Call of Duty: Black Ops

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Call of Duty: Black Ops review
Bane Williams

Review

The FPS experience of the decade!

This is my gun, there are many like it, but this one is mine


Perhaps the heart of the differences in Black Ops lies in the ability to create a set-up that is completely unique to each player. Being able to add a huge variety of camouflages to the vastly different weapons adds some sense of individuality, but adding your clan tag and custom-made emblem to your weapon is what really steps things up. Further customization can be applied to the colour and shape of your aiming reticule when choosing the Red Dot Sight or Reflex Sight attachments. In total, there are 26 different designs to choose from, from standard single dots to skulls, yin yang symbols and the three dot design familiar from the Predator.

Emblems are personalized designs created by you from a selection of base images. These allow you to create some insane designs from gun wielding horses to a grim reaper holding a bazooka or maybe even a ghost-chasing Pac-man. The sky is the limit (as long as it fits within the 12 layer limit) and it is probably not too surprising that some players have attempted to create offensive imagery. Be warned, though: Treyarch have been issuing bans from up to 3 hours to 2 days depending on the severity of the image.

Additionally, the choice for your first perk slot affects your character's external appearance. Players who choose the Ghost perk, for instance, will find their character shrouded in a ghillie suit, regardless of their weapon choice. Finally the theatre mode allows you to edit the footage that is automatically captured from your games as you play and there is even the option to upload the end result directly to YouTube. The game captures entire matches, and not just your viewpoint – so if you are wondering how an enemy got an insane kill against you, you can go into his first person perspective and watch it back.

The Sky Darkens


With the amount of dedication and detail that has been put into the game it is a shame to see the multiplayer tainted by a number of design oversights and restrictive choices. You are not completely free to go wherever you please, as many logically scalable obstacles and deep grass areas are blocked by invisible walls. Map design is both great and awful at the same time, with many of the maps being made in such a way that using a sniper rifle is completely useless. In fact, almost all of the maps can be dominated by sub-machine guns, which forces a certain playing style upon players. The guns suffer from a lot of kickback, meaning players generally need to crouch in order to shoot enemies accurately from a single building’s distance away. This would not be an issue except that only a handful of low cover points are available in the game, and most of them actually obscure your vision or provides next to no cover at all.

Finally, the hit detection in the game is absolutely atrocious and is one of the worst I have seen in any multiplayer FPS of the last 5 years. Shots fired at an enemy’s torso are regularly registered as headshots, and you often find bullets that are targeted 100% accurately on one person's screen will fail to register as hits at all on others. The delay of shots is also frustrating. When you are regularly up against an enemy with the same connection as yours, there is no excuse to witness a significant change in events from what you witnessed first-hand to what you see in the killcam.

Overall the game is an epic masterpiece, capable of delivering a fun, enjoyable and action packed experience from start to finish and then some. With Treyarch’s dedication to keeping the multiplayer community happy by removing glitches and hackers, they have taken huge steps in the right direction. Marry together an amazing single player story with a great multiplayer and some crazily fun extras, and you have a game that deserves to not be missed by anyone. This is the FPS experience of the decade.

9.7

fun score

Pros

Great story full of twists and turns, fight Zombies as JFK, a mostly balanced multiplayer

Cons

Some basic multiplayer design issues keep this from being as perfect a game as this could be