Black Ops is a great game, but the multi-player doesn't have the fun factor it once had.
I was one of the people that was waiting in agony for this game to come out. Most Call of Duty players already know about the mess that MW2's multi-player turned into, and like many others, I saw Black Ops as "our last hope" for a well balanced multi-player entry in the Call of Duty series.
And for the most part, that is what we got. Call of Duty: Black Ops, at least at this point, has the most fair and balanced multi-player we've seen in the series. From a balance standpoint, the maps are spectacular, and without perks like Stopping Power and Juggernaut, weapon damage seems to be a lot more predictable. I do think that this is a game that competitive multi-player gamers are going to absolutely love.
Now, when I saw the previews, I loved the idea of an economy based game as opposed to an unlock game. And on some level, I still do. However, I just find it kind of cheap that by level 30, I already have my favorite weapon, with my favorite sight, and my favorite camo, without doing much if any work. The customization you can do to your guns is awesome, but there are a lot of people who in past games worked very hard at mastering a gun, just so they could use Red Tiger or Fall camo on it. I just feel that it kind of cheapens the experience, and gives me as a casual player a bit less to work for.
Now, there were a ridiculous amount of people playing last night, it got to over 4,000,000 people at one point, so my next complaint might just go away on its own, but as of this review, its something to keep in mind. At this point, it seems to be pretty much impossible to join a lobby if you are in a party with 3 or 4 other people. Our entire group was able to get in 4 or 5 games total in about 2 hours. This isn't particularly surprising for such a new game, but it is pretty annoying.
Another thing which has really bothered me so far is the map rotation on some of the playlists, Search and Destroy in particular. I have no idea if this was intentional, but the map vote was almost always between the same two maps, Firing Range, and WMD, over and over again. These maps aren't particularly bad, but when a map starts to get old after the first day a game comes out, you know there is something wrong.
And about those maps, one big difference between maps in previous Call of Duty games and those in Black Ops is that many of them have interactive elements, ie: trap rooms and doors you can open and close. This is pretty cool the first time you notice it, then it gets a little gimmicky, then it gets really obnoxious. Also, it just seems to me like there are way too many snow maps. There are 3 or 4 of them, and personally, I would have thought 1 would suffice.
A lot of people who had flashed Xboxes were complaining about the audio quality being poor. I thought they were just looking for something to complain about, but they were actually right. Things that you would be able to hear in past Call of Duty games simply aren't present in Black Ops, the planting of claymores, defusing of bombs, etc, etc. is almost inaudible. I have no idea if this was intentional, but for someone that really liked to crank the Turtle Beaches up, the bad audio is definitely noticeable.
A lot of people were also claiming the graphics were worse than Modern Warfare 2. I hadn't played MW2 in a while, so I actually went back to MW2 to see this for myself, and while I wouldn't say BO's graphics are any worse than MW2's, they haven't really been substantially improved either. I've heard that this was because of stability reasons, and that apparently the campaign has far superior visuals. As a PC gamer at heart, I could see why they might have wanted to tone down the visuals a bit for the multi-player, but an option to turn graphics options up and down, similar to how the PC version has one to scale to older PC's would be nice just to have as an option.
A few closing things that I couldn't really find a place to put in the review:
I've played the zombie maps a little bit, and they're pretty fun, Dead Ops arcade was pretty cool as well, but I don't really like how Treyarch seems to consider it a zombies map.
I think its time to build a new engine from the ground up for the Call of Duty series. Its too big of a game to have to rely on ancient code from the Quake 3 engine, from over a decade ago.
To me, Black Ops feels like the Halo Reach of the Halo series. A very well put together game, but seemingly lacking in the fun factor past games in the series had.
So, overall, Black Ops is solid, its still early, and Treyarch will have plenty of opportunities to fix and tweak the game to improve it. I'm sure DLC will come out by Spring to add some new maps to the game, and because nobody is really looking forward to going back and playing Modern Warfare 2, even if people get tired of Black Ops, I doubt they would stop playing it.