LOS ANGELES – Unfairly or not, when it comes to ‘Call of Duty’, Treyarch has long been seen as the stand-in developer for the franchise. As Activision’s military shooter title shot to world stardom, Treyarch was called upon to pump out place-holder games while Infinity Ward toiled away on the next triple A COD release. The COD titles that Treyarch produced weren’t bad – indeed, ‘Call of Duty: World At War’ was an engrossing and enjoyable shooter. But the Santa Monica-based developer’s COD games were always considered by fans to the equivalent of straight-to-DVD movies when compared to Infinity Ward’s blockbuster releases. With the release of ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’, those days are now well and truly over. To put it simply, ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’ is superb.
The experience of playing the game, thanks to the modified World at War engine, is comparable to the best in what the franchise has had to offer up until now. The meaty kick of the guns, the blistering pace of the action and the sterling soundtrack of explosions, gunshots and whistling bullets all serve to quicken the player’s pulse and tighten their grip on the controller. The controls will be familiar to anyone who has ever played COD (millions of players by the last count) or indeed any shooter in the last ten or so years. The game also earns every ounce of its 18 rating with some particularly grisly violence, although this is confined to the single-player experience.
There is nothing gratuitous about the violence in the campaign, however. While it contains its fair share of graphically violent scenes, there is nothing on the level of the cheap theatrics of the ‘No Russian’ level of ‘Modern Warfare 2′. All the violence, however eye-watering it may be, is used at the service of the campaign’s plot – and what a rip-roaring piece of work that happens to be. The player takes on the role of a soldier, who at the beginning of the game, is strapped to a chair in a makeshift torture chamber, with shadowy figures barking questions at him about his chequered past. The plot unfolds in flashback with the action moving around different theatres from the Cold War such as (amongst others) U.S.S.R., Vietnam and Cuba. The writers do just the right amount of drip-feeding plot details and twisting the narrative that the story maintains a lethal degree of intrigue and tension. When all is finally revealed, they’re also deft enough tie up campaign, while not spoon-feeding the player by closing out every loose end. It’s top notch stuff and it has the edge over Black Ops’ predecessor in that it actually makes sense.
The level design matches the plot’s strength neck and neck. Granted, awe-inspiring set pieces have always been Call of Duty’s stock in trade as a franchise, but Black Ops ramps up the intensity while tossing in a lot of variation. Beyond the overwhelming, chaotic action in the game’s major gun battles – during a charge up a hill in Vietnam or a frantic rooftop chase in Hong Kong – Black Ops offers a slow crawl through corpse-filled foxhole in Laos and a stealthy infiltration of a substation in the snow-capped steppes in which the slowdown in action is compensated for by nail-shredding tension and creepy atmosphere. There are also a couple of vehicle sections; one standout moment involves laying waste to enemy positions along a river in a helicopter gunship. Throughout the campaign, Black Ops offers an engrossing plot with epic shooter action to match.
The multiplayer is just as robust as its predecessor, with the only shortfall being that the 20 killstreak rewards have been reduced to 15 and the deathstreaks, which gave the less skilled online players a bit of help, have gone completely. To compensate for this latter omission, Black Ops contains a mode called Combat Training which pits the players again the game’s AI in multiplayer maps and match-types. This can be played solo or with friends (in local and online co-op) and the difficulty level can be toggled according the player’s skill level.
Finally, fans of World at War will be pleased to hear that the zombies are back. This time, players take on the roles of John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Robert McNamara, and Fidel Castro who have come under attack at the pentagon. Up to four players can take part in online battles, while two can play together in local split-screen co-op. It’s a zany entertaining mode in which player’s dash madly around a series of rooms, blasting the stumbling undead who are trying to break into the map at four entrance points. If Treyarch felt they had something to prove with ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’, then the developer can give itself a well-deserved pat on the back.
They’ve really hit one out of the park with Black Ops; this COD entry is easily the gold standard for this franchise now. This is a game that will silence any naysayer and beat off any competition. Activision will doubtless be pleased, although any other developers tasked with following Black Ops will probably be wondering how they can improve on Treyarch’s work here. ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’ will be a tough act to follow as it’s easily one of the best games of this or any year.
