Call of Duty: Black Ops

[Rob Williams]

In a follow-up to last year's Modern Warfare 2, Treyarch aims to impress with its most ambitious project yet, Call of Duty: Black Ops. The game features a solid storyline, fantastic gameplay, many unique elements, and a ton of content... even a bonus game or two! Did Treyarch deliver on all the hype that led up to Black Ops' launch?

You can read our look at Black Ops and then discuss it here!

[Optix]

I nearly lost my $#!+ when I saw them reference Kowloon and showed a shot of Walled City. I have been a history fiend on this place for years and years. There were parts where you felt like you were inside of there but I wish they took it one step further. That's just a wish though.

As for the game I'm still going through it but it's crazy. I'm so out of touch with FPS's so for them to come this far since Quake II, the last FPS I actively played I have been blown out of the water.

I think this is the game to whisk me away from RTS land.

[Doomsday]

this game has made $360M on its opening day till now!

for some reason i just cant feel it for this game, u know!

[Optix]

What a ton of fun -if- you can manage to find the right server. Rob and I tooled around for over an hour trying to find one but we couldn't see the same list even though we're in the same city. I'm not sure how they have things setup but it's screwy and they need to fix it.

On a positive note I didn't notice any lag that people have been describing. The game with max settings runs flawlessly at 1680x1050 on my OC'ed i3 530 and 5770 although the game and Steam did crash several times on me last night. It's a head scratcher since I stress tested my overclock for 6 hours using LinX with no errors.

Regardless I had a blast and am looking forward to tonight although I hope I can stay awake after a late session last night. Time to grab an energy drink!

[GameTraveler]

Fans of the Call of Duty franchise are in a unique position, one that allows them to experience a brand-new game every single year. This is helped by the fact that the series has two developers, Infinity Ward and Treyarch, and while the more hardcore fans can easily distinguish when a game is developed by either, the core gameplay is usually the same... oh so satisfying.

Are you sure?

Possible 2009 agreement over IW development of the CoD franchise

The rift still exists and the original Infinity Ward is no longer there

According to a recent article at IGN, while Black Ops will still ship with dedicated server support — thus opening the door for private servers, user made maps and mod support — the only way you’ll be able to set one up is if you go through server rental site Gameservers.com

from here

CoD4 competitive multiplayer had the advantage for open game play on a LAN without requiring a Game Server Provider. Mods and maps were easy enough to make or find. Which also allowed for the competitive mods that tournament administrators could standardize on.

Games like Battlefield 2: Bad Company that also has a dedicated server component *BUT* like Black Ops requires an online dedicated server or to have the GSP present at the event. This is a serious failure for gaming events and competitive players.

Why? It costs money to get a GSP at an event, and most PC gaming events today just don't have the resources to handle this.

Black Ops fails in the dedicated server department since they're only offered online by GameServers.com I'm sure there are better quality GSPs in the market, but there's no way to shop for them.

Your review indicates that the single player portion works well. But the review neglects the multiplayer portion both in depth and breadth.

It's not just the bugs in the game, but the lack of what made CoD4 a better multiplayer game.