CoD: Black Ops & NFS: Hot Pursuit Receives 85% and 90% from IGN

Ahh, isn’t this just the best time of year? No, it’s not because of the weather, or the upcoming holidays, or the fact that we all ate too much candy in recent weeks. No, this is the best time of year because it’s when most of the biggest games of the year get released, and gamers are faced with a unique problem of too many games to choose from. I call that a good problem.

Two games I am most stoked about this month are Call of Duty: Black Ops and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and given that Black Ops is out today, you could say my day is pretty much already planned out. As any game I look forward to nears a release, I always get a little uneasy in case they happen to miss the mark and turn out to be lackluster in many ways. Thankfully, neither of these titles seem to fit that bill.

IGN has posted its reviews for both games, and both received great ratings. Hot Pursuit proves to be a perfect reboot of the series, and earned itself a 9/10… which for the record is quite incredible. The past couple of NFS games have been rated rather horridly (aside from Shift, to be fair), so this was a fresh rating to see. It got huge props for graphics, Sound and also gameplay.

Black Ops also saw a high rating, of 8.5, and looks to be a stellar follow-up to last year’s Modern Warfare 2. In fact, the way things are looking, Black Ops is likely to be the superior of the two, and that’s saying something given it’s normally Infinity Ward that produces the more desirable titles. Hopefully this game will give typical Treyarch-haters some faith, and a reason for IW to step up its game.

Are any of you looking forward to either of these games, or others? Hit up the thread!

Call of Duty: Black Ops is a great overall package that has a ton of content to enjoy. The multiplayer modes are largely based on what was established by Modern Warfare, but the twists that Treyarch throws in work well. My biggest issue with the multiplayer is that the new Wager Matches, while fun in their own right, don’t compare favorably to the high-quality and addictive leveling system and game modes from Modern Warfare 1 and 2.