COD Black Ops
Posted by mortal
| Moderator Registered: 20 years ago |
Anyone got it, review? Worth the cash?
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[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to.
[www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central| Registered: 20 years ago |
| Moderator Registered: 20 years ago |
Hmmm, I was hoping the SP would be ok.
[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central
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[www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central| Registered: 20 years ago |
As I haven't played previous COD games I won't compare but what I know is that the game is made in such way that your actions are mostly irrelevant. If you go on youtube you'll see some people who have uploaded videos of them going through several parts of the game without shooting or doing anything except for walking along the AI.
| Registered: 19 years ago |
Single Player makes Modern Warfare 2 look long, realistic, and incredible. Black Ops Single Player is so utterly @#$%& hilarious that if the writers of Die Hard, LOST and Tropic Thunder got together, they still couldn't come up with something as @#$%& up as this game. And that's just the story - don't get me started on how horribly scripted and broken it is. As Gui said, it's so bad you can actually play through entire levels without firing your weapon.
Multiplayer is black and white. You have the normal mode which is a mess and suffers from the same issues as MW2, where players can soak up bullets like a sponge, whilst knifing you for an instant kill. If you switch to Hardcore Multiplayer it's a different box of frogs entirely. Whilst it cannot be claimed to be tactical, it's far less ridiculous and becomes incredibly enjoyable once you get used to it. A lot more thinking, a lot more sneaking and a lot more work to get the kills. The PC version has too many people per servers (9v9, compared to MW2 6v6), which leads to it being a bit of a nightmare at times, and the spawn points are almost completely unworkable, but overall, hardcore mode in MP is excellent.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/2010 01:08PM by DaveEllis.
Multiplayer is black and white. You have the normal mode which is a mess and suffers from the same issues as MW2, where players can soak up bullets like a sponge, whilst knifing you for an instant kill. If you switch to Hardcore Multiplayer it's a different box of frogs entirely. Whilst it cannot be claimed to be tactical, it's far less ridiculous and becomes incredibly enjoyable once you get used to it. A lot more thinking, a lot more sneaking and a lot more work to get the kills. The PC version has too many people per servers (9v9, compared to MW2 6v6), which leads to it being a bit of a nightmare at times, and the spawn points are almost completely unworkable, but overall, hardcore mode in MP is excellent.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/2010 01:08PM by DaveEllis.
| Registered: 20 years ago |
| Registered: 19 years ago |
Morbid Wrote:
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> Awesome then, that Gamespot gave it a 9.0 and
> slapped an editor's choice on it too. The review
> business is really corrupt.
Totally. This is a great example too -
[www.gametrailers.com]
They spend the entire time calling the game sh*t, then give it 9/10. Same for every Gran Turismo review. Nobody has anything good to say about it, but then rates it highly. If these games were being produced by small developers, without big publishers shifting money about, then they wouldn't even get a look in.
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-------------------------------------------------------
> Awesome then, that Gamespot gave it a 9.0 and
> slapped an editor's choice on it too. The review
> business is really corrupt.
Totally. This is a great example too -
[www.gametrailers.com]
They spend the entire time calling the game sh*t, then give it 9/10. Same for every Gran Turismo review. Nobody has anything good to say about it, but then rates it highly. If these games were being produced by small developers, without big publishers shifting money about, then they wouldn't even get a look in.
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SportsCarArchives.com
| Registered: 15 years ago |
All reviewers should just stand aside and let us, or rather Dave, write and score games. Still, games reviewer has to be a good job. Play games, write some stuff down and get a decent wage. Noice.
GPGSL: S6 - TafuroGP Tester (14th) /// S7 - ART Tester (6th) /// S8 - Demon Driver (13th) /// S9 - Demon/Snake Driver (13th) /// S10 - Snake Driver (???) ///]
"My ambition is handicapped by laziness" - Charles Bukowski
GPGSL: S6 - TafuroGP Tester (14th) /// S7 - ART Tester (6th) /// S8 - Demon Driver (13th) /// S9 - Demon/Snake Driver (13th) /// S10 - Snake Driver (???) ///]
"My ambition is handicapped by laziness" - Charles Bukowski
| Moderator Registered: 20 years ago |
That is why I asked here, no B.S. 
[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central
[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to.
[www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central| Registered: 19 years ago |
This post contains spoilers. Do not read it if you care about the Black Ops single player.
