even scripted, as in one sequence a group of friendlies is ambushed by Vietcong soldiers, and as one of them is shooting a friendly soldier dead, one of your allies rushes up to him, holding his assault rifle near his waist, Hollywood-style, the gun jams, he looks down at it, struggles to fix it, and the Vietcong soldier turns around, LOOKS AT HIS GUN, then uses his own gun to bash the man upside the head. THIS MAN IS SUPPOSED TO BE AN INSANELY WELL-TRAINED SPECIAL OPS SOLDIER.
Another frustrating problem, almost as bad as the horrendous AI, is actually SEEING who is an enemy and who isn't. Whereas in the WW2 games, people wore uniforms, and even in Modern Warfare 2, you could tell who the OpFor agents were, due to their haphazard attire and occasional turbans, or who Russians were based on their dark red fatigues, here, EVERYONE IS DRESSED EXACTLY THE SAME in the same assortment of pants or jeans, shirts, vests, jackets, masks, headpieces, ALL DARK. The only people not dressed this way are Vietcong and NVA soldiers (and Nazis in a flashback mission).
The horrendous AI doesn't help with this either; there's such a gape in the reaction time for enemy AI, that I've never EVER adapted to turning a corner, seeing someone there, and just waiting for a full second to see if they're a friendly, or if they shoot me, or if I end up shooting at them and they turn out to be an ally.
Another incredibly frustrating element is the Hind piloting. Alex Everyman gets to do BOTH the piloting AND the shooting, and the limitations means that while you can't crash your helicopter into caverns or walls or upside big ships (which is a good thing) you also can't elevate or descend (which is a very very bad thing). There comes a point in one mission where you have to destroy two opposing Hinds, and you're all alone. The missiles do NOT lock on in ANY way, and the enemy Hinds CONSTANTLY rise and descend to avoid YOUR incoming fire, whereas YOU can not. Sometimes, they will even fire DOWN at you, with you unable to hit them unless you turn on your side, strafing wildly and trying to shoot at them while you're moving at high speed. Add to the frustration for achievement-hunters, there is an achievement for accomplishing this mission WITHOUT using the Hind's cannons, and ONLY using its rockets. The rockets are infinite, but they reload slowly. Fatally slow, up against the two Hinds, if you're not a good shot.
The Weapons:
- Like I mentioned before, I think there's a slight credibility gap with regards to some of the weapons in the game, or weapon upgrades which seem either ridiculous, a bit of a stretch to picture existing in the 1960s, or incredibly goofy. A gun with a bottom-mounted flamethrower is an awesome thing in game, but I've never seen or heard of this being used before, and it would seem to me that, given where the flame begins, continued use would melt the gun barrel. There's a neat variety of guns, perhaps more than in Modern Warfare 2.
One of the great things is that most of the guns have a more realistic sound than in previous games, more like firecrackers than bombs.
The multiplayer has a new system of upgrading in which you do not unlock weapons, perks, or upgrades in a linear way, but you earn "money" in each match, and use it to purchase weapons, perks, upgrades, etcetera. This is neat, as you can choose to unlock a laser sight ahead of a grenade launcher, or to unlock your favorite Assault rifle before your favorite Shotgun, but this introduces a whole new issue, which would probably not be an issue for many players:
It renders certain upgrades useless. Why bother to buy Laser sight, when you can get a better sight, or a Reflex sight, which is exactly the same, and only different in aesthetics? Why upgrade something you don't like? Why buy a perk you never use? With previous games, you could unlock certain things by kills, and unlock other things by kills using certain upgrades (such as unlocking Holographic sights by getting 60 kills with Laser sights), essentially forcing you to use virtually every upgrade in order to unlock the rest.
The Characters:
- There are the standard character archetypes here; the Generic Loner Badass protagonist, the Token Black Guy (who obviously dies first), the Sidekick Guy, the Scrappy, the Tough All-Business Veteran Guy, the Nerdy Politician (voiced by Robert Picardo), etcetera. None of them are particularly interesting.
Most of all, Alecks Mason, is called the BEST THEY HAVE and treated like a testosterone-souped Mary Sue, complete with no evidence of why he is the BEST THEY HAVE, no likeable characteristics, a dull tone of voice, total lack of charisma, and either a below average intelligence, or very poor judgement. I found myself smacking my forehead, calling him such an idiot as, towards the end, he needlessly punches the guy trying to help him, and trying to SAVE THE COUNTRY FROM TOTAL DESTRUCTION just so he can stumble about in a drugged haze, and then get punched in return later on.
However, there is the appearance of Viktor Reznov, Sergeant from World at War, boistrously performed by Gary Oldman. With the dullness of playing as Alex Mason all game wearing me down, a flashback mission from October 1945 with me as Reznov, and also speaking, I was rejuvenated, and found myself actually having fun instead of going through the motions with the game. We also get to see Dimitri Petrenko from World at War, and him speaking, but it's nothing remarkable. It's also refreshing to hear music from World at War returning for the flashback mission.
Possibly the single biggest problem I have with the characterizations is that they all behave like movie stars in a generic Hollywood action flick. The military professionalism of the special ops teams and armies in the Modern Warfare series was taut and compelling and COOL. Here, the actors chomp scenery madly, spouting lines with ridiculous intonation, a total lack of professionalism among them. There's no dry humor or wisecracks, military-slanged quips, or "Cut the chatter!"s, but tons of "Hell yeah!" and "Kick some ass!" and all other sorts of adolescent trash talk.
Playing through the campaign was a dismal, frustrating, boring experience. The multiplayer is not any MAJOR improvement over Modern Warfare 2, and its true staying power may, as with World at War, lie with its Commie Zombie functions.
Description of Call of Duty: Black Ops
The newest installment in the biggest action series of all time and the follow-up to last year's blockbuster Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops launches on November 9, 2010.
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