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Great production value does not make a great game.
I'll start with the good things. COD:Black Ops graphics are on-par with any top-shelf title and it has an incredibly smooth feel. The game is reported to run at 60 frames per second and it feels very high def. The voice acting is good, and clearly the production value and marketing budgets are both very high. However, graphics, and hype do not make a good game. Gameplay and immersion do. Here's why COD:Black Ops Fails utterly.
1 AI is stupid. These shortcomings remind you constantly that your playing a game, and a poorly scripted one at that.
Enemy recognition: I've seen the AI sit 2 feet away from an enemy and not shoot at them. When they finally do, they shoot it out for 10-15 seconds to score a kill on the enemy. This is ridiculous. Your allies in the field are supposed to be top-notch soldiers just like you. Why can't they do some of the heavy lifting? Why can't they do ANY lifting?
AI Movement: Once again you are expected to lead the way no matter what. AI will lead you from one battle to another with annoying "follow me you jackass" type comments (I mean you're supposedly the "very best" soldier in the US's arsenal and your squad pampers you along like you're the greenest rookie in the armed forces, but I'll hit on this later) but once you get from one battle sequence to the next, they sit and shoot in the general direction of the enemy, but do nothing, generally, to progress the situation.
I want to ask the developers, "Have you played ANY other modern games with AI in them?" Because they do have a worthwhile influence on the outcome. Try playing Halo:Reach on legendary without the help of your squad mates you are FAR worse off. In that game, your squad shoots and accurately, and infinitely and eliminates enemies... For the really tough enemies you can time your shots with your AI squad mates to take down difficult targets with efficacy. This is entirely missing in BO.
2. Scripted non-sense battles: Once again the feel of a real battle is completely removed here. You can not move naturally through a level, but instead must figure out through countless, monotonous trial and error sessions what the best, and arguable only, (especially when playing on hardened/veteran difficulty) way through a section is. The fact that the story won't proceed to the next sequence until you trip the magic tripwire in the game is on par with 10-15yr old video games. Have the developers played anything but their own garbage in the last decade? I'm guessing no.
Nothing is worse in battles than seeing your buddies standing in the open taking zero fire, while you are ducked behind cover, and somehow getting magically lit up by enemies invisible to you. While I understand that perhaps some finger or toe might be sticking out of cover, why in all reasonableness would the enemy concentrate the entirety of their base of fire on such an impossible target when there are readily available targets standing entirely in the open? The fact that every enemy on the field seems to ignore all targets but you is very hard to get over. It's counter intuitive. If you see your friends moving with impunity, its natural to think, "I can go with them and NOT get shot at by multiple enemies, since they are in the open and not getting shot at by multiple enemies." Treyarch rewards this logic with untimely, inexplicable death, over and over again. = totally annoying
3. Infinitely spawning enemies
There are times when this is sensible, and there are times when it isn't. The fact that Treyarch rewards you for getting into a tactically superior position and eliminating enemies with unending waves of reinforcements is ridiculous. It's once again, counter-intuitive. While I understand the need to move, you are murdered over and over for sticking a toe out of cover, yet you are rewarded for being in cover with unending oppression. There needs to be a balance struck here where, IF you decide to take cover and use tactics to weaken the enemy force, you will get your chance to move. Maybe its simply the timing of the waves of enemies, but its seems that once you eliminate one enemy they are immediately replaced. This makes it pointless to eliminate enemies, and turns the game into a measured, Run-from-cover-to-cover type of battle where you simply hope to survive the onslaught and recover while in safety, only to do it again. Smoke grenades are the great balancer here, but they are in limited supply and that doesn't excuse how counter-intuitive it is to play a battle game without actually rewarding the player's skill and use of tactics with the ability to advance and succeed in a battlefield environment.
