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.  

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Review

Written 01/01/2010

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

I believe it would be safe to say that Infinity Ward's original Modern Warfare title was a huge success. It brought us out of the very used and abused World War II battles that we all probably know by heart at this point, into the present with all of the technological marvels that came after WWII. It told a compelling fictional story that eerily resembled the current state of the real world today. It also gave us some of the best multiplayer experiences with a very active community that still stands today, regardless of what platform you choose to log in to. With all this awesomeness seeping out of the original Modern Warfare, I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that Modern Warfare 2 discs are spinning in almost everyone's consoles and PC disc drives. The question is though, what makes Modern Warfare 2 so much better than its predecessor, if anything?

Visuals and Presentation

To put it bluntly, this game is absolutely gorgeous! In every map and campaign mission I've been in so far, the attention to detail in the environments, character and weapon models, textures and ambiance are all top notch. The set pieces alone can give you a great since of calm one moment, apprehension the next, then get your blood pumping right after as everything starts blowing up around you. A good bit of the ambiance was sacrificed in the multiplayer maps for the sake of performance and flow, but it's not very noticeable in the utter chaos of matches and the trade-off is very worth it.

Visuals and Presentation Rating:

Sound

I always hate it when I get a game that looks and plays awesomely, but the voice acting or general sounds are simply terrible. It's really quite sad that those developers don't understand the importance and impact of good sound. Luckily for us, it seems Infinity Ward understands just how important it really is, because Modern Warfare 2's audio is just as much of a treat as its visuals! I can't remember any of the voice actors' names in particular, but I could have sworn I heard a few iconic voices from other games and a fair number of returning voices from the first Modern Warfare. Every line of dialog was well portrayed and believable, with little to no cheesiness in sight. I can only imagine how much it cost to hire that many quality voice actors for the game. The weapon sounds were also what you would expect. There's never really an instance where a certain weapon that was quite powerful when fired sounding weak or vice verse. When you combine the excellent visuals with the equally excellent sound, you get an experience few games can provide. In short, you don't get sound quite like this in an FPS very often. So crank up those speakers, it's well worth it!

Sound Rating:

Gameplay

If you've played any of the previous Call of Duty titles, then you already know what the gameplay in Modern Warfare 2 will be like for the most part. This is a high-octane, over the top action shooter that is meant to keep you constantly on the edge of your seat, and it does that to stellar effect. One difference you'll find in the campaign missions from the first Modern Warfare is that you won't get nearly as lost trying to get from point A to point B in a level, as paths are much clearer to pick out. Another change you'll find is that enemies will no longer infinitely respawn, which allows you to plan out your strikes against defended buildings a bit better.

A new game-mode has also been introduced in Modern Warfare 2 called Spec-Ops missions. These missions are designed to take anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes each to complete, and can be tackled either alone or cooperatively with one friend. They typically have one objective and, at times, one sub-objective. For example, one mission requires you to clear a small slum town of 30 hostiles while killing as few civilians as possible. If you die or kill 6 civilians, you fail the mission and must restart from the beginning. The difficulty of missions can range from rather simple to quite insane, and I would imagine some are nearly impossible to complete without someone there to help. You are also awarded star medals depending on your performance in each mission and if you complete certain criteria set forth by the game for particular missions. Once you earn enough stars in the missions available to you, you will unlock another set of more difficult missions to try your hand at. In all, you can unlock four sets of missions.

Although the single-player gameplay is still as fun and intense as ever, Modern Warfare 2 truly shines in its multiplayer. I didn't count, but there are well over 10 gametypes to choose from ranging from your standard Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch to more objective oriented modes where one team must control certain points of the map for a certain amount of time to win, or another where one team must capture the only bomb in the map and plant it within the opposing team's base without dying. There are also a crazy amount of weapons and perks to choose from, and it would take me forever to describe them all. Suffice to say though, if you want to unlock them all, you're going to be playing a while. Each weapon also has it's own progression path to unlock new equipment for that weapon, which in itself will take quite a while to unlock everything for one weapon; much less all of them! There is also a personal level-up system to facilitate the unlocking of everything, in which you gain XP for killing opposing players, completing objectives in appropriate gametypes, and so on. Once you hit a certain level, you unlock a new weapon or perk. Speaking of perks, you can now customize your own killstreak rewards. Don't like having to use a UAV at 3 kills? Change it to something else you've unlocked!

