CoD: BlOps

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » November 12th, 2010, 3:41

Call of Duty - Black Ops

Introduction
This is the 7th CoD game, being an odd-cod, it's made by treyarch, which is usually a bad thing, however, somehow, they've managed to put out something pretty decent this time.

Singleplayer
Singleplayer is fairly standard AAA fair these days, Dodgy story, lots of action, some attempts to be clever, checkpoints with no manual save, blah blah. It's scripted to fuckery and back, A few times I died repeatedly because I took a step wrong, or didn't see the exact thing I had to do, most annoying, but not really game breaking.

All in it works fine, but nothing special, Generally good clean fun if you turn your brain off and enjoy the ride. Which is worth doing for the JFK zombie level, which unlocks after you complete the game. fucking genius.

Multiplayer
This surprised me a lot, they seem to have scaled back the stupidity of MW2 a huge amount, I've not even been killed by a grenade launcher.

There's still silly things, like RC cars with C4 on, but they're not super effective and die easily if you're not a spastic.

All round, the MP seems balanced, after less than an hour playing, I was holding my own against lvl40 players, no-one appears to have a massive advantage.

There's plenty of maps, nicely varied, quite a lot of vertical space in use, and more inside sections, feels good, if slightly CS:S-ish in places.

Weapons are present and varied, no complaints, customisation is... interesting, picked up a gun with a red dot sight with a heart instead of a dot earlier, that was faaabulous.

All in, from what I've seen, it's a decent addition to the CoD franchise. Shada can probably add to this, having played a lot more than me.

Sights and Sounds
The graphics in blops are... odd. The whole game looks good, until you look closely, then you notice the details are a bit, 2005. Doesn't really hurt, but can be distracting.

Sounds are good, they managed to find the bass that was missing from WaW. blops sounds lovely and punchy, like a AAA FPS should do.

Stuff that sucks
Overly scripted singleplayer
Price
Difficult to sweep.
Weird bugs

Conclusion
CoD:BlOps isn't the best game ever, the SP is run of the mill action trash, nothing wrong, just nothing special. MP is a step in the right direction, has potential once it's fixed.

Score :

Shada · Post by **Shada** » November 12th, 2010, 4:10

I think the campaign is the most fun COD campaign to date, but that's probably just gonna be me. It's got plenty of Russians in it being awesome and shouting URAHHHHH, so that's pretty much automatic 10/10 from me. It was the same with World at War.

Multiplayer is what people play COD for, though, so here's my impressions so far in wee notes format:

GOOD:
- It feels a mix of COD4 and World at War, and lifts only the best bits of MW2 (which wasn't a lot, despite how much I played it).
- Customisation, holy shit, I love customisation. Everything you change about your gun is visible on the third person model (even "upgraded ironsights", which makes them slightly bigger) and your character looks like whatever your main perk is, so you can have a ghillie suit with an assault rifle if you pick Ghost. I just love simple stuff like having a green dot sight on my green camo'd gun - I'm faaabulous for colour matching.
- Nice amount of variety on guns and attachments, including some stuff that hasn't been in previous games like underbarrel flamethrowers, two types of red dot sight and taped magazines for faster reloading.
- Sprint and hit the prone key and you do a sweet dive. Dive through windows, dive off cliffs, dive into people's faces, it's awesome.
- There's a lot more focus on gunplay than COD4 and MW2. You WILL get killed by grenade launchers every once in a while, but most people seem to prefer red dot sights and silencers. I'm still rolling a grenade launcher class, though, so watch out for me. The best bit is it's a 25mm grenade launcher on my wee AKs74u - so I'm superfast and grenadey. Of course you can just put on a flak jacket and then that's me fucked, and there's no infinite grenades like MW2.
- Killstreaks aren't stupid overpowered and it's harder to get the high end ones. There's also a good variety of fun stuff to pick - I've gone for Spy Plane, Counter-Spy and Blackbird, so the more people I kill the more enemies I bring up on the map for my team and the more I blind the bad guys.
- Contracts are fun. Every day they get mixed up a bit, and you can pick one from each category. Easier contracts include stuff like "Kill 3 dudes with a pistol" or "Win a round" and give you shit all for doing them, but the harder ones give a whole bunch of cash and XP and include stuff like "Get 5 Tomahawk kills in one life" and other weapon specific things. You usually get 40 minutes of in-game time to complete contracts, so they give you something specific to do for a few rounds.
- No stopping power or juggernaut. This is the best decision ever.