Awful
Game mechanics that are 10 15 yrs old, completely stale, and showing a complete inability to evolve
Completely lackluster AI
No rewards for player skill in a combat game
Good
Smooth, good-looking graphics
Talented voice acting
NOTE: Multiplayer is what it is, you either hate it or love it. I think its quick and addictive fun but I also greatly prefer the realism of other recent releases (MOH)
Zombies is great fun, but hardly worth a 60 pricetag.
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I had never been a fan of the franchise, preferring to do my shooting in the more Arcady Half-Life engine, Halo, Fear etc...Then I played Modern Warfare, and loved it. You felt free to act. On veteran, the game was challenging. The worlds were large, and the enemies didn't re-spawn to infinity. This allowed you to actually be creative in your strategy, instead of tunneling. You could fall back, flank, snipe, or rush. Level design facilitated all strategies and the AI responded. Some levels set up better for different strategies, but the important thing is that it felt organic. When players died, they felt they could do something different--that they had control.
A majority of the positive reviews for this game focus on its numerous improvements over other Treyarch offerings, and hey are right to do so. The graphics, story, voice acting, and music are a step up (from COD:WaW), as well as the addition of some "cool moments," and extras like Zombies. However, there are serious problems that get brushed over. I feel like multi-player issues have been covered. So this review will tackle single player.
While game-play seems fluid on easier difficulties,fundamental problems express themselves at the more difficult settings. My play through on Veteran got boring fast largely due to the fact that Treyarch uses infinite enemy spawns to compensate for poor, predictable level design and unacceptably bad AI. Eventually you realize that besides a few "cool" roller-coaster moments type moments--fun but there's only one track, most of the game consists of a long corridor or an enclosed "box" with predictably placed pieces of cover. Even though there are things going on outside the "box" and the graphics seemingly connect them (see the trenches in the Vietnam level), you cannot interact with them. Visually its a large world; in practice it's claustrophobic. Enemies advance mindlessly in single file from the most distant cover to your position, eventually charging recklessly from the last piece of cover. To "kill" them you need to toss smoke grenades, sprint past some imaginary line, and hunker down. If you get unlucky and the RNG pops off a couple head shots, prepare to live the last 5 minutes of your life over and over again.
Lets be frank--in the early versions of COD, this was a necessity because of inherent technical limitations. The "box" existed because large interactive environments weren't possible. The endless spawns were needed because AI was terrible. It was necessary to have smoke grenades because these other compensations made certain configurations of enemies and cover frustrating. Purists might say "This is Call of Duty," but how many other games get a free pass when refusing to innovate from their predecessors?
Halo got a lot of crap for repeated area designs, but at least there were multiple ways to attack each situation. As Bungie put it, it was the same "moment of fun" over and over again. Black Ops is the same moment of predictable annoyance over and over. Instead of forcing you to critically think, death in Black-Ops feels like you just got unlucky playing the exact same interaction over and over again in the only way possible to play it. Theres nothing to do differently--just rush ahead and cross your fingers again. You are bound to get unlucky and die--even doing the right thing. When you do, unpredictable load points reward you with the with the same set of identical interactions and identical solutions. And then suddenly, when things work out, the gratification isn't there. You did nothing different. If the definition of madness is "doing the same thing and expecting a different result," then I guess I was mad the whole time I played.
Aiming is also problematic. I understand that real guns kick, but when you have an enemy completely filing my sights and the recoil from the last shot makes you miss anyway, you don't feel a sense of reward for aiming and you certainly don't feel a sense of realism; you feel a developer trying to compensate for poor difficulty balancing.
"Throw smoke and run into it" seems like a poor mechanic after a while. In the Infinity Ward games you throw smoke to get a tactical advantage, get away, or provide temporary cover to move to a new position. In Treyarch games, you do it because its the best way to stop infinite spawns. The former feels immersive, the latter feels like band-aid for poor game design.
It seems like Treyarch, in a misguided attempt to differentiate themselves from Infinity Ward and to give long time COD fans exactly what they've played over and over, actually refuses to let the series mature into a dynamic, creative, and frankly more fun experience.
