Final thoughts on Black Ops

iMuse

Well with MW3 just over a week away I thought id ask to see peoples final opinion on B: Ops. What did treyarch do right and what did they get wrong? What improvements would you like to see in B: Ops 2?

stek

Final thought... meh!

Nuri Sahin

Solid, if unspectacular is how I'd sum it up in a sentence.

I do appreciate the effort of Treyarch in trying to patch things. Something which IW have been dreadful in even before **** in the fan internally. But there was something missing, an X Factor that even MW2 had, and we all know my feelings about MW2 by now! I'm still not sure what that was, probably a culmination of a few things. Maybe it's becoming older *waves stick* and getting tired of FPS games in general, there is certainly an element of that no question about it.

Lack of stopping power and thus ghost becoming the favourite perk for many was a dampener in the long run. Second chance as pathetic as it is, only had a short effect at least. Playing against people who refused to use anything but the Famas and AK74u was tiring. Maps being a too dreary and characterless - Summit, Stadium, Nuketown and a couple of others aside.

The combat record was quite brilliantly done, as was the training mode and wager matches. Dead Ops was a nice unexpected addition that I think retro gamers (especially fans of Smash TV on the SNES ) appreciated.

Zombies. Sigh. I tried to get into it. Maybe it's perhaps my attention span can be fairly shabby at times, or Kells being downed and bad force of habit trying to save him thus costing me my life :pac: but I just didn't enjoy it. I thought Ascension was the best map by far though.

So yeah, on the COD scale - I'd give it a 6.5 (couldn't decide on 6 or 7) out of 10 :P

UsernameInUse

Final thoughts....

It was wasted time. MW3 should have been last years edition - the technology was there as this year there doesn't seem to be literally any advancement on anything compared to MW2. Treyarch should have been brought into the mold though; I liked the Zombies mode and is perhaps the sole reason it's stayed relevant for all these months.

But now with the release of a what will be a fierce competitor, Battlefield - COD needs to step their game up. Although they'll outsell DICE because it's a longer running franchise with a huge consumer base, I see COD going the way of MOH when COD first came out. BF will eat away the support base as COD has now flatlined and become "linear". That's why I feel that BLOPS was a waste of a year. If MW3 was last years release, perhaps it would have advanced the series somewhat and left this year open for a huge change in engine, overall gameplay - just to evolve the game and give it a "new feel".

So, my final thoughts is that BLOPS was a waste of a year.

NinjaK

I enjoyed it least of all the call of duys since cod4.

Randall Floyd

Second Chance was annoying, some of the maps were crap like Jungle. Other than that it was grand.

ugglasdav

Black Ops = best cod ever

hypermuse

I quite liked blops and found it far more enjoyable than MW2.

They brought so much to the table for COD.. combat training, wagers, theater, combat records...

The cons of blops I feel are quite small in comparison.. RC-XD, overpowered guns (which every game has), poor sound and tired/grubby looking maps.

People keep hating on Blops coz of ghost.. but seriously, it aint that big a problem! It was when it started, just like 2nd chance but it aint half as bad now... Its just that when you get killed by a ghost you notice it more and feel more aggrieved by your death and subsequently hate on it more..
People will always exploit a stronger perk when weaker ones are available. There is nothing wrong with ghost just the fact its abused coz of weaker perks around it! But it really aint that big a problem!

Despite the fact I feel MW3 will just be MW2.1 and I'll get sick of it quickly, I'll still buy it but I think as far as FPS goes, I feel I will be playing blops and BF3 more than MW3...

So my final thoughts are not very final at all!

Magill

I liked it quite a bit tbh, after CoD2 its probably my favorite.

Weapons were good with the exception of the shottys and some SMG's. Snipers were about as fun as the other games if only a bit more challenging than the other games (Still underpowered.. but thats just console gaming i guess).

Matchmaking and connection issues were grand after the first month or so, much better than the other CoD's i found.

Wagermatches/Theatre and the private match customisation was great.

Overall... i thought it was a solid game... not the best MP ever but probably the best console one, at least imo.

DanTheMan91

I agree with the above poster who said that the game was lacking something, it got boring faster than any other Call of Duty I have played. The first few weeks were great, but then the game just got stale. I kept on playing but I wasn't have as much fun as I would with the previous games in the series. Treyarch done well to look after the game through the year, with patches, double Xp Nuketown and DLC packs.

I enjoyed the campaign, even though the story was hard to follow. Zombies were fun as usual but I feel like I didn't play them half as much as I played zombies in World at War. I personally feel like the zombie maps in the dlc were poor.

I reached 15th prestige with about 12 days playtime, and I enjoyed playing the game. I would give it 8/10, I place it under Cod 4 and World at War but above MW2.

