Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops

[Floppertje]

snip

I agree. Quite a few levels felt like they at least "Borrowed" from the MW and MW2 quite a bit. Among what I caught was Favela inverted in the Clarke level, WMD being a combination of "Death from Above" from MW and "Contingency" in MW2. And the Rocket Launching is getting a bit predicatble. Okay, it was really cool in MW and worked pretty well in MW2 but the mission in BO seemed kind of odd, particularly from a historical perspective.

And the last mission felt like an(Old School) James Bond endgame so, so much(movies like "They Spy who loved me" and "Moonraker"). Particulary the very last scene.

why does it seem odd from historical perspective? command guided missiles were developed in the 50's so a prototype of one in the 60's isn't that weird. besides, it's fun to blow stuff up ^^ i really enjoyed the various vehicle scenes, especially the hinds. even though they don't steer very well.

something else: the zombies intro is totally awesome! one moment they're having peacetalks and the next it's 'the pentagon has been breached! it's zombies!' XD

 

[thenumberthirteen]

yeah. I'm not going to get this now. I was on the fence, and I wouldn't have saved any money by buying it later like other games so I thought I'd wait for some reviews.

I trust the Escapist and I've found their reviews to stand up to my gaming experiences so I'm giving this one a miss. The only reason I would buy it would be for the single Player (as I do for most games) it doesn't stand up so I'm spending my money elsewhere.

A 20 minute cutscene!? What is this MGS4?

 

[Zhukov]

I am just loving the butthurt fan rage on this thread.

Music to my ears.

 

[Chris^^]

that's exactly how I felt playing it.. surprised you didn't comment on the vast array of gratuitous and unnecessary vehicle sections.. (who could fail to see the realism in driving a motorbike out of gulag whilst firing a shotgun off it one handed)

I'm gunna give the multiplayer one try, if (when) it fails to impress the game is getting sold.

 

[Shihoudani]

Honestly I think The Escapist has been drinking a bit too much Kool-Aid mixed with Southern Comfort. Graphics are a little worse then MW2, yet I wouldn't say the story is bad at all in Black Ops. In fact in comparison with all the other contrived stories that Modern Warfare or in fact most of the CoD's, short of the World War II versions. The story is actually pretty interesting. I like the different flavors one goes through as you enter each memory. Is this a bargain bin game? No I wouldn't say so in the least.

Multiplayer is fun and relatively fast paced. Zombie Mode is a lot of entertainment when you're with your friends. Dead Ops is a great time waster in the hopes of having a large high score, and the single players story is unique enough that it doesn't feel like the previous CoD from last year.

 

[Darth_Dude]

SERIOUSLY!?

Wow Russ, you tore this game apart. This has to be my favourite COD of all time, it had a terrific story that was fun ,intense and felt like a movie. Everywhere else is giving it good reviews, dont know what happened here.

I guess each to his own, although the sales wil tell all in the end eh?

 

[oneshotfinchy]

Piss poor review, seems like he's trying to indulge COD haters rather than helping people who are on the fence.

 

[DTWolfwood]

Happy i saved my $60. Thanks Russ for making my mind at ease. I had suspected the single player would not be any good. I don't play online shooters enough to justify the expenditure if it doesn't have at least a compelling Single-player to boot.

 

[Hanzo Hattori]

Well the Story is kinda... special. I mean, I love cutscenes and all that stuff in general so I really enjoyed the campaign. But yeah it's hella different to previous CODs.


To MP:

I keep getting the issue that I dont see any freaking server in my serverlist, even if it's finding them. It looks like "Servers: 0(896)". This is SO pissing me off. It hasn't ANYTHING to do with my ports and all that stuff, since I traced like every single damn package on my network monitor.
The Activision/Steam support doesn't help me too, since they're giving the same advises over and over again, even If I tell them that this isnt a clientside problem.

It seems there are plenty of other ppl experiencing that problem....

Seriously guys, this is getting me upset.

 

[MetaKnight19]

I liked Black Ops, as far as story goes its decent but I still prefer the CoD4 story over all of them. The graphics while not outstanding still look really nice, especially in the set-piece moments. Probably the main reason people will buy this is for the multiplayer and it is a lot less frustrating the the MW2 multiplayer, none of those Ranger shotguns that kill you from a mile away. I only paid £16 for it anyway so its not as though I'm losing out by paying full price.

 

[silasbufu]

Actually the campaign was better than the last ones. At least they tried something new ( not like mw2 where some guy just goes rogue and betrayes you..oh nooo how could I have not predicted this??) , plus you get to meet very interesting people, avoiding spoilers. And if you finish the game the story will make sense just fine.

