plabtunesGame Review Call Of Duty Black Opps
February 6th 2011 13:02
As a series, Call of Duty felt dead to me. I was tired of both single player and multi-player forms of the game and the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops just didn't excite me. I felt as though I had done as much as my thumbs had wanted to do within it's war-torn grasp.
I enjoyed the multiplayer games of the past but after a while the online community broke me down a little with its screaming teenagers and their 'win at any cost' mentality, and I found that I just wasn't having fun any more.
The single-player game, which was always worth a punt, had seemed to grow a little tired. Despite new settings, the basic mechanics never really progressed from the landmark CoD 4. It felt that Treyarch's World at War was trying to live up to the legendary Modern Warfare, and that the developers feared to change anything too much in case of a backlash. Modern Warfare 2, although good, felt as though it had to stay faithful to the series.
What we were left with were three excellent games in their own right, but titles that were far too similar to get you excited for a fourth. So, it was safe to say that Black Ops didn't quite have the same buzz about it amongst the hardcore gaming community, no matter what the mass-media press would have liked you to believe.
I decided to play through the campaign first. I suppose I was a little too scared to log into a multi-player match. I'd been playing a lot of Halo Reach before this, so I didn't want the first time I threw a grenade against a wall by accident to be in front of a group of people. I wanted to save those moments for just me. I didn't want anyone to know how much of a n00b I had become.
As it so happens, CoD Blops doesn't give you any sort of chance to familiarise yourself with the controls. Unlike the games before it, there is no tutorial. No assault course to run around, no potato grenade to chuck at a bottle. You are dropped head first into battle. This was either an arrogant swagger, or the first in many decisions made to steer the series away from the template it had become.
Either way it was an eye opener. Within moments of the game loading, I was firing a harpoon gun at a helicopter in order to to bring it down. It felt like the start of a brainless action movie. One that had a shit-ton of money that it wasn't afraid of spending. Little was I to know that this was just the tip of the iceberg.
Black Ops never lets up. There is no room for controlled storyline build up, not when there are cars to blow up. Your journey through the game feels like all of Arnold Schwarzenegger's films edited together, after deleting any scene without and explosion. Well, maybe with the exception of Jingle All The Way.
As brainless and straightforward as the constant violence and set peices are, I found the whole experience to be thrilling. I never felt bored of shooting, nor did I care that the enemy had the AI capabilities of Katie Price at a chess match. With the amount of action going on around me, I soon realised that Black Ops understood what made the CoD games good.
It wasn't the tactical puzzles, or even the skill involved in shooting. It was the spectacle being played out before your eyes. It took that one element of the past games and turned it up to 11 and, by doing this, it's created one of the most intensely satisfying single-player shooters for a long time.
I had some minor gripes but in a way it pains me to tell you them. The odd level seems to be a little under par from the rest of the game. Some felt a little bit too much like CoD-By-Numbers. But every 'weaker' level is followed up by an enthralling one, usually set in Vietnam.
Treyarch also decided to go back to the infuriating technique of infinitely spawning enemies. A frustrating decision that takes a minor step back for the series and seems completely unnecessary.
Still, these gripes only entered my head for a moment. Before I had the chance to get irritated by them I was screaming, “Oh look its a plane flying so low that it might take my head off!”
In short, this is the best single-player CoD game so far. It focuses on the good and (mostly) drops the bad about the series. The ugly does pop in from time to time but never stays too long, and you've already got a date by the time it's arrived anyway.
I don't know if you've heard, but Call of Duty isn't just known for its solo game. Apparently it's quite handy when it comes to online multi-player too.
I've been a big fan of CoD online since Call of Duty 2. It offered something new, something that was missing from that space marine game that everyone was banging on about at the time. When Modern Warfare came out, it felt like a huge step forward for the genre. A sort of happy middle ground between Unreal Tournament and Rainbow Six.
I'm sure you were as gripped as I was for about a year, but maybe unlike you I got a little tired of it when Modern Warfare 2 came around. It contributed to its own downfall for me. The more intense the action, the more frustrating the game got. It got me on the edge of my seat, but mainly because I was ready to jump through the screen to strangle the little shit who had nuked me from the other side of the map.
When Halo Reach came out this year, it destroyed any hope of me loading up Modern Warfare 2 again. I wasn't in need of another online multi-player in my life. That was until I entered my first game on Blops.
This side of the game could have gone so wrong. With such a hardcore fanbase ready to pounce on any minor fault that it may be harbouring, Treyarch had to get it right. They did, in so many ways. Everything seems tighter in this. The levelling up seems more fair, meaning that you're not starting with peashooters any more. You always feel that your next level-up is in sight and that you're just moments away from getting that gun you've been dying to get your hands on. Yet you don't feel that your current equipment is useless.
