Call of Duty: Black Ops Review

Weapons & Combat

The game has a very large arsenal of guns; most have decent implementations, but there’s nothing that I would call exceptional. Weapons include standard NATO (e.g. M-16) and Eastern Bloc variants (e.g. AK47), and some WWII arms make an appearance too. There are also variations of weapons you can find, such as attached grenade launchers, scopes, laser sights, extended magazines, and double magazines for faster reload times. In some levels you can also call in artillery/aircraft strikes by using a laser from your radio to paint targets.

Moving/jumping reduces your aim while aiming down the sights improves it, along with crouching and prone stances. You can also hold your breath to steady scope movement when using sniper rifles, and sprinting allows you to move faster for a limited time.

Firefights are generally fast and furious, but the enemy AI is quite average overall. They stand still for long periods of time, and I never saw any flanking or team-work maneuvers as the likes of Far Cry 2 or the original Fear had.

Come get some!

You have regenerating health and your vision turns red if you sustain too much damage, as has been done in countless other games. There’s full blood when you shoot someone, and also dismemberments from limbs being blown off. Also the silent knife kills are quite graphic.

The game also has a range of vehicles that either support you or can be manned (e.g. landing craft, helicopters, etc). Sometimes you pilot them as well as using their guns, but other times you just use their guns. I think the helicopter flight in Vietnam was the best vehicle section in the game, and the SR71 Blackbird reconnaissance mission was highly original.

Technology

The game uses an updated version of Infinity Award’s custom in-house engine, first introduced in Call of Duty 2. Visuals are generally above average, although some texture surfaces are a bit bland and muddy. Water and vegetation is done very well, but it’s not quite as good as something like Far Cry 2. Smoke/sparks/fire from combat also adds to the hectic realism.

It's a great day for a missile launch.

The sound effects are also very good, with gunfire and explosions being very convincing and immersive.

A few people have experienced stuttering and performance issues, but I didn’t have any trouble playing through the single player campaign unpatched on my system (i7 870, GTX480, 4 GB, Windows 7 64 bit, stock clocks). I used maxed in-game detail levels (except AA) at 1920×1200, 16xAF and 2xTrSS, and most of the time the game was over 60 FPS, even in the most demanding snow levels. As of this writing, two patches have been released which claim to address some performance issues.

The game’s DRM requires a Steam account and all associated limitations thereof. Sometimes the game experienced long delays in launching because Steam wasn’t reacting immediately to it.