Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops

[Ross Fixxed]

I'm not a huge multi player fan (read: I'm rubbish) but I partly negated the issue of the single player by renting it... then finishing it in 2 days of casual play...

For me the real issue in the game is just how scripted the sections are. Take the guy he stabs in the video, drags the body off etc. If you die after this you have to go back and do the same pre-scripted stabbing, the same cut scene of the body being dragged and so on. It got distracting. I'm a COD fan but this was the first time the bad AI and the restrictive scripting really interfered with the game for me.

But for 7 bucks a rental is worth the money, it's like a passable thriller that you can sometimes play.

I rented Medal of Honor, while not a great campaign the guns felt more solid, the kills were more visceral and I have to say the little head shot icon made me feel more skilled / badass while I played it. I can't put my finger on it exactly but COD just felt a little nerfed...

 

[anonymity88]

Aye, I thought the campaign's plot was a lot more interesting and clever than MW2's, and I liked the way they did the whole "most of the game levels are flashbacks whilst he's being interrogated". It tried to do something different.

Alpha Protocol's story is told as a series interrogation flashbacks so I fail to see the trying something different angle.

 

[Semitendon]

Wow! Am I missing something here? I don't understand the hate for Treyarch.

I played Modern Warfare, and I wasn't impressed. It was bland, the story non-existant, with forgettable characters. It was so unimpressive, that when MW2 came out, I didn't buy, and I still haven't played a single second of that game.

Black Ops isn't in the " greatest game ever" range, and it's fair to say that it's not even close. But, it suffers from none of the weak points of other shooters, and at the very least, is intelligently different.

For example, MW ( and presumably, MW2) are the roughly the same as all the other modern era shooters, the Tom Clancy games being among the most popular. Maybe, MW and MW2 look better and play smoother than those games, but then, it's COD, that's what we expect.

Black Ops breaks the mold, it's the 60's, the CIA, and Vietnam. When is the last time we saw a shooter that wasn't modern, sci-fi, or world war 2? I can only think of a couple of games, and those were civil war era shooters.

Black Ops does have it's weak points, as all games do. But, this review seems unneccesarily harsh. Honestly, if there is a difference in the graphics, it wasn't very noticable. The voice acting was average, remembering that average is commonplace, so that shouldn't be counted against them.The cut-scenes are too numerous and do break the flow of the game, so, fair point there. The storyline is what you would expect for focusing on the 60's era CIA, assuming that anyone had ever played a 60's era CIA shooter.

My point is, that altough it's far from perfect, it's has no hugely noticable downsides when compared against other shooters, and the slight upside of having an uncommon setting.

Which brings me back to the start, if Black Ops is a competent average shooter, then I can only assume that it's being bashed because Treyarch made it, which is often explicitly mentioned by reviewers. So, I say again, Why all the hate for Treyarch?

 

[ChupathingyX]

It's funny how in the review complaints are made about cliches, bad voice acting and a crappy singleplayer. But doesn't Halo have bad voice acting, cliches and a crappy singleplayer that no one even plays and everyone goes for multiplayer, and yet Halo: Reach got 5 stars and this got 2 (yes I am aware of different reviewers). I call major bias fanboyism. Seriously Halo is about good humans fighting evil aliens, never heard that before. Not to mention the soldiers are wearing power armour, spit military jargon every 5 seconds and say the same suicide worthy one liners all the time coming from annoying voices that are trying way too hard to be badass, not to mention as Yahtzee said the most heroic death competition. You just can't give Halo a good score and then give Black Ops a worse one.

I'm not saying BO deserves 5 stars, I'm against scoring games, but it should not be considerdd inferior to games like Halo: Reach that does pretty much the same mistakes.

Opinion.

 

[supaflystrikes]

The worst review I've ever seen. For anything. Ever.
I agree that the story was pretty bad, and the graphics were downgraded a bit, but you didn't even discuss multiplayer at all. You just said a lot of people played it. You didn't discuss Zombies, Theater Mode, Combat Training, Dead Ops Arcade, Wager Matches etc. It's really not a surprise. The reviewers on this site seem to hate everything mainstream, and Call of Duty is the most mainstream series in history. The game is great, but not perfect. I'd give it a 8.9/10.

