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Released: November 2010
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii, Nintendo DS
Modes: Single-player, multiplayer, co-op
Developer: Treyarch

Call of Duty games are very over-hyped. School boys go crazy for them, leading to more serious gamers resenting the game slightly, claiming that they are bad, rubbish, terrible, etc. It's a similar story if a cult music band suddenly gains a more mainstream audience. Though their music may not have gotten worse (in most cases, they would've gotten better), their new popularity causes their old, 'hardcore' fans to suddenly dislike them. The same, I notice, has happened to Call of Duty fans. Yes, the games are over-rated and yes, they're nothing particulary new or special, but the point I'm attempting to make it this: they are not bad games. I don't know why people play games, but I for one play games to experience 'fun' and to have a good time. And Black Ops delivers this feeling of 'fun'. Sure, it's not technically brilliant but does every game need to be a work of art for you to have a play and enjoy it ? Anyway, I've had my minor, incomprehensible rant, let's get on with the actual review.

Seeing as they release a COD every month or so, I seem to have developed a tradition now where I won't play any multiplayer or zombies or whatever until I've completed the campaign. It doesn't take too long, only about eight hours or so (ten at a push) to go through a play on a reasonable difficulty. I enjoyed the campaign alot, it had the best storyline in a COD since World at War (I tend to be a sucker for World War II storylines, yes I am a massive nerd). I tended to be a lot less interested in the previous storylines as if you blinked you'd lose track of who you're meant to be playing in this particuar chapter or how many times your character at the time were supposed to have died. But yeah, it was good'un, lots of turns and suspense, it really made me want to keep on playing, even just to see what those goddamn numbers meant. Gameplay wise, there wasn't anything particularly new or groundbreaking compared to previous titles. Helicoptor missions, sniper and stealth missions, snow missions, they're all here but there's nothing especially different about them.

As soon as you're done with all that, you're thrown immediately into a game of Zombies. Nazi Zombies was an unexpected and freakishly huge hit from WAW, which gives Black Ops a slight advantage over the Modern Warfare titles (which had no undead). It's significantly more fun when you play the co-op version. Keeping the wooden barriers up and trying to keep your ammo up, opening rooms and upgrading guns, can get pretty intense when you're trying not to get mutilated by zombies. The maps are better than WAW's, more puzzles and windows, and generally a little more comical and fun.

80% of the whole ~Call of Duty~ experience is from the multiplayer. I suspect it's one of the main reasons everyone wants to go out at midnight and buy it straight away so they don't trail behind everyone getting prestige or whatever. I am not one of these hardcore CODers that have to level up and have the best KTD ratio and unlock all the weapons and be the best and, let's be honest here, take the whole thing a little bit too seriously. I only have MW2's online to compare it to (though I may have given the original MW's a go too, I cannot really remember) but while I thought MW2's was better, Black Ops' was more fun for me because I was better at it. I was getting killstreaks of 7 and such, which is crazy good for me. These other kids who play it have either much quicker reactions or very modded controllers. Of course, Bad Company 2's multiplayer rules supreme overall, but let's not get into that right now.

So overall, yeah, I liked Black Ops. It's a good FPS, though I know that it's not 'cool' to say and think that, but let's not get snobby over video games. After all, 18 million consumers can't be wrong, right ?