Multiplayer Review - Long time FPS fan, but not keen on Modern Warefare
I like my First-Person Shooters a certain way: Difficult, but not frustrating, with lots of team emphasis and a good balance. And a high replay factor is a must. Unlockables, large community, and the stolen RPG element of Leveling up. While all of these are great, it is difficult to for them to coincide with one another. for instance, unlocking guns and perks give a high replay value, but at what cost? WIll this lead to an imbalance among high ranking players and low ranking ones? Do the "Rich get Richer" so to speak? Call of Duty: Black Ops has combined all these together, and did it with almost no flaws what-so-ever.
I was never fan of Modern Warefare. Atleast for me, that game was beyond frustrating to the point of losing it's appeal. Constant "camping", High level players having a substantial edge over you. Team play was almost non-exsistant, as players had a very selfish style compared to other shooters.
Fortunately, Black Ops fixed a lot of these issues. The guns you can unlock don't appear to vary too much from one another, as you can get kills very easily from the base weapons. Perks only provide a "slight" edge in battle. And both Perks and Guns can be unlocked in any order from the start(Assuming you play a few rounds to earn Black Ops currency, or "CoD Points"). This leads to a much better balance, and you no longer are spawning only to get shot by a helicopter instantaneously. of the 6 or so maps I have played, I enjoyed all of them. Each has a great flow, and it seems the makers have cut back on "Choke Points", or areas deadlocked in battle and difficult to move through. This is a game you can pick-up and play and not have to be an expert, while still giving a challenge to long-time fans.
Some slight issues however: Black Ops really needs to do a better job of team balancing. It seems you are either on a very good team, or your against a very good team. each match almost always ends in a blowout going in either way. And camping is still a bit of an issue. Too many times players are hiding to keep their K/D ratio high, or keep their Kill streaks going. A proposed idea: Once you get on a killstreak, set a timer for the user to get the next kill. If they don't succeed, they lose the killstreak. This will give the player a sense of urgency to go "find" the enemy, instead of wait in a corner for him to run by. That said, these two isues are really easy to look past. For some reaosn, losing in BlackOps isn't as annoying as previous installments. Maybe it's because of the aforemention balancing, and that Kills are easier to come by.
This is truthfully an impressive game. Treyarch did a great job of taking the frustraion out, and filling in the void with balancing, solid team-play and an even higher replayability than before. All combined makes this a game you can play for hours on end before you realize it's 3:00am in the morning.