Due to a horribly heavy workload that makes Dawn French look.... dainty, and a PS3 that is struggling after ONLY A YEAR of playing, my review of Black Ops is a little late.
No need to apologise however as my blog is still in the internet equivalent of remote tundra in popularity terms, but no matter, my time shall come.
Call Of Duty Black Ops is the brainchild of developers Treyarch who had a.... well mountain isn't the right word. If you could get a word that summed up Ronaldo's ego in rock terms that completely dwarfs any sort of known star in the universe and crowbar that in as a substitute for mountain, you would be about halfway to what Treyarch had to climb to compete with Infinity Ward, who had no effectively bought the intellectual rights to the 'cool' first person shooter for the next decade.
Metaphors of granite and quasars aside I just can't find it in me to like Black Ops, and where I don't hate it unless I have a poor game online and want to throw my controller into the mouth of whoever did the map design for multiplayer, it’s not... great.
Campaign is like a relationship with a randy but relatively unattractive girl, great if you're up for it, but still disappointing at the end of the day, regardless of good intentions. The timeline spanners about all over the place, and I've noticed over years of playing lonely single player campaign before wireless internet was cheap, (a.k.a having no friends), there is a direct correlation between chronologically ordered campaigns over a shorter time period, (that is to say GAME time, not campaign longevity), and understanding of events within the game. For example, Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 were set over about a week? (Or two I forget). Black Ops' campaign is told over 7 years, while lurching forward and backward to an interrogation room where the entire campaign is eventually revealed to be in part influenced by your own schizophrenic alter ego, which I kind of worked out after the second mission, because the same guy you happen to meet in a Russian gulag turning up on every single one of your secret missions on the other side of the world is a bit far fetched, even for a game series that gives you a magic sponge that you can wipe blood off your face with, jumps over chasms with snowmobiles and finds helicopter crashes about as fatal as a cold.
Although the idea of Black Operations, (essentially unsanctioned, off the books missions), is as old as the hills so that developers can make up any old mission they want, Black Ops is new to the COD franchise, which is good in the sense that it proves there is still at least one original entrepreneuring monkey at Treyarch, as it is fresh at least, but pulls its own trick of borrowing HEAVILY from films. World At War ripped off Enemy at the Gates, COD 2 ripped off Saving Private Ryan, and Black Ops ripped off just about every Vietnam film you'd care to name, despite the Vietnam section only being a few missions long.
The driving sections were a brave stab at something recycled ”new" , but controls felt clunky and unresponsive, and whatever you were driving soaked up damage like a sponge.
Some scenes however genuinely impressed me, such as the level "Victor Charlie" where you have to crawl through Vietcong rat tunnels getting jumped by knife wielding banzai attackers, which genuinely shit me up. Likewise with the occasional slow motion, campaign makes for some nice single player gameplay.
Multiplayer within the Call Of Duty series kind of has its own league now where nothing can compete, and every other FPS online multiplayer is kind of held up against it and judged on how similar it is, but that’s just the world we live in now.
The map design is infuriating to say the least. There is virtually no sniping maps as the map is either a) so small you can touch all four boundaries, or b) got so much shit in the way you can’t see for more than 50 metres and any sort of open area offers no cover whatsoever.
Within my first 20 games I got knifed in the back more times than I could count, hit markers were inconsistent to say the least, and my gun seemed to be spitting rubber bullets in damage terms whereas the other teams was loaded with Chuck Norris' fists.
After some hard grafting I managed to start doing well and started averaging positive K/D ratios which made me happy, and the discovery of an in-game K/D ratio, which made me happier, but the discovery it wasn't within every game mode.
Modern Warfare kind of set the high bar for online multiplayer, then MW2 lifted that massively by adding all kinds of gimmicks like more weapon attachments and killstreaks, which led to more customisability which the fans lapped up in adoration, not entirely wrongly, as they got the mix of adding just enough to make it feel very fresh but not enough to overwhelm you.
Treyarch clearly got wind of the "adding more shit = happier game players =>more £$£$, so in typical American fashion, crammed so much shit into 'Create A Class', I effectively lost all sense of navigation similar to plunging off a Boeing in the middle of the Atlantic and being asked to navigate to Belarus.
There's just TOO much choice which does allow for a lovely variety of choice and "oh look no-ones the same" unless like me and about a million other players you mostly leave everything on default because there’s just too much choice to make it worth the effort, or you don't want to spend time on what is effectively Microsoft Paint to make your little playercard simply proves how much time you spend not going out.
The earning of COD points/dollar/beans sort made no sense to me, as it supposedly balances things out, when all it does is add another frustrating ladder to this pisstake of a snakes and ladders game. What’s the point in having to rank up to unlock a gun, only to have to spend points that you earn by ranking up to unlock it? For the extras like camo and stuff maybe, but for the things you need in the game? Is it to balance out the skill? Smart, as the better you are at the game the more COD points you earn, so the better guns you can buy... just doesn’t make sense.
Some things about multiplayer are good however, such as the new modes they've put in for COD cash, which should be stand alone modes in my opinion, but are still quite inventive and fun, "One In The Chamber" is always fun as everyone having the same gun balances things out nicely, meaning its based more on skill rather than the auto-aiming-multi-spread-hyper-railgun the camping 11th Prestige is using from the other side of the map.
Ultimately, what rescues Black Ops is Zombie Mode. One of the few original ideas of Treyarch's, (meaning they hold onto it like a toddler with only child syndrome with the coolest car out the toybox), therefore for the next 90 years any game they release will probably be in it in some format. Admittedly, it was nice to incorporate a swarm mode into COD, which is what the fans all now want, all the time.
In conclusion, Black Ops has some rare moments of brilliance, and makes for a relatively tasty treat, but unlike the toasted steak and cheese Subway on Hearty Italian with BBQ sauce and red onion, the campaign comes out as a ham sandwich, tasty enough, but maybe not a filling or delicious as the aforementioned.
In fact, Black Ops is rather like a Third World dictatorship, in that the "rave" reviews that the game doesn't live up to seem mostly have been inspired by the brand rather than the game itself, which was built upon the now slightly decomposing bodies of its predecessors, ignoring glaring errors similar to having the GDP of Dagenham, such as some of the shittiest parts of levels making PS2 graphics look cutting edge, or spawning behind the guy who just spawned on your toes in Free For All.
Of course Black Ops is simply the next stepping stone to the ever higher throne of the next big thing everyone will rave about like they've got guns pressed into their spines.
Campaign- 6
Multiplayer- 7
Zombies-9 (Didn't seem fair to omit it as it comes under both categories)
