Call of Duty: Black Ops

[Art Blade]

It described Quake III Arena.

[deadman1]

Are you sure? The way I remember it Quake III Arena was MP only with no SP at all. ????

[Art Blade]

I was referring to this:

I would love to see someone come out with a killer MP shooter and then actually admit they completely phoned it in on the plot, or even better neglected to create one altogether.

QIIIA never had a plot, when it was announced it was already clear that it would be MP only.

[deadman1]

That´s what I get for completely misreading mmosu´s post  :-[, I thought he meant something completely different. Must remember to have some coffe before I post in the morning  ^-^

[Art Blade]

I know what if feels like, starting the day without coffee...


so, allow me to say humbly and carefully and with all respect, ARE YOU CRAZY?!  \:/

hehehehe, NEVER skip coffee   ;D


Well, then the best thing you could do was to say something.. talking helps  ;)

[deadman1]

so, allow me to say humbly and carefully and with all respect, ARE YOU CRAZY?!  \:/

^+-+

[PZ]

Nice avatar, Art  :-X

[Art Blade]

deadman: ;D

cheers, PZ :)

[eor123]

If Black Ops is anything like the recent CoD titles, the SP game will be very  short and linear. Hopefully I'll be proved wrong :-\\

No, you're not wrong. I bought it yesterday afternoon and finished it late last night -- and that includes a trip out of town to eat with the wife.

Honestly... it was more of a chore than an enjoyable game and I was happy to see it end.

The rogue Russian with an evil plot scenario has grown very tiresome. I guess voice actors who do Russian and Russian accents are cheaper and easier to find.

ACOG sights on an M-16 type rifle during The Bay Of Pigs invasion in 1961? Puhleeese... That absurdity set the tone for me and it went downhill from there.

Directing a ground squad from an SR 71 Blackbird in real time? Seriously...these guys [developers] have run out of ideas and have reverted to nonsense.

At least they did get McNamara as JFK's Sec of Defense. His appearance in the game was pleasantly surprising.

It would be interesting to time the cutscenes versus gameplay. I have a feeling people would be shocked at how high the cutscene / gameplay ratio is in this game.

And the cutscenes were annoying...after the 4th or 5th segment with the flashbacks, I got the point. They were a good time to go to the bathroom or get a bottle of water--and not worth much else to me.

And the numbers station shtick...really cool concept but they screwed that up. I am familiar with shortwave numbers stations and used to listen to them as a hobby. The transmit 5 character groups consisting of letters and numerals -- not one or two digit numerals. A small detail, but the real thing can be as interesting as fiction at times.

This seems to be the year that the major gaming franchises went to the well once too many times, IMO.

In the game's defense, the weapons play (although at times ridiculously inaccurate from a historical perspective) was good. 

I played it on Normal difficulty and it was challenging. I died...a lot. Pretty chaotic...and made even more so by the dumb AI that makes it possible for an enemy to casually walk past one of your squad mates, and flank you. This is a real pet peeve of mine in gameplay. Is it too much to ask that a squad mate shoot an enemy that walks in front of him so I don't get shot in the back while in cover and dealing with a dozen enemies?

I'll admit to putting myself in some really bad tactical situations because I was rushing the  gameplay. Most battles don't have a time completion element so there isn't a need to rush in spite of the feeling that you must.

One battle is pretty screwed up from a design standpoint. You are fighting in the trenches of Khe San in Viet Nam and being overwhelmed with huge numbers of enemies. The game portrays the chaos of the situation very well but it is almost impossible to figure out where you are supposed to go and what you are supposed to do to progress the game. After 10 minutes of killing hundreds of VC attackers with a mounted machine gun, I figured out they were going to spawn endlessly unless I moved on.

The Marines direct you to a bunker but after you fight your way there you really aren't much closer to the objective. Apparently you can hang out in the bunker, killing the enemy until you get bored or run out of ammo. It has no effect on progressing the game.

