Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm back to blogging. But there's a hitch, I won't be able to blog as much as I used to due to lack of things happening around here and work, so that's some bad news. But hey, I'm back and let's focus on that. And to mark my triumphant return to blogging, I bring you my review of Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Well, let me be up front, I was a little worried about how this was going to be, seeing that Modern Warfare 2 just hit less than a year ago, and well here we are with yet another Call of Duty game. I was/am really afraid that Activision is going to give this venerable franchise the Guitar Hero treatment (My hate for Activision is explained here, http://fireverygood.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-i-hate-activision.html), not to mention that now we had to put up with second place developer Treyarch. But maybe, a part of me thought, maybe this was Treyarch's chance to step out of the shadow of Infinity Ward's shadow and show that they too can make a really great game that doesn't have "Modern Warfare" on it. I think they have.
The game opens in a rather gruesome scene, the protagonist, Alex Mason, it being tortured and interrogated for information he can't remember. To help him remember the interrogators take Mason through his actions in life, starting at the bay of pigs in Cuba, to the American Offenses in Vietnam. In basic terms, you are literally a special forces operative (or dare I say, Black Op?). What interested me was the way Treyarch connected this game to their previous title, World at War, seeing that if you remember the Sergeant from the Russian Campaign then you'll be interested to know that he's your buddy in this title. Let me just say that this game is basically a Micheal Bay movie on Steroids, you are almost constantly fighting intense battles and quite often blowing stuff up. It's a very cinematic game. But one real problem with the story is the pacing, I found that it fluctuates in terms of pacing, something that rather disjointed me from the campaign.
But most people aren't going to play the campaign, because when they think Call of Duty they automatically think multiplayer. The multiplayer and gameplay of Black Ops is the same well known and loved style from any other Call of Duty. The one thing that's new, and is either going to be loved or hated, is that there is now a "money system." where once you relied on getting new and better weapons by leveling up, now you need to save points you gain by playing multiplayer to buy new weapons, perks, and so on. With that there is a new type of match known as a wager match where you can gain a lot of money by doing good, or lose a bunch by doing poorly in a new risk-reward style of game-mode.
The one problem with Multiplayer is a simple one, that it's still the same old Call of Duty style of Multiplayer. Meaning Treyarch did not add or take away anything major, other than the money system. The saying is, "If it ain't broke don't fix it," while this is true, it would have been nice to have at least some innovation to the Multiplayer that would at least have people learn and try to master over time.
Since this is a Treyarch game, there is the triumphant return of the Nazi Zombie Mode. This basically has no context to the game, aside from the fact you unlock more Zombie maps by playing the campaign. Basically you fight rounds and rounds of Zombies to earn money to unlock both new guns and new areas. If you've played the World at War version of Nazi Zombies, you'll know what to expect. An interesting addition to Zombies is that there is a map where you are in the Pentagon taking on the roles of JFK, Nixon, McNara, and Castro fighting these waves of Zombies. Let me tell you, it's really entertaining to play while the voices of these famous individual are going off.
Overall, Black Ops is a really nice surprise from Treyarch. They've proven that they can indeed put out a good Call of Duty game, with the title of "Modern Warfare" being on the box. It does lack in certain areas where some change and innovation would be nice and the stories pacing is slightly disjointed, but it still has to be one of my favorite story lines from the Call of Duty series.
Challenge: 8.5
Graphics:9.0
Atmosphere:8.2
Sound:8.7
Storyline:9.0
Overall:8.6
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