NeVeR

I went back and played MW2 today and i couldn't switch it off quick enough.

BO is a class game and i'm sure I will be playing it even when MW3 is out.

krudler

I thought it had some great additions like gun game, wager matches, theatre mode, tomohawks, some really cool stuff. they did a good job of nerfing a lot of stuff from MW2 like scavenger replacing ammo only. and fair play to Treyarch for listening to a lot of complaints, fixing things as the game was out and seeing things from a players perspective.
But for every step forward it took they went one step back, graphics were meh in multiplayer (yet looked great in the campaign mode) the sound design was horrendous and the most important thing, it just wasnt that fun to play. Deathly dull maps and a few gems like Summit and Nuketown, air support was so easily taken down it was rendered utterly pointless most of the time so everyone camped for blackbirds (the most overpowered killstreak ever in cod, people whinge about heartbeat sensors yet use an easily gotten perk to turn the entire map into one) and dogs.

tldr version, was a stopgap that got old pretty quickly. have played COD4 more than it in the past 12 months and even though MW2 is absolutely headwrecking, its never dull.

minidazzler

Really enjoyed it and still do. I only had MW2 and online capability for 3 weeks before Black ops came out so was never into that so much. Blops being patched regularly and the fact that it's yet to be hacked is a credit to Treyarch. They really did listen to the customer and give us what we wanted. Solid game, good maps though some of the DLC's were rather lack lustre and i hate a few of them.

They need to add some colour to their palate, and then it could be a great game.

r3nu4l

I agree that the colour pallette needs to change. Sound was poor too. Like all CODs, some maps were shocking, others great.

I loved the combat records and contracts. I really liked the RC-XD but only because every time you saw someone use it you knew that was one less spy plane in the air :pac:

I didn't like how so few people chose launchers. It meant that many airborne kill streaks went on longer than they should have IMO.

I think it was a million times better than MW2 but overall there was room for a lot of improvement.

beertons

Theatre, wager matches, and probably gun game. Best bits about BO.

Oafley Jones

Fairly decently balanced multiplayer, but it really was missing something. As noted the colour palette just added to the overall sense of greyness of the whole thing.

Didn't really care for the single player, but its also been the multiplayer with COD for me.

Zombies was a huge let down. Sunk days into the four maps on WAW, but this lot never clicked. Incidentally, this is the first COD game where I didn't buy all the map packs. Couldn't be bothered with the last one and - also a first - deleted the second and third map packs as I just hated them.

Still don't think I'll purchase MW3 owing to Activision's lack of support for MW and WAW. I think I'd be happy enough if they were the only two COD games i'd ever own.

Just played BLOPS there for an hour. It's absolutely ruined with lag switchers. Really wish there was a solution for them.

Snake Plisken

I think it's a fantastic addition to the COD franchise and still on playing it every night, as mentioned before Treyarch were quick to patch any issue and listened to the community when it came to complaints about overpowered weapons etc.
As mentioned before they brought the wager matches and combat training and the mini-game as a little bonus, also the design your own emblems was good fun and always loved the double xp weekends when we got Nuketown 24/7
One major plus was no major hacks on it right up to now, remember last year MW2 in septemeber there were some major hacks on it and we thought it was activision doing it. Also no boosting, any small hack that came along like the coloured clan tags was quickly patch. The report a player was also a nice addition.
I also thought the original maps were fine most the mappacks were so so but the likes of Stadum and Hazard were good, you got to love Nuketown, Firing Range Havana & Summit.

The ususal complaint of issues with lag etc are not really treyarch's fault, it's the lack of servers causing this and poor internet connections and the crappy wireless in the PS3, I have a wired connection to my router and although I do get the occasional lag when connected to spanish/French host's more often then not I will get to host and it has worked fine for all players.

Now compare Blops with Battlefield 3 and then you see how good Blops is technically, I mean I bought BF3 friday said I'd give it a chance and it's a mess on the PS3 the VOIP is broken graphics are dark and you still get lag on it, I stuck on Blops afterwards and it looked fantastic compared to it. So I'm going to trade BF3 in for either credit or Uncharted 3.

So thank you Treyarch for a great game, I'm actually looking forward to their COD game next year already!

CORaven

Zombies was fantastic, but more hours into it than any other CoD multiplayer. It was fun and challenging.

I did not like multiplayer too much. The maps were designed well in some aspects, such as every point of power having a counter or having multiple points of entry along with frag spots. However SnD was ruined for me by the poor parts of the design: several maps had ways of killing people in their spawn eg. Firing Range. The abundance of RC-XDs, Spy Planes and Blackbirds really had a different effect on the game on the killstreak side of things too, mainly for the worse.

As long as you were not playing as a sniper or a LMG user, the maps were in your favour and you could pretty much do well with everything in game modes like Dom and TDM.

