Call of Duty: Black Ops Single Player Review (360)

A look into the short but exhilirating Call of Duty: Black Ops single player

Do you smell that? Sweet smelling victory? Steaming bullet holes? Blood spewing? Oh! How I love the smell of fresh Call of Duty in the morning, guns blazing, fires burning, screams in the distance, you and your gun mowing down endless enemies like never before. This FPS brings you into the world of an over-dramatized and glorified war path as you play out the past of a military SOG named Alex Mason, and I wouldn’t expect anything less from Call of Duty. From piloting boats rigged with endless rocket ammunition in the Vietnam war to silently killing your enemy and letting them slip to the floor dead. This thriller is nothing short of spectacular, exhilarating, and a down right crazy experience. From the opening scene to the last you’re on the edge of your seat blowing the shit out of people. Suspend your belief of reality because in this game there is nothing but destruction in the most modest and militarily respectful way.

It all starts off with a secret organization desperately trying to interrogate the bloody and beat down Alex Mason to extract vital information for their benefits. The re-occurrence of numbers is evident as well as some well developed characters. The story line becomes clear within an appropriate amount of time and is truly gripping. This decently fresh story line plays out quite nicely and delivers a riveting ride. Yes, it might be the same brink of war, end of the world, and foreign country conflict that fuels the Call of Duty series- but who cares it’s awesome. Revealing the past through interrogation makes the story line really interesting, as the pieces of what is really going on falls together giving you a greater sense of urgency. It is that sense of urgency that Black Ops really delivers well. There are no boring missions or points in the game where you feel you can slow down, take it easy, or calm down. Black Ops brings back some memorable characters from World at War and does a really good job at furthering your understanding and care for these characters. Of course, there is nothing like Captain Price but you really can’t complain. On the other hand, the story line is always filled with quick and fun objectives that give the linear gameplay a bit of dynamic.

Call of Duty : Black Ops single player gets your adrenaline going, your heart beating, and really hits home.

The story line is nothing short of simply amusing but there are some things that do cause some friction. The graphics are really nothing desirable and a lot of the textures do seem copied and pasted from the previous games. This game had that same plastic feel that World at War had and it makes it hard to really enjoy the combat. Plastic, meaning it felt like I was shooting down action figures that were programmed to shout out the same phrase all in the same voice, as if they only knew the word “DIE!”. Halo revolutionized the enemy when the grunts would shout out the most hilarious things. Nothing was more fun than chasing down a screaming grunt pleading for its life then smacking it in the back of the head. In Black Ops your stuck behind cover shooting at enemies who are either standing in plain view spewing bullets shouting the same stupid phrase, or an enemy behind cover twirling his finger screaming the same god damn obnoxious phrase. It’s this same mechanic that has always infected the Call of Duty games. The normal combat is just the same thing over and over again and it gets drawn out. Treyarch desperately tries to fill the game with different combat instead of just fixing the normal combat of the game. They try to hide the problem of boring shooting under multiple crazy objectives or behind flying a crazy helicopter. However, they have yet to find a way to make that cover to cover shooting any fun (unless you play on recruit because then cover is not necessary). But, I can’t come down to hard on the basic mechanics because that is what Call of Duty is and unfortunately might always be.

Call of Duty : Black Ops single player gets your adrenaline going, your heart beating, and really hits home. I would recommend playing on recruit or regular just to go around killing and mowing down your enemies without a fear. The basic and boring combat is drawn out and tedious on any difficulty higher, but it by no means bad just not spectacular. I would not recommend buying this game for just the single player but there is also Zombies and Multiplayer (Check out the review on Call of Duty: Black Ops Multiplayer). Zombies is ridiculously fun and the multiplayer is the best of the series. The slightly above average graphics and drawn out cover to cover combat is easily carried by a thrilling story line and some awesome extras.