You play the game in flashback form. You are being held captive by seemingly government agents, and being forced to remember what you did at certain points to stop the cold war. The game starts off quite cool, as you fight through the streets of Cuba to get to Castro. Whilst this mission can be fun, it's scripted. Far too scripted. Other than 2 points, where the game FORCES you to fire (by pointing you directly at your target), or fail, you can do the entire mission without firing your weapon. Just stay hidden until the AI eventually kill each other. Doing this also shows you how retarded the AI is. From point blank range you'll watch them shooting entire clips at each other and missing, leaving you waiting a while, or having you kill them off for them.
As you move on, the story gets increasingly messy, as you try to remember what a series of numbers mean. It's almost directly stolen from the early Lost seasons, where the numbers are continually flashed at you. Because you jump around in memory, you don't really get a linear series of events. It's a bit like watching Tarantino films, but worse because there is no 'down time'. The game is always at 100% action, and whilst that sounds cool, it has a negative effect on the game play. With no calm points, there is nothing for you to compare the 'epic' moments top. At one point you shoot down a Cuban missile with a stinger. It should be amazing, but because the entire game is insane, it just blends into it.
The story gets increasingly stupid as it goes on, with your character having numerous psychotic flash backs, and you end up playing the parts of 3 or 4 people, like in MW and MW2. Unlike MW and MW2, there is no distinction between the characters. In MW2, you knew what you were playing a TF141 soldier or an Army Ranger because of the completely different part of the story and settings you played in. In BO this distinction is gone, except for a single WW2 mission, making it even more difficult to keep up with the stupidity of the story. Eventually you get to the end and you've seen 4 or 5 plot twists where your friends betray you, and the interrogators are people you fought alongside before, until you get to the final plot twist. You've been through so many twists that they are no longer a surprise, until the last one, which resets the bar on how stupid the game is. One of the AI, that you've played alongside for the entire game, isn't real. He doesn't exist. He is you. It's like a perfect rip of Fight Club and Tyler Durdan. And then when that's realised you get a cut scene (yes, BO has reintroduced cut scenes, with MW/MW2 done it's best to try and avoid) where the walls and roof peal away and you get the big ending scene where you stopped the Cold War.
One of the biggest complaints with COD4 was the infinite respawning enemies. You wiped out a wave but they just kept coming. Your team refused to progress without you, which means you have to progress forward on your own (and they will follow) and you have to do it quickly. This was removed in COD:MW2 with the introduction of a timer system. The enemies did not keep flowing, but if you stayed far too long then you'd get another wave. Black Ops reintroduces the infinite respawn and it makes so difficult that even the most hardened FPS players will struggle. On Veteran (hardest level) it only takes 2 bullets to kill you. That is fine, I can cope with that sort of realism. However because the enemies are quite accurate on hard, you spend a lot of time hiding and picking your shots carefully, so you don't get shot. But by the time you've done that the enemies have respanwed and you are stuck again.
So if you ignore the respawning enemies, how is the game play? Well the control system is still the most natural and fluid feeling of all the FPSs. But then again it is actually Infinity Wards engine, so whilst we can praise Treyarch for keeping it, they certainly didn't make it. The rest of the game play is all rubbish. When breaking out of a Cuban prison, they have what can only be described as Super Soldiers, who can take 5 shotgun rounds to the face before going down. They try and justify it by giving them some sort of armour which appears to be made from recycled Coca Cola cans, but there is getting away from the fact these enemies appear right at the start and are stupid in damage terms. What makes it worse is these are one offs. There is NO reason for them to be there. They don't appear again, no reference is made to them before or after. They have purposefully added a terrible enemy.
They also build up several parts to be incredible, and it's a horrible let down. For example you have a cut scene (which is played from your viewpoint, to stop it looking like a cut scene), of you climbing into the pilot seat of a Blackbird SR71. An incredible aircraft. And then it is followed by the worlds most dull mission. In what feels like a desperate rip off of the COD4 AC130 mission, you have to direct troops on the ground. The entire time you are in this stunning machine, you just watch a crap little fuzzy black and white screen, directly blips on the map. The only kinda cool bit is when you come into contact with enemies, you take control of one of the ground units and fight as them, before going back up to the SR71 screen again. The swapping between characters is awesome, but the SR71 sequence is not. Similarly, there is a fantastic part where you are being stealthy in a Vietnam village, swimming under water and getting behind enemies before silently removing them. Unfortunately it is too scripted, so there is no room for your imagination. That's fine I suppose if it's enjoyable, but it only lasts 2 minutes before they return to insane action levels and a huge gun fight breaks out. What happened to the awesome stealth parts of COD? Like the Pripyat mission in COD4? Every time you think you're about to get something different, you get the same generic massive gun battle.
