Ich Bin Ein Scwartz Operationen: The Call of Duty: Black Ops Review

I'm the last person in the world to jump on the Modern Warfare band wagon. Hell, Call of Duty: World At War was the only game in the series that I enjoyed. What was I to expect with this game, another Medal of Honor themed game in modern times? Or would it be another Modern Warfare game with a fictional plot? The first pleasant surprise I got was this: it takes place in the Vietnam War era, and is an MoH type theme of special operations.

Unfortunately, that's where the story strays. You play mainly as Alex Mason (not Alec Mason from Red Faction: Guerrilla), who flashes back to various missions while being interrogated about numbers whilst in a torture chair. The premise is fairly interesting, if not a little Saw-like, except that it's actually not a terrible game. The problem here is that the story takes what is supposed to be a left turn, but to anyone vigilant, it's blatantly obvious. I do have to give Treyarch credit for making the story different from the usual "shoot everyone you see" war story that we usually see, and for making the premise pretty unique. Unfortunately, sometimes, it just doesn't stick like it should. Other times, it does some pretty stupid things to characters, for very stupid reasons. This mainly applies to the WaW characters. I'm going to be bitter about that for a little while.

As polished as the graphics are in the game, I do have some errors to point out that take you out of the realism. I encountered a bug where my partner kills me instantly, one where a bad guy was stuck inside of a rock until I killed him, and, my personal favorite, going through a level, killing everyone, and then playing through the same part, except the dead bodies are standing and doing nothing. These can be fixed through patches, and mostly aren't big issues, but that last one... phew. How do you not notice that in play testing?

Other than that, the game does look and play very good. It took me a while to get used to the controls, namely because I like using the trigger buttons to shoot, but I can't say that they never worked right. They are very intuitive, even in the quick time events. Actually, in the QTE's they're a little too intuitive. I don't think I failed a QTE even if I waited to press a button. I could really give hell about this, but those instances are so few and far between that it really makes no difference. The difficulty is hard enough as it is without QTE's being needlessly irritating.

What will make the difference in the game being worth your well earned money is whether or not you like multiplayer and Nazi Zombies. I'm not a big multiplayer person, but the only gripe I have is the hodge podge, mix and match matchmaking. Yet, the addition of two player split screen is welcome, especially in the revamped Zombies game. The computer randomizes between four characters, each set exclusive to a map. One of which has you playing as Secretary McNamara, Fidel Castro, JFK, or Richard Nixon. They could have boxed this as Left 4 Dead 3, and I would've bought it quicker than Rock Band 4.

I can't say I hated Black Ops, but I also can't say I loved it. It's pretty much a standard war shooter, with some innovative concepts, both mission and story wise, but isn't fully explored to its full capabilities. I can say this, though: Unlike most shooters (Halo), the developers did put enough thought into the single player campaign to make it worth a playthrough, and put a twist on a classic diversion. What it really comes down to is this: If you like CoD, buy it. If you don't like CoD, rent it. Either way, give the game a chance.

Overall: C

+ Intriguing story

- Though a little hodge podge

+ Varied and Innovative Missions

+ Great graphics and sound

- Some glitches, big and small

-/+ Moments of cheesiness

+ Nixon and Kennedy hate Zombies