Black Ops is a mess of good and bad. Some features work, others don't.
Black Ops's presentation is fine. It has a eerie menu system where your character is strapped to a chair and uses a TV as your main menu. The rest of the menus however, are the same layout we've seen in Call of Duty 4 to Modern Warfare 2. The story, is good, but the campaign is really over the top and silly. So silly, that it's really hard to take a lot of it seriously. The story is deep and has a great plot twist, but a lot of strange plot holes (ones I can speak of that would spoil the campaign) and crazy moments hamper it from being really good. There are just too many explosions, and things like shooting Russians with a minigun is really silly for a game that is trying to act like a gritty, Vietnam war film with a slight conspiracy story.
Black Ops has mediocre graphics when you compare it to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, one of its predecessors from 2007. The game lacks detail, and most of the environments are big, but bland and empty. Textures are very low quality and the game has tons of texture pop up issues. The characters look good though, but everyone seems to be really sweaty 24/7. The game also has some poor effects, and dirt flying up in the air looks like a bunch of grey circles scattering everywhere, with some dust along with that. The assault rifles' sights are way too similar, too. The animations are also weird, and characters in the multiplayer walk as if they are skipping. The game's graphics only has 60 FPS going for it.
The sound quality in Black Ops is decent. It has okay sound detection, with the occasional occurrence where a sound that sounded like it was from behind you, turns out to be to your left. The music is good, but not really memorable, and the voice acting are also good, but not memorable. Guns sounds are terrible on the other hand. Most guns sound like you are shooting BB guns and the rest of the bunch sound really similar to one another.
The gameplay is the same old Call of Duty, which actually turns out to be a negative. The only real big feature in Black Ops, is the ability to dive when sprinting. You sprint, and hold the crouch button to hit the deck. It is a cool feature, but you sometimes trigger it when you don't want to. Everything else is what you'd expect from Call of Duty, smooth controls and gunplay. The multiplayer really is more of the same, and the maps are average for your typical Call of Duty game. The perks are balanced, but some feel useless while others, like Flak Jacket, are kind of overpowered and annoying. The guns also feel really weak, and since they took Stopping Power (a perk from previous games) out, the guns retain their low-power feel. I also enjoyed the improved Zombie mode, but as I played it more, it also felt like more of the same.
The game has a lot of content, but the single-player is short and the multiplayer gets boring after a while. The Zombies mode is good, and if you haven't played the famed mode yet, it's best to pick this game up. For all of you people who enjoyed the past three games, do not pick this up expecting a new experience.
Presentation: 7, good menus, good story, silly moments and extreme pacing. It is perfectly described with the word, "decent".
Graphics: 6, bland visuals that are saved only by the constant 60 FPS.
Sound: 7, good voice acting and music, with poor sound quality and design.
Gameplay: 7, more of the same with some new features that feel more like gimmicks than actual advancements.
Lasting Appeal: 8, it's Call of Duty, there's a lot of content shoved into the game, but the question is if it's enjoyable enough to play it.