A stagnant franchise and technical issues mar Call of Duty Black Ops on the PC but nevertheless, it's still fun.
User Rating: 7.5 | Call of Duty: Black Ops PC
Death, taxes, Call of Duty. These are the things we deal with year in, year out. Treyarch once again takes the reins from the beleaguered Infinity Ward with the seventh installment, Call of Duty Black Ops, set during the height of the Cold War. Although the game still delivers on the fun factor, the franchise is suffering from being stagnant and compounding this are technical issues on the PC version. Black Ops has you play as Alex Mason, a SOG operative who has been captured by a clandestine organization who interrogate him about a numbers broadcast and what they mean. Drugged up and with no choice, Mason tells his story and his mind flashes back to the missions that led to his capture. The conspiracy theory premise is a nice touch but the tale still reeks like something out of a Michael Bay film with macho-man soldier stereotypes and an overabundance of explosions, including a highly jingoist ending celebrating American "superiority." I myself am an American but even this is a bit too much. The story really picks up during the final missions as all the pieces start falling together. The campaign should take around 7 to 8 hours to complete and features 15 missions, some of them touching upon the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the Vietnam War. Gameplay has remained virtually unchanged with the exception of the setting and the single player is very scripted but the pacing is done quite well with some nice, if overly ridiculous, set-pieces. This is by far the most coherent story I've seen in a Call of Duty game. Most people aren't even going to touch the campaign though and jump right into the multiplayer, which features dedicated servers this time around but unfortunately, it's limited to 24 players to keep it from having an advantage over the console versions. Again, it's the same game modes and you'll mostly find me playing Team Deathmatch and Domination. There new feature is the money system where you earn in-game cash as you level up and can buy weapon upgrades or customize your player card. This way you can use only the upgrades that you want and not slowly unlock everything. However, the multiplayer is plagued with serious issues with stuttering and frame skips. Often times you'll find yourself shooting an enemy, encounter a frame skip, and find yourself already dead. These issues also appear in the campaign as well but not as severe. The visuals are still rendered with the same engine since CoD4 and there are some slight enhancements with the lighting but not much else. Facial animation looks excellent however thanks to the motion capture. To be honest, it looks slightly worse than Modern Warfare 2 and in multiplayer, the textures have this washed out feel. Add in the optimization issues, you have to wonder what the developers were smoking considering the engine is based on Quake 3 tech. There's also the return of zombie mode but there's only a paltry three maps, meaning Activision is going to sell us more and make us pay $15 dollars. I can buy totally new game at that price so I won't be buying any DLC. Let the sheep on consoles do that. Things on the audio front are top-notch with immersive sound effects. The voice cast includes Sam Worthington, Gary Oldman, Ed Harris, O'Shea Jackson (otherwise known by his stage name Ice Cube), Topher Grace, Oleg Taktarov (last seen in the film "Predators") and Emmanuelle Chriqui. The PC version comes in an Eco-Box DVD case and a flimsy manual. For DRM and achievements, the game uses Steam. My review may sound overly negative but for the most part Black Ops is fun but you can tell Treyarch was trying a little too hard to one-up Infinity Ward. Unfortunately, fun does not erase all the issues and to be honest, there seems to be less and less new features with each iteration besides the setting and it starts to look the same. Honestly, I would like this franchise put to rest but with a bang. That's not likely to happen so I'll probably be back here for Modern Warfare 3.