Yes, it is challenging on veteran with high infinite spawn rates. It's challenging that the only solution is to press forward into oncoming fire. But it was also boring and I'd like my money back.
The bottom line is: if you want to romp through the game one lower difficulties or like the Multi-player, give it a shot. It looks good, and is entertaining. I enjoyed the voice acting and the story. If, however, you play through shooters at max difficulty and prefer to get your multi-player in MW2 or the new Halo offering, rent it or wait for better pricing.
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Ah, another year, another Call of Duty game. It seems like the annual release of the next installment in the iconic first-person shooter series should be a national holiday, given how many people attend the midnight launches for the game and no doubt skipped work or school the next day (myself included). Having hit the apex of popularity with Modern Warfare 2, the big question is how Black Ops will compare. I don't live and die by COD games as some people do, but I can say that Black Ops is one of the most satisfying and intense shooters I've ever played, with the best campaign out of all the games in the series and a multiplayer aspect that I can finally enjoy.Perhaps I'm the odd one, but I mainly buy these games for the single-player campaign as I am not the best at online shooters. The campaign in Black Ops is easily the best out of the series, with more cohesive storytelling and a more satisfying conclusion than the previous entries. Set in the Cold War era (early to late 1960's), you fight your way through diverse terrain in Russia, Cuba, and Vietnam, among other locations. As with other games in the series, you play as two main characters and you go back and forth between their missions. Without giving too much away, the story is pretty stock, but the manner in which it's told and presented is a big step forward for the COD series, which has lately felt like a batch of multiplayer games with a brief single-player campaign tacked on. Black Ops gives players a better experience in this regard, and despite being brief (7 hours roughly), it doesn't feel too short or seem to end as abruptly as the Modern Warfare games. The difficulty settings are standard for the series, and for achievement/trophy hunters, the biggest rewards come when playing on "Veteran" difficulty.
The style of gameplay, the weapons and the linear design is all par for the course, but Treyarch has done a wonderful job at bringing this era and the surroundings to life. The cinematic quality that made Modern Warfare 2 such a hit is still intact here, and the graphics and sound are as amazing as you would expect. What I've always enjoyed about the COD games are the tight controls, and Black Ops will fit like a glove for any FPS fan. The multiplayer, undoubtedly the biggest day of Black Ops, is surprisingly accessible for people like me who typically get owned when going online. The focus is on class creating and experience points, and while I've only played a couple of hours, everything seems to run smoothly and without lag. My only fear is that the usual frustrations, such as campers and rude teenagers acting like idiots, will eventually creep in, but I'll be optimistic and see how things play out.
I don't believe in gushing over games and hailing them as the "Best Game EVAR!", so I'll avoid hyperbole and simply say that Black Ops one of the better FPS games that I've played. If I have any negative feedback, it surrounds some of the difficulty spikes and the dumb-as-bricks AI of your teammates (and some enemies), but that was the same case with Modern Warfare 2 and especially World at War. Black Ops is not a perfect game graphically and it doesn't reinvent the wheel for FPS games, but it is a thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying experience that I don't regret investing the time or money into.
Honest reviews on Call of Duty: Black Ops - Xbox 360
My friend talked me into buying this game (used, from GameStop). If I had rented it first, I would not have bought it.The problems with the campaign mode:
1) The AI is horribly stupid. Your allies have no concept of covering fire, except in the (very few) cases where it is written into the script. They will let enemies sneak up behind you or flank you without firing a single shot. They do, however, have helpful things to yell at you. For example, if you are getting shot up, they will yell "You're getting shot up!" Thanks for the heads-up on that one.
2) Special rules for NPCs. Your allies can stand fully upright in a fire fight and never get hit, but if you so much as try to peak around a barricade you die. It completely ruins what should be an immersive experience.
