Call of Duty: Black Ops

I bought the PS3 version of the game and I'm liking it. The Vietnam levels in the campaign were really cool. The Russian levels (aside from that one level where you start off in the Blackbird) were boring. I ESPECIALLY hated that level where you and Reznov sneak onto the island and all you have with you is that tomahawk. I also didn't really like the vehicle segments they threw in though.

As for multiplayer, it's alright. It's pretty laggy for me. I'm gonna have to agree with Xeros612 in terms of the spawning. It sucks. There were times where I'd have half of the enemy team spawn behind me and get ripped apart.

Also, what's the point of "Combat Training" if you have to be online to use it? I thought the point of playing with bots is so that you don't have to be online in the first place.

Combat training isn't offered in the offline options? That sucks, guess I didn't look there. At this point not even that is all that enjoyable due to the spawning system.

Unless I've somehow missed that option, I'm not able to play it offline. I have to be connected to PSN in order to play Combat Training.

Nick Perrin said:

The engine that powers Black Ops runs perfectly at any and every moment, though, which I can't say about BC2 - and I have a pretty killer rig to play both on.

This is balls. I had constant framerate stuttering issues, in completely random places. It's no more graphically intensive than MW2 that I can see, and yet it runs WAY worse.

Craigs said:

I might consider getting it off steam if it goes on sale for around $10. Honestly, the game doesn't seem like it'd be worth anywhere near $60.

COnsidering that MW2 stayed full price on steam until less than a month before Blackops came out, I don't see that happening.

AirRaid said:

This is balls.

This is not balls. Your system is overheating or something.

I knew PC gaming was on the decline when Doom 3 was released (sorry but I hate it and almost everything after it).

AirRaid said:

This is balls. I had constant framerate stuttering issues, in completely random places. It's no more graphically intensive than MW2 that I can see, and yet it runs WAY worse.

Some other game glitch/hardware/software issue is causing this, the game felt and ran exactly like MW2 for me. Which is to say, smooth as hell with maxed-out settings.

I have to say the current console-generation-defining really holds the graphics back. It's nice to know every current game will run well on your system because it has to be able to run smoothly on a 360/PS3, but at the same time Crysis, which came out around this time in 2007 exhibits graphics that are on par with or superior to any game today. And of course Crysis never hit any console. Three years later nothing's changed...

I bought CoD Black Ops for the Wii.

I really enjoy playing it online. I think the game is fun, but then again my 360 red-ringed and I may feel differently if I had the 360 version.

Anyone have an Ally code? I have no friends who play the Wii :'(

DuckReconMajor said:

This is not balls. Your system is overheating or something.

I love how that's the first thing anyone says when low performance is claimed. My system is not overheating. I can run far more complex engines just fine, and even MW2 which uses the same damn engine runs a hell of a lot smoother. Blackops just goes to shit every so often no matter what I do with the resolution and graphics settings.

I think I'll pass on this one I've heard/read too many bad things about it allready. Besides COD has always been as linear as fuck, something I really dislike about games nowdays. COD gets boring, stop milking the cow dammit.

AirRaid said:

I love how that's the first thing anyone says when low performance is claimed. My system is not overheating. I can run far more complex engines just fine, and even MW2 which uses the same damn engine runs a hell of a lot smoother. Blackops just goes to shit every so often no matter what I do with the resolution and graphics settings.

From what I heard, the problem is that the game wasn't made with multicore processors in mind (which is pretty damn stupid and shows just how grossly incompetent Treyarch is). Hence the performance issues.

.

Honestly. All this herpaderping about someone's system being horrible? Look around the internet. The general consensus is that the game's CPU bound like a bitch.

Why this is the case is a mystery. There's no way they'd get the Xbox version looking the way it does without multithreading, so I'd expect the PC version would have threading in it.

These have been done to death, but this one is on topic and quite lol:

I can only comment on the PS3 port. Graphics have the same style of CoD: World at War. I would've expected Treyarch to make it visually more appealing and not all grey, bland, and dull. You look at it an you can tell it's done by Treyarch. Also the framerate does sag at times. Not to the point of choppy unplayability, but it does in parts for seemingly no good reason. I pointed these nuances out to my friend, but he's got Sony's balls so far down his throat he can't acknowledge them as being issues.

Part shoddy coding, part PS3 having the weakest GFX of the 3. Unless you got a real low end GFX card for PC.

Multiplayer is quite nice. They really switched things up from MW2. Perks, gun behaviors etc. That shit sandwich that could be construed as gameplay in MW2 has been completely revised. You learned to enjoy the shit sandwich and adapt to it. With Black Ops, you're eating a Nutella sandwich and fuck you if you hate chocolate. Killing annoying campers with an RC is guaranteed to make you smile.

What could possibly be the best feature of all for console ports? Online multiplayer split screen. A second person can get in on the action from the same account simultaneously. They're effectively a gypsy that earns EXP for the account holder. Very nice feature.

This concludes my diatribe.

