I'm not going to write a full review of Black Ops. It's sold a bajillion copies and it's a great game. This you already know. I do want to talk about it though because a bajillion-selling game needs to be spoken of, the way an exploding gas main or nude co-worker needs to be spoken of. The situation demands commentary.
First I'd like to praise the campaign's story. It's not often I want to keep playing a game to find out what happens, and it's certainly rare for an FPS. It's not that Black Ops wasn't predictable. I had an inkling of the outcome and I wasn't far off. I think I wanted to keep playing to find out if my theory was right. The campaign itself had some bumpy spots where fun gave way to frustration but for the most part I enjoyed it.
I was disappointed to hear that titles and emblems would not be unlocked in multiplayer via the completion of challenges. One of the things I liked most about MW2 was that not only could you customize your title but you got those titles by feats of awesomeness. In this way your title/emblem was both an expression of your personality and a way to show off what you'd accomplished. My title/emblem combined the following:
"Kill every member of the enemy team without dying (at least 4 enemies)."
with
"Kill an enemy, Pick up his weapon, then kill him again with his own weapon."
I felt that was a combination that both spoke of who I was and what I was capable of. While I was disappointed that you would be able to have whatever you wanted I was excited that emblems would be custom creations using a layer system similar to Forza's. Once I unlocked the emblem feature I went strait to work to create my dream emblem... only to find out how limited it was. You only have 12 layers, the color pallet is shallow, you have to buy layers AND shapes, and shapes cannot be skewed or warped, only turned and resized. Even as limited as it is it's fun to create emblems, and there is a prestige element in that you have to pay for everything, and shapes are unlocked by level a little bit at a time. So you can't have a bitch'n emblem without spending some time in the game. I've seen some pretty impressive emblems, and I'm going to try to take some pictures and post them here.
Gun Game. The wager match thing is a cool idea but it's overshadowed by the best of its 4 gametypes, gun game. Holy crap this game is fun. It's got the raw feel of bare bones deathmatch but you get to use 20 different guns in one match (assuming you do well)! There is no thrill greater than scoring that final tricky kill with the ballistic knife. There is no agony like the sting of someone's backstab sending you back to the crossbow at the last second. The first time it happened to me I howled like a grieving mother over the corpse of her child. It was... bone chilling, unreal, amazing.
Also, glitchy networking. Fix it.
Finally, how cool is it that you can play with the old DOS-esq computer? It has ZORK!
cd C:FUN
