Black Ops Sucks

Treyarch tried to do some good based on the complaints players had against MW2, mainly involving the Commando perk, killstreaks stacking kills, Tactical Nuke, too much Killstreak chaos, and the desire for greater customizability, among other things I can't really remember right now. But none of it's mind-blowingly revolutionary, and the good doesn't outweigh the bad by any means.

It's apparent Treyarch lobbied the popular game review sites, as they generally give the game a very high rating, and the back of the game case even reads, "Ludicrously deep multiplayer experience" by GamePro, and "We weren't just impressed with Black Ops, we were blown away" by OXM. Really? Because a good chunk of the player community doesn't think so - go Google it, or YouTube it. A lot of people hate this game. And trust me - it's not because we suck. I have a 2.5 K/D ratio in this game, which is pretty fair, and even I have to say it sucks.

"And here... we... go." - The Joker

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--- Graphics are shit. Textures are poor. Polygon counts are low. There's this generally cartoonish feel to the game with the colors and cel-like design to the lighting and shading effects. Even on an HDTV in HD mode the graphics are bad, albeit crisper than my 20-year-old tube TV, but all the other games I play on there look great. Black Ops is the only one that looks like shit.

--- Sound effects are shit. So is the sound quality. The MP5k sounds like someone whipping the wall of a public restroom with a belt, and the RPK reload makes sickening plastic crunching sounds. Grenades sound like firecrackers and sniper rifles make this ridiculous 'POOF' when you shoot them. Those are just a few examples... And the Final Killcam, when it slows down, reveals that for each single shot you fire from an automatic gun, you hear three shots fired. Clearly Treyarch was banking on regular gameplay being too quick for players to notice this, thus warranted a half-assed attempt at stitching synchronized gunfire sound effects together. That's how we know Treyarch cares for the players. And again, this has nothing to do with my tube TV... All the other games sound nice on it, and on an HDTV in HD mode, the sounds are hardly better. It's only Black Ops...

--- The hit detection is the worst of any game I've ever seen. I have a blazing 30-40mbps connection and even when I'm host it's evident the detection is fucked up in both directions, whether I'm shooting or being shot. That, matched with the fact that everyone who isn't host has lag to deal with, and you have a game that's already broken before we've gone on to rate the actual gameplay itself. I picked out four videos to prove it.

--- The worst, most chaotic spawn system you'll ever see. Players often spawn next to enemy players, either behind them (so the guy you just killed spawns behind you and kills you back) or in front of them (you can kill the same guy again). Another game-breaker.

--- All of the guns feel the same. SMGs are designed for close-quarters combat and assault rifles are designed with range in mind - yet they're both equally good at either distance. ACOG on a sniper rifle makes it feel more like a semi-auto assault rifle, and likewise, assault rifles feel like sniper rifles when you put Thermal on them, or Variable Zoom for the G11. LMGs are just like SMGs and assault rifles, except they're heavier with bigger clips, the latter being meaningless since SMGs and assault rifles can have lightning reloads with Sleight of Hand and Dual Mags, so it's like you have one huge clip with all your ammo compounded in it. Shotguns and pistols both feel like knifing (because that's usually what you resort to), and launchers and the Crossbow both feel like the grande launcher on SMGs and assault rifles, albeit replenishable, and are as likely to kill someone as no weapon at all.

--- Knifing hit detection... My god. You either have this hidden Commando perk where you teleport 15 feet to stab, or you have this death scythe that allows you to stab from 15 feet away. And then sometimes when you stab someone - actually, absolutely, undeniably stab someone - it won't do a damned thing.

--- Perk setup is meh. You can use Marathon and Lightweight, for instance, but you can't use Ninja with them. Some perks have impractical PRO versions, and some of those PRO versions don't really make much sense. For instance, Hacker PRO is impractical, and Warlord PRO is kinda random, more like something Scavenger PRO should've had, while Warlord PRO should've maintained MW2's Bling PRO effect, allowing you to put two attachments on secondary weapons. And Marathon is a joke... The PRO version is just the original effect made infinite, as opposed to MW2 where it was infinite from the start (like it should've been) with faster climbing for the PRO version, complimenting the original effect very well. Consider the usefulness of the perk in the first place... Marathon doesn't do anything actually useful to your capacity to kill. In fact it probably gets you killed more often since you're more inclined to sprint knowing you have an unlimited amount of it. To me, Marathon should have a more definite and useful effect, since the stop-and-go of depleted sprint using a perk intended to lengthen your sprint is annoying at best.

