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?

Medal of Honor (Tier 1) Review – PC

There have been mixed reviews about the new Medal of Honor game. My first reaction was to dismiss all the negative feedback as subjective outlook from buzz-killing journalists, only because I had really been looking forward to this title. No offense to those who reviewed it but at the time I felt I could offer more on it since I have played nearly every “real-world” first person shooter war game title released till date. Thins includes the Call of Duty franchise, Medal of Honor franchise, Operation Flashpoint series and other unimpressive ones. To my utter dismay by the time I finished the single-player campaign, I couldn’t agree more on some of the insight provided by the other reviewers from IGN, Gamespot etc.

Electronic Arts
I picked up the highly anticipated Medal of Honor in Australia the day it was launched, i.e. Oct 14. After what seemed like an eternity to install I finally got a piece of the action. Unlike other titles in this genre (blatant comparison to Modern Warfare 2) this game puts you directly in the boots of a Tier 1 operator. The single-player campaign only took about 3.5 hours to complete and ended somewhat abruptly. I can understand the philosophy behind the gameplay, that EA and Danger Close wanted people to experience what it was like to be one the elite among US Defence Forces. Having said that although the missions seem linked and have some cliched controversial hollywood-like themes such as “the general sitting 9000 miles away and calling the shots” and the men on the ground “dealing with it the way they deem suitable”. What does stand out in the game is the research on the degree of realism in the missions and the character outfits. You might even be able to see such real-life footage on youtube of soldiers pinned down under heavy enemy fire only to be relieved by a 2000lb JDAM slammed onto the fortification. Yeah! 3 cheers for close-air support. We are oscar mike for review …

Theme / Story: 3/5

The game does indeed have a good theme to it and the missions complement this to a large extent. The premise is to give players a “feel” for what it’s like to be on ground as the “scalpel” of the coalition forces. So you end up running around the valley for 2 days clearing up insurgent camps and securing high value targets. It therefore does not have a very strong storyline because that would perhaps just distract the players from the “real” job.

Characterization: 1/5

The Tier 1 chaps look badass. PERIOD. But you can’t really identify with any of them since they all look very similar. The Rangers, although elite (commando equivalent) looked a notch above regular infantry units. Compare this to Battlefield: Bad Company and Call of Duty, where you can really identify with the main characters. Danger Close may have done substantive research on Tier1 “comms” and dress-up and general appearance but all of this falls short because the characters aren’t distinct enough. On top of that they ended up naming the player’s character, in keeping with the Call of Duty tradition (recall Soap), something as ridiculous as “Rabbit” when all the others around you have cool names like Voodoo and Dusty.

Graphics & Sound: 3/5

The open terrain is simply breathtaking, especially when you get to admire it in the “Gunfighters” helicopter gunship mission. Most weapon and uniform textures are highly detailed too. The models on the other hand seemed a bit out of place with secondary weapons attached to the main body of the model as if it were stuck there with glue. Although the dust-storm and blizzards add to the fog of war, they tend to be glitchy and stragely disappear at times, only to reappear a fraction of a second later. The explosions seems like something our of the first release of Duke Nukem in terms of the graphical quality. No doubt the destruction left behind from a 105mm howitzer strike from the “Spooky” (AC130) or a guided bomb seems to have been represented well. Bu overall it feels like someone at QA really messed up.

Gameplay: 3/5

The gameplay is extremely sluggish. When attempting to run it feels like the speed of position translation in space is just not as fast as the secondary movement observed while running, translated, that means it feels like you’re running fast but you just don’t move fast enough through the game. Even though this isn’t a run-and-gun game like MW2, there seems to be a disconnect between the visual element and movement. The missions, on the other hand have a great setting, but fall short on the execution since taking down the opfor quite literally is a whack-a-mole session. Weapons no doubt do pack a punch but with cheaply available ammo (just request a team member when you’re about to run out) you can fire to your heart’s content. Knowing how the weapons deliver their lethality helps too e.g. MG’s become useless if you’re not firing in bursts, assault weapons also work best in controlled bursts over a longer range and take down tangos with ease in close combat when fired with no restraint. The best of all was the visual delivery of the M82A1 with an IR scope, when that thing does off you know it’s going to hurt the opfor on the other end. The gunfighters’ (apache gunship) mission was really immersive but too easy due to the firepower available. The only time you feel the pressure to direct the right firepower to the right target is in the Bagram Airbase mission, even though it begins to feel like an arcade-like shoot-up after the first minute or so. The quad-bikes used by AFO wolfpack, although a great inclusion, again disappointed me with a poor execution of physics.

Overall Experience: 2.5/5

Despite all the hype created by the “MoH Experience” videos, the beta multiplayer and the teaser trailers the game, in my personal opinion, failed to deliver what it promised. Although some may argue that such gameplay has it’s place on the shelf, might I add that I agree with that line of thought, the execution of it all falls short in creating anything even close to a spectacular experience. Having said that, I must add, that the game has definitely reaffirmed my deepest respect for the men on-ground, especially the SpecOps teams.

NOTE:
This review is based on the single-player campaign only, multiplayer could not be tested at the time because for some bizarre reasons I couldn’t be connected with any of the 3000+ players online. Wonder if this is a problem for players in Australia due to a dearth of available servers.

Windows 7 (RC1): It works!

Although a little skeptical about jumping on the windows 7 bandwagon after the Vista aftermath I must admit I haven’t stopped using it since I installed it. The installation was simple and straightforward. With the exception of downloading specific drivers for my Radeon 4870 GFX card, everything just worked as though someone had waved a magic wand over my machine.

The best part is that software meant for XP works instantaneously without having to specify compatibility. Look and feel wise its like vista but the differences become apparent when trying to execute unsigned software installers, your wish becomes its command and it won’t bother you again with irritating questions. My hardware hasn’t changed at all and yet it didn’t demand any more than what it got.

I have yet to try using it with RAM more than 3 GB, something XP didn’t support but apparently vista did. The system hasn’t crashed on me even once in the past month. When applications become unresponsive it subtly asks you what action you’d like to take. Afterall you ARE meant to be the boss here. The massive taskbar reminded me of Linux (perhaps someone learnt something). It made sense to have it big given that the OS is being geared for touch interaction. Recovering from hibernation takes literally 5 seconds (on a 3GHz core 2 duo). Window transitions are comparable to OSX and are a welcome eye-candy (don’t we all wish for something exciting at times?). Windows can be stuck around the screen and even maximized by sticking it to the top of the screen, very intuitive indeed.

Literally everything an average user would make use of, such as photo gallery, printers, wireless network etc can be managed through sensible interaction with the machine. Win 7 even gives you a fair choice of anti-virus software to choose from if one isn’t installed already.

I really am looking forward to getting my hands on the final release.