Definitely not your average Call of Duty game.

The game is based on the 1960's Vietnamese war. Your Captain Alex Mason, who is taken into interrogation to supply answers upon a code of numbers, however he doesn't know what they mean or what they refer to. As well as having the campaign played in real time, instead they are recalled, from Mason's memory of what he has been through. It seems like a nice change for the story, but it's nothing too special. In Addition to the war, there is a deadly biochemical weapon known as Nova 6. This deadly gas is a killer to human beings. It may seem like a drug which seems cheesy enough as it is. The story supplies a decent background upon places you set in like Cuba, Russia, Vietnam and others that are in range along the way. As well as that, having historical characters including John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, and Fidel Castro kicks a little extra. You play as multiple characters on behalf of the events that occurred, though everything does come through in the end, it comes from a form of a mix-up that of which includes loads of killing soldiers. The story doesn't show a lot but it does pass, as well as having to finish the campaign with ease under a few hours, it does hold succession in being fun at first play.

DESIGN
As much as the campaign goes, it still follows the same routine, following objectives and killing numerous enemies in your path. There are various types in playing the campaign. For instance you pilot a chopper and ride on a boat, obliterating enemy lines in the way. Another involves having to command your team from an aircraft, alternating from that to executing with your team towards the objective. You even go underwater, to commence an attack from underneath a base. These share the same concept in having extreme action that keeps you entertained and highly on your toes.

Besides the campaign, the multiplayer was the main thing in Call of Duty. Levelling up is quicker. The equipment, kill streaks and perks you have are bought using points instead of being unlocked at a certain level. The points you gather is still normal, having to kill enemies, capturing objectives and planting and defusing bombs are the same.

You can still play in various game modes such as team death match, free-for-all, domination, etc. Also you have your enhanced Nazi Zombie mode, holding off waves of zombies from either doing it solo or in a party up to 4 players.

Aside from that, the new additions were superb. The new wager matches are your 4 experimental matches using specific weapons and equipment playing alongside a certain set of rules. One In the Chamber has each player with three lives, armed with only a pistol and a melee knife, both of which kill with one hit. The pistol is loaded with just one bullet, but each kill will be rewarded with an extra bullet. Sticks And Stones has each player equipped with a crossbow with three explosive darts, a ballistic knife and a tomahawk. Kills with the crossbow or ballistic knife score 100 points, melee kills score 25, and tomahawk kills score nothing but reset the victim's points to 0. Gun Game starts with a pistol and ending with a ballistic knife, the winner is the first player to get a kill with every one of a set sequence of 20 weapons. Each kill advances you to the next weapon, but falling victim to a melee sets you back one. Sharpshooter has every player equipped with the same randomly generated weapon for a 45-second period whereupon a new weapon is randomly generated for everyone, then another aft

An Excellent All-rounder With a Lot of Bang (Literally) for Your Buck

In October 2010, Treyarch released the seventh installment in the hugely successful Call of Duty franchise. So far, the game has gone on to break sales records worldwide, ultimately becoming the video game equivalent of Avatar in terms of sales. Black Ops has been huge, but sometimes the best games are not always the highest selling.
Black Ops has three main game modes, the single-player campaign, the multi-player online mode, and the single- or multi-player zombie mode. The first main game mode is the campaign.
Black Ops campaign is the most cinematic Call of Duty campaign I have ever played. By cinematic I mean that it is presented like a movie more than any other Call of Duty games. This is a good thing. The story is clearly fiction, but that is a good thing for a shooter like Black Ops. The voice acting is solid, featuring several well-known actors such as Sam Worthington, Gary Oldman, Ed Harris, and Ice Cube. At the beginning, the campaign can be a bit confusing due to the mystery that is not revealed until later on in the game. Other than that and the repetitiveness of the missions, the campaign is very good. One other minor quarrel, even though the campaign is actually pretty short it did tend to drag a little. Also the replay value is minimal because the "shock factor" is gone. However, the campaign is not the main dish in this meal.
The main part of Call of Duty: Black Ops is the multi-player a.k.a. online, which, in this case, is also the best part. Compared to Modern Warfare 2, the game does some things better and some things worse. One major improvement is the leveling system. In previous Call of Duty games, if you wanted the good guns you basically had to give up your life to get them. Not so with Black Ops. In addition to having only 50 levels compared to Modern Warfare 2's 70, it takes much less time to level up in Black Ops than Modern Warfare 2. This is a very good thing. In addition, the widely regarded "best" gun is unlocked at level 14, so no longer do you have to work so hard to unlock the best gun. For the most part the gameplay is identical, the graphics are touched up a bit from Modern Warfare 2 and the game is set in the Cold War instead of modern times. Other than that, the games are almost identical in gameplay. The other major difference between Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 is the COD points system. A new addition to Black Ops, the system lets you buy any attachment you want for any gun as soon as you unlock it; opposed to having to earn a certain number of kills for every attachment, you can just buy an attachment for a pre-set number of COD Points. Also, COD Points can buy numerous character customization options, also new to Black Ops.
The final part of Black Ops is the zombie mode. This is a survival comedy-horror mode where you and three companions fight off endless waves of the undead. Besides getting more complex, this mode plays just like the one in Call of Duty: World at War.
Overall, Black Ops is a great game. I still believe that Modern Warfare 2 is better, Black Ops is still great. If you like shooters, you need to pick up this game; I highly recommend it.

