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?

HTC Touch Pro: First Thoughts

After reading a number of reviews about the phone I finally got myself one (more so because I busted my N95 while fiving it a makeover). The reviews seemed biased in favour of the smartphone until I found a video by the chaps at omio.com who put forth a more objective review. In the same stride here are some of my comments on the smartphone.

Performance: This is my first Windows Mobile powered phone and as expected in comparison to OSX mobile and Symbian S60v3 the responses seemed somewhat sluggish. Although HTC did a good job at putting in bold menu options, the native winmobile interface is better interacted with using a stylus due to the small size. The screen orientation changes smoothly most of the times, but then again while multitasking, its a little sluggish.

Touch: I also had to activate sound for touches because it was hard to figure out when the system had registered a touch. I did not notice this on the iPhone. Furthermore, gestures and actual touches aren’t as precise. While you may be trying to flip a photo, the system considers it a tap gesture and opens it fullscreen. Same for navigating through messages and program list.

TouchFlo: The TouchFlo 3D that everyone is flipping head over heals about isn’t quite as nice when there are a couple of applications running in the background. Its sluggish at times and does not respond too well when you scroll through the shortcuts (at the bottom of the screen in portrait mode) too quickly.

Navigation: I am unsure as to whether the phone has even a basic mapping application. I looked at QuickGPS which I believe just gets the location data off the GSM network because it worked even in a closed room. The GPS receiver however worked a lot better than the one on my old N95. Under the open sky it can get a good signal within a mater of seconds. I installed TomTom 6 navigation software which too is very well made.

Network: When using the WiFi be sure that you don’t specify the connection type as “Work” or it won’t let you get any further than the internal network. The good thing about the network is that once the access point settings have been saved the system won’t ask you for them again quite unlike the N95 where the settings had to se separately saved.

Filesystem: Had to re-format the memory card to FAT32 for the phone to detect it. File transfer from local memory to teh storage card is uber slow, not sure why.

Accelerometer: The accel is calibrated really well and for applications that do make use of it flip between portrait and landscape as soon as it detects a tilt. On the iPhone you really need to change the physical orientation before the screen orientation changes.

Boot: The system boots in under 1 minute. Although WinMobile itself boots in under 30 seconds the phone is practically unresponsive until the TouchFlo3D app loads up.

Keyboard: The keyboard is much appreciated. Soft touch and fairly large surface area contribute to a better experience. if you have fat fingers like you’ll definitely appreciate this. Also, if you’re going to be using the system for emails, you’ll find the physical keyboard an added advantage. The onscreen keyboard too is very well laid out and responds very well. The only downside with the onscreen keyboard is that the letters appear under the finger which makes it a bit hard to know if the touch was registered. Could have done with the OSX Mobile-like concept where the key press is indicated above the key.

Camera: The camera is decent enough to take casual pictures or record a spontaneous video. The microphone is quite sensitive I believe and thus loud sounds crack during playback. If you really like photography then you probably shouldn’t be using the phone camera at all.

Size: I don’t really understand why people have been dissing the device for its size. None of the PDA+Mobile phones out there are small enough. Infact this phone has been designed very well for the features it exposes. I compared it to the N73 and N95 and the sizes are only marginally different. Its obviously not very flat because of the keyboard but then its not as tall or as broad either.

Overall, the phone is beautiful and fun to interact with. If you don’t mind using the stylus, its a breeze to operate. However, to achieve one hand operation its still got a way to go.