You can't use Marathon with Ninja in Black Ops. To Treyarch's credit, a tighter hip-fire spread is useful for a mobility class since you can simply strafe and fire instead of slowing to a crawl to aim. Unless of course you're using an SMG, which most will do with a mobility class since they're more mobile, making Steady Aim a little less useful than it could've been. They should've made Steady Aim also reduce the loss to movement speed while aiming down your sights, and grant the capability to hold your breath longer. There are much better ways to manage your breath than using an entire perk slot (Scout) to double the time you can hold it. As a sniper, Scout's original effect is utterly useless to me - but its PRO effect is quite nice. Scavenger also doesn't replenish Masterkey or flamethrower ammo, and Tactical Mask's original effect is almost totally useless.

List of Black Op's perks.

--- Shotguns were made primary again and are now even weaker than they were in CoD4 or WaW. At least shotguns back in those games were fairly useful as primaries but MW2 did us a great favor by making them secondary. WTF was Treyarch thinking?

--- Pistols are terrible unless dual-wielded. In CoD4, WaW and MW2, you could kill someone quickly with a single pistol. In this game, you find yourself landing 4-5 hitmarkers before getting the kill.

--- The ballistic knife should be an equipment item, not a weapon. I would can the throwing hatchet and replace it with this.

--- Maps are campfests, look bad, and some have unoriginal names. That one map that took place in the jungle - yeah, that one's called Jungle. Damn... I never would've guessed that one. But hey, Radiation has a cool name.

--- Camera Spike, Motion Sensor and Claymore are profound camping tools... Which just goes perfectly with the camptastic maps. Claymore is a one-shot deal, but the sound it makes when tripped is so quiet you can't tell you tripped it until after it blows up on you,  which is almost instantaneous, so interpreting the sound effect would be useless anyway. Lightweight doesn't allow you run past it. The only way to effectively avoid Claymores in this game is with Flak Jacket or Hacker - neither of which are commonly used because there are better perks out there. Oh, and here's a picture I took off my phone:

If Treyarch made Black Ops' multiplayer from the players' suggestions, then I guess their fan base never bitched about campers. It becomes too obvious they intended you to pitch a tent and get comfortable with the Camera Spike.

--- In Combat Training and Private Match, you're not allowed to use Camera Spike. Why? Because your pal can watch your camera while screen-hopping? I guess it never occurred to Treyarch that maybe players want to play Combat Training with a friend on the same team and use the camera to watch each other's backs. And why can't we use Tactical Insertion in Free For All in the same manner? Online it's understandable, but this is fucking Private Match, can't players arrange that themselves without Trey telling us how to customize our own matches? Maybe we want to be able to tactically insert ourselves anywhere we want - maybe they agreed not to boost, or maybe they ARE boosting because they're trying something out - but who cares? As long as it's not online, it shouldn't matter.

---  The 'CLASSIFIED' weapons aren't anything special - in fact, they tend to be slightly retarded. The Stoner63's the classified LMG. While a good weapon, it has a 30-round clip - and that's what must make it so special. The G11's basically an M16 with a lot of ammo and an optional low-power scope attachment that proves worse than ACOG, in my opinion. The Kiparis is no different from any other SMG in any respect that I can see. The classified sniper rifle is actually damned good, but the classified shotgun is just a SPAS-12 with half the clip size and can actually be dual-wielded. But it's useless used dual anyway because the accuracy is absolute shit without Steady Aim, and even with it you can't hit someone from more than ten feet away - and if you do, you might be fortunate if more than one or two pellets actually produce a hitmarker. In fact, if you were standing ten feet away from a doorway with an enemy standing in it, and you fired both shotties at them, you're going to hurt the door frame more than the enemy. When you Prestige and lose everything, you can't see the classified weapons anymore, even though you already know what they are - so you can't compare stats or anything, because they treat you like a newb who hasn't seen them.

--- The GUI's not just pretty - it's pretty ugly.

--- Why does Combat Training require Internet?

--- Theater mode's a cool addition, but why can't I record Combat Training sessions? At least leave a watermark on the recording so everyone doesn't confuse it with actual gameplay (something we'd be sure to abuse). And why can we only save up to 6 total items, pictures and videos combined? Halo 3 - a four year old game - did this so much better than Black Ops... and even had a Forge mode, too. It wouldn't bother me so much if Black Ops didn't assign all this focus on customization, because they were terrible at what they tried to do.