3) Instead of having an engaging narrative, the writers used a flashback wrapper technique to make the story seem interesting. Every battle you fight (except the very end) is a flashback. In one case, you play a flashback inside of a flashback. I'm not kidding! The writers were that lazy. So, every time you die, you stop and say "Wait a second! I know my guy survived because he is getting tortured in the future!"
4) Infinitely spawning waves of enemies too close together. I understand that you are supposed to feel like you are in an impossible situation, but it is just ridiculous when you can't move because the same 5 guys keep respawning, and by the time you've killed the fifth guy, the first guy is shooting you again (while your allies watch and yell at you).
5) Idiotic checkpoints. When you die (and you will die frequently), the game either starts you back 10 minutes earlier, or in the exact spot where you just died. Then, you either have to fight your way back all over again, or you get killed 15 times in a row until you figure out the exact combination of moves to get to safety right away.
6) Bugs! There are places in the game where you can get trapped. I once got my boat stuck and had to do a save+exit+resume trick to get it unstuck. Unfortunately, when I resumed my screen was completely white for 5 minutes, with only the waypoint indicator visible. I could move toward the waypoint, but the graphics did not recover until I hit the next checkpoint.
7) Bad level design. The SR71 mission is the single worst level of any game I have ever played. It is obvious the creators were trying to recreate the feeling of the AC130 mission from the first Modern Warfare game, but what they actually made was an epic fail.
8) Poor acting. I have read other reviews that praise the voice actors in this game. In my opinion, there is only one good actor in this cast. The rest are either hams or just seem to be bored with their lines (and I can't blame them, their lines are usually pretty lame).
The okay parts:
1) It is kind of neat that this game builds on part of the story from COD: World at War.
2) The only fun I had in this game was when I got to use the dragon's breath incendiary shotgun rounds.
3) With the flashback wrapper, at least you know your character isn't going to die half way through the game like they do in the Modern Warfare games.
4) The graphics are good, but nothing spectacular.
Final thoughts:
I play video games to have fun. The campaign mode in this game is simply not fun. Multiplayer may be fun, but you can get good multiplayer and a fun campaign with the Modern Warfare games. The zombie levels might be fun for some people, but I find them repetitive and overly difficult. If you want a zombie game, go buy Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Resident Evil, or any of the other zombie games out there.
I'm selling this one back and letting some other sucker (who didn't read my review) suffer through it. I will rent Black Ops 2 before I even think of buying it.
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Initially, and compared to the terrible Gears Of War series, I really liked this game. It was a breath of fresh air to actually feel I had some degree of control over my on screen character, and could actually engage other players on equal terms. After playing for a while though, that illusion soon vanished. Black Ops suffers from poor hit box detection, and the usual lag issues associated with peer to peer gaming. On top of the actual issues with the game mechanics, the game suffers from a limited number of maps that soon become dull, and not sure if there is map rotation issue, but some maps seem to appear time and time again. Expect to play a lot of WMD and Array. I think it says a lot about the quality of the maps, that when presented with the two possible choices, players will always vote for a random map, anything other than the ones they have been presented with. The only maps that players do seem to vote on are Nuke Town and Firing Range. The maps are also pretty small, so the sniper class seems redundant. This is little more than a gun and run game.Gun selection in this game is pretty much all eye candy, and really makes no difference at all. You can still shoot someone point blank with a shotgun any number of times and they will not go down, and firing on a person first is no sure guarantee that they will be killed. I particularly like the way as well that 50% of the time, enemy players can stroll past your claymore, which will then detonate well after you have been killed by said player. Oh, and watch out too for the poorly animated dog attacks. The blurb says a well timed knife attack can kill a dog, however, there are so few frames of animation on the dogs attacks, that one minute it is on the floor, the next it is on you! Oh, and speaking of knives, expect to be knifed by another player a few feet past them.
Whack Ops may be fun if you have come from an even poorer game, in my case, the Gears Of War series, but at the end of the day, get ready for BS and WTF moments aplenty.
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