Call of Duty: Black Ops - ArniesAirsoft

Author

Ranger_Captain

Pissin' people off one post at a time

Registered: July 2005
Location: West Point, New York
Posts: 1,229

Review Date: 4/1/11

Would you recommend the product? Yes | Price you paid?: None indicated | Rating: 0

Positive aspects of the product (pros):	Fairly Balanced, Popular (well populated Servers), Dedicated Servers
Cons:	Lower End Machines seem to run into issues, So far support from Treyarch has been.... sub par, For all the System requirements it is not a step up graphically from MW2

Call of Duty Black Ops

BLOPS is the newest entry into the now long line of Call of Duty games that have, by now, become the largest grossing franchisee to date. Black Ops, at time of writing, has passed the 1 Billion dollar mark in sales, a scant two months after release. So does this game stand up to it's new-found reputation? Well considering this is a review for the PC version, that's a complex answer.

For one, to get it out of the way, in my humble opinion it is an overall improvement, in many ways, to Modern Warfare 2. I say this based on three items:
1) The MP Has been Streamlined to have more hard-counters to avoid spam of the same class/setup
2) SP has taken on a more mission oriented design, and less story progression, something I personally believe COD does better and is better off remaining.
3) Dedicated Servers

While the other two are primarily opinion based, the 3rd items is unequivocally better. With no host migration, local (or at the least, regional) servers connection, loading and packet flow is increased exponentially over the old model, as well as it allows for a higher degree of customization. As a server owner myself, I admit there is still something to be designated. Control over number of players (instead of 18 or 12 only), number and effective reserved slots, locking, and many others would be nice, but as it stands, being able to set up matches on particular maps is a huge plus.

One major flaw however, well duel flaw, in BLOPS however was it seems it's comparability and movement by Treyarch to fix this. While no game release is smooth, in many ways this is the poorest game I've ever seen released. This goes beyond the beta that was released years ago in the guise of "Battlefield 2 (which is fine now)" A high number of users seemed to be totally unable to run their product, and those who bought it on steam (which was by and large the majority) were unable to even return for a refund. It wasn't for a month and a half that Treyarch got a patch out that mitigated many of these issues and many still remain, such as the now infamous rank-reset glitch, that plague users.

That all said I find BLOPS to be very fun, quite addictive, and it's new streamlined Rank progression/Unlock progression serves me quite well.

My only other item of mention is, itself a qualm, a minor one and not aimed at Treyarch per se, but rather the games industry on the whole that makes FPS's:

For the LOVE of God, PLEASE stop removing the front sights on weapons JUST because an optic is mounted. FIREARMS do NOT works like this

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Never argue with a gun, it may argue back...
United States Corps of Cadets, USMA
Cadet, United States Army
2012 "For More Than Ourselves"