Array was a nice sniper map, but no one picks it.
Hazard is a good map for shotguns, but everyone snipes.

Most of the perks were good and enjoyable, bar two.

Flame thrower is pants, but fun. So very very fun.

senordingdong

I felt single player was good but took a few plays through it to really enjoy it.
Multiplayer had some improvements but some regressions too.

Was really looking forward to zombies but compared to WAW it was desperate.
Ultimately, a fun game that will be forgotten.

GEasy

Probably my favourite COD but I didn't get to play COD 4 in it's hayday. So I guess I'm saying it beats MW2 !:)


Party system is great in blops, as is the combat record. No ridiculous noobtubes or commando lunges. The hit detection is still a bit ****! As is the sound and general look of the game. It's nowhere near 60fps on the ps3 if we're taking mw2 as a datum.

Treyarch beat IW hands down when it came to support. Stuff was patched before I even came across it whereas that javelin glitch in mw2 was a month ? before being patched?

Theatre mode was a huge addition to the game even if it can act up at times it added a whole new angle to videos (excuse the pun).

There were only two real gun classes that worked. Don't know why they gimped some of the smgs so much and why the shotguns were so crap even though they were a primary. :mad:

I used to love sniping in mw2 and in COD4 for what I've played of it. Treyarch's approach in the first few months turned me off it altogether (randomisation when scoping in ffs). It's been patched now but still leaves a sour taste.

The maps in the game were a tad too big imo too. There were too many ways to get from one side to another too.

Overall I think Treyarch did a great job and I hope IW have built on this games strong points :LESS BS

tonsiltickler

I've been playing it a bit more as MW3 comes closer and I'm liking it again. I think COD games seem better in retrospect. Some lovely maps like summit and cracked, the killcams looked great and combat record was epic.

I still think the game came out unfinished/not fully tested though. I don't think they realised how OP ghost would become when they took out stopping power. I wish they hadn't taken out stopping power tbh. The pro perks were too hard/tedious to get and offered no benefits really.

Sniping was bad for a long time. It shouldn't have taken a year to fix it. Some of the patches were a bit odd; when everyone was complaining about the famas they reduced the power of the ak47. Everything sounded like a wet fart and I felt the character reactions were sluggish compared to previous games.

One in the chamber and gun game were great. SnD was much more fun than other games. The gun selection was a bit poor; everyone seemed to use the same four or five guns, the others were pretty crummy. I thought zombies and the ending of the campaign were dumb, I have absolutely no interest in it.

At its core is a really playable game with some great maps, fun killstreaks and some things that COD never had before. Sit up and take note IW.

Nuri Sahin

El LoCo Ade wrote: »

Solid, if unspectacular is how I'd sum it up in a sentence.

I do appreciate the effort of Treyarch in trying to patch things. Something which IW have been dreadful in even before **** in the fan internally. But there was something missing, an X Factor that even MW2 had, and we all know my feelings about MW2 by now! I'm still not sure what that was, probably a culmination of a few things. Maybe it's becoming older *waves stick* and getting tired of FPS games in general, there is certainly an element of that no question about it.

Lack of stopping power and thus ghost becoming the favourite perk for many was a dampener in the long run. Second chance as pathetic as it is, only had a short effect at least. Playing against people who refused to use anything but the Famas and AK74u was tiring. Maps being a too dreary and characterless - Summit, Stadium, Nuketown and a couple of others aside.

The combat record was quite brilliantly done, as was the training mode and wager matches. Dead Ops was a nice unexpected addition that I think retro gamers (especially fans of Smash TV on the SNES ) appreciated.

Zombies. Sigh. I tried to get into it. Maybe it's perhaps my attention span can be fairly shabby at times, or Kells being downed and bad force of habit trying to save him thus costing me my life :pac: but I just didn't enjoy it. I thought Ascension was the best map by far though.

So yeah, on the COD scale - I'd give it a 6.5 (couldn't decide on 6 or 7) out of 10 :P

Just to add my post after reading other comments below it.

Kudos to Treyarch for theatre mode. Flawlessly done.

yimrsg

Good
Theatre mode, borrowed idea but a good one
Custom & gun games
Constant updates, community felt valued
4 player co-op mode marked improvement over Mw2 spec ops and Mw3.
No real game breaker perk combinations

More of the same
No boosters but their replacements are dashboarders and lag switchers. IW dealt with host ending games in cod4, treyarch should have foreseen the same trap.
Greater prominence given to stats, which is a double edged sword.
Graphically it added nothing to the series. Probably should be a bad point.
Campaign was awfully dull and cliched. Cod4/Mw2/3 has returning characters which elevates it in my eyes.
Getting important pro perks was good when you were taken outside your comