Call of Duty: Black Ops Review

Written 12/30/2010

Note: Screenshot and video taken from my machine. This review is for the PC version of the game.

I was pretty hard on Treyarch in my review of World at War, and I still stand by everything I said in that review. However, it appears that I'm going to need to eat my negative words about their understanding of the Call of Duty franchise. Black Ops not only stands up to the mighty Modern Warfare 2, but it also surpasses it on some fundamental levels; including story. Unless you're a die-hard Infinity Ward fanboy, this is more than likely the Call of Duty you're looking for.

Visuals and Presentation

Black Ops is made on the Modern Warfare 2 engine, so if you've played MW2 you know how pretty it can be. Some definite improvements were made however, especially to the character models and textures. Treyarch makes a point of giving you very nice closeups of the characters pretty often in the campaign, and it's something I never grew tired of. You see individual wrinkles, beads of sweat, strands of hair, creases in certain facial expressions, and on and on. It's really striking to see, and you're going to have a hard time looking away. Animations are also equally awesome, with nuanced gestures at times giving you more instructions than verbal commands; especially in the more stealth-heavy sections of the game. The environments and weapons are also gorgeous, but play second fiddle to the characters and animations by just hair. Variety is also in great abundance in Black Ops, with a wide assortment of weapons and customizations for them. The environments you'll be visiting range from government buildings, to third-world prisons, to jungles, to snowy mountains, to desert-ish areas; it's all here, and it's all beautiful in both the campaign and in multiplayer. The dramatic lighting seems to be a little reduced in the multiplayer maps, but I think it was a necessary sacrifice to improve gameplay. My only complaint, if you can call it that, is the fact that you'll occasionally see a rather low-res and flat texture on a character or two. This should by no means distract you from the amazing amount of eye-candy in Black Ops!

Visuals and Presentation Rating:

Sound

The Call of Duty franchise has always had a good grasp of sound, but Black Ops seems to be a notch above the rest; especially when it comes to the music and voice-acting. In the typical Call of Duty campaign, music is usually present in the high-action sequences, but it's also usually too low to hear or drowned out by the constant gunfire and explosions. In Black Ops, the music is not only awesome and appropriate, but also very easily heard! Granted, it's still only in the high-action sequences, with excellent hard rock tracks that perfectly compliment the over-the-top action on-screen. In other words, if you're not in the mood to blow stuff up before the music, you definitely will be when it starts! The voice-acting is also top-notch, not only because of the voice talent itself, but because the writing is actually more than your standard “A terrorist organization is threatening the world with a bomb!”. It's more personal, and interactions between the characters don't feel forced like some of the other Call of Duty relationships. The weapon and environmental sounds are just as high quality as they've always been, so there's not much really to comment on there. Overall, a very solid sound package with some excellent writing. I just wish there would have been more music in the multiplayer aside from the rank-up, match-start, and match-end tracks.

Sound Rating:

Gameplay

The core gameplay in Black Ops is basically the same as every other Call of Duty in existence; a fast-paced action roller coaster that's highly dependent on your reflexes and twitch skills. The formula doesn't feel like it's been changed a bit, and quite honestly it doesn't need to be in my opinion. The campaign flows much more cohesively than in the previous games (more on that in the Story section), and the multiplayer is still as fun as ever; though unfortunately stricken with some technical issues.

There's not really a lot of new things going on as far as the campaign goes, but again, there didn't really need to be. There are large shootouts, races against the clock, on-rails vehicle shoot-em-ups, and two sequences where you fly a helicopter. It's all here, and it's all great! If memory serves me well, the helicopter sequences really are new to a Call of Duty game, and it's a whole lot of fun to say the least.

Multiplayer is another story though, with the introduction of Wager Matches and CoD Points. In the most recent Call of Duty titles, you would unlock new weapons and perks by ranking up with a traditional XP bar. While you still rank up and gain XP in the same way, CoD Points, which are earned in the same way as XP, allow you to have more control of what weapons and perks you unlock at any given time. For example, if you  want to use a particular weapon, you must first meet the rank requirement as usual. After you have the required rank, you need to also have the required amount of CoD Points to purchase the weapon. Once the weapon is purchased, you can continue on to buy any available attachments for that particular weapon, like scopes, grips, larger clips, etc. I find this to be a more user-friendly experience than in previous Call of Duty games because of the simple fact that you aren't gimped when first using a new weapon because you haven't earned any attachments yet. It allows you to more freely experiment with weapon and attachment combinations to find the perfect match for you; which is always a good thing.

The second major addition in multiplayer comes in the form of Wager Matches. If you have 500 or more CoD Points you don't know what to do with, you can gamble them in a Wager Match for a chance to make a lot more CoD Points in one match. There are four available Wager Match gametypes: Gun Game, Sharpshooter, Sticks and Stones, and One in the Chamber. In Gun Game, everyone starts with a revolver. When you get a kill, the revolver is exchanged for dual-wielded pistols. Get another kill, and the pistols are exchanged for a shotgun. The process continues with you getting more powerful weapons with each kill. Once a player gets a kill with the 20^th weapon, that person wins. You should keep in mind though, that if you're killed with a melee attack in Gun Game, you are pushed back by one weapon rank. So if you're using a shotgun and are killed by melee, you will respawn dual-wielding pistols again. In Sharpshooter, everyone spawns with the same weapon again, but this time around that weapon will switch for everyone (to the same weapon for everyone) every 40 seconds. Other than that, the gametype is basically a free-for-all with the winner being the one that has met the score goal, or the one with the highest score when time runs out.

