The highly awaited sequel is here! But does it live up to other games in the series?
Now where do I start? I can't do presentation cause after one cutscene I started skipping them (they're useless to the plot anyway.) So I guess story.
The story in Black Ops pretty much boils down to you being Alex Mason, and you're being interrogated by a shadowy figure. As this happens, you're asked about a numbers broadcast which activates sleeper cells in the US that will activate Nova 6, a powerful gas bomb that will kill you instantly. So the story is told through the flashbacks of 3 people, Mason, Agent Hudson of the CIA, and Victor Reznov from World at War. Honestly, I hated his return. True we get see some of his life destruction, but I really didn't care. These feelings actually came through by the end, but I refuse to spoil it, because it was a great story. So Mason's story revolves around him, Frank Woods, and Bowman trying to kill three people, Stiener, Kravchenko, and Dragovich. These people are all related to Nova 6 and all are literal a-holes. Hudson revolves around keeping Mason under control and investigating into Nova 6 by some pretty sweet stealth moments. Reznov is only one mission where it tells his story, and that is the backstory on how the Soviets got Nova 6. Overall the story got too exaggerated by the end but it was still pretty cool.
Now to gameplay in Black Ops.
Eh, it's the same thing as all the other games. There are some helicopter scenes and a scene where you're fighting in Nova 6 gas so I'll explain those. The helicopter scenes were pretty well done, but they were short. It is basically a faster way to get from point A to B, while blowing stuff up along the way. Sometimes a enemy helicopter will come and you'll fight, although you just hit with a couple rockets and they're done. There is no health bar or red screen here but you can see the damage done to your chopper like flame, cuts in the glass, beeping sounds, etc. The Nova 6 scene is where it got bad. You see, you have to have a gas mask so that means, put on a gas mask. You can't see in the Nova gas so you have to use a thermal scope to see. This is clunky at best, but that's just sugar coating it. You can see the enemies in a white haze but there is no reticle in the scope, so you have to pretty unload a clip into one enemy just to shoot him once. Another thing is that you have to constantly check for enemies by using the thermal scope. One more thing, as you get shot, your gas mask starts to break. I know this is realistic, but this is a game, not reality. We should be able to get past a mission without some attempt at trying to be unique.
Graphics are bland and boring, I mean, they were great graphics in 2008 when World at War came out, but this is 2010, even Wii games have better graphics, time for Treyarch to spend some of their Black Ops money.
Okay multiplayer, lets see if it's better as other games, like Treyarch promised. Well let me start by saying Treyarch pretty much lied to us about the currency system, I still have to unlock guns, then buy them. Treyarch screwed the multiplayer from here. Let me start before I start reviewing by saying this review was posted after, I believe, the 4th update. Okay, Treyarch lied to us about a (big) detail, but the multiplayer is awesome right? No, not even close. It seems that after each update, the game gets worse. True, they fix some graphical glitches but seem to make the gameplay here worse. Why does it feel like my weak but accurate MPL seem to do no damage against that higher ranking AK47? It's because accuracy still doesn't matter, all that matters is damage. Now Treyarch went all out to piss people off here, let's see why.
Gun skins feel like I can buy them at any time, but the gold camo is unlocked at prestige 13? Two things, in MW2 (yes here comes the comparison) you actually were tasked with getting some headshots for this skin you wanted, now you just buy them, which makes the game really boring as there's nothing to do. I haven't prestiged yet mainly because I either got too bored or too pissed to keep playing. The other thing is that with the fact you have to unlock everything at prestige 13 means that this is a scheme to keep you playing this awful multiplayer. Killstreaks are more overpowered than they were in MW2, especially the Chopper Gunner, in which they thought having a whole view of the area and making the gun faster, the kill count to get one is even smaller. They took out killstreaks adding on to killstreaks and I'm cool with that but it's bad for all the bad players who can't get a counter spy plane with their RC-XD. They reduced recoil on all guns and didn't add recoil to guns with rapid fire. accuracy in all bolt action snipers, oh wait, I mean THE bolt action sniper. Honestly, this is dumb, we're forced to semi-automatic snipers we could be getting one shot kills with a bolt action sniper. So now I can't get a kill because the accuracy makes the bullets go haywire on the arctic warfare sniper.
Combat training is crap so I won't get into that.
But I did venture over to wager matches. The idea is great, some fun game modes in which you bet money. Too bad half of the game modes suck. Sticks and Stones was not a favorite because everyone was running around with tomahawks making me lose. So I told that to go piss up a rope. Gun game is probably the worst and is completely broken. I hated how the later gun levels were snipers instead of SMGs or assault rifles. So I got killed many times while trying to get a sniper kill. Plus once again, we go into the fail stage where knifing depromotes your gun level. One in the Chamber was pretty fun but once I played it, I didn't want to go back again. Sharpshooter is the best, it's kinda like gun game, but the weapons are swapped every 45 seconds, which causes epic chaos and even made me better with the gun classes I sucked with. There was nothing there to make your score go down so it was done right.
Well that's Call of Duty Black Ops which, to sum it up, was pretty good.
Goods-Great story, helicopter scenes were fun, nice stealth segments, Sharpshooter.
Bads-Pretty much all multiplayer, every other wager match, Combat training, reused graphics
Well that's all I hope you enjoyed reading my review