Slightly new twist on more of the same!
Unless you're a achivement nut, or enjoy being frustrated I reccomend you playing through on a lower difficulty for a more enjoyal experience.
The story was the most captivating and twist turning yet. Instead of playing multiple characters during the same time period but in different loccations you only jump characters a few times. The bulk of the story is told through flash back memories. Starting from the beginging going up to the present day. Which personally I prefer, because my attention span isn't great and I have to play through a game a couple of times to be able to remember the story. But I can remember most of this story with only one play through.
Right lets get down to the serious stuff, where you're going to spend you're hours in this game is the multiplayer. I was disapointed that there is no co-op campaign but this is made up by being able to play split screen, 1-4 players offline (you can add bots with varying difficulty to play with/against as well!) or a 2 player splitscreen online, great for scwabelling brothers! :D
However I found the online experience not as good as MW2 in the normal matches, the weapons are great but the attachments and killstreaks cause it to be a massicare, freqiently I found myself blown up just after respawning. So i prefer to play barebones: team tactical. Which takes away all your perks, attachments and killsteaks for much more rewarding and skillful gameplay.
The few things that were wrong in MW2 have been fixed, like in a search and destroy match you can now see how many of your team and the opposing team are left alive in the round. And in capture the flag, the tresspasser with your flag no-longer has a slightly lagged 'kill' emblem on their trail. This causes you and your team mates to race to the opposing flag and steal it before they return to their base with your flag and capture it. Starting a sort of 'hide and seek' gameplay. Which is great. It forces more co-operation between players which is always a good thing in team based games. :D
I have to admit I haven't played much zombies, and I didn't play it on WAW. It doesn't appeal to me too much. But what I have played seemed fine, no glitches. Solid gameplay and varied enviroments. Just lots and lots of zombies!
Overall it's a close call between the games for multiplayer, but I would say that black ops has the edge. Some of my friends disagree. But what they have changed works well and you just have to experiement, ;) , to see whch game mode suits your playing needs most.
Enjoy.