Black Ops doesn't have that spawn-death/spawn-death feeling that some of the earlier games had either. You're never completely overrun by the other team's perks, and you are never left feeling cheated by their tactics; making for a far less frustrating experience.
Multiplayer was a side of the game that had put me off playing, but now I feel I can enter the arena again, happy in the knowledge that I'm going to enjoy myself.
There are some nice touches added too. A personal favourite is the customisable guns. As you level up you don't have to unlock attachments in any sort of order. You can spend the cash you've earned on whatever item you want so long as it's within budget. You can also go as far as adding customised laser sights and gun graffiti. There really is nothing cooler than killing someone, picking up their gun and admiring the hard work they put into making it look good as you're mowing them down for a second time in as many minutes.
Everything seems a little more balanced this time round too and that's partly due to the perks involved. Some of the more vicious perks of the past have been nerfed a little making the games seem more open and fun. The only perk that started to grate though was the Remote Control Bomb Cars.
But when it comes down to online, Blops really is all about the shooting. There's something about the feel of CoD online that hooks you. Despite being rusty, every kill I made had me feeling like I was a pro-gamer.
That's the main thing the this game gets right: the kills.
They feel solid. Each bullet that sinks into your opponent is highlighted by an X on your crosshair and a dull thudding noise. You don't just know that your shots are making contact, you know when each bullet is hitting home. It's immensely satisfying and that is why I believe I got so addicted to this game; the feeling I get from making a kill. I may have died about 12 times just to get one, but that one kill felt so good that I could hardly feel the lead inside me.
The only thing that seems to be missing from this game is the Spec Ops mode from Modern Warfare 2. It's a shame really, that this is missing. I had a hell of a lot of fun with it and it would have made an excellent game a near-perfect one.
Black Ops should be a classic, but it won't get the credibility it deserves because it will be hidden within a string of CoDs. I nearly missed out on this because I thought I was finished with the series, but before I knew It I was hooked and in love again. It's not a massive step forward, but it didn't need to be. Only a little step was needed and that's what has been achieved here. I thought I was tired of the mechanics, but maybe I was more tired of where the series was going wrong. Black Ops has highlighted these blips, shredded them to pieces with an AK47 and created arguably the best war-based game to date. The problem is, its just another COD there is hardly anything innovative about it. 9/10
I enjoyed the multiplayer games of the past but after a while the online community broke me down a little with its screaming teenagers and their 'win at any cost' mentality, and I found that I just wasn't having fun any more.
The single-player game, which was always worth a punt, had seemed to grow a little tired. Despite new settings, the basic mechanics never really progressed from the landmark CoD 4. It felt that Treyarch's World at War was trying to live up to the legendary Modern Warfare, and that the developers feared to change anything too much in case of a backlash. Modern Warfare 2, although good, felt as though it had to stay faithful to the series.
What we were left with were three excellent games in their own right, but titles that were far too similar to get you excited for a fourth. So, it was safe to say that Black Ops didn't quite have the same buzz about it amongst the hardcore gaming community, no matter what the mass-media press would have liked you to believe.
I decided to play through the campaign first. I suppose I was a little too scared to log into a multi-player match. I'd been playing a lot of Halo Reach before this, so I didn't want the first time I threw a grenade against a wall by accident to be in front of a group of people. I wanted to save those moments for just me. I didn't want anyone to know how much of a n00b I had become.
As it so happens, CoD Blops doesn't give you any sort of chance to familiarise yourself with the controls. Unlike the games before it, there is no tutorial. No assault course to run around, no potato grenade to chuck at a bottle. You are dropped head first into battle. This was either an arrogant swagger, or the first in many decisions made to steer the series away from the template it had become.
Either way it was an eye opener. Within moments of the game loading, I was firing a harpoon gun at a helicopter in order to to bring it down. It felt like the start of a brainless action movie. One that had a shit-ton of money that it wasn't afraid of spending. Little was I to know that this was just the tip of the iceberg.
Black Ops never lets up. There is no room for controlled storyline build up, not when there are cars to blow up. Your journey through the game feels like all of Arnold Schwarzenegger's films edited together, after deleting any scene without and explosion. Well, maybe with the exception of Jingle All The Way.
As brainless and straightforward as the constant violence and set peices are, I found the whole experience to be thrilling. I never felt bored of shooting, nor did I care that the enemy had the AI capabilities of Katie Price at a chess match. With the amount of action going on around me, I soon realised that Black Ops understood what made the CoD games good.
