This will be my first review I type up for this blog. It is on the mega hit Call of Duty: Black Ops. Black Ops is developed by Treyarch and published by Activision and is rated M for mature. The game supports one player for the campaign, four for the zombies cooperative mode and up to eighteen players for the online multiplayer.
This Call of Duty is different from the others in more ways then it's predecessors. The campaign is actually told in form of flash backs as the main character Alexander Mason (voiced by actor Sam Worthington) is being tortured. The game takes place through many years spanning from The Bay of Pigs to the Vietnam War and it's aftermath. It is up to Mason to relive some harsh times in his life in order to survive his future.
The campaign is your standard first person shooter foray. You move to one position, shoot some people and move on. The game however went back a step in what Infinity Ward (Creators of Call of Duty and developers of Modern Warfare IP) did by eliminating the respawning enemies. Treyarch has made their return prominently during a mission entitled "S.O.G." The game has it's fair share of "WOW" moments (SPOILERS) , such as piloting a Huey and blasting several villages to riding a boat and destroying compounds.
The game is rated M for a reason. Limbs are blown off, cursing is rampant and scenes of torture seem gratuitous. There is an option to shut off the graphic nature though the swearing stays with it.
The game is short, but is a little longer than past Call of Duty's. It mostly depends on the difficulty you play on and if you quickly learn about how to take care of the respawning enemies (HINT: Move forward before they respawn and they won't respawn.) Difficulty ranges from the super easy Recruit, to the patience tester known as Veteran. Normal and Hardened are in between the two. There is a checkpoint system for the game so if you reach a point and die, no worries, you'll be back where you were. However they removed the option from the pause menu to load your checkpoint. It only has "restart mission," and "save and quit." The way around is to just "save and quit" then reload it, however it is tedious especially since the past games have had a "reload checkpoint" option.
On the cooperative side of the game, instead of capitalizing what Infinity Ward had in Modern Warfare 2 with Spec Ops missions Treyarch added back what got them popular on World at War: Zombies. The game comes with two maps for the popular game mode in which four players must survive wave after wave of the zombie horde. Survival is done through collecting weapons off walls and repairing damaged windows and doors. Four other maps are also available, they are the four maps from World at War but they are only available to those with the Hardened or Prestige editions of the game. There are two surprises in the game involving zombies: the text-based game called Zork and the 2D over-top shooter Zombie Ops Arcade. Both are addicting fun especially Zombie Ops as it can be played with three friends cooperativel.
Now is the main draw of the game: Multiplayer. Everyone buys Call of Duty for multiplayer. Well not everybody, but a good percentage. The reason is quite simple. It's easy to pick-up, has addicting fast gameplay, and with Prestige you can never truly get bored of the game. All the past Call of Duty's had ten prestige levels with ranks from fifty-five to seventy depending on the game. Call of Duty Black Ops has fifteen prestige levels and fifty ranks per prestige. That makes it 800 ranks to go through including the original fifty.
Some differences from the past games are that instead of unlocking specific guns and perks by level, you use in-game currency to buy what you want when you want. Only thing is some guns can't be purchased until a specific level. Killstreaks return but there is no game-ending Nuke this time that many people cheated to get for the quick win. Death streaks are gone as well so no more Painkiller or Martydom and to balance it there's no more Stopping Power perk as well. There are four main lobbies now with Core, Barebones, Hardcore and Prestige. Core is the standard, Barebones is with no attachments or perks, Hardcore is where there's no HUD and quick deaths and team kills are on and Prestige are for those who have hit a new prestige level.
Other new additions to online are the wager matches, combat training and theater. Wager matches is just that, you bet your COD currency against five other players in free-for-all games with specific rules. These rules are different game types: One in the chamber (everyone has a pistol, one bullet, and 3 lives), Sticks and Stones (everyone has only a crossbow, ballistic knife and tomahawk), Gun Game (each kill changes your gun to the next until you surpass all 20 levels of the guns), and Sharpshooter (everyone has the same gun, the gun cycles automatically every forty-five seconds to a new one). Combat Training is something new to those who aren't sure about heading online. It lets you go against bots on the real multiplayer maps and get a hang out of certain guns, perks and find the chokepoints on maps. Theater mode is where you can review your played games and watch them from a free-flowing camera. You can then upload up to a 30-second clip straight to your youtube account, or if you got a capture card you can catch the action and put the whole match up. Emblems return and are fully customizable. Mine is the James Bond iconic image of the gun barrel with blood dripping and Bond in the center. It's pretty creative what some people make.
Now for the wrap up, the game in my opinion is the best Call of Duty since Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It changed things up, kept it's pacing and has even found a way to report those with offensive emblems, harsh language or cheating/boosting. It kept it's fun too.
Story: 9/10 The best Call of Duty story so far, trumps both Modern Warfare's.
Gameplay: 10/10 Easy controls, not over-complicated and ever button is responsive.
Graphics: 8/10 Most people love Call of Duty's graphics but they really aren't anything special. It's not just about prettiest colors, it's about the physics and everything going on at once, the frame rate etc. Sadly the frame rate kills this Call of Duty at certain times, though the reload animation are the best in any game, some animations of the third person models just look cheaply made.
Sound: 8/10 It's no SOCOM or Battlefield, but it gets the job done in terms of guns and the action. The voice acting in the campaign is star-studded and the zombie voice overs is hilarious. Music from online is heart pumping as well.
Replayability: 10/10 You got fifteen prestige levels, fifty ranks per each level. You got the campaign, the two zombie maps, the zombie ops arcade, and you got their upcoming map pack which will have five maps! The hunt for the trophies will also get you coming back for more.
Overall: 9/10. Buy it if you like shooters, multiplayer games and a fan of any COD from before.