The objective is marked as a point in a trench down the hill and after you fight your way to it, the music changes but you don't know where to go and you are getting shot to Hell. The enemy keeps spawning and shooting you from above. After dying about a dozen times and having to restart from the top of the hill, I got online to get some help and found that several players have gotten stuck there. Apparently if you move forward in the trench from the marked objective, you reach a dead end and at that point the enemy miraculously stops spawning and the Marines advance toward the next objective.

So in this battle, moving to the next objective has more to do with going to the right spot than killing the enemy but your stated mission objective is to push the attackers back.  It was pretty confusing to me.

I ran into a glitch that forced me to restart an entire level. A member of my squad decided to "hang out" somewhere rather than join the rest of us and the game would not progress as a result.

The gore was strange-- shoot someone with half a clip from an light machine gun and they peacefully fall over dead. Shoot a guy with what appears to be a .357 mag revolver in a tunnel and it blows his arm or legs off. And guys... the tunnel rats in Viet Nam were typically armed with M1911 .45 ACP pistols, not large bore revolvers. Kinda hard to reload a revolver in the dark, you think? Oh, but in the game you do it with one hand. LoL

And if you could sit through the dumb cutscenes, the storyline and plot twists that emerge are pretty good, in spite of the execution. However, the story line borrowed HEAVILY from films. One cutscene is so similar to a famous one in the "The Deer Hunter" I think the author of that screenplay should have been credited.

The only redeeming part of the game in my view was the Epilogue and prelude to the now standard Zombie siege. I actually laughed at that.

I hope the mutiplayer is awesome, because in my opinion the SP campaign doesn't rate more than a 7.00. But I am sure the loyal franchise fans will clamor about it being the "bestest" FPS, evah!

[deadman1]

Thank´s for that eor  :-X yours is not the first revue I´ve read that says the game is a disappointment. The MP seems to have some serious lag issues and with a short SP campaign I think I´ll wait until I can find in the bargain bin. I have my hands full with BFBC2 MP anyway  >:D

[eor123]

I'm sure I'm too hard on the game as I tend to set the bar pretty high -- probably too high.

But for a game to really impress me, it has to be very immersive [ Far Cry 2] have an engaging story [Red Dead Redemption] be stupid fun [ Bad Company or Just Cause 2] be a non stop adrenalin rush [ Killzone 2] be visually stunning or cinematic in its scope [ Uncharted 2] or a combination of all those elements [ Half Life 2 or Mass Effect 2].

COD Black Ops just comes up short in pretty much all those categories and the sum isn't particularly greater than the all the parts in that instance. The SP campaign is short and linear and overburdened with cut scenes...once again all just my opinion for what it is worth. 

[mmosu]

Well it's worth a lot to me, cause all the things you just mentioned are pet peevs of mine too.  Thanks for the review Eor  :-X

[PZ]

Great review in my opinion - it is good to see the other side of the coin.  Although I've not played that much in the way of Call of Duty, my brother had Modern Warfare, and I have World at War - they were far too linear (and short) for my taste.  A single play through was all she wrote.  In fact, I remember finishing World at War and thinking to myself: "that's it???" because I'd seen marketing videos which indicated there was so much more.  There was, only it was specifically for online, not SP.

[JRD]

COD Black Ops just comes up short in pretty much all those categories and the sum isn't particularly greater than the all the parts in that instance. The SP campaign is short and linear and overburdened with cut scenes...once again all just my opinion for what it is worth.

They should've called it Black Ooops  :-D

[Art Blade]

 ^+-+

[fragger]

Lol JRD :-D :-D :-D

Eor, thanks for posting that great review :-X and for unfortunately confirming my doubts >:((

For this particular SP gamer, this franchise has overstayed it's welcome. Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I like to actually play a game, not be a spectator for half of it. MW2 SP had too much scripting and too many specific tasks for my liking, and BO sounds worse in those respects. I won't be bothering with it.