BAD:
- No one's found the overpowered weapons yet, but it's looking to be the FAMAS for the assault rifle class and the AKs74u for the SMG class, so if you see everyone using those two guns by next week I totally called it. Still, all the weapons kill folks just fine, and no game is ever gonna have total balance.
- Shotguns look cool, but they're mostly well naff. You'll get one kill with the under-over shotgun then get killed yourself as you spend an age trying to cram some more shells in even with sleight of hand, and the pump-action has too long an interval between shots. SPAS is good though, I hear.
- Terrible spawn system as usual. Nuketown is particularly awful, where you'll constantly spawn in a backyard while enemies are right behind you duckshootin' you and the rest of your team.
- Sniping is balls hard to do. Some of you will like this, others won't. But basically you're way better off just using an unscoped assault rifle to kill people far away. I've still got a Dragunov class, but it's mostly just when I feel like being a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. rather than when I want to get any kills at all.
- This is something that doesn't bother me too much but I know it'll bother some of you guys: a lot of folks playing right now you can tell are seriously trying really hard not to get shot by you. People will run and jump and dolphin dive and do anything they can to dodge your crosshair, and if you're used to slow paced games at the moment you're gonna be surprised when a Lightweight Marathon dude sprints full pelt at you, soaks your bullets and sticks a knife in your chest. Knifers are nowhere near as bad as in MW2, though, where they were actually encouraged with stupid perks that don't exist in BLOPS.

I probably forgot a whole bunch of stuff but I seriously think this is the best COD to date. I liked MW2, but this game is what that game should have been.

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » November 12th, 2010, 10:40

I'm hearing things I like and things I obviously like less, so I'll have to buy it for myself to see what it's like. I must admit the diving thing sounds like it could easily be exploited.

These reviews are really useful though, well done guys.

Shada · Post by **Shada** » November 12th, 2010, 12:10

Forgot to mention, you can't fire while diving and there's a delay after you hit the ground before you can fire. I have dived down a snowy slope and landed at a guy's feet and knifed him, though, that was hilarious

Post by **deject** » November 12th, 2010, 13:13

I have enjoyed BLOPS so far.

Post by **HereComesPete** » November 12th, 2010, 17:13

Shada wrote:Forgot to mention, you can't fire while diving and there's a delay after you hit the ground before you can fire. I have dived down a snowy slope and landed at a guy's feet and knifed him, though, that was hilarious

Slidy stabbing, I like this. And the delay so it's not full blown floaty diving like in beef, that fucked me right off.

I also like that sniping is difficult. Moh sniping is super simples and as such no fun whatsoever. I decided to give the m24 and hi-power scope a run out a few weeks ago and went 47-3 in less than fifteen minutes. A shot anywhere from the non-bullet drop laser accurate cannon will kill the target unless they're packing the flak jacket upgrade. You can massacre a team whilst watching a film on the other monitor and smoking a tab.

If everyone can do it and do it easily then they will and you'll never capture an objective and everyone is dying on the spawn and then you get a cruise missile to the face and rage quit.

Hmm, maybe this is why I'm rather meh about moh. In fact I shall call it meh.

Bring on pay day and bring on the blops!

Post by **Grimmie** » November 12th, 2010, 17:42

Did they fix the floating apple bug yet?

Shada · Post by **Shada** » November 12th, 2010, 18:22

No, that's what's making the game completely unplayable right now.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » November 13th, 2010, 9:35

That's the only reason I'm not buying it, the apple is a massive exploit.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » November 13th, 2010, 10:30

can be had for 30 quid off D2D.

http://savygamer.co.uk/2010/11/12/codblops-pc-29-96/

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » November 14th, 2010, 21:25

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:can be had for 30 quid off D2D.

http://savygamer.co.uk/2010/11/12/codblops-pc-29-96/

Not for me, sadly.
Amazon was nice enough to sell it to me for the same amount and no delivery cost though, so it's all good.

Post by **deject** » November 14th, 2010, 22:46

The multiplayer is pretty awesome.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » November 17th, 2010, 23:14

Additional: This is why you should buy Blops.

My Gun has horses on it, they're pink, it also says pony.

How can you, as reasonable 5punkers, not already own this game?

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » November 17th, 2010, 23:20

Now that it's not laging, it's actually a pretty decent thing. The only problem is we can't do homebrew servers, we have to rent one from Gameservers.

Shada · Post by **Shada** » November 18th, 2010, 0:32

:D

D:

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » November 18th, 2010, 0:44

Shada wrote:

Wat.

Shada · Post by **Shada** » November 18th, 2010, 0:46

haha that was my response too. I wasn't even doing anything particularly notable, just shooting mans with a silenced AK.

I've also been called a wallhacker for tracking people through walls or shooting through floors when my Blackbird is in the air. Durrrr hurrr how does killstreaks work durrr.

Post by **deject** » November 18th, 2010, 2:19

Yeah I love it when I get accused of hacking. It happened to me when I went 25-9, which is good but not like ZOMG HAXOR good.

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » November 18th, 2010, 2:21

I usually do good but never get accused, it's probably because I usually camp a choke with an M16 with silencer and acog, which has a pretty much horrible penetration but great sniping capabilities

Post by **deject** » November 18th, 2010, 2:23

Running like a madman with a silenced SPAS12 is awesome fun. You can do so well in hardcore with it, as the silencer does not reduce damage in any way apparently, and it has decent range.