Call of Duty: Black Ops Review
by John Kalanderopoulos, Gaming Reviews
November 15, 2010
I have been enjoying first-person shooter games since I can remember playing on my computer. I remember watching my father beat Wolfenstein 3D, I remember picking up Doom, and then moving on to Star Wars: Dark Forces. There is something about experiencing events from a first-person view that really engages me. I have been privileged to remember playing Quake, MechWarrior, GoldenEye 64, Rainbow Six, Medal of Honor, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Deus Ex, Halo, Far Cry, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and the list can go on and on. Up to that point I had heard about the Call of Duty franchise but was truly blown away by Modern Warfare. Until then (for the most part) first-person shooters had either been based in World War II and you were killing Nazis, or was based in the future and you were killing aliens. Call of Duty took the franchise into the foreseeable future, tossing any political correctness aside, and brought the player into the modern theatre of war.
When I heard about Call of Duty: Black Ops I was definitely excited, but also hesitant. I loved the first Modern Warfare but thought that Modern Warfare 2 was a little bit lack luster and felt like a reiteration of the first one. It really didn’t give me anything new. I also heard that the developer of Black Ops was not Infinity Ward as it had been with the previous Modern Warfare games, but rather Treyarch. They’ve previously developed Call of Duty: World at War, another game that really didn’t rank high for me. So while I did start playing with excitement, I also didn’t have high expectations, despite the anticipation amongst the video game community.
The only game I have ever played online was the first Modern Warfare. I do not like online play because I find it too often repetitious and so when I review a game I pretty much just look at it from a single player campaign perspective. So not only does the story have be top notch, but has to be long enough for me to justify purchasing a game. This game has to have one of the best story lines for a Call of Duty game, if not for any realistic first person shooter that I have experienced. The game starts you off being strapped to a chair, your hands bloodied, and you talking to some shadowy figure. Through this interrogation, the story is told through flashbacks of your career as a black ops soldier. You revisit past operations in Cuba, Russia, and Vietnam to name a few. My one gripe with the game at large is that it seems more that you’re watching a spy movie rather than playing a game. The action is too often interrupted by cut scenes, and while it makes for a very fast story line, it very much detracts from the game play itself by removing you from the experience.
The actions taken by the player are what you would expect from any Call of Duty game, or really any first-person shooter: lots of explosions, enemies spawning by the hundreds, and a good variety of weaponry. While the game tries to provide a lot of variety of things to do, like driving vehicles or operating different turrets, these moments are very short and I would have liked it if they were drawn out more so I could appreciate each one. But the game play is most definitely very linear and doesn’t really give you a chance to enjoy the environments presented. Visual and audio in this game is terrific, from the character renders, to the backdrops, to the score. This game really does have all the finer touches on it though also presents a problem, as I had a lot of lagging moments and it seemed to take forever to load, but other than that it was more than enjoyable. One little tidbit I liked was every time a level loaded was to see the title in the bottom corner become blackened as it would in a classified black operations file.
Can you imagine how Call of Duty started as a small World War II game on the PC back in 2003 that tried to rival Medal of Honor? Now it has become one of the most commercially and critically successful franchises that the video game industry knows. Call of Duty: Black Ops is no different and has exceeded my expectations. The story telling does excel in this installment and though I was worried that it would be sacrificed in lieu of spending more time on the multiplayer portion of the game, I am satisfied to say that my fears were for naught. While this game does have some minor glitches, and the load times can just seem to drag on, this is definitely worth it in the end, not just for the game play but for what the series has accomplished with their unique narrative.