P.S. I see alot of hypocrites here. Everyday you see posts like "oh fuck the graphics, I don't care about that, content is the most important", and now everyone disses the graphics, when the content is pretty solid itself.

Whatever, I liked it, I respect all your opinions, but give it a chance. At least rent it or something.

Also, Russ, I detect a scent of trolling in your review. I think when you started to play the game and make the review, you already had your mind made up about it. At least that's how it seems.

 

[Karathos]

I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and thought the voices were great. Sam Worthington, Gary Oldman, Ed Harris - all brilliant, recognizeable voices that made it very enjoyable for me. Maybe I'm just easier to please than the people at the Escapist I suppose - I don't know.

And oh, Black Ops gets so many points for being actually FUN multiplayer (unlike certain other Call of Duty-games) that it'd have to give me an epileptic seizure from the flashing lights before I started seriously cutting off points at my personal review table.

Happy i saved my $60. Thanks Russ for making my mind at ease. I had suspected the single player would not be any good. I don't play online shooters enough to justify the expenditure if it doesn't have at least a compelling Single-player to boot.

Shouldn't take one person's word for it tbh. I suggest you rent it, or play at a friend some weekend. Escapist reviews are usually fairly accurate, but I think this one didn't hit the mark. Then again reviews -are- personal opinions so that doesn't mean anything really. Just saying. If you're on the fence, you shouldn't completely dismiss it. If you don't wanna spend money - play at a friend's house.

Quick edit: Just noticed you guys played on the 360. I haven't played console-versions of these games in a while, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest the graphics are better on a PC - way better, because I sure wasn't sitting there going "God these graphics are horrible". They weren't mindblowing on my PC, but certainly not "hammered shit"-level.

 

[mchoueiri]

Interesting review but I am still gonna pick it up.

 

[Withard]

I love it when staff members jump to the defense.

 

[Nukarama]

I gotta disagree. Yes, the voice acting is terrible. Yes, the story is convoluted. The twists and turns may seem like an ass pull at first but go back through an look at it again. It makes sense. Oh, and zombies are fun to slaughter as well.

 

[Gralian]

I can't help but feel the Escapist is pandering to its own community, as i'm sure the staff are well aware of all the 'i hate CoD / Halo / Modern FPS' threads, and so this comes up. I think it's Russ who gave Blood Stone a favourable review? You know that game only got a 5 from IGN, and Gametrailers slated it as being terribly mediocre and short - to the point of only being 5 or 6 hours? The review didn't even touch upon the extras, like Dead Ops Arcade, as the extras are really what make Black Ops. Even Zombie Mode, one of the most desired / talked about features wasn't mentioned. I can't help but feel that the review is either terribly biased or terribly simplistic. I understand the Escapist isn't on the same level as Gamespot / Gametrailers for professional reviews and serves as an online magazine(?) but even so, this feels a bit weak to me.

 

[Tbone123]

Ok.....let me start by saying that I was looking through Metacritic in regards to the review of this game. The Escapist was the lowest at 40. I then proceeded to find out why they rated this game so low and I still cannot figure out why. Does the game have enough quality for a nominamtion for game of the year? No. Is the game good? Sure! I totally disagree on the score given by The Escapist. Are you telling me that this game is equally as bad as Naught Bear, Ninety-Nine Knights and Clash of the Titans for which you rated these games as a 40 as well? I'd like to know what your agenda is by reviewing this so low. Are we even playing the same game? I guess opinions are like buttholes.....everyone has one. This will be my last and only post on this site. To all the true gamers out there I bid you godspeed.

 

[Darth_Dude]

Ok.....let me start by saying that I was looking through Metacritic in regards to the review of this game. The Escapist was the lowest at 40. I then proceeded to find out why they rated this game so low and I still cannot figure out why. Does the game have enough quality for a nominamtion for game of the year? No. Is the game good? Sure! I totally disagree on the score given by The Escapist. Are you telling me that this game is equally as bad as Naught Bear, Ninety-Nine Knights and Clash of the Titans for which you rated these games as a 40 as well? I'd like to know what your agenda is by reviewing this so low. Are we even playing the same game? I guess opinions are like buttholes.....everyone has one. This will be my last and only post on this site. To all the true gamers out there I bid you godspeed.

Bye, we certainly won't miss you/

 

[Popido]

Good review. I have been only hearing good things about this game, yet theres so many people that hate it. Its good to have some honest critizism for once.

I havent played this game yet by myself, but now that I've seen how the audience reacted to this, I dont think that I ever will.