A familiar friend lurks under that glossy extrerior.
That isn't a major criticism of Black Ops. It is what it is: a very solid shooter with an impressive game engine that offers bouts of exciting action, even though it doesn't bring anything new to the table, or allow you to deeply strategise your every move. It has an accessibility to it that means that everyone au fait with first person shooters can pick it up instantly and feel familiarly at home with it.
The intensity throughout the campaign, undoubtedly helped by great audio and visual work, is a real highlight. The action can be quite relentless at times, especially when swarms of enemies descend on your position and you're frantically picking them off one by one, but that helps create the ferocity and aggression that consistently runs through the missions. It's a testament to Black Ops playability that with a blink of the eye you will have blasted your way through the game's fifteen major objectives in just a few gaming sessions. Such is its more-ish nature and pick-up-and-play appeal that you will have had a great time doing so, you just won't remember it in years to come for making any real impact on the genre.
It's the overall production rather than the gameplay that makes Call Of Duty Black Ops really stand out among the crowd and worthy of such high scores. There are some spectacular sights to behold and slick cut-scenes to enjoy, a real top-notch production from beginning to end. The storyline is also worth listening to and the action is relentlessly exciting, even if there is a familiar friend lurking under that glossy exterior. If you detect a hint of disappointment at our review, you're right, we did want to see a little bit more from Call Of Duty rather than have a new storyline and new locations planted around identical gameplay. But, it's still a great first person shooter, one of the best in 2010 no doubt. If you're one of millions that have picked up Call Of Duty Black Ops, a blizzard of exciting firefights awaits.
Note - Multiplayer not played at time of writing. Please check back for a separate multiplayer review.