If I have any real complaints about Modern Warfare 2's mechanics, it's how Infinity Ward has chosen to handle server selection and mod support. There are no dedicated servers in the game. Instead, you choose the gametype you want to play, and the game searches for the best host to give you the best ping possible. This may sound like a good thing, and it is when all you do is play the game casually, but the problem shows itself when players want to form guilds and stick together. Sure, you can create a private group and move on from there, but it would have been nice to have a place to call “home” in the community. As for mod support, because there isn't any dedicated server support, there isn't any mod support either. Not only was this choice a huge let down for me personally, it could end up hurting the game in the long run. Unless Infinity Ward can provide us with worthwhile and cheap (if not free at times) DLC on a regular basis, the lack of community created content will make the game grow stale much quicker for many people. After that, those people will either move back to the original Modern Warfare or to another game entirely. If you just play the game casually though, none of that will really matter to you.

Gameplay Rating:

Story

Let me get this out of the way here and now, Modern Warfare 2's story, if you can even call it that, is by far the weakest part of an otherwise stellar game. If you were considering picking up Modern Warfare 2 just to see what the story was like and never playing online, don't. Go back and play the original Modern Warfare's campaign again. Trust me, the original's story is that much better. The events of Modern Warfare 2's campaign are so seemingly random and vague that it's hard to follow what's really going on beyond the third mission. Quite honestly, I can't really tell you what happened in the story if I wanted to because it went in so many directions. There's not much reason to care about the new characters that weren't in the original Modern Warfare because it's hard to tell who's side certain characters are on.

To Infinity Ward's credit though, there were some very awesome moments in the campaign that are well worth experiencing. Even with the poor story, I still greatly enjoyed the campaign simply for the trademarked Call of Duty action sequences. Just don't make this the only reason to get the game.

Story Rating:

Replay Value

Considering that Modern Warfare 2 was mainly designed around its multiplayer offerings, it has amazing replay value spanning literally hundreds of hours of leveling up, unlocking equipment for new weapons, and experimenting with perk configurations. On the single-player side of things, there are some truly awesome moments in the campaign that deserve being replayed multiple times. Then there's Spec-Ops missions, which can be tackled solo or with a friend, and trying to master each mission. If you wanted to accomplish absolutely everything that's offered in the game, you could easily put 200 hours into the game if you're moderately skilled. Not only is that a lot of gameplay time, it's a lot of bang for your buck. If you were to buy the game now for $60.00, and play it for 200 hours, you're spending $0.30 for every hour of gameplay; you can't really go wrong with that at all! In these rough economic times, I'd say that was a worthwhile investment of your limited cash.

Replay Value Rating:

Final Thoughts and Overall Score

All in all, this game just plain rocks. Even with the lack of dedicated servers and mod support, Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer is just as awesome as the first game and manages to top it. Although the story in the single-player campaign is basically non-existent, it's still a wild ride that must be experienced. Spec-Ops missions are a great way to test your mettle against the AI alone or with a friend. Everything offered in the multiplayer portion of the game alone is worth the price of admission. Whether you pick up the game for PC (system requirements below), PS3, or 360, it's pretty hard to go wrong with Modern Warfare 2.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Overall Score:

PC minimum system requirements:

OS: Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista (Windows 95/98/ME/2000 are unsupported)

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor or better supported

Memory: 1 GB RAM

Graphics: 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT or better or ATI Radeon 1600XT or better

DirectX®: Microsoft DirectX(R) 9.0c

Hard Drive: 12GB of free hard drive space

Sound: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

Internet: Broadband connection and service required for Multiplayer Connectivity. Internet Connection required for activation.

Co-op/Multiplayer Hosting: To host Co-op or MP matches, a 2Ghz dual-core or better processor is recommended.  

Call of Duty: World at War Review

Written 04/09/2010

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

Let me get this out of the way now, having played Modern Warfare 2 it's going to be difficult to not have some slight bias against this game. Plus, having only played the Infinity Ward entries of the Call of Duty franchise so far, I can't help but favor them over Treyarch. Don't get me wrong though, World at War is a very worthwhile entry to the franchise but...well...just read this review for the whole story!

Visuals and Presentation

Considering that World at War is made on the Call of Duty 4 engine, it already has a very solid foundation visually. Character and weapon models are solid, as are the textures. The animations are what you would expect from a Call of Duty title, with nice fluidity and believability. There are some pretty nice effects as well such as the water, dust clouds, and explosions. The environments are mostly well made and diversified. The lighting, while good, often felt flat in areas that some really interesting things could have been done.

The simple fact of it though, is if you're comparing Call of Duty 4 and World at War visually, Call of Duty 4 is still the superior looking game; even with it being a year older. It just didn't seem like Treyarch tapped into hardly half of the engine's real potential, which is a shame. On the design side, some pretty interesting things were done at some points, then other areas felt empty and lifeless. For example, the areas where you're required to clear out a trench of Japanese infantry and destroy anti-aircraft emplacements are great! They are well planned out, flow well, and are generally a lot of fun. Then you have an area where you drive a tank, and while it is a good experience, the constant dust clouds that take away all of your visibility for up to 5 seconds at a time along with some areas of the level that are completely barren really take away some of the enjoyment of it. Overall, the visuals are mostly solid, but suffer from the occasional design flaw.