There is also quite a lot of physics bugs. Floating objects, objects which can be walked through, invisible objects (or they pop up late, same bug essentially) and bodies stuck in impossible positions. But these are minor complaints which would normally be about ruining immersions. It doesn't ruin immersion in BO because there is no immersion.
My most trivial complaint is the double standards by the media. In the new Medal of Honor there was a major outcry because it allowed you to play as the Taliban, which had you shooting US Soldiers. But in Black Ops you get to play a Russian (the bad guys at this point, you know those blasted commies!) and you get to shoot British SAS Commandos. So cheers for that. Shooting Americans is bad, shooting the British is fine.
A game which is an action, psychological, horror or thriller (or even all 4) is all fine and well in it's own right. But this is Call of Duty, not FEAR. This is meant to have some sort of ties to realism, even if it is a bit OTT. Anyone who thinks MW2 was over the top will be horrified by Black Ops.
I realise this is a lot of moaning, but the single player is @#$%& garbage. MP is great only in Hardcore mode.
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You play the game in flashback form. You are being held captive by seemingly government agents, and being forced to remember what you did at certain points to stop the cold war. The game starts off quite cool, as you fight through the streets of Cuba to get to Castro. Whilst this mission can be fun, it's scripted. Far too scripted. Other than 2 points, where the game FORCES you to fire (by pointing you directly at your target), or fail, you can do the entire mission without firing your weapon. Just stay hidden until the AI eventually kill each other. Doing this also shows you how retarded the AI is. From point blank range you'll watch them shooting entire clips at each other and missing, leaving you waiting a while, or having you kill them off for them.
As you move on, the story gets increasingly messy, as you try to remember what a series of numbers mean. It's almost directly stolen from the early Lost seasons, where the numbers are continually flashed at you. Because you jump around in memory, you don't really get a linear series of events. It's a bit like watching Tarantino films, but worse because there is no 'down time'. The game is always at 100% action, and whilst that sounds cool, it has a negative effect on the game play. With no calm points, there is nothing for you to compare the 'epic' moments top. At one point you shoot down a Cuban missile with a stinger. It should be amazing, but because the entire game is insane, it just blends into it.
The story gets increasingly stupid as it goes on, with your character having numerous psychotic flash backs, and you end up playing the parts of 3 or 4 people, like in MW and MW2. Unlike MW and MW2, there is no distinction between the characters. In MW2, you knew what you were playing a TF141 soldier or an Army Ranger because of the completely different part of the story and settings you played in. In BO this distinction is gone, except for a single WW2 mission, making it even more difficult to keep up with the stupidity of the story. Eventually you get to the end and you've seen 4 or 5 plot twists where your friends betray you, and the interrogators are people you fought alongside before, until you get to the final plot twist. You've been through so many twists that they are no longer a surprise, until the last one, which resets the bar on how stupid the game is. One of the AI, that you've played alongside for the entire game, isn't real. He doesn't exist. He is you. It's like a perfect rip of Fight Club and Tyler Durdan. And then when that's realised you get a cut scene (yes, BO has reintroduced cut scenes, with MW/MW2 done it's best to try and avoid) where the walls and roof peal away and you get the big ending scene where you stopped the Cold War.
One of the biggest complaints with COD4 was the infinite respawning enemies. You wiped out a wave but they just kept coming. Your team refused to progress without you, which means you have to progress forward on your own (and they will follow) and you have to do it quickly. This was removed in COD:MW2 with the introduction of a timer system. The enemies did not keep flowing, but if you stayed far too long then you'd get another wave. Black Ops reintroduces the infinite respawn and it makes so difficult that even the most hardened FPS players will struggle. On Veteran (hardest level) it only takes 2 bullets to kill you. That is fine, I can cope with that sort of realism. However because the enemies are quite accurate on hard, you spend a lot of time hiding and picking your shots carefully, so you don't get shot. But by the time you've done that the enemies have respanwed and you are stuck again.