POTGIESSER said:

I would've expected Treyarch to make it visually more appealing and not all grey, bland, and dull.

Honestly? I don't see the problem there. It's supposed to be a gritty, war-torn environment. There's no reason for it to be super-colorful. Modern Warfare 2 tried to color things up and that ended up looking horrible in that respect. Honestly, there's more than plenty of contrast and color depth, you just have to adjust your in-game brightness setting properly, such as to what the menu screen suggests. A lot of the people I've seen complain about the other CoD games being "washed out" are the ones who jack their brightness up to retarded levels.

No need for me to get this game, because I've already played Modern Warfare 2.

Normally I wouldn't bother with any Call of Duty game however after checking out some gameplay footage on youtube just now I might consider buying it(the wii version since thats the only console I have working to play it) cause it actually looks fun.

Also the tv Commercial was very badass.

Xeros612 said:

Honestly? I don't see the problem there. It's supposed to be a gritty, war-torn environment. There's no reason for it to be super-colorful. Modern Warfare 2 tried to color things up and that ended up looking horrible in that respect. Honestly, there's more than plenty of contrast and color depth, you just have to adjust your in-game brightness setting properly, such as to what the menu screen suggests. A lot of the people I've seen complain about the other CoD games being "washed out" are the ones who jack their brightness up to retarded levels.

Nothing to do with the contrast of the television. Purely speaking of the artistic style of the game. WAW didn't have very good graphics, Black Ops is done in the same style. You can tell they're done by Treyarch plain and simple. They've a distinct style. I like Treyarch more than IW but graphics are Treyarch's weakpoint.

Modern Warfare was great. Life is colorful, why can't war? Not like it's film noir. Turning down the contrast doesn't obscure the ugly character models. Nor does it hide the pixelation of the textures, but maybe that's just your idea of gritty.

POTGIESSER said:

Hitle vs. Black Ops for PC

You just gotta love Hitler sometimes. He hits everything spot on. I remember the iPad video like this.

dutch devil said:

I think I'll pass on this one I've heard/read too many bad things about it allready. Besides COD has always been as linear as fuck, something I really dislike about games nowdays. COD gets boring, stop milking the cow dammit.

After COD4 (and 2 to some extent), nobody bothers to play the games for the campaigns anymore. It's all about the multiplayer now.

DAM STRATE

I still haven't played the campaign yet. I'll get to it when I'm bored of multiplayer.

POTGIESSER said:

Nothing to do with the contrast of the television. Purely speaking of the artistic style of the game. WAW didn't have very good graphics, Black Ops is done in the same style. You can tell they're done by Treyarch plain and simple. They've a distinct style. I like Treyarch more than IW but graphics are Treyarch's weakpoint.

Modern Warfare was great. Life is colorful, why can't war? Not like it's film noir. Turning down the contrast doesn't obscure the ugly character models. Nor does it hide the pixelation of the textures, but maybe that's just your idea of gritty.

Life isn't anywhere near as colorful as the Halos and MW2 try to portray it, those are like taking a photo and turning up saturation by 50 or so percent.

As for the models and pixelation, the thing's designed for five year old console hardware, those come with the territory. Treyarch do try some new things, though. The increased (and far improved) amount of first person motion sequences with full-body (though why they couldn't keep the full body thing full-time, not like that caused the F.E.A.R. or Condemned games any trouble[aside from the first F.E.A.R. game's sometimes wacky animations]) first person view, the reflectivity of Reznov's face in the labor camp, the screen effects, etc. Outclassed by PC exclusives and whatnot(obvious to anyone), and of course some console games do it better(though they're generally not using a heavily modified Quake III engine either), but it's not unbearable, unless you're exclusively used to games developed specifically for much stronger hardware.

Xeros612 said:

Life isn't anywhere near as colorful as the Halos and MW2 try to portray it, those are like taking a photo and turning up saturation by 50 or so percent.

I think you're confusing color with lighting effects.

Xeros612 said:

Blah

I didn't see a single thing in the game that outclassed Metro 2033, a game that scaled rather well from consoles to PCs.

Nothing special here, just another linear modern shooter with nothing new or remarkable about it.

That's because Metro 2033 is a better game.

Call of Duty 2 is still the best CoD game ever. From perfection, you can only go downwards.

just ask doom.

Doom sux, bro.

Mr. Freeze said:

Call of Duty 2 is still the best CoD game ever. From perfection, you can only go downwards.

I love CoD 2 with all my heart, but I did try and play it again a while ago (I still never got all the way through on Veteran) and it is getting some age on it. I didn't realize how much the tech can evolve in one console generation.

GooberMan said:

I didn't see a single thing in the game that outclassed Metro 2033, a game that scaled rather well from consoles to PCs.

Amazing looking game, but doesn't run too well. Metro 2033 is the only game that gets choppy at high settings on my rig.

The facial animation in this iteration of CoD was way better than the previous 3 games though. Despite the limited polygons, it looked quite expressive.