Call Of Duty Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Ops is a first-person shooter with stealth and tactical play aspect that puts players in the role of a shadow soldier fighting in a variety of historically representative fictional Black Ops missions of the Cold War era. Created with the input of actual Black Ops soldiers from the time, the game mixes traditional Call of Duty tactical shooter gameplay with new gameplay options designed to expand the players' experience. Additional features include extensive multiplayer options, along with new vehicles and explosive new weapons. .caption { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica neue, Arial, serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; } ul.indent { list-style: inside disc; text-indent: -15px; } table.callout { font-family: verdana; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1. 3em; } td.vgoverview { height: 125px; background: #9DC4D8 url(http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/electronics/detail-page/callout-bg.png) repeat-x; border-left: 1px solid #999999; border-right: 1px solid #999999; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; padding-bottom: 10px; width: 250px; font-family: verdana; font-size: 12px; }

Putting Out the Hotspots of the Cold War
Follow-up to 2009’s blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops breaks new ground in the Call of Duty series and the video game industry at large by delving into the not-so cold conflicts of the Cold War.

Call Of Duty Black Ops Picture

Call Of Duty Black Ops Image

Call Of Duty Black Ops Photo

Call Of Duty Black Ops Photo

Most helpful customer reviews

599 of 772 people found the following review helpful.
COD Must Evolve
By 3V0LVE
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.

123 of 158 people found the following review helpful.
An Unfortunate Step Back
By reedissleeping
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.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Beyond Zombies, It's Disappointing.
By tvtv3
The overall storyline in CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS focus upon Alex Mason, a member of the CIA's Studies and Observation Group (SOG) or Black Ops for short. The game opens with Mason tied to a medical chair, surrounded with monitors with a non-descriptive disembodied voice asking him questions. At the same time Mason keeps hearing and seeing a list of numbers. It's unclear until about halfway through the game whether Mason has been captured and is being interrogated by an unknown enemy or if he is being questioned by a friendly force trying to extract life-saving data from him. The game progresses through a series of flashbacks that show what Mason has been through and how he came to be in the chair he is in. The flashbacks take the gamer from Cuba and the Bay of Pigs to Vietnam to a frozen wasteland near Russia and to beneath the ocean. The climax of the game leads up a climatic battle that loosely ties to actual history.

The overall graphics in the game are spectacular. There are many times that you look around and get the impression that you are playing a movie and not a video game. At certain points in the game, the images are extremely lifelike. The voice acting is strong and the music does an excellent job of accompanying what is happening during the story.

I usually don't play multi-player levels, but BLACK OPS has a special multi-player/co-op mode where you can fight a zombie horde. The "Zombies" mode is exciting and addictive. I just wish there was an end point somewhere; the zombie hordes never stop invading.

With that said, CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS is a disappointment. The overall storyline is short and the "reveal" at the end is disappointing. I mean, do we really need another Manchurian Candidate scenario?

The way the game operates is frustrating, too. BLACK OPS has been marketed as though it offers a more expansive and innovative gameplay, but that's just not the case. You have to complete each objective a certain way, otherwise the game doesn't progress and you are killed. The A.I. buddies that fight along your side don't do anything during actual combat and the blunt of the enemies attacks are always at your character. If you try to hide and peak a shoulder or a toe out, you're dead in a few seconds. There's no thinking outside of the box and if you try, you die. During battle sequences, if you stay in one spot it doesn't matter how good of a shot you are or how many enemies you kill because they just keep coming and coming and coming. The men at the Alamo had better odds than you do if you attempt to stay undercover and fight it out without advancing.

Beyond that, I was also disappointed by how little you actually get to play in certain environments. BLACK OPS was marketed as being a Cold War video game. For example, despite the historical negative connotations of the actual historical war, the prospect of fighting in Vietnam as a secret covert agent is exciting. You imagine all the possibilities of fighting and surviving in a jungle and think of a video-game version of Rambo. Instead, you are given a few sequences that have to be accomplished in a certain way and only about 25% of the game being spent fighting in Vietnam. It's like playing a game in the American Civil War only to find out that for over half of the game you're neither going to be a Yank or Reb but will be playing a Native American in a completely different conflict between two warring tribes out in Montana.

Overall, the graphics and voice acting are superb, but the storyline is weak and the gameplay is frustrating and non-innovative. BLACK OPS looks fun from the outside, but when it sees the light of day, it's a disappointment. The best thing about the game is the Zombie mode. Kids will probably enjoy it, but those over 16 or anyone who is a more experienced gamer will probably be disappointed by it.

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