Visuals and Presentation Rating:

Sound

I've never had any complaints about a Call of Duty's sound, and World at War doesn't force me to start now. Everything from the gun sounds to the voice acting to the music to even the footsteps are superb! None of it is out of place in the least, and the game would truly suffer without it. The voice acting in particular shines above everything else with its well written dialog and voice talent. I didn't recognize any of the other voices right off, but I do know that Kiefer Sutherland (you know, the guy who plays Jack Bauer in 24) voices your commanding officer in the American sections of the game.

The music is also worth noting because it successfully mixes modern hard rock music and metal into a WWII game without making it feel strange in the least. It adds a lot to the overall feel of the game and effectively gets you in the right frame of mind for almost any situation. Not to mention everything sounds better than usual with surround sound.

Sound Rating:

Gameplay

This is a Call of Duty game, so it's pretty common knowledge what the gameplay is like. The single-player campaign is a fast and furious ride from one action sequence to the next until the credits roll. The multiplayer is a very balanced experience that's moderately easy to pick up and play and nearly impossible to truly master. The gametypes are somewhat limited, but are varied enough to satisfy whatever play style you likely are. There's your typical Free-for-All, Team-Deathmatch, and Capture-the-Flag. There's also different gametypes such as Search & Destroy, which is very similar to Counter-Strike where every player only has one life and one team must successfully plant a bomb in the proper zone and detonate it or kill every player on the opposing team to win. The other team must either kill every player on the opposing team or disarm the bombs  planted before they detonate to win.

Unfortunately though, it's in gameplay that World at War shows it is not an Infinity Ward title. The single-player campaign, while enjoyable, doesn't have the same impact and flow as Call of Duty 4. The AI is also MUCH poorer than in Call of Duty 4. On countless occasions the enemy would simply stand out in the open looking right at me with his gun raised but never shooting, allowing me time to either line up a headshot or even walk right up to him and melee him to death. I also had some difficulty connecting to a multiplayer server without PunkBuster kicking me for apparently cheating. To the game's credit though, that issue was something involving Steam, and was easily fixed.

Even though those issues were everywhere in the game, it isn't without its saving graces. The main one of these is Nazi Zombies; an incredibly fun and challenging game mode that you can play solo or with up to 3 friends. You must finish the single-player campaign to unlock this mode, but it's well worth it. It's basically a base defense game where you must hold back ever-encroaching waves of Nazi zombies until you die. I simply can't stress enough how fun this game mode is, especially if you're into tower defense games. The game's other saving grace is the ability to play the entire single-player campaign cooperatively with a friend. Overall, the gameplay, like the visuals, is mostly solid with a few design flaws here and there.

Gameplay Rating:

Story

Just as in all of the Call of Duty games before it, possibly excluding Call of Duty 4, the story in World at War makes absolutely no sense. This is a WWII game that, unlike nearly every other WWII game in existence, looks at the less popular battles of the war. This is a good thing because quite honestly, I'm sure many people are tired of storming Normandy by now. The game follows an American and a Russian soldier as they go about completing their missions to further win the war. To put it simply, when you're playing as the American soldier the game will focus all on gameplay and hardly none on story. When you're playing as the Russian soldier, you'll still get some great gameplay, but with a pretty decent revenge story. Basically if you're considering buying World at War for its story and nothing else, don't! Play it for the multiplayer instead.

Story Rating:

Replay Value

Considering that World at War is a multiplayer game at heart, the replay value here is exceptional! Also considering that this is made on the Call of Duty 4 engine, you're guaranteed to have all the bells and whistles that were present there such as the ability to create your own weapon loadouts and perks. Nazi Zombies is also an incredible reason to keep playing, it's just that fun. Not to mention there is still a decently active online community for the game today. Basically, you just can't go wrong with a Call of Duty game as far as replay value goes.

Replay Value Rating:

Final Thoughts and Overall Score

Overall, while World at War is a very worthwhile addition to the Call of Duty franchise, I think that Treyarch does not fully understand what makes the series so great at its core, and thus cannot emulate themselves. If you see World at War in a half-off sale someplace, it's definitely worth a go. If you have to pay full price though, get an Infinity Ward Call of Duty instead. World at War is available for PC (system requirements below), PS3, and 360.

Call of Duty: World at War Overall Score:

Minimum System Requirements

Supported OS: Windows XP/Vista

Processor: Pentium 4 @ 3 GHz/AMD 64 3200+

Memory: 512 MB (1 GB for Vista)

Hard Drive: 8 GB Free

DirectX version: DirectX 9.0c

Sound: on-board or better

Graphics Card: 256 MB (nVidia GeForce 6600/ATI Radeon X1600)