So its been a while since I have played any FPS and now that the new Call Of Duty (CoD) title is out it was time for me to leave my CoD hibernation and put Call Of Duty: Black Ops through the ropes to see what it was made of. For all the avid followers of the CoD franchise Black Ops delivers what we have come to expect from the series plus some extras. There is the usual Campaign mode (Single Player), Multiplayer (Online/Network) and an additional “Zombie Mode” which facilitates both solo and online play.
A FPS with a Good Story
Campaign mode offers the usual story mode experience which is just as good if not slightly better than what I experienced in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare (MW) & Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) and for me that’s a good thing because FPS usually fail terribly when it comes to their story mode. It is not necessarily that the Black Ops story mode had better content but it was more interactive it seemed to pull in the player more.
Interactive Campaign
At the beginning of the campaign one of the things that is instantly obvious is the graphical detail, this time around in Black Ops but it is to be expected from this generation of graphics technology. Another thing that soon becomes apparent is the level of interactivity (MW & MW2) had key points where one was required to interact in specific scenes usually relating to key moments of the story but in “Black Ops” interactivity was promoted frequently which gave the story a somewhat more of an in-depth feel to it.
The feel of gameplay is somewhat different due to character remodeling which affected the look and feel of movement of your character and the operation of some of the weapons also had a different feel to them. As per usual the story mode was brisk & it was not that Black Ops was longer than the last two titles per say but it was more that I found myself dying more often which in turn may have made the game seem longer. Over all I enjoyed the Campaign mode the intensity of the engagements and just the overall interactivity of the gameplay kept me in the zone for the most part. I’m not sure if this applies for all versions of Black Ops but the “Steam” version has some 40 odd achievements aside from the Intel gathering aspect of the game which offers a bit more to the replay value of the Campaign mode.
Zombie Mode
The Multiplayer setup is similar to the one in MW2 where you level starting from level/rank 1 and level up from experience points which you earn from matches but now you don’t only earn experience points and automatically get new weapons and or equipment as you level but instead you get both experience and something I could only describe as “COD Points” which then in turn one uses to purchase weapons, various other equipment, customizations etc…. so now one has complete control of which weapons and upgrades they receive and the order they receive it but in the same breath one has to be careful because one mistake in purchases may very well end up with you purchasing a gun that you don’t like or worst can’t use and now you are stuck saving up points to buy another one, players now also have more customization options over things like their in game tags, weapons, overall appearance etc. There is a bit more options when choosing what type of match one wants to participate in such as whether you want to be in Ranked, Unranked or just to practice (another new Black Ops option where one can practice against bots if they choose to) after that there are choices of traditional game modes such Team Death Match, Free For All, Capture the Flag etc.
Cheaper Gameplay
The multiplayer feels pretty much the same as previous titles but in Black Ops the movement is a bit different due to some of the old guns having slightly a different feel or different operations all together (for the best for the most part) the AK47 feels similar to the CoD4 version & previous guns like the FAL feel almost completely different from the FAL model of MW2 unfortunately CoD still has the same physics teacher and we still have people running through bullets and knifing you but I digress. I more had problems with little things that made the game feel cheap/easy/watered down like the effectiveness of “hip fire” I kept getting killed I was wondering if I was lagging and then when I started paying attention to the kill cam I realized that 90% the time when I was killed it was due to hip fire so while I was trying to line them up they just point and squeeze and bam I’m dead (I’m sorry it was nailed in my head to target properly from MW & MW2 and it was usually persons who new the game inside out could efficiently kill you with hip fire because it had a high miss rate in untrained hands), they brought back good old killstreaks and some are just ridiculous but this is not that the killstreak rewards (KSR) are over powered per say it is more due to the maps being so darn small that someone can place a “Sentry Gun” almost at the end of their side of the map and it is able to mow you down before you ever completely leave your side of the map (I kid you not) or if one “carpet bomb” (one of the killstreak rewards known as Rolling Thunder) a stage and is able to wipe out around 95% of the map yes you read correctly “95%” and thats my optimistic value, so for all of you who didn’t like the “AC130” or the “Chopper Gunner” you going to love some of these new KSR.
In all fairness they have attempted to equally tone down some of the KSR like the “Chopper Gunner” even though it now requires less kills to attain it no longer almost automatically locks on to heat signatures of the opposing members but instead like good old “Bad Company 2” one has to manually track down and shoot their targets, but due to several things like the several lagging issues, the inability for assembling a team to join together and play as a pre arrange group and some of the other what I consider down sides above I was just not drawn in the MP aspect like how I was with MW2 perhaps if I stopped at MW didn’t play MW2 nd then go straight to Black Ops perhaps I would be impressed but as of now I’m not, I could see myself playing the MP a friend’s copy of course or if I got it as a gift or a ridiculously discounted value but I just having hard time seeing myself playing USD59.99 for this title, I have been informed that the console versions may be more enjoyable because they do not suffer from several of the PC bugs.
2 responses to “Call Of Duty: Black Ops PC Review”
Indeed, the console (PS3) version is a lot better than the PC version, from the bit i’ve played of the PC version.
Agree on most of those points about people phasing through bullets, and swings of the knife in the air killing people. But not so much about the killstreak rewards.
Many people i know have major hate for the Napalm Strike as well, but its just that each map and killstreak has their particular weaknesses, strengths and intricacies. Its something you learn to deal with over time. Try playing around with your class config.
That said…i really hate the f***ing dogs
What exactly did you get from what I stated about the killstreaks just to make sure we are on the same page? In MW2 the worst or the most effective killstreaks could be countered usually by staying in a building or using that “cold blooded” perk to me those killstreaks were the “AC130” and the “Chopper Gunner” those two things were relentless in the right hands but as effective as they were none of those covered 90-95% of the map in a single instance even when one used the Steath Bomb Run it affected one side/aspect of the map and you had to decided whether you wanted to hit the top, left, right, bottom or center of the map with it but also when used properly it could be very effective I have no problems with effective killstreaks I have a problem with “ridiculous” killstreaks.