By now, it will be clear to anyone following the gaming industry that the Call of Duty franchise has transcended the developer making the game and taken on a life of its own. Leaving aside those of us in the know, a betting man would put money on most purchasing customers to not know or care about who makes the game as long as it keeps their trigger finger busy with an action-packed single player campaign and a multiplayer component voluminous enough that it would put most other developers to shame.
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However, and as much as I hate to sound like a stuck record and discuss Treyarch’s latest effort in relation to Infinity Ward’s earlier games in the series, it’s nigh on impossible to ignore the fact that both World at War and Black Ops have stuck to a pre-determined formula that Activision has deemed worthy of repeating until they have another Guitar Hero on their hands. It’s a classic catch 22 where you don’t want to change too much because what’s there has been tried and tested over multiple retail iterations, and as a mega buck corporation, you honestly don’t want to mess with something that’s been keeping your accountants happy.
Suffice to say that Black Ops looks and plays as well as every Call of Duty before it has, mostly owing to the fact the game still runs on a modified version of the Modern Warfare engine. Barring the inclusion of some fun new weaponry and a dive move that I never used, this is, for better or worse, the same compact, tightly paced six-hour single player experience. Formulaic design aside, the weapons deserve a special mention. Some of the classified, experimental armaments they threw in really succeed in empowering you. There ought to be an Achievement or Trophy for using the Dragon’s Breath shotgun or the explosive-tipped crossbow without a huge grin on your face. Luckily for us though, the overlords at Activision did allow Treyarch to fiddle around with a number of peripheral elements that support the gameplay.
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What Treyarch have done with Black Ops is make not-so-subtle changes to the pacing and the story beats. If you thought Modern Warfare 2 was too outlandish or action packed, it may be best to temper expectations a tad, as it’s only got worse here. It also feels as though there is a distinct gap between story and gameplay, possibly as a consequence of hiring an external writer to pen the story. While you’ll play through a somewhat cerebral Jacob’s Ladder-esque tale that required the right kind of pacing to accentuate its psychological nature, the gameplay unfortunately verges on overkill, with the player being rushed through several outlandish situations that are over before you even have time to settle in.
You may get to ‘drive’ a litany of vehicles and even play through a couple of underwater sequences, but what does it matter when they last less than a minute and aren’t fleshed out enough to give you complete control? You never feel fully in control during the brief driving sections, for instance. Credit is still due for a sequence where you alternate between commanding a squad of soldiers from an overhead view from an SR-71 Blackbird and actually controlling the soldiers themselves.
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Set during the height of the cold war, Black Ops tells the story of Alex Mason, a special operations chap who gets called on to participate in the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion-cum-failed coup in Cuba. What should have ended with a summary execution after being captured by Castro quickly devolves into a strictly competent plot involving a Nazi-developed chemical weapon and a plan to strike the continental United States. You can tell that they’ve tried to make the story as interesting as they possibly could, and it does work most times, and while it isn’t anything the series hasn’t seen before in terms of obvious red herrings and telegraphed twists, there is an absolutely stunning character in there that makes the whole experience worthwhile – Viktor Reznov.
Superbly voiced by Gary Oldman and with a fleshed out back story and strong motivations, this holdover from Treyarch’s World at War is the best part of the game, and even the most mundane trek through a military complex is made better with Reznov by your side. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the other characters, including bland turns from Ed Harris and Ice Cube, the latter of whom was deemed reason enough to have half a dozen ‘ice cube’ references in the script. Mason, voiced by Sam Worthington, is sufficiently capable as the driver of the tale, except for the fact that any dialogue that isn’t in a cutscene is hamstrung by an obvious Australian accent, almost as if there was no VO director supervision during the in-game sessions.
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The Call of Duty series has always been known for scripted sequences. The early Infinity Ward games always wore their aspirations of hanging with their big screen live action cousins on their sleeve, and the current generation of consoles has given the developers enough horsepower to push these sequences to above and beyond what a summer blockbuster can. Now as fun as watching something like a nuke going off in front of your eyes sounds on paper, it could all fall to pieces if the execution doesn’t match the quality of the concept itself. This in my opinion is the biggest difference between Black Ops and previous games from Infinity Ward – the polish.
There were several instances where scripted sequences weren’t as smoothly executed (or as well thought out) as they ought to have been, especially concerning the behaviour and movement of your AI compatriots. Their path finding, enemy engagement routines and scripted on-rail sequences didn’t really assist in losing you in the experience. It seems acceptable from a story perspective that Reznov would get himself into reckless engagements, but you start to question Treyarch’s fine-tuning skills when seasoned marines like Woods and Bowman spaz out and act less like Price and Ghost from Modern Warfare 2 and more like your average glitchy NPC sidekicks. Add moronic enemy AI into the mix, and you have a six-hour keystone cops episode on your hands, with enemies running up and planting their feet right next to your squad and neither being the wiser about it.
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The levels themselves are a lot less interesting and just drabber than they were in previous releases. There are no iconic locations like middle town America, Okinawa or the Reichstag that stay with you like in the last three games. You’ll see more than your fair share of military bases and caves, and even a short trip to Hong Kong can’t escape the dreariness that is Black Ops. As much as I wanted to like this game, the less-than-epic ending really did sum up the whole experience.
Aside from the single player campaign, there are a ton of other modes to keep you occupied. The zombie mode from World at War returns, but as fun as it is, I miss the locations and variety from Modern Warfare 2’s Spec Ops mode. You’ll also unlock two hidden games, including a twin-stick top-down zombie shooter from a workstation that’s accessible from the game’s main menu screen. The zombie schump is a good laugh, and props to Treyarch for taking the time to throw in a freebie that could very well have been hawked as a paid downloadable game.
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The multiplayer mode, where the most player hours are logged, has seen a fair bit of change. Weapon customisation has been enhanced, and you can now use COD points to unlock weapons and attachments in any order you choose. You’ll see a lot more individuality, not only in the weapons, but also with character models. There are also a series of wager matches that let you put your COD points on the line in a number of match types. There is also a local split-screen option as well as bots if you’d much rather practice offline.
Conclusion
Black Ops is a perfectly playable game, serviceable owing to its me-too design ethics. While I didn’t regret my time spent with it, it did open my eyes to how important everything else around the gameplay is. This could (and should) have been a better game, one that took Modern Warfare 2’s level of polish forward. It doesn’t. It isn’t.