In Sticks and Stones, everyone spawns with a crossbow, three explosive darts for it, a ballistic knife, and a tomahawk. The game progresses as a free-for-all until one player reaches the score goal. Beware though, because if you are killed with the tomahawk, you are bankrupted and sent to the bottom of the scoreboard. In One in the Chamber, everyone spawns with a pistol, one bullet, and three lives. If you kill a player with either your gun or melee, you take that player's bullet. Things continue as a free-for-all until there is one player left or time runs out. If you're not lucky enough to be in first place at the end of a match, the second and third place players also receive a reduced amount of CoD Points. Everyone below third place gets nothing. In all, the gametypes are a whole lot of fun, but they can become one-sided very quickly if you don't bring your A-game every single time. I do wish the gametypes were available without forcing you to be in a Wager Match, but I understand why they did it the way they did.

As a bit of fan service to the World at War faithful, Treyarch brought the Nazi Zombies (or should I say Korean Zombies here?) gametype back in Black Ops, and it's as awesome as ever! If you haven't played it in World at War, think of it as Left 4 Dead 2's Survival gametype with Call of Duty shooting mechanics. You can also build barriers to keep the zombies back for a short time, as well as using environmental hazards for quick kills. The cast is absolutely fantastic, featuring John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro, and Robert McNamara. Each is fully voiced over and it's a riot to see and hear them slaughtering the undead with prejudice. My only complaint is that there are only three maps in the gametype with one of those maps locked and no real explanation on how to unlock it.

My final and worst complaint is the stability issues in the multiplayer portion of the game. In the campaign, I suffer no crashes or even slight hitching. In multiplayer, the game crashed forcing me to Ctrl+Alt+Delete and exit at least seven times in 16 hours of gameplay. Doing the math, that's roughly one crash every 2 hours 15 minutes. In my opinion, that's quite bad and needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Overall though, I wouldn't allow that to deter you from enjoying the most excellent gameplay offered in Black Ops. Even with the crashes, it really is quite great!

Gameplay Rating:

Story

As far as storylines go in the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops has the best one by and far. Considering how poor the stories (if you can call them that) are in the previous games though, that's not a very hard title to claim. The biggest thing helping Black Ops with that achievement is the simple fact that the story here really IS a story! Without giving too much away, you are Alex Mason, and you have been captured by an (at first) unknown party and are being severely interrogated. You're being asked to recount the events that took place while you and your team were in Vietnam, but the questions begin to be very personal about those events very quickly. Eventually the subject of cryptic numbers comes up, and things become much more confusing. That's all I'm going to say about that. The story is told via flashbacks (which are all gameplay), and things seem to move in very random directions fairly often. Don't let that throw you off though; all of it has a meaning. So be sure to pay attention to everything going on, because it will all come together at the end of the game, and you'll be saying “ooooooh, I get it now!”. Overall though, it's not an award-winning script, but it's definitely better than every other Call of Duty story I've experienced.

Story Rating:

Replay Value

You're probably getting tired of me saying this in this section, but Black Ops' replay value is highly dependent on how much you enjoyed the game the first time around. There's not a whole lot to do in single-player after the campaign, but multiplayer offers literally hundreds of hours of gameplay; especially if you're a completionist that must unlock absolutely everything. If you're not a fan of Call of Duty gameplay in general or get easily bored, you'll likely get a solid 20-30 hours out of the game easily. If you do enjoy Call of Duty gameplay in general, you're likely looking at your new primary game right here!

Replay Value Rating:

Final Thoughts and Overall Score

Treyarch has really stepped up their game since World at War! Black Ops is easily one of the best entries in the Call of Duty franchise, if not the best. If they can keep this up in years to come I would venture to say that they could become better at this than Infinity Ward, especially with all the drama at the latter company of late. So if you enjoy FPSs at all and you're not a die-hard Halo fanboy, you will most definitely enjoy Black Ops! Great job Treyarch!

Call of Duty: Black Ops Overall Score:

System Requirements

• OS: Windows® Vista / XP / 7
• Processor: Intel® Core™2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom™ X3 8750 or better
• Memory: 2GB
• Graphics: Shader 3.0 or better 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600GT / ATI Radeon® X1950Pro or better
• DirectX®: DirectX® 9.0c
• Hard Drive: 12GB*
• Sound: DirectX® 9.0c-compatible

*Call of Duty®: Black Ops requires an initial hard drive space of approximately 24GB to download and install the game via digital download (8GB of compressed files, 8GB of decompressed files and 8GB of installed files). Upon installing the game, 16GB (compressed and decompressed files) may be deleted from the hard drive. Please make note of where the compressed and decompressed files are being saved on your hard drive in order to later locate these temporary files for removal.