One of the best FPS's around, very engaging and hard to put down. Must own!

For starters the PC genre is slowing starting to fade away and while we (PC users) do have a few exclusive titles to brag about, fewer and fewer big budget games are making their way on to the PC platform in favor of consoles. It's not all bad on the PC playing field though, FPS's are still king here. The mouse/keyboard combo still has the upper hand over analog sticks, user created mods can freshen up the way the game feels and plays, but the big ace in the hole would have to be the graphics. Console games are limited on this front due to the inability to upgrade their hardware were PC gamers are only limited by the amount of cash they have to spend.


This is just one of the reasons why I bought Black Ops. With a well equipped PC, the details, textures, frame rate, and overall beauty of this game shines over its console counterparts. It's all about the game play though. Navigating through the menus feels more intuitive using a mouse and creating the perfect class takes no time. The single player campaign mode is nothing to write home about but don't fool yourself, you didn't buy this game for the campaign, you bought this game so you can go online and frag. For what it's worth, the campaign isn't bad though. Set in the cold-war era, you'll be exchanging bullets with Russians, Cubans, the Vietcong, and even a few evil Brits have turned their site on to you. It's fun and more than competent enough to keep you entertained should your internet connection ever go out.


Dedicated servers run the multiplayer world, which is a bit of a bummer if you were wanting to host and run your own personal clan server (servers can be rented), but aside from that, the multiplayer feels and plays very solid. If you're like me and play a lot of TDM, then the majority of servers you'll come across usually run set map rotations. I've noticed the Nuketown and Firing Range maps are a popular combo (both maps are fairly small and encourage confrontation.) I'm not sure if it's just bias towards Treyarch (developer) but I heard a lot of bad things about this game before I purchased it, particularly about campers. I don't know if it's just a console thing but so far, playing online, I haven't seen any overwhelming abuse of camping.


Coming from someone who has strictly played the first Modern Warfare online for the past 3 years, this game is not only fun but refreshing. It's both addictive and rewarding at the same time. The intense firefights will keep you on your toes and engaged in the combat while you're online. Then when you're offline, the stats, immense amount of class customization and theater section, which stores replays of your past 100 matches, will have you dissecting your every move. In other words, it's hard to put this game down.


You're free to take my word for it or not, but this game is great. The only thing holding it back from a 5/5 would be the online community. It's a small grip but so far the most players I've seen online at once is 8,000. Might sound like a large number but it's only a fraction of the amount of traffic the console versions get.

If a good review isn't enough to sell you on this game, maybe the price will. Since this game has been out for awhile, you can easily find a copy of it for about half the asking price of retail. If you choose to go with a used copy BE SURE THE SELLER GUARANTEES IT COMES WITH A VALID KEYCODE or you will NOT be able to play online.

Black Plops

This game has really good potential and has great modes to keep things interesting, but the multi-player fails to deliver the advancements that should have been made since Modern Warfare 2.

The most enjoyable features of the game are the campaign, the main menu, the split screen options, and Zombie Mode. At the bottom of the barrel is the on-line multi-player games.

As far as FPS campaigns go, Black Ops is shaping up to have the richest set of campaign and Easter eggs that I've seen in a long while. Though the campaign lacks some features that would really make it shine, the story is told in such a way that makes you want to play though the onslaught of enemies just to advance the storyline. Where the campaign sputters is the lack of complete environmental immersion and destructible objects. Most of the interior scenes so far seem like 2D drawings of a room. If I lob a grenade at a wall where a desk is sitting, the papers stay neatly stacked next to the telephone on the desk. On the upside, shoot through a window or plate glass wall, and the glass shatters. Shoot at a mainframe tape library, and the equipment explodes. Treyarch did a good job, not a great job.

