It’s November. It means that another Call of Duty game is being released and everyone is on the edge of their seat waiting for a chance to play it. The development shifts to Treyarch who gave us the forgettable Call of Duty 3, the surprisingly good World at War, and now Black Ops. The focus this time around is the Cold War and we take a look at all of the conflicts that “didn’t” happen. The game is very, very good, but feels like Modern Warfare 2.5 and not the leap forward we all had hoped.
Not much has changed since you put down the MW2 controller and that is not a bad thing on most parts. The controls remain tight and the frenzied action is ramped up. Black Ops should have had two major goals in mind: fix the multiplayer mode and bring something new to the table. They almost completed both. The style of play of the multiplayer has not changed much. Find a good spot and shoot the people running around aimlessly. The game has been leveled as some unbalanced perks are gone and kill streaks have been consolidated. No more nukes is a blessing. The idea of changing the leveling system to a credit based system is genius. Leveling up is fast as you can have the right to buy new weapons faster, but the ones you choose to buy are your choice. A great idea to a system that needed a kick in the ass.
I do find myself at least a little disappointed here. The campaign has more vehicle combat, which is awesome. However, the gameplay is the same. The levels are basically on rails and while your enemies can cover behind walls, you cannot. This is an issue on the harder difficulties. The enemy and friendly AI is still at Corky levels. There are a ton of glitches in the campaign. I encountered three on the first level. All required a complete mission restart. There is no Co-op campaign. This is just absurd at this stage in gaming, especially for a franchise that has had the game mode before. Zombies are great, but should be more of a tacked on side thing than a major installment. Dropping Spec Ops for Combat Training is another head scratcher. The replay value there is minimal at best.
The game plays great, looks awesome and sounds better than ever. There is a lot of content here with hidden games and a multiplayer in which you will put in an embarrassing amount of time. However, the quantum leap a lot of us wanted is not there. Releasing a game every year prevents the time that major changes would need to be implemented. This just feels like Modern Warfare 2.5. The backdrop, story, some weapons, and new maps have changed. Everything else is basically the same. I like the game and I will play it a ton. I just wish a bigger step was taken to improve a game that we have been playing for the past few years.
[A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.]
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I’m happy the single player is at least longer than MW2, but it sucks they took out Spec Ops. That was one of my favorite parts of MW2.
I couldn’t agree more. The game is great, I can’t say many bad things about the 1 player or multiplayer gameplay (other than the bugs you mentioned). But the lack of co-op options is truly embarrassing. I know that for many MW2 fans, the Spec Ops mode was the highlight of the game. To strip that out for a stupid zombie mode… it makes me wonder if they just want to prevent two roommates from buying a single copy. I get that, but they could have just skipped split screen and it would have had the same effect.
I’m willing to bet they offer a Spec Ops type mode through DLC over the next three months. It’s a joke, really. I’m not happy about this.
Played the campaign for the first time last night on “Hardened”, I believe. I was bewildered by how stupid the Enemy and friendly AI were. I was running around a hallway with 6 enemy soldiers, 1/2 of which didn’t even realize I was there looking out the windows. My allies, would run into a crowded room of enemy soldiers and not take cover. In the old game, any time I lost patience and tried to go Kamikaze, I was killed instantly; that wasn’t the case with this game.
im not sure if you realize this but there are basically two call of duties, theres modern warfare versions and older combat versions. They’re by different companies and rotate releases, this is a sequal to the world war 2 call of duty, not the last modern warfare one. That’s why it looks nothing like modern warfare and doesn’t have spec ops.. they didnt take any features out.. they just are not related to modern warfare call of duty. there are two different companies involved here.
I was a little flustered when I first started playing Black Ops, but it’s starting to grow on me now that I’m getting the hang of it.
Here is what I want to know, did they fix the multiplayer? Way to much lag and do not get me started on the hackers. Is it just a matter of time before these things become an issue as they were in Modern Warfare 2? Love the series of games but lag and hacks really made me pass on Black Ops (and truth be told I can play Modern Warfare 2 better now that most people are playing Black Ops,go figure).
[…] not going to be buying Black Ops only for the simple fact that it’s Modern Warfare 2.5 (at least from all of the reviews). I just don’t play military shooters (competitively) like I used to. I played […]
I really like the maps, I’m not the biggest fan of Treyarch but they always had pretty good maps, and I’m digging these. You are all right about spec ops and a co-op feature. I hated zombies in world at war and haven’t even looked at it yet in black ops. They did some interesting things with the multi-unlocking your own perks and shit, but I had a few games where my team was to busy trying to complete contracts and were not focused on the game objective. Thats my gripe