Declassified should of been kept classified, and shelved away.

User Rating: 3.5 | Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified VITA
The Call of Duty franchise is the biggest franchise in the whole of the gaming media, with it's blockbuster budgets and it's great multiplayer and cinematic campaigns, it was interesting to see whether they had done this with the new Declassified for Vita.

Sadly, no. Declassified suffers from a lack of content, a lack of focus. and a lack of everything really. From a single layer point of view, you are given 10 missions in the campaign with all last around 5 minutes each, this is fine if they were fast and offered replay value, but they feel quite uninspired and bland, you can go back for a higher Star Rating (Like the Spec Ops in it's Console brethren). These missions are set in different areas and ask you to perform certain tasks (Such as breaching, saving hostages etc), but none of them actually feel that well design and I only really had fun with 2 of them. However similar to Mw3's Survival mode, Declassified has it's own 'Hostiles' mode with is basically a wave of enemies coming at you and see how long you last, its the typical 'Horde mode', and does nothing really to go out it's way to be different. You also have Time Trials similar to the training runs you had in CoD4, MW2 etc, These are fine, but can be awkward to do with the finicky controls to use.

However what most fans would probably want to hear about is the Multiplayer, it's half decent when you can actually get a game, at first I thought I was unlucky, but it seems it's a major issue with it after going online and checking, after about 2 hours trying, I got into 2 matches. However the online 'barracks' are nearly identical with their 'Get 50 Kills with the M14' etc etc, and the Create a Class with all it's perks is intact here. There is also support for Ad Hoc but I haven't tried it.

Graphically the game is fine, most textures, models and animations have been ripped out of the original Black ops, so it looks similar (although no where near polished), the Framerate is actually good unlike burning skies, and being at 30 fps it doe snot seem to suffer either being a cod game.

Also another point is the story, it's awful, it is meant to explain what happens between BO1 and BO2 but it explains nothing as the cut-scenes are just jumping around with a uninspired voice actor rambling on through.

So in conclusion, is it worth it? No, it severely lacks content, it's own identity and ideas, a non-broken online and a good story.

Pros:

- Feels like a Call of Duty
- Graphics are fine, although ripped straight from CoD
- Solid Framerate

Cons:

- Lack any Identity
- or it's own ideas
- Broken Online
- Very short campaign (1 Hour!?)
- No Zombies
- Some odd level design
- The voice acting seems poorly directed
- Poor Story and Cutscenes.-
- Hostiles just feels underwhelming.


4/10