The latest Call of Duty game – Black Ops, hit the shelves of Australian stores today. There were midnight launches at very select stores last night, but the majority of fans had to wait till 9am. I picked up a copy for the Xbox 360 at lunch so have only had a couple of hours in the game. A full review will come later, but here are some inital thoughts on Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Modes
Black Ops has a choice of Single player campaign, Multiplayer (local + Xbox Live) and of course, Zombies. The single player campaign took around 8.5 hours to play through on the 2nd of 4 difficulty levels. During my first play through I managed to land 180 Gamerscore from 14/50 Achievements, obtaining the rest will require spending a lot of time in multiplayer.
Graphics
Its becoming abundantly clear that we’ve well and truly reached the graphic capabilities of the Xbox 360. Those expecting a significant improvement over Modern Warfare 2 are going to be dissapointed. There may be new story in Black Ops, but graphically its very familiar.
Update: The good news is that after you spend a decent time in the game there are some amazing sequences to delight your eyeballs. Naturally if your looking for it, you can see the square edges on something that should be round or low quality textures, but to be honest all of that faded away. There are some scenes / missions in this game that draw you in, completely engaged, your heart races and you loose track of time. The sign of a great game.
Gameplay
Undoubtably immersive as you’d expect, the game continues to keep the heart rate high. There has been some noticible glitches, like when you stand in the place where your scripted solider-type-friend is programmed to go. Despite the relatively small amount I’ve seen so far, there has already been a couple of pretty epic moments. That said there’s been a couple of pretty average ones, sometimes the game feels a little stand on a gun and spray. While that may sound like fun on the surface, it really didn’t feel very skillful.
Overall
This game is certainly not without its flaws, that said, Call of Duty fans won’t be dissapointed. Black Ops provides more of the same great first person shooter action.
Price
If your considering picking up Call of Duty: Black Ops, make sure you don’t pay $119.00, hunt around and you can find it for around $80.
More to come..