So if you ignore the respawning enemies, how is the game play? Well the control system is still the most natural and fluid feeling of all the FPSs. But then again it is actually Infinity Wards engine, so whilst we can praise Treyarch for keeping it, they certainly didn't make it. The rest of the game play is all rubbish. When breaking out of a Cuban prison, they have what can only be described as Super Soldiers, who can take 5 shotgun rounds to the face before going down. They try and justify it by giving them some sort of armour which appears to be made from recycled Coca Cola cans, but there is getting away from the fact these enemies appear right at the start and are stupid in damage terms. What makes it worse is these are one offs. There is NO reason for them to be there. They don't appear again, no reference is made to them before or after. They have purposefully added a terrible enemy.
They also build up several parts to be incredible, and it's a horrible let down. For example you have a cut scene (which is played from your viewpoint, to stop it looking like a cut scene), of you climbing into the pilot seat of a Blackbird SR71. An incredible aircraft. And then it is followed by the worlds most dull mission. In what feels like a desperate rip off of the COD4 AC130 mission, you have to direct troops on the ground. The entire time you are in this stunning machine, you just watch a crap little fuzzy black and white screen, directly blips on the map. The only kinda cool bit is when you come into contact with enemies, you take control of one of the ground units and fight as them, before going back up to the SR71 screen again. The swapping between characters is awesome, but the SR71 sequence is not. Similarly, there is a fantastic part where you are being stealthy in a Vietnam village, swimming under water and getting behind enemies before silently removing them. Unfortunately it is too scripted, so there is no room for your imagination. That's fine I suppose if it's enjoyable, but it only lasts 2 minutes before they return to insane action levels and a huge gun fight breaks out. What happened to the awesome stealth parts of COD? Like the Pripyat mission in COD4? Every time you think you're about to get something different, you get the same generic massive gun battle.
There is also quite a lot of physics bugs. Floating objects, objects which can be walked through, invisible objects (or they pop up late, same bug essentially) and bodies stuck in impossible positions. But these are minor complaints which would normally be about ruining immersions. It doesn't ruin immersion in BO because there is no immersion.
My most trivial complaint is the double standards by the media. In the new Medal of Honor there was a major outcry because it allowed you to play as the Taliban, which had you shooting US Soldiers. But in Black Ops you get to play a Russian (the bad guys at this point, you know those blasted commies!) and you get to shoot British SAS Commandos. So cheers for that. Shooting Americans is bad, shooting the British is fine.
A game which is an action, psychological, horror or thriller (or even all 4) is all fine and well in it's own right. But this is Call of Duty, not FEAR. This is meant to have some sort of ties to realism, even if it is a bit OTT. Anyone who thinks MW2 was over the top will be horrified by Black Ops.
I realise this is a lot of moaning, but the single player is @#$%& garbage. MP is great only in Hardcore mode.
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| Registered: 18 years ago |
| Registered: 19 years ago |
Oh, I forgot something good. When breaking out of the Cuban Prison, you find a gun called a "Death Machine" (Treyarch you imaginative bastards), which is basically a massive gattling gun from Duke Nukem. But its light enough that your character can run with it. So yeah, realism and stuff.
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| Moderator Registered: 20 years ago |
Awesome review Dave, I think I'll buy something else for Xmas....maybe a tin of paint, I could paint something and watch it dry, sounds more entertaining than Black Ops.
[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central
[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to.
[www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central| Registered: 20 years ago |
Good review Dave, I agree totally. The way the story jumps about was pretty confusing and irritating, I think the prison was actually in Russia rather than Cuba (I guess that speaks volumes).
I did finish the SP on veteran but not without dying a LOT. You feel like you are fighting the battles on your own, rather than as part of a unit. Often the AI seems to forget you have comrades and targets you relentlessly which gets a bit boring. The game is too scripted, I noticed a few graphical glitches and much of the gore is a bit unnecessary too. And I would have liked to have seen a couple of sniper missions (like COD4's Pripyat).
I did finish the SP on veteran but not without dying a LOT. You feel like you are fighting the battles on your own, rather than as part of a unit. Often the AI seems to forget you have comrades and targets you relentlessly which gets a bit boring. The game is too scripted, I noticed a few graphical glitches and much of the gore is a bit unnecessary too. And I would have liked to have seen a couple of sniper missions (like COD4's Pripyat).
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