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November 15th, 2010, 23:41 GMT · By

Call of Duty: Black Ops – Soyuz Capsules and Free Will

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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.

The fourth or fifth mission of Call of Duty: Black Ops moves the action to a launch site where the main character needs to take out a team of scientists working on the prototype of a Soviet ballistic missile and the rocket itself.

The level is well designed and varied but underscores one of the biggest problems with this title, in particular, and with the first person shooter genre, in general.

The player gets less and less to do with each new iteration of Call of Duty and, it seems, the relaunched Medal of Honor.

I already mentioned the fact that you need to wait on others to open doors but the space launch mission adds quite a few more infractions to the list.

At one point the game forces the player to stand in place when a convoy passes, instead of simply allowing him to make a mistake and then learn that one should have stayed in place instead of moving.

Then the main character gets handed down a binocular and the game adds insult to injury by not allowing the player to actually determine what he is looking at.

Instead the game automatically follows a pre set path in order to allow a mini cutscene that focuses on a mission critical character.

And, further down the line, what could have become a simple yet interesting sneaking section turns into a simple follow the leader bit and the game even takes away from the gamer the simple choice of where to hide a body.

These all could seem like small things but they are symptoms of a disease that will soon see the player relegated to just pushing the fire button while Call of Duty takes over the task of aiming for him and moving him around the scenery.

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READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: arniemazmax on 16 Nov 2010, 00:30 UTC reply to this comment

How about a fantastic single player campaign, and awesome online, I bought MW2 hated it and took it back and bought extra maps for my Call of Duty WaW, I can't put this game down, such a joy to play, level up and progress. The fact that you can play online with a friend is what it is all about sheer class. If this is all you have to whine about, do yourself a favor and get another job you will never find perfection...but Black Ops co
mes as close as it can.


Comment #2 by: Viktor on 16 Nov 2010, 01:17 UTC reply to this comment

I agree Ed. I played it and gave up after 5 missions. It is contrived and thus boring, even though it looks so pretty. The feature I loathe the most is the auto aim LT, then shoot with RT. It's so repetitive that I couldve scored top accuracy even in a drunken stupor. Its back to BBC2 for moi!


Comment #3 by: dualsweat on 16 Nov 2010, 01:47 UTC reply to this comment

Agree totally. Dumbed down games is the new style.

Not to mention Treyarch did not outperform Infinity Ward here. MW2 is still a more polished game.


Comment #4 by: KHolland on 16 Nov 2010, 01:51 UTC reply to this comment

Seriously? It's for realism. They put that in there because all you stupid gamers don't know how to make it realistic.


Comment #5 by: asassssa on 16 Nov 2010, 01:54 UTC reply to this comment

These all could seem like small things but they are symptoms of a disease that will soon see the player relegated to just pushing the fire button while Call of Duty takes over the task of aiming for him and moving him around the scenery.


Comment #6 by: B_A_D_D_I_E on 16 Nov 2010, 02:26 UTC reply to this comment

Fair comments Andrei, there are a lot of "lost opportunities" in the single player game that could have given a lot of WOW factor to the player. The game of Russian Roulette in the POW camp is a biggy. have the player interagate the gun and if he gets it wrong BANG! (something like that)

Although I liked the SP missions I found myself saying "wow....that's cool" alot less than MW2 SP. Great story but more player interaction would have been icing on the cake.

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