Call of Duty Black Ops review

Everyone goes absolutely nuts for the Call of Duty games don’t they. I think the single player campaigns are always short but intense and the multiplayer is something that keeps me playing for hours if not days on end. Black Ops is the latest game in the series and it’s made by Treyarch, the team that made World at War. So does this game offer anything new or is it more of the same?

Instead of playing as different characters, this time you just play as Mason, a Black Ops operative who’s being interrogated for some numbers in his head. As he recounts different covert missions all over the world and even an escape from prison, you play through these stories and learn more about what’s going on. I won’t spoil the story but it’s fair to say that because you only fill one set of boots in the game it’s one of the best and coherent stories in the series.

If you’ve played previous COD games you can jump straight into Black Ops with no problem. Controls are identical but strangely the knife melee attack now feels a bit weak after the visceral stabbing shenanigans you can get up to in Medal of Honor.

There are also some great set-pieces to get your heart pumping and some new weapons to play with including a nifty crossbow complete with exploding arrows. It’s a pity then that the allied and enemy AI are so dumb then. Sometimes it feels like you’re in an episode of the A-Team where everyone fires bullets and nobody gets killed if you don’t join in. Combatants also seem to run right past each other at times without getting into some close-quarters combat.

As always the game looks and sounds amazing with great detail on locations and characters and fantastic voice acting from the likes of Ed Harris and Gary Oldman.

But what you really want to know is what the multiplayer is like because you’ll still be playing this way after you’ve finished the campaign. Game modes vary from the usual deathmatches to capture the flag and domination modes but you have to unlock some of these as you go up through the levels. You also won’t unlock weapons and accessories as you go automatically. Now you buy these with COD points which lets you get the kit that suits your play style sooner. You can even spend these points on aesthetic things like putting a signature on your guns. It’s as addictive as always and should keep you playing for absolutely ages.

And for fans of the Nazi zombie mode in World at War, this mode is back too with extended objective-based modes which you can play solo or with friends online. It’s all very arcade-like and has some laugh out loud dialogue in it too. It’s certainly worlds apart from the campaign mode.

Black Ops provides lots of game modes and great value for money for FPS fans so it can’t get any less than 9 out of 10.

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