[spaceboy]

I agree with above assessments.  The single player is really lackluster and lots of hand holding.  The MP is fun enough for sure.  But even that, if it weren't for a friend convincing me to get it cause he wanted it, I would've passed.  It effectively was $40 for me with the amazon discount offered, so in that sense, I'm not upset I picked it up.

[retiredgord]

Well after reading all your reviews of Black Ops I'm glad i didn't buy it myself. I got it as a Christmas present so it won't hurt my gaming feelings any if I play and do not like. After all there are a lot more games out there. Too many games not enuf time, even for a retired guy.

[Fiach]

I must preface this with the caveat that I hate CoD games. Theres a review here somewhere by me, of CoD MW2, slating it iirc.

I thoroughly enjoyed BO, I thought it was everything that MW2 wasn't, there were no BS missions like All Ghillied up, where you spend more time travelling to a mission and away from it, than in the actual mission.

I liked the story, sure, it telegraphed the ending quite early and it was a bonkers plot, but nowhere near the league of the degrre of madness that was the MW2 plot. :)

As regards realism or rifle sights, I dont know from adam, I was playing a game, as regards Khe San, I only know about it from a Springsteen song, but I had no problems on where to go next.

As regards directing the OP from the plane, there was a similar mission in one of the other MW games that bored the beejeesus out of me, but I loved the way that you gave the commands like a strategy game, then zoomed down into the squad immediately, into the action.

Actually that last paragraph summed up my thoughts on the game, there was no dicking around, you were whisked from set poiece to set piece and era to era, with no let up, it was one long constant firefight, I really enjoyed the pace/momentum of the game.

And ZOMBIES!!!!!  I LOVE ZOMBIES, there are iirc 3 different zombie modes in the game.

Bbbbrrrraaaaiiinnnnsssss..... :)

But again, its just opinions, I hated MW2, but (as shown by its sales) many millions of people LOVED it.

Either way a great and well written review , cheers :)

[Binnatics]

Oooooh, didn't read all reviews allready but i've spent quite a while on this game. I also LOVE them zombies. It's so damn thrilling surviving all these waves together with a bunch of good players.

And off course, again, I got challenged with these damn achievements....

The Zombie-related-achievements were the toughest, and damn I was happy when I finally could 'C me, Stab me, Heal me'  ;)

I survived 'til round 22 so far, and that was complete madness. Took me allmost 2 hours of constant gaming (lol, remember the coop times in Bulletstorm) to get that far.
Bad thing about the Zombie mode is them cheaters, f*cking around with them endless ammo cheat.

[retiredgord]

Hi all. I finally started this game and agree with most of the reviews here. I only came into see about getting some advice on a tough spot. It probably is easy once I find out but as there is not a "help" area I'll still ask.
What is the sequence to get thru the area of the comm station when the catwalk outside is blown up?
Any help would be appreciated. I've checked some walk thrus but of course they don't mention what should be done.

[Fiach]

Sorry mate, its been so long I cant remember :(

Hope you are enjoying the game, I liked it alot :)

IIRC the russian guy appears in CoD WaW as well.

[Binnatics]

Is it when you escape from this 'satelite-station' during this mission somewhere in russia? I mean one of the 'jobs' that are part of the mission with the spyplane?
You just get out of it, and have to follow your friends... but indeed the cakewalk crashes. All I remember is that you have to be fast. Only run, run and run. And at the cakewalk you might have to jump then. It's just simple, but you gotta be fast.
Then, continue running thrue the snow and you'd make it out in time.  ;)

[retiredgord]

Thanks for the answers. Indeed you gotta run jump quick and run and run fast . It took me about 20 tries to get the right combo but then success.
I did enjoy the game and now I can go back to a particular mission(s) that I liked.
The Zombie end is ok but I prefer an ending where eventually you get somewhere and not end up as  zombie entree.

[Art Blade]

Gord, just dropping a comment here for you: Glad you're dropping by once in a while :) You used to post a little more back in the days of FC2 and I miss that ;)