It wasn't the tactical puzzles, or even the skill involved in shooting. It was the spectacle being played out before your eyes. It took that one element of the past games and turned it up to 11 and, by doing this, it's created one of the most intensely satisfying single-player shooters for a long time.
I had some minor gripes but in a way it pains me to tell you them. The odd level seems to be a little under par from the rest of the game. Some felt a little bit too much like CoD-By-Numbers. But every 'weaker' level is followed up by an enthralling one, usually set in Vietnam.
Treyarch also decided to go back to the infuriating technique of infinitely spawning enemies. A frustrating decision that takes a minor step back for the series and seems completely unnecessary.
Still, these gripes only entered my head for a moment. Before I had the chance to get irritated by them I was screaming, “Oh look its a plane flying so low that it might take my head off!”
In short, this is the best single-player CoD game so far. It focuses on the good and (mostly) drops the bad about the series. The ugly does pop in from time to time but never stays too long, and you've already got a date by the time it's arrived anyway.
I don't know if you've heard, but Call of Duty isn't just known for its solo game. Apparently it's quite handy when it comes to online multi-player too.
I've been a big fan of CoD online since Call of Duty 2. It offered something new, something that was missing from that space marine game that everyone was banging on about at the time. When Modern Warfare came out, it felt like a huge step forward for the genre. A sort of happy middle ground between Unreal Tournament and Rainbow Six.
I'm sure you were as gripped as I was for about a year, but maybe unlike you I got a little tired of it when Modern Warfare 2 came around. It contributed to its own downfall for me. The more intense the action, the more frustrating the game got. It got me on the edge of my seat, but mainly because I was ready to jump through the screen to strangle the little shit who had nuked me from the other side of the map.
When Halo Reach came out this year, it destroyed any hope of me loading up Modern Warfare 2 again. I wasn't in need of another online multi-player in my life. That was until I entered my first game on Blops.
This side of the game could have gone so wrong. With such a hardcore fanbase ready to pounce on any minor fault that it may be harbouring, Treyarch had to get it right. They did, in so many ways. Everything seems tighter in this. The levelling up seems more fair, meaning that you're not starting with peashooters any more. You always feel that your next level-up is in sight and that you're just moments away from getting that gun you've been dying to get your hands on. Yet you don't feel that your current equipment is useless.
Black Ops doesn't have that spawn-death/spawn-death feeling that some of the earlier games had either. You're never completely overrun by the other team's perks, and you are never left feeling cheated by their tactics; making for a far less frustrating experience.
Multiplayer was a side of the game that had put me off playing, but now I feel I can enter the arena again, happy in the knowledge that I'm going to enjoy myself.
There are some nice touches added too. A personal favourite is the customisable guns. As you level up you don't have to unlock attachments in any sort of order. You can spend the cash you've earned on whatever item you want so long as it's within budget. You can also go as far as adding customised laser sights and gun graffiti. There really is nothing cooler than killing someone, picking up their gun and admiring the hard work they put into making it look good as you're mowing them down for a second time in as many minutes.
Everything seems a little more balanced this time round too and that's partly due to the perks involved. Some of the more vicious perks of the past have been nerfed a little making the games seem more open and fun. The only perk that started to grate though was the Remote Control Bomb Cars.
But when it comes down to online, Blops really is all about the shooting. There's something about the feel of CoD online that hooks you. Despite being rusty, every kill I made had me feeling like I was a pro-gamer.
That's the main thing the this game gets right: the kills.
They feel solid. Each bullet that sinks into your opponent is highlighted by an X on your crosshair and a dull thudding noise. You don't just know that your shots are making contact, you know when each bullet is hitting home. It's immensely satisfying and that is why I believe I got so addicted to this game; the feeling I get from making a kill. I may have died about 12 times just to get one, but that one kill felt so good that I could hardly feel the lead inside me.
The only thing that seems to be missing from this game is the Spec Ops mode from Modern Warfare 2. It's a shame really, that this is missing. I had a hell of a lot of fun with it and it would have made an excellent game a near-perfect one.
Black Ops should be a classic, but it won't get the credibility it deserves because it will be hidden within a string of CoDs. I nearly missed out on this because I thought I was finished with the series, but before I knew It I was hooked and in love again. It's not a massive step forward, but it didn't need to be. Only a little step was needed and that's what has been achieved here. I thought I was tired of the mechanics, but maybe I was more tired of where the series was going wrong. Black Ops has highlighted these blips, shredded them to pieces with an AK47 and created arguably the best war-based game to date. The problem is, its just another COD there is hardly anything innovative about it. 9/10
| 19 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
