I can't remember a year in the past ten years when a Call of Duty game wasn't released, can you? The Call of Duty franchise started out with primarily World War II based games, but more recently they've moved into more contemporary conflicts. Over the past few years, two developers have switched back and forth every year with the Call of Duty name. Arguably the most ground breaking Call of Duty series to date was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) developed by Infinity Ward. The next game to come out was released by Treyarch, Call of Duty: World at War (2008), which still clung to the WWII genre, but added a new feature, Nazi Zombies. The next year, 2009, Infinity Ward released Modern Warfare 2, which, while still maintaining a fantastic single player experience, had a revolutionary online multi-player system. This year, Treyarch hyped up their newest release, Call of Duty: Black Ops. Black Ops is Treyarch's first shot at a more modern game, but they took a spin on it and placed it during the Vietnam War.
After all of the great Call of Duty games over the years and the numerous additions year after year, Black Ops had a lot riding on it and, for the most part, it has delivered. I will admit, that before Black Ops came out, I was incredibly hesitant about buying it. I never got World at War and I know a large reason most people got it was because of Nazi Zombies; essentially, the campaign was nothing special. However, with Treyarch's newest addition, Black Ops has one of, if not the best, campaign of any Call of Duty game to date. Like other CoD games, Black Ops switches you between several characters through out the game, but you play primarily as a special forces operative named Alex Mason. This puts a huge fix on one large complaint I've had about the games over the years: while you come to love some of the characters, you never really identify with the character you play as. The entirety of the plot is placed in the mind of Mason while he's strapped to a chair being interrogated by an ominous voice about "the numbers." The in game graphics are incredible and some of the interactive scenes are really dynamic, expanding on those that were featured in MW2. On top of that, the in-game characters are great, in particular Viktor Reznov, a former Red Army soldier that Mason befriends while held captive at Vorkuta Gulag. The voice acting of Reznov is superb and the character developement makes you love him and defend him til the end. Certain scenes are particularly nerve racking and almost eerie, so much so that I think Treyarch could make a very successful horror game.
While the campaign is incredibly well done, the multi-player falls a little short. While it has all of the elements of MW2s online play, for some reason the graphics are not nearly as good as the in-game graphics. Something about it looks rough and unpolished. One helicopter I saw looked so bad that it was more of an awkward green trapezoid than a helicopter. To make matters worst, Black Ops has several host issues which have yet to be ironed out, making finding a match overly difficult, with players some times waiting more than ten minutes before they find someone to play with. Where the multi-player falls short in graphics, it makes up in game play. The wager system is a lot of fun, most notably the Gun Game in which, for each kill, you upgrade to a better gun. Whoever gets 20 kills first wins and the top three players receive more credits than they put in. The overall system is relatively the same as previous games with Team Death Match and other game types. Players also have a wide array of customizable options ranging from their logo (which can be virtually anything from a kitten to a work of art consisting of various layers) to the type and color of your cross hairs. Zombies is also a great addition, especially because with two players, you can play as JFK and Nixon.
Call of Duty: Black Ops is definitely more impressive than I had initially anticipated. The campaign is, in my opinion, the most exciting and engaging to date. While the multi-player is essentially the same and has tons of customizable options as well as the wager system, the graphics are surprisingly lack luster and are no where near the quality of the in-game graphics. Fortunately, Black Ops has several additions such as zombies and even a hidden arcade style game that make it more than worth your time and money. Black Ops may not be the greatest Call of Duty game to date overall (in fact, according to Raptr, more people are currently playing Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare 2, and World at War), but it is definitely a game to add to your collection if not for the campaign alone.
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