--- Callsigns and camos aren't earned based on skillful completion of certain tasks. They used to be earned and shown off for your accomplishments in MW2 - now, you just reach the appropriate level and you automatically get every camo and callsign available to you at once, with the exception of the canary-yellow excuse for Gold camo, which you don't get until 14th or 15th Prestige, and a couple callsigns which, again, you don't get without Prestiging. The Callsign Titles look like ass and don't have the cool catchphrases they did in MW2, or 3D moving emblems to go with them. Instead, you create your own emblem using the assortment of images they give you, which opens you up to world of opportunity to create racist, sexist, hateful, and/or sexually explicit content, which can get pretty bad. Here's one I took a pic of on my cell phone:

Customizing your emblem in Black Ops was a great idea, wasn't it?

... Or, we can just pull some off the interwebz:

Hey, maybe this level of customization isn't so bad after all.

--- Just like callsigns and camos, weapon attachments aren't unlocked based on completing a set requirements that require a certain skill to be exercised. Now, whenever you get a gun, you start off with every single attachment unlocked, except, you need to CoD points to buy it.

--- Clan tags no longer allow you to use symbols in them, except maybe the @ symbol. Everything else has to be letters and numbers. Also, you can't color your clag tag like you could in WaW anymore without Prestiging 13 times. Why'd they do this?...

--- The new CoD points system sucks. Every single little thing you ever get in the game aside from what's spoon-fed to you at the very lowest levels has to be unlocked twice. The same two prerequisites must be met for everything you get - first, you have to reach the level/Prestige (or both) to UNLOCK it, then you have to have the points (which accumulate slowly, especially in lower levels) to purchase it. This is the evil behind all the unlockable content in the game, is knowing that no matter what requirements you meet, you always have to buy your way into everything. Killstreaks, weapons, attachments, camos, callsigns, guns with callsigns and clan tags, emblem layers, clan tag colors, face paints, reticules, reticule colors, lens colors, Prestige leaderboards, maybe even Custom Class slots. Nothing is paid in skill, just with the kills you and your camping ass get from sitting in a corner the whole match.

--- I eventually dawned on the realization that no Stopping Power was a good thing. Juggernaut and SP back in the day were vastly overpowered as perks and moreover made customization of that perk slot pointless because the same perks were going to be picked for every class, by every player. It made the game dull. But on the other hand, playing Black Ops a few rounds really made me wish they'd put SP back in the game, as much as I didn't believe in the perk to begin with. In Black Ops' case, no Stopping Power means there's no perk to balance out the other perks... Everyone used SP from CoD4 up through MW2 because they NEEDED that extra damage. This made other perks in the same slot as SP more uncommon, but the difference is, SP is a neutral perk - which means, it promoted a facet of gameplay that's always there no matter the circumstances (killing other players), so its dominance of that perk slot just meant everyone died slightly quicker, which was likable and realistic. Now, there's no SP anymore - so everyone gravitates to the next best perk, Ghost, which is stealth-oriented, thus ruining the original ages-old UAV concept that's become a standard feature in CoD, and combined with silencers, campy maps, and campy inventory, games become very slow and players are discouraged from venturing out and actually finding other players. Ghost also gives you a ghillie suit, whether you're a sniper or not, which just complicates the matter of determining a sniper from anyone else, and gives you even more stealth. This makes CoD less a game of tactical killing, and more a game of stealth and patiently waiting in a corner for the whole match for some unsuspecting enemy to pass by. Also, no SP means everyone's 40% tougher to kill, although I have a feeling this isn't the whole story behind everyone being excessively tough to kill in Black Ops. In MW2, even without SP, you could kill someone quicker than in this game. It often takes the better half of a 30-round clip to kill someone in Black Ops, and they're given too much time to run from you, or to turn around and kill you. They sound like cap-guns and look cartoonish, so why not make 'em weak, too?

--- RC-XD is, like the Spy Plane, a three-killstreak, making it the easiest killstreak in the game to get. It can be earned in as little as two kills with Hardline. It's excessively used and unfortunately nigh-impossible to avoid, since it can't be outrun, and is too tiny and fast to be noticed easily or destroyed before it reaches you. This is made worse by the fact that many use the Ghost perk, so players often opt to fill their three-killstreak slot with the RC instead. This means that every little corner-camper now wants to use this little bugger instead. It's not uncommon to hear, "Heads up, enemy RC-XD inbound!" every minute or two in a match. This frequent appearance of the killstreak encourages everyone else who isn't camping to camp for cover from the campers who're using the RC in the first place. And finally, this killstreak is quite capable of multiple kills in a single blast, but even if that's too much to hope for, you're almost always guaranteed a single kill anyway. So for every two or three kills you get, you could have one of these little fuckers - now multiply that by 6-8 players on a team. If your team needs 75-100 kills to win a match, that's a lot of RCs.