 

[BrownGaijin]

To Whoever said that user reviews were better...think about that for a second. You're letting the 12 year olds, trolls, and frantic fanboys...

You mean like these guys:

Spoiler

I found it to be... compelling.

OT: I finished playing it. So who is going to make the next one, Hideo Kojima?

 

[knight56]

I'm trying to decide whether or not to get the game. I never saw any trailers. The only things about the game I saw were other reviews on the basic sites, and one multiplayer video on my xbox dashboard two weeks ago. And from my point of view:

The review is unbelievably vague. Unimaginative, and just reiterates what a person who already doesn't like Call of Duty would say. The video is hard to follow and it shows and says a lot of things out of context. It gives the editor's opinion without really explaining it and the comments on graphics sound like it's coming out of a whining child.

The review is also drastically inconsistent with other sites, not even destructoid was this harsh.

As a potential consumer just doing research, I am unbelievably confused

So I'm going to get the game and see where the drastic difference in opinion came from.

If it's right, then Mr. Pitts is right but he needs to put more effort into his review then the simple "oh I've seen this shit 1000 times before" which was worded a lot more interestingly in the Halo Reach review. Actually come to think of it, the Halo Reach review had a different author.

If it's wrong, then Mr. Pitts is just trying to get attention and doing the easiest way possible and as a result, sacrificing his integrity.

 

[bjj hero]

I bought this simply because all of my friends are playing the multiplayer. I've not touched the campaign yet, I'm not feeling the need to either.

I would say that the game is bowling shoe ugly though. I thought games looked better in the sequels? Unless you give it to another developer with a history of sub par games. Treyarch are yet to make a game that I love, or that I play for more than a couple of months.

I might be leaving the COD series after this as IW is now IW in name only an Treyarch are yet to make a game that is better than mediocre. Treyarch would have been out of work long ago if they were not able to feed from IWs work like an over paid parasite.

 

[Subversive71]

I know right?! I have no idea what game he was playing!

 

[Reshkar]

It's sad, I love the escapist, but people take these reviews as if they're only right. I think their shouldn't be perfessonal reviews anymore for any game, only user reviews.

No offense, but seriously, people read this and then say "well this guy says it sucks, so it must suck." Without ever even trying it. People should try games for themselves, not just going off the opinion of others.

I am not saying this review is right or wrong, its someones opinion and I don't want to change that, I just hate when reviewer's opinions are taken above anyone elses.

And user reviews would be different...how, exactly? Assuming, of course, people paid any attention to them, which is all folks are doing here. They're reading the review, and deciding for themselves whether or not they still want to get the game. Paying attention to a professional reviewer and paying attention to an amateur one is no different.

In my opinion, I think reviews are more of a opinion, that must be taken in consideration in which you would decide to buy the game or not. I never decide upon buying a game out of a review, I love to hear other people's thought about it, what they like/dislike, what could have been done better etc..

 

[ThisNewGuy]

Wow. I completely and utterly agree with this review. It's very rare that I actually have the same opinion on a highly anticipated title as the reviewer.

 

[VanBasten]

Call of Duty: Black Ops lacks the "wow" that elevates previous installments in the series.

Errrr, while I agree with most of what has been said in the review, I fail to see how all of that somehow doesn't apply to MW2 as well, or any CoD really.

I'm also really surprised that reviewers are suddenly realizing after 7 games that "ZOMG, CoD is scripted!!!"

Also, arguably one of the best missions in the entire series, All Ghillied Up from CoD4, is basically follow a guy and hide behind a pipe(or pipe equivalent). So there's nothing inherently bad about that.

This review is basically saying this BO is bad because it's CoD.
Which would be an understandable point, had the reviewer not made another point saying that the other CoD's are all good. To which I can only say: Wait, what?

 

[Ryuu814]

Really? Cause it uh, seemed fine to me.

Nothing completely spectacular, but as far as single player FPS's go, its not bad.

Right, as far as FPS single player games go the stroy was actually pretty good. Sure the whole interrogation scenes and all that were jarring but I found the story to be pretty good, better than Modern Warfare 2 to be honest which seemed to have little or no story development apart from that one twist middle/end game of the campaign for that I just took MW2 as the typical American against Russian thing.

