14 DAY TRIAL // Call of Duty: Black Ops is the new first person shooter from developer Treyarch and publisher Activision Blizzard, allowing the player to experience the covert ops conflicts between the United States and Russia during the era of the Cold War.
Towards the end of Call of Duty: Black Ops two special operations soldiers, after escaping some pretty horrifying torture at the hands of Soviet and North Vietnamese soldiers, find a hind attack helicopter deep in the jungle.
Chances are they are not trained to fly the Russian beast but they still climb in the cockpit in search of the vengeance that the flying machine can offer them.
With the player controlling both the movement of the attack chopper and the use of its main cannon and its wing mounted rockets the Hind goes on to follow the course of a rives, fighting anti air guns, patrol boats and blowing up encampments.
The grand finale is a battle with those other helicopters while attempting to blow up a petrol pipe.
Contrast the whole sequence with the helicopter level in Medal of Honor, which focuses on a trained Apache crew which, with another bird, assaults an insurgent held village and then goes on to hunt enemies in the hills, with the player only controlling the weapons systems of the helicopter.
It's a more on rails shooter and the thrills it delivers are somewhat more subdued but it is also closer to the realities of a military conflict, with the limitations clearly on display and with the Apache very vulnerable to ground based rockets.
The comparison can be extended to the entirety of the two first person shooters which launched this fall.
Medal of Honor aims for a more somber ride, where respect for the military is a constant theme and the developers try at least to simulate the way fights happen.
Call of Duty: Black Ops is more incoherent but also more flashy, allowing the player to feel much more powerful and in control but eliminating any pretense that the army could actually do what's happening on screen.