Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops

18 Dec, 2010

Yes, yes, I know. The game has been out for weeks – this review should have gone up ages ago. The thing is, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to stop playing!

Even now my Xbox controller is giving me the eye..

As you probably know by now, if you’re a regular at GGS Gamer, I was (unfashionably) late to the FPS party, having my first experience when I picked up Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 back at the beginning of the year. How is this relevant to this review? Because I don’t have a huge library of first-person shooters to compare it to. I haven’t played Treyarch‘s other title, Call of Duty: World at War so I won’t be comparing it to that either. This could be a good or a bad thing, depending on which way you look at it.

This review is going to be mainly concerned with the campaign and will only touch briefly on the multiplayer – partly because so many other sites have covered it to death and partly because I’m crap at it.

Okay, let’s do this!

From the moment I put the disc in, I knew that this wasn’t gong to be just another bulk-standard FPS. Before all you COD fans out there start hurling insults at me, yes, I know it’s a Call of Duty title and therefore must be awesome, but you must forgive me for thinking that, as this is the seventh main title in the franchise, it could be in danger of getting a little repetitive.

Not so.

The game starts with you strapped to a chair, surrounded by TV monitors and other electrical equipment. You are being interrogated by a disembodied (and heavily disguised) voice who wants to know the code to decipher the numbers that are flashing on the monitors around you. When you don’t give the answers they want to hear, an electric current is put through you. Nice, huh?

You play as several different characters throughout the game but the main story revolves around the character of Alex Mason and plays out in a series of flashbacks as you recall – with the aid of your interrogator and his electrical current – past missions in an attempt to remember the code and meaning behind the numbers that they are so sure you are privy to. Some people have complained that the flashback approach makes the game feel too “scripted” and “movie-like” – for me it piqued my interest immediately and made me want to play to find out the meaning of the numbers and whether or not the main character would ever escape his captors.

Set in the ’60s, the story takes you to various locations including Cuba, where you are part of an operation to assassinate Fidel Castro, and the U.S. where you are given direct orders from President Kennedy. In addition to this, you also carry out missions in Russia, Vietnam and other locations.

So what about the actual gameplay? Let’s be honest here, it’s an FPS – it plays like an FPS. If you’re familiar with the genre, you won’t have any problems with the controls. If you’re not, you have an Aim Assist feature which you can enable/disable in the options menu as well as four difficulty settings to choose from to suit your skill level. Several new elements were added to the gameplay to give it a fresh feel. These range from new weapons (crossbow with explosive bolts, anyone?) to piloting aircraft, boats and motorbikes.

You may (or may not) recall my article describing one such mission from a preview at Gamescom, back in the summer. I can confirm that the mission was just as much fun to play as it was to watch. Another mission sees you acting as the pilot and gunner on a Hind, where you are expected to take out enemies on the ground as well as deal with 2 Soviet Hinds.

My only complaint with regards to gameplay – and it is a relatively minor one – is that the missions seemed to get easier, the further into the game you got. Some of the earlier missions had me nearly throwing the controller through the TV, I died so many times but either I got better at the game (!) or the missions got progressively easier.

Despite those early hiccups though, the game was amazingly fun to play.

Multiplayer

Treyarch have added a lot of new features to the multiplayer, giving you several options to choose from. As mentioned above, I’m not going go into too much detail on each mode but rather, give a basic overview of the new features.

COD Points
You earn COD points each time you play a match online. What are they used for? Well, unlike the other Call of Duty titles, you need to use your COD points to “buy” weapons, perks, killstreaks, etc. What’s really neat about this whole system is that, even though only a limited number of weapons are available to you when you first start out (the rest you unlock as you rank up, the same as the other COD titles) all of the perks are available for purchase once you rank up to level 4 and unlock Custom Classes. This system just seems to make the game a lot more balanced and works well.

Wager Matches
Wager Matches consist of several different free-for-all game modes; One in the Chamber, Sticks and Stones, Gun Game and Sharp Shooter. These matches require an “entry fee” paid in COD points. If you place in the top three at the end of the match, you get a payout (again, in COD points) but if you place lower than that, you lose your entry fee.

Combat Training
This mode does pretty much what it says on the tin. Combat Training recreates the Player Match mode but instead of pitting your skills against other players, you are playing against AI. You can choose either Team Deathmatch or Free-For-All and can select your difficulty in the Game Options menu. Selecting the harder difficulties gives you an experience which is surprisingly close to the real thing. You have the same weapons and perks available and the same unlocks as you rank up. You also have the option of playing with friends by creating a party. It is worth noting, however, that any experience, COD Points or unlocks do not carry over to the Player Match mode.

Theater
Anyone familiar with the Halo series will be familiar with Theatre mode. This mode allows you to playback your recent games, take screenshots and record clips. You game stores your last 100 games and these are viewable by yourself or your friends if they visit your profile. Theatre mode is only applicable to Player Match and Wager Match. Campaign and Combat Training don’t include this feature.

Obviously, I can’t finish this review without giving the Zombies a mention. With the popularity of Nazi Zombies on Call of Duty: World at War, there was no way Treyarch were going to let Black Ops escape from the zombie treatment. All players have three maps available; “Kino der Toten” is available immediately and sees you fending off hordes of zombies in an abandoned theatre, “Five” is unlocked once you complete the campaign and is set in the Pentagon. The last (and most bizarre) is Dead Ops Arcade which (as the title suggests) is an arcade style version of Zombies. This map (mode?) can be unlocked from the title screen.

I have to admit, despite all the hype, I didn’t expect to enjoy Black Ops as much as I did (and do!). I certainly didn’t expect the story to intrigue me as much either and the twist at the end was totally unexpected.

I’d recommend this game to Call of Duty veterans and newbies, alike. Sure, there are issues that need ironing out with the multiplayer but it’s far from unplayable and Treyarch are releasing updates and patches to address these issues.

The game gives you everything you could want: the campaign is fun, the multiplayer addictive (and amusing when you can use Theater mode to record a clip of that guy that did a strange jumping pirouette in the hopes of pulling off a cool kill and failing completely when you knife him in the back when he’s trying to get his bearings after the aforementioned weird pirouette thing. What?) and when you get bored of those, you can risk your COD points on Wager Matches or battle hordes of zombies to shake things up a bit.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is available now on Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Wii.

[rating:4.5]