Call of Duty: Black Ops – PC (public review)

Image stolen from Crunch Gear

Much has been said in the media through previews about the newly released game in the call of duty franchise. Rightly so too, to a large extent. After a painful and windy installation (courtesy of the steam delivery platform) on the PC (Alienware M17x R2) I finally got a taste of the action. There have been some interesting changes in the game-play style and it would be wrong to junk some of them straight away. I’m talking about the physics behind the movement, weapon types, hands-on approach in multiplayer mode etc. After an unimpressive, if not disappointing, show by Medal of Honor: Tier 1 Call of Duty: Black Ops does offer a fairly gripping story, although not as good in comparison to Modern Warfare 2. I think it’s to do with Treyarch’s ability to tell a story which gets dwarfed by Activision’s Hollywood thriller-like script. Enough comparions, let’s get on with what it has to offer, shall we?

Campaign

The story is long and I mean really long to the point that you just won’t care about it anymore and would want to just get it over with it (or perhaps it was the hour of the day that caused that for me). Without giving out much, all I’ll say is, I hope you have a good appetite to travel across the world, just like Task Force 141. There are a couple of blatant political references from the cold war era and somehow, just like the SOG (special operations group) the Russian Spetznaz are everywhere. Well you do need someone to shoot at now, don’t you? That being aside, the campaign feels like it’s being played on a Hollywood set with limited depth in terrain. The characters, well, you’ll know their names by heart by the end of the game. Kinda like the game’s being playing you (you’ll understand the reference once you’ve played the game). The campaign features interesting characters with their own unique facial features and fashion. The only glaring anomaly being that “Woods”, the SOG guy who takes you into the chopper, has 115 instead of SOG on his left forearm’s tattoo. Maybe Treyarch wanted to make the SOG bit really obvious in the cover art just in case you couldn’t tell from the attire as to whether he is regular Army or special forces. That’s not all, you actually get to know what you look like throughout the game, well atleast in the parts where you’re “strapped in” (yeah! I’m not going to kill the fun for you). Other details such as user controlled rappel,  breach and clear and “blackbird overwatch” also made the game-play interesting. My only gripe being that it got pulled too long. The graphics are very detailed but do look kind of plastic in some levels. I guess treyarch couldn’t do away with all their code from World at war which had a similar issue. I have probably never seen as realistic a smoke effect in any other game before. The audio, not too convincing! Gun fire sounds like you were playing cops and robbers (or indians and cowboys or whatever it is you played as a kid involving a play gun) i.e. no punch. There is only so much you can do in terms of moving around because the game-play is VERY and I mean VERY linear. You’d rather just walk through an alley blind with a mini-gun in your hand so it is rather boring and predictable. There are some over the top “actable” narratives in the story which digress way too far from the story and kind of kill the fun of it all. Overall, although Treyarch has tried to keep up the trend in the call of duty franchise, I do not understand why they have to keep going retrograde in terms of their story line to produce something only half as interesting as the Activision’s production. They did it with World at war and they’ve done it again. From present day / near future conflict in modern warfare 2 we’re back in the 40’s and 60’s.

Multiplayer

Treyarch’s introduced motion physics which, although make the game-play interesting, is somewhat of an added nuisance to get used to. Thankfully the dive and peek works really well in terms of tactical control. You’re probably aware of the virtual market within the multiplayer console where, even though perks and weapons get unlocked as you rank up, you need to purchase these. Gives you better degree of customization and lets you spend on stuff you really want. The initial experience with the game-play was extremely disappointing because despite connecting to localized servers the lag was absolutely deplorable. I guess it’s just one of those teething issues. The gameplay is still  MW style run-and-gun and can be very fast paced on smaller maps. If only I ranked up high enough I’d let you know how much you can customize the characters and weapons but in the mean time you could check out this video that demonstrates it.

So the overall take on call of duty black ops is that it’s a slightly above average first person shooter. Not as good as it’s predecessor and not as much multiplayer fun as Medal of Honor (Tier 1). Oh! and there still is a zombie mode post credits in this one too. Did you folks really like it that much from WaW?