--- The new Prestige system is unoriginal and just... fucking stupid. Now there's 50 levels instead of 70, and 15 levels of Prestige. And guess what? You still lose EVERYTHING when you Prestige - except your callsign. Yeah, even your CoD points go down the drain.

--- There's not much about the game that's really 'new'. Sure, they fixed some complaints of MW2, like killstreaks stacking kills, and they added new things like changing up your Red Dot Sight... But still no selector switches or custom stocks, bullet types (FMJ, hollow-tip, etc.), calibers or barrels, or armor of any kind short of Flak Jacket, if you can call that 'armor customization'. Attachment system is the same it's always been, and nobody at Treyarch had the idea to maybe categorize attachments so players could easily use multiple attachments. There's fewer perks in this game than the previous three, and whatever happened to 'Create-a-Class 2.0' Treyarch promised us? There's about the same number of guns and attachments in this game as MW2, everything being right about the same with little change except Treyarch adding or subtracting little pieces from the big picture. If they really listened to players and built their game based on what we suggest, then their fanbase is obviously comprised of 12-year-olds, because I find it hard to believe that too few people requested actual customizability, like stocks, barrels, ammo, armor, etc. for them to be arsed to add it. They even took quickscoping out - who knows if we can call that n00bish, I don't think anyone ever really understood QS took skill, but instead of 'easy, nooby QS', we got 'high-skill Camera Spikes and Motion Sensors and Ghost'. MW2 was made for fun - I'm sure they acknowledged Commando was a dick in everyone's ass, but it wasn't unstoppable, and it was really fun when you applied it yourself. Sometimes, that's the sacrifice you make for some freedom and fun. But they stripped Black Ops of all that in an attempt to make it a 'skilled, big-boy' version of MW2, and did so with camptastic gameplay. Black Ops, in all honesty, is just a stripped-down carbon copy of MW2 pasted in the Cold War era instead. And it's boring.

--- Treyarch needs to stop making Zombies maps now and just give up. Zombies was great in WaW, worthy of its own game back in those days. Now? Now the maps suck, the new features in each new map are too limited or confusing, or they work against the player, or are just too difficult or useless to employ. The maps got better and better in WaW - in BO, I feel like they're getting worse and worse. The latest map, Call of the Dead, has some new features to it that I'm sure nobody asked for. For being a company that supposedly listens to it's players, I have a question to ask: did the majority of your loyal players run to your forums requesting a cast of horror movie actors as the characters? Is this what Treyarch's been spending their time doing with that map, just adding a new cast of characters (which has no bearing on the gameplay) and adding a couple new guns? Hey, I DID like the explosive sniper rifle and the new Wunderwaffe-esque gun they added, and the zipline was cool, but come on, did your fanbase really insist that was all they wanted? It's a waste of a map and a shame Treyarch won't actually do what we ask them to. Like... A huge, open, free-reign map. Or multi-upgradeable guns. Or a whole cache of new guns. Why can't we buy a bandolier off the wall for 10,000 points which triples our ammo stock? What about buying/earning killstreaks to use against the zombies? Driving cars or tanks, using money to build up a fort against a zombie attack with Sentry Guns and fortified windows that take longer for zombies to break through? Maybe allow us to rescue or buy some AI allies to help us out? But no - we can't do any of this. Instead, we get to play as the girl from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, woo! Seriously, IW could do it better.



Black Ops gets a 5/10 from me, just because I'm sure there are far worse games out there, but for me personally, it's the worst I've ever laid hands on, and would be a 2/10 just compared to what I've played.

When I tell people how poorly I think of the game, the first reaction I almost always get is, "But the storyline was great." And that might be true, I wouldn't know since I didn't finish the campaign. Personally I didn't like it much. But honestly, who are these people kidding? People don't play CoD for the storyline, they play for the multiplayer. Campaign is a one-shot deal, the replay value's not that great, maybe just to re-run it once for Veteran completion. Maybe a campaign is considered necessary for a full gaming experience, but I'm considering that CoD would be better off without one, with all efforts on the multiplayer experience instead. What would Black Ops' multiplayer be like then? Multiplayer stacks up days, often weeks worth of hours in playtime - what does campaign add up to? I'd rather have a lasting experience with superior replay value that'll keep me going for years than a quick ten-hour runthrough that takes two days to complete before the game collects dust for the remainder of its existence.

But why should Treyarch care? They broke the record for sales the first day, they made their money, and they get to keep it... And Activision's happy enough with that to let them make another CoD. Black Ops might've broken the record for the number of sales made on release day... but I bet it broke the record for the number of returns the next day, too.