The latest of the greatest First Person Shooter franchise is out and by now you are either immersed in hours of leveling up with the online, multi player component or you’re scouring the internet for more reviews and details on Black Ops. If you are still trying to decide if you are up for another round of mayhem let me try and convince you Black Ops is worth it.
There are a lot of First Person Shooter games out there including Medal of Honor and Battlefield Bad Company but Call of Duty tends to put together the best package of storyline, online play and other features (such as zombie mode or co-op missions). Most people these days buy a FPS for the online play; some gamers don’t even play the campaign missions because they get immersed in the addiction of leveling up in the multi-player games online.
Black Ops continues the great online tradition of the series with fast paced, multi-tiered maps and true to life weapons. Black Ops tweaks the linear system of leveling up from past games by giving you points that act as cash. With those points you can “buy” weapons, attachments, camouflage, perks, customizable graphics for your player card, different color “red-dot” sights and so on. The great thing about this format is that you don’t have to spend points on buying a gun you will never use and go straight to your favorite weapons.
Furthermore, the points system factors into other game modes that are new to the series. A gambling component allows you to wager points in Wager Matches, if you finish in the top three then you take home a nice reward, if you don’t then you’re out your “buy-in”. This becomes a lot of fun once you get your load-out set up to your liking and gain the confidence from hours of online play.
Another way to get the most out of your points (and fuel your ego / gambling habit) is to take out contracts. Contracts such as “Team Death Match Brutality” cost a buy in of 50 points and if you win three TDM games then you get a pay out of 300 points. That is just one of over 30 contracts in the game but the main point is to add a layer of pressure and in some cases change your motives during the online games (for instance with the Pistol Challenges you may find your self sprinting around with a pistol in situations where you would never use that weapon).
Some other new additions to the online game modes (the standards are still there: Team Death Match, Free for all, Domination, Hardcore modes, etc) include Gun Game and One in the Chamber. Gun Game has a randomized rotation of guns you are given. This mixes things up and you end up with guns you might not use in any other part of Black Ops. It also changes your strategy, if you have a shotgun or pistol you might want to stay in close quarters whereas the longer-range rifles will send you seeking out higher ground. One in the Chamber gives all the players a pistol with one bullet; if you successfully shoot someone with the one bullet you gain another bullet. You can also knife people to gain more ammo. Both modes are fun and add a twist to how you approach online play.
One refreshing thing about Call of Duty Black Ops is the storyline of the Campaign. If you played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 you know how a convoluted, ragged storyline can make you not even care about the Campaign mode. Black Ops injects some life into the single player story arc by using a good combination of history, framework and location. Let me go into further detail without providing any spoilers.
Like Call of Duty: World at War, Black Ops is set in the past, primarily the 1960s. The angle throughout the story is that you follow a group of soldiers on secretive missions (hence Black Ops). These missions range from Cuba (Castro is involved) to Russia and Vietnam. Each setting is geared toward the audience reliving specific historic moments and the events leading up to those moments. There are cameos from other historic figures besides Castro but we’ll keep quiet on that.
The way Black Ops frames the story line is by using an interrogation room setting. You, the solider being interrogated, start having flash backs to different points in your past, not necessarily in linear order. This provides some intrigue and a personal stake to the storyline that was lacking in previous installments.
As in past installments of the developer Treyarch’s Call of Duty games there is a Zombie mode. The Zombie mode pits you against an unending wave of Zombies in cramped quarters, usually a building with multiple entries. You can play it alone, with friends offline or online with friends. It’s fun and addicting but there isn’t really any new material here from the last game’s Zombie mode.
All in all Call of Duty: Black Ops provides enough fresh elements to the already solid Call of Duty franchise to justify a purchase. A lot of people and critics are calling Black Ops a more well rounded release than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. In some ways this series is becoming like the Madden football games, slight updates to a solid game that comes out each year. I’m not sure if the Call of Duty series can keep finding ways to change the game enough to justify an every year release (although the popularity and high sales will ensure that we keep seeing a new title each year) but if I was going to change anything about the game it would be to update the textures and polish of the graphics to a Uncharted or Killzone 2 type level of detail. Until then – I’ll be online honing my headshot skills.
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