A great game hampered by a few major issues. Like everyone is a ninja in multiplayer. Best single player for COD.
I am going to harp on this a bit.
Everything sounds good, EXCEPT you cannot hear the enemies footsteps. I thought I did not have the right settings on, so I went to the sound options, and I noticed they were quite limited, like it didn't even have the option to put it on 5.1, like in past games, which may be unimportant, as eveything seems to be positional, like the gun fire, but the enemy footsteps and actions are incredibly muted. I played on a team, and I could hear my team mates footsteps very well, but enemies could drop from a second story right behind me, take a swing at me, trying to knife me, and I would hear nothing. Some even fired shotguns at me and I didn't know they were there till I died, and watched the replay. I thought the shots were a long distance away, but they were right behind me, almost point blank. I didn't have a clue. I find myself shaking my head at disbelief almost constantly because of this. I am supprised more people do not mention this. I am constantly running into enemies, literally, in the game bumping into them coming around a corner, because I have no idea they are there. Head shaking... again.
I searched the internet to see if others were having this same problem, and some said it was a decision on the developers part, because some do not have good positional sound systems, so they didn't want some to have an "unfair" advantage. I doubted if that is true, because if it is, that is extremely ridiculous. But the fact that I could hear my team mates and not the enemies makes me think there is something to that. Really, they penalize eveyone because some are limited in their sound capabilities? I still cannot bring myself to believe it totally, because that just seems so stupid. Really would they purposly mute the enemies? Why, why why, would they do that? Broken!
I ranked up to get the Awareness perk, only to find it did nothing to help at all. They say it amplifies enemy footsteps by 4 times, but 4 times zero is still zero. Even with Dead Silence and Awareness perks, I could hear almost nothing. People could still "sneak" up on me at A FULL RUN, with no Dead Silence (ninja) perk, and I could not hear them till they are knifing me. Rendering Dead Silence and Awareness Perks totally pointless.
In my search, I learned about something called "sound whoring". Literally "people who use their sense of hearing to get an 'edge' on their opponents. Really? Seriously? People complain about using our sense of hearing to help play games? That is a problem that needs to be rectified? Seriously, I cannot believe this was an issue being discussed. I would think better sound would be embraced, like better graphics, and better control. But some see this as a problem? I don't get it.
Another issue, is about the ADS (Aim Down SIte) aspect. In my opinion, that was very important in past games, except in MW3, were the akimbo was way too powerful and accurate and ruined multiplayer for that game (IMO). This has that too, a bit. I armed a sub machine gun (not akimbo), and refrained from ADS only to find I was rewarded with victories. I think partly because I cannot hear anyone, so people are too close most of the time to try to ADS. Again, more of a sound problem.
I bought the game from steam. I looked to see if there were patches, and what they fixed but I can find no information, as of yesterday. I do not know what they changed, but it definitly was not the sound.
Bottom line, as it stand today, the single player is grat. but the multiplayer is a potentially great game, hampered by a significant problem, that keeps it from being very good.
P.S. Did I mention the lack of enemy sound in multiplayer is to ridiculous. Terrible, terrible choice. I am so tired of people running up behind me without Dead Sinence equipped, and I can't hear a thing. Congratulations Treyarch. You managed to make me almost hate the multiplayer. I even knocked off another point from my review. Loved all the others, and wanted to like this one too. Not happening.