Call of Duty: Black Ops The 1960s: the decade of peace, love and rock'n'roll. The decade of LSD and flower power, colour television and manned space exploration. Call of Duty: Black Ops 'Knife to meet you; to meet you, knife' Only that's not how Captain Alex Mason remembers them. Under interrogation and drugged up to his eyeballs with sodium …
Eight to ten hours. I usually wait until I believe the price is reasonable before buying any COD game because their single player campaigns are almost criminally short.
This is one of the greatest disappointments for this kind of game. When the game reverts to single player only in a few years because the servers have been shut down, will all the reviewers be revising their scores down to account for the fact?
Keyboard, mouse, done.
BO looks great, but it would be better if Steam/Activision hadn't done the usual crap with the release - I was hoping to have a go at midnight but no such luck, so I'll be going home early tonight. It's also nice to see a good SP review, there's a lot of repetitive articles talking about the MP aspects, and while I'll be spending more time on MP, it's good to know that the SP campaign is up to standard.
8 to 10 hours of campaign for the best part of 50 quid? No thanks. Already got stiffed by COD:MW2 which lasted me less than 6 hours. I wouldn't mind but I'm actually pretty crap at games so if I can finish it in that time it's definitely not worth the money.
It's a real shame too as the screenshots look gorgeous and I'd love to play it, but I'm not getting ripped off like that again, I'll stick to games that give me a good 40+ hours for my money.
Is it still a rush to a spawn point with a shotgun fair? It always sucks when a war game has infinite respawns for the enemy (until you reach the correct check point to deactivate the spawn point) making strategy and snipering pretty much pointless (if there are unlimited respawns), of course unlimited spawns for a given time are necessary in things like base defence but that's a different kettle of carp.
Every CoD game so far has played out a lot faster than it needs to due that one design flaw. I played Farcry and then Crysis for hours before finishing. Each "level" was generally pretty huge and you had free and unfettered access to almost every nook and cranny in it. This allows the player to explore and sneak around to find the best way to defeat the enemy. For some folk the best way is always full frontal assault with guns blazing Rambo style but for others like me I prefer to scout around, pick off sentries and generally find the spots from which to cause chaos and mayhem.
In the CoD games you don't have this option. All you have is a narrow play "corridor" that you need to fight through. If you stay in one spot and try and clear out the enemy in order to move forward then the enemy just keeps respawning as you kill them until you eventually get bored or run out of ammo. There is usually no way of flanking the enemy either so the only way to play it is to charge forward Rambo style until you reach a hidden checkpoint that turns off the enemy spawning for that section. Because this is all you can do it is easy to play through the whole game in short order and there is little replay value either.
On the whole I would say that CoD style is fun in the same way that a one night stand might be fun.
Short, exciting and unmemorable.
I avoid buying them until they reach the "Platinum Release" or equivalent and pick them up for $20. There is no way I would pay a super premium for the game equivalent of a quick romp in the hay.
is there a decent squad based mode?
i still think my fave FPS was battlefield 2142, bad company 2 online was ok but a bit linear and boring in places. you really need 64 people for a decent FPS game i think. none of this 16 v 16 rubbish on little maps.
also, how good are these for cheaters? its one thing that has pretty much ruined online gaming in recent years
hardly anyone plays the single players on this type of game, its almost all online. the single player is generally just to fluff it out and for the odd review.
maybe they should sell a cheaper version for just online or single player?
sounds to me like battlefield games are still the superior squad based games.
I'm with GhillieDhu on this - I'm also not a big MP player, mainly because you've only got the choices of deathmatch or clan-based. So if you aren't "clanned up" then you're pretty much stuck with deathmatch. Then, the matching systems don't seem to work that well - so if you're a n00b then you always seem to get matched with folks who live and breathe MP, in which case you're only there as cannon fodder.
Plus I can't help thinking that weak single player is indicative of a lack of effort by the developers. And while I appreciate that MW2 had a good MP, the single player campaign was at best "average" - Bad Company 2 was way better. In fact, I'd maybe go so far to say that MoH:Tier1's SP game was at least as enjoyable as MW2's - neither of which were as good as MW1's - although I've gone through Tier1's more times than MW2 so far.
Getting back to CoD:BO - it's frenetic, challenging and quite enjoyable so far. Well done Treyarch! I might even give the MP a go this week... ;)
I suddenly feel envious.
No, it's gone.
Replaced by the disgusting "HEADSHOT" cried by the UT narrator copied by every other mod, for every other FPS multiplayer game. Especially for those littered wtih aimbot cheaters.
I only go coop multiplay now.
As for the others, LEFT 4 DEAD practically reinvented zombies games, don't dismiss single player versus zombies until you played this. Even the 3 coop bots are smarter than lots of online folks. Which reminds me: when gaming with bots and humans, help the bot. The bot is programmed to follow the player that was left alone / behind, and he will save you when humans won't.
It mentions that the maps are smaller than the Battlefield games which suggests to me that it will be the usual spammy, run and gun twitchfest so beloved of the masses. Not that the battlefield games have been anything to brag about in this regard recently. Bad Company 2 was hopeless. Buggy on release and the server browser is still pretty terrible. I am a PC gamer you can probably tell, although I am thinking that it's becoming more and more a waste of my time. Games are developed and aimed at the console tards first and PC versions are an afterthought.
Well obviously not or like most users from what I can see you'd be severely disappointed by a game that lags and stutters even in the menu. Completely unusable product even for many with i7s and 6gig of RAM.
Pity, because from the little I've seen of the single player it seems like it would be better than the awful single player of MW2.
I'm not sure the review is playing the same game as me... I spent an hour last night going through the first couple of levels and found it to be a typical Treyarch COD placeholder offering; disappointing.
Linear levels, on-rails style routes, impassable rocks and rubble, invisible walls and level edges, uninspiring sound and an incomprehensible storyline.
Now I realise I'm only just starting the game and single-player at that, but the constant jumping from location to location (interogation one second, Cuba the next, Russia after that) is disorientating. and frankly annoying. I nearly gave up last night and took the bloody game back.
I'm going to take it online tonight in the slim hope that this will save the day but if you were thinking of buying this game for the single-player only I really wouldn't bother.
Incidentally I picked up the Xbox 360 version in Sainsburys for £27.98 when purchased with an additional £30 worth of groceries. Thank god I never paid £55 for it!
This may look like a rant but is definitely not
Firstly if you bought this game for its single player story then fine, not so bad but surely not worth the asking £40 price just for that. I would value it more at about £25 or £30 at most.
For multiplayer this is probably one of the worst releases in the game company's history. The list of bugs just keep growing.
1. You cannot find servers in the server browser (even filtered) they just randomize.
2. Favorites are random too. You can add some but no guarantee it will show in favorites
3. Recents, same as favorites.
4. Cannot join friends games, you always have to get an invite otherwise tough luck.
5. Like 4 except when your friends do send you invites you never get them.
6. Laggggg. Not everyone is running dial up in this world yet everyone is bouncing around like they are on dial up
If you want to buy this game for its multiplayer features, then in my opinion don't. Rather wait till they fix it (if they ever do) or wait till it goes on special for the single story only
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