At least no-one dies in this game XDD well...they do but your not playing as them when they die XD.

but as someone else mentioned here, Reviewers are just expressing their own opinions, no matter what they say it would be their opinion ^_^ so I usually take reviews with a grain on salt XDD not to say I don't take their ipinions into consideration. But I've already played Black Ops before reading this XDD

nice review though

 

[Toasted Nuts]

Wow he hates this game.

I am not going to have a go at the reviewer for not liking the game. And i am not a CoD fanboy at all, I much prefer the battlefield series. However I bought MW2 and have bought this game. Multiplayer not withstanding, the single player on this game was at least as good if not better than MW2, which had probably one of the WORST story lines I have seen in the game, espcially from a flowing coherent story aspect. Awful narrative, samey levels over and over again.

If this game gets a 2* for single player. MW2 should have got a 1*.

 

[GuiltBlade]

Well that's Treyarch. I really don't understand why they can't grasp why modern warfare was successfully, and why it is they insist on scripting everything your character does instead of setting the stage and then letting you run from A to B dodging gunfire.

Some people are noting that CoD is always heavily scripted, the difference is that Treyarch's releases take all the dramatic moments, all the meaningful moments and they do this because they were too worried about leaving control in the users hands.
If MW1 had been Treyarch, the radiation scene would have been a cutscene, the end of game hold out would have removed all game functions instead of at least giving yo a mock sense of control with last stand mod.

Final difference of much note betwean the two developers, Infinity ward let the player define the actions and directions for the non story related moments. The story angle is explained and then left to play in the background so the game can leave the player to hunt down every last hostile in a city suburb they are given full access to.

Treyarch's releases will give you 3 paths, which will meet up for anything even vaguely important such as your Sargent/Partner telling you what he just did and which way the enemy went, but in actual game terms his information is useless, and in story terms it adds nothing.

In short my thoughts boil down to, Ughh another Treyarch CoD, move on already guys, someone else does these much better than you do.

 

[Dana22]

The story is better and makes more sense then one from MW2.

 

[mrF00bar]

I agree with him, I was really disappointed with the game. It just was not as good as the previous ones, this is what happens when Activities screws everything up.

 

[sharpe95th]

Well I liked the story missions, when it actually let you play the game rather than shine bright lights in your face, maybe there were a few too many gimmicky levels where you're driving bikes and helicopters and stuff and perhaps a few too many stealth sections but when it got back to the regular loud and frantic firefights that characterise the series it was good fun. I think perhaps where Black Ops has got it wrong is that it's all about super secret special forces. The odd special ops stealthy stealthy oooh look how bad ass special forces are missions are fine but I've always prefered the more down to earth regular soldier missions like Wolverines in MW2, Warpig in Cod4, pretty much every mission in CoD2, and so on. It's those more grounded regular missions that made me love the series. Maybe that's just me but I'd be interested to see what types of missions other CoD players prefer.

 

[Seneschal]

It's sad, I love the escapist, but people take these reviews as if they're only right. I think their shouldn't be perfessonal reviews anymore for any game, only user reviews.

No offense, but seriously, people read this and then say "well this guy says it sucks, so it must suck." Without ever even trying it. People should try games for themselves, not just going off the opinion of others.

I am not saying this review is right or wrong, its someones opinion and I don't want to change that, I just hate when reviewer's opinions are taken above anyone elses.

If you want to trust what IGN says, when practically every AAA title advertizes on their site and subsequently gets a nice 9/10, then go ahead.

Still, I wasn't expecting a review this harsh. I remember in CoD4 how the missions flowed naturally. Sure, there wasn't any advanced characterization or anything, but it had a rigid structure, three very thematically separated arcs, two different perspectives on the events, some amusing banter between the leads, and a very decent pace. And that was Infinity Ward, whose MW2 treated the single-player like an unsightly parasite on their beautiful online gameplay. I was expecting Treyarch to be all like: "Let us show you how it's done! *gives us a wonderfully engaging campaign mode*"

Ugh.