Apparently, the Call of Duty franchise has been around for quite a while. This latest addition, Black Ops, is a grand testament to the series’ strength and the knowledge gained through years of experience developing First Person Shooters. I’ve only played one other Call of Duty and that was years ago. It’s not much to say that this game is a marked improvement over my previous experience. Although, this is a beast of a game. There were times when my laptop slowed because it couldn’t take all the action. This is the only game for which that’s ever happened. To be fair, I don’t exactly have the highest end, gaming laptop. I own a Dell.
Anyway, Call of Duty: Black Ops tells the story of “Mason,” a CIA covert agent who gets assigned to kill people – in order to protect America, of course – throughout the world and its various wars. As you probably have heard, there is a little hiccup over someone famous getting shot during the game. I don’t care about it and, I think the level headed will agree with me when I say, people need to understand it’s just a game. There are worse things, more gruesome kills at least, that happen to a number of other individuals. The gameplay actually occurs when Mason is recalling his past actions to a group of silhouetted men who are torturing him to get answers. You’ll have to play through the game to find out what exactly those answers are and how they lead Mason to his current situation. I say the gameplay “occurs” because I couldn’t help but feel as if I was watching a movie during most of the game. There are in game “cinematics” that involve you in some way, but never more than slowly approach this person and take him out from behind. Most often, it’s a simple one button press and the game then takes over. It’s less than a quick-time event, but the game is clearly not trying to make them challenging, rather, I’m sure the purpose is to make it all feel like one is in the middle of a Hollywood Blockbuster. For my own part, I appreciated the effort to make the game more than a common FPS. The cinematic feel of the game lasts through its entirety and it’s enough to separate the game from other, dime a dozen shooters.
This f**king guy...
As I implied earlier, the visuals are incredible. I was impressed every time I looked at the sky, saw countless bullets flying by, or watched as I blew up what looked like an experimental rocket ship. Any sound other than explosions or gunfire was a little hard to hear and, to be honest, I didn’t even pay attention to it sometimes because all I wanted to do was find cover and kill more Russians. This game is intense. I died so many times just while playing it on “regular” difficulty that the option to “lower difficulty” on the menu screen just seemed to taunt me. I don’t know if that’s a theme with other Call of Duty games or if I just wasn’t used to the way the game plays out, but I was very happy with the game’s take on such arduous tasks. Mason isn’t a super hero or some cybernetically enhanced marine and you can tell you’ll need to find cover every step of the way if you’re not a hardcore FPS fan. It makes the game less appealing and harder to approach for the general population of the gamer community, but I’m sure most gamers know what to expect from a game like this long before they ever pick it up.
In the end, for the gamers who don’t feel the need to own a dozen different shooters, Black Ops isn’t too different from previous games of this type. Mason’s story of a forgetful CIA killer is a nice touch and I’m happy to have this game as an addition to a genre which isn’t known for its cerebral qualities. Also, as expected, the game supports online multiplayer, which I don’t feel the need to discuss because Modern Warfare 2 set the bar pretty high and Black Ops does much in the same way. There is also a mode simply dubbed, “Zombies,” which has you doing what you can to survive a wave of, you guessed it, Zombies. This is not a mode that’s needed to make the game better, but it is a lot of fun and a welcome extra. You won’t get anything too new with this game, but you will have a great time trying to figure out what’s exactly going on and trying to kill a seemingly endless hoard of enemies.
4.5/5 Near Perfect Score! Almost Super Dope!
No comments:
Post a Comment