The main menu.... oh my goodness..... the main menu.... This is the best menu is game history, and is my primary enjoyment of the game due to the link to the campaign. It wasn't until I started playing the campaign that I realized that the main menu is a torture room (more politically correct: interrogation room). Then, I found that you can break free from your restraints and walk around the main menu.... from there, I was just a button press from locating what reminds me of a C-Shell UNIX system. Navigating around the directories, I found some executable binary commands that unlocked a whole new aspect of the game: hacking. Reminiscent of Enter the Matrix, only better. You have access to a computer with multiple accounts and mailboxes, and the teaser to be able to remote login to other computers on the network. You can even enter some commands that unlock additional zombie modes as well as my favourite part of the game: a tops-down 1980s style arcade game. There's also a popular text-based adventure game built into the menu. The programmers were really geeking back to their roots with this one, and if it weren't for the shoddy multi-player, this game would have ranked higher.

The split-screen options are really nice for off-line co-op play, but to sweeten the pot, you can play split-screen in Zombie's mode, too! This is such a refreshing feature and it gives you twice-the-fun when your friend (i.e. girlfriend) wants to jump into the Zombie fray with you! How sweet is THAT?!?

Which leads to Zombies: what else is there to say about Zombies? It's really addicting, and multi-layered as well. Now there is the challenge of turning on the power and linking teleporters (which have their own Easter Egg qualities about them!).

Alas, the part of the game that brings this review from an excellent or good, to just an average rating, is the multi-player. If multi-player looked and felt like the campaign, the rest of my game library would be gathering dust. Unfortunately, the small advancements that Teryarch has made since their lay foray into a FPS title don't seem in-line with where the Industry is heading. While the gameplay is enjoyable, its just not up to par.

Overall:
The campaign gets a great score of 9
Game modes get a score of 8
Multi-player scores a 6.5

Yeah, another Call of Duty...

Well, I'll start this off by saying I had set my expectations low for this game because I had been quite disappointed by the previous installment and so I went in knowing that the game was probably going to be based off the online side of the game and thus making it not very enjoyable for me, because I LOVE multi-player, but I dislike playing online. Especially shooting games. The only first person shooter i've ever enjoyed whilst playing online has to be Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

I'll list this in a simple format to keep it short, and provide a brief description for each statistic ----

(Graphics, 9/10) - Okay, so graphics are the last thing that matter to me in any game, but because of the rather harsh criticism this game seems to get from a lot of it's fans, I feel it necessary to explain the graphics a bit. For anyone that doesn't know, even though this is the latest Call of Duty installment, it's actually using the same graphics engine from Call of Duty: World at War - which is noticeably more gritty and darker, instead of Modern Warfare 2's graphical engine, which has more detailed textures and brighter colors. Doesn't necessarily mean the graphics aren't as good, but I did notice a few textures that seemed stretched out and bland. Their's a lot to look at, though. Certain subtle things like these don't affect the game, so I don't see why they matter. Anyways, moving on...

(Gameplay, 9/10) It's still the same realistic (to a point) online warfare experience. I was rather happy to hear their was an ability to "Dive to Prone", which is quite fun, but otherwise it's still the same Call of Duty. Which is pretty solid most of the time. Otherwise, it's your standard First Person Shooter game. It's difficult to explain the game-play, because of the difference in Online and Offline, which I would have a difficult time sorting out, but chances are that if you like First Person Shooters, you'll probably enjoy this. And that brings us to the online experience, which defines the game.

(Online, 7/10) Now, i'm not going to simply say that it's not worth playing, because it can be enjoyable. My problem (among a lot of other people) is the fact that the online isn't very stable. The main problem being latency issues. Unlike Bad Company 2 (Which i'm trying not to reference often, but it's a standard in FPS for me) has Dedicated servers online. This doesn't exactly erase lag, or online problems. What it does do, is make it so that if one person is lagging at all, it won't bring the rest of the game down and reduce stability and/or frame rate. It also helps resolve a lot of general lag problems. Meaning latency won't be much of an issue, and you won't drop out if the "Host" of the server leaves, because their's no such thing with dedicated servers. With that explained, this game does NOT have dedicated servers. So, expect to be shot through walls and die from a single shot, often.. It all depends on how good the connection is in the particular lobby. If you have luck like mine, you'll probably be migrating a lot to find a suitable connection to play in. (Treyarch is actively trying to repair the problems, by the way)

(Achievement, 7/10) Well, since none of the other descriptions have been "Brief", i'll make this one quick. You can only get about 2-3 achievements online, all of the rest are for single player = disappointed, I am.

- (Overall, 8/10) It's nothing new in the series, but it's definitely worth playing with friends.