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    Call of Duty: Black Ops

    Game » consists of 19 releases. Released Nov 09, 2010

    The seventh installment of the long-running action franchise, Call of Duty: Black Ops puts players into the early era of the Cold War (including the Vietnam War) as a member of the United States black operations unit known as the SOG.

    grahammaster's Call of Duty: Black Ops (Xbox 360) review

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    Call of Duty: Black Ops Review

    Call of Duty: Black Ops is the latest installment in the long-running, blockbuster series. After its long stint in World War 2 and in the modern era, developer Treyarch load up the Blackbirds and take us into 1960's Cold War. The game throws a lot things at you, with its action-packed campaign, its intensely customizable multiplayer, and everyone's favorite ridiculous add-on, zombies.

    Campaign

    The single-player campaign opens with protagonist Alex Mason (played by the not-at-all Alaskan Sam Worthington) being interrogated by an unknown entity in front of a swarm of televisions (you'd think with all those TVs that there'd be something worthwhile on). The game uses this setting as a way to cut back and forth between different flashbacks involving Mason and CIA operative Jason Hudson (Ed Helms) as the interrogator attempts to extract vital information from Mason concerning a series of numbers and a deadly nuclear device. The story starts off with an explosive assault in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs and then winds its way through Russia and a large section of Vietnam. Throughout the narrative, you'll be battling alongside characters such as Hudson as well as Frank Woods and Joe Bowman (a surprisingly good Ice Cube). The story definitely has its share of action movie corniness, but I found the total package pretty enjoyable. One of my major gripes with the game's campaign, and this is also for all of the CoD installments lately, is its brevity. I got through it in about five to six hours, and that was with frequent stops to check the environment for intel.

    Multiplayer

    Meet Frank Woods, he'll be kicking your ass today.
    Meet Frank Woods, he'll be kicking your ass today.

    As with every CoD since Modern Warfare, multiplayer is the main push and features a plethora of customization options and features. Much of the structure from the previous games is still here with your standard deathmatch, headquarters, and capture the flag modes, but this mode also features a lot of new aspects to keep it feeling fresh. One of the major new features is introduction of currency known as CoD points. This currency is used to buy practically everything from weapons to perks to emblems, which are now totally customizable and a little too easy to make graphically vivid sexual images out of.

    Another new feature are the wager matches. Wager matches takes up to six players who pay a set amount at the beginning of points and pits them in one of four match types with various stipulations to them.

    • One in the Chamber: Each player starts out with a pistol with only one bullet, hence the title. If you shoot an opponent, you gain an extra bullet, but if you miss and are out of bullets, you're left with only your knife. Each player only gets three lives and once they're out, they're out.
    • Gun Game: Players must kill opponents to advance through a series of weapons. The first player to advance through all of the weapons wins.
    • Sticks and Stones: The only weapons are the crossbow, ballistic knife, and tomahawk. Players battle for five minutes to get the highest score. Suicide and getting hit by a tomahawk will reset a player's score to zero.
    • Sharpshooter: Each player starts with the same, randomly-selected weapon. Every forty-five seconds the weapon changes to another, and the player with the most points at the end wins.

    While multiplayer is by far the most revamped mode of the game, and I certainly enjoy many aspects of it, it's also the mode I have the most problems with. Among some technical glitches that have cost me lives and, in rare cases, the deciding point of a match, the respawning in just about every match is awful. Many of my quick kills come from me spawning in very close proximity to enemies with my back to them followed by them quickly mowing me down. In one case in particular, while watching a killcam, I actually saw myself respawn about ten feet away and directly in front of my killer. Another major problem is with the local multiplayer, which unlike every other game with local multiplayer, has absolutely no match customization whatsoever. Every match is set at the same score limit and has a time limit; I honestly believe the developers flat-out forgot to put in the feature.

    Zombiessssssss!

    The zombies are back, and so is their uncontrollable need to eat out your cranium.
    The zombies are back, and so is their uncontrollable need to eat out your cranium.

    Nazi Zombies return from World at War with three new maps, including a retro top-down shooter. If you're like me and you bought one of the special edition versions of the game, you'll also be able to play the four zombie maps from the original game with this game's weapon set. While I enjoy the new maps, I feel there's one too many concepts and mechanics present. The very first map from WaW had a very simple premise and structure, and it felt right. Now, the later maps are having you restoring electricity, taking drinks for perks, setting up traps for oncoming hordes, using teleporters, and it can all seem a little overwhelming at times. It's also baffling to me how four players are still unable to play a game of split-screen zombies on one TV. I don't know if it's a technical issue or something along those lines, but it seems so obvious that it should be there.

    Closing Thoughts

    Call of Duty: Black Ops gives you a lot of bang for your buck. While brief, the single-player is gripping and provided one of the rare times when I actually enjoyed seeing explosions in games, the multiplayer can provide dozens of hours of gameplay with vast personalization tools at your disposal, and Nazi Zombies is goofy yet immensely challenging. While all of this sounds like the total package for any game, all of these modes feel like updated versions of something we've been playing for the past couple years, and that's simply because they are. It's a fun-filled roller coaster ride, albeit a familiar one.

    Other reviews for Call of Duty: Black Ops (Xbox 360)

      All must die 0

      Call of Duty: Black Ops is the seventh core Call of Duty game to be released in the past eight years, making it one of modern gaming’s most consistent franchises. And while each entry is generally solid, that ridiculously frequent release pattern is starting to dilute the overall product. Black Ops is a perfectly fine shooter, and an equally fine entry into this blockbuster series. But it also does so little that hasn’t been done to death already, making it increasingly hard to jump on t...

      7 out of 7 found this review helpful.

      Scripted bore. 0

      Everything in the solo campaign is scripted.  If you move up too fast, you can actually shoot enemies and they won't die because they aren't "valid" because their script hasn't started.  In that same theme, enemies will spawn in certain areas to supposedly make a tense event.  Sure is amazing how many guys hide behind a door even thou you can see that its clear until you walk thru.  The CoD series is no longer exciting.  You can see scripted events coming up, you can even guess what will happen ...

      10 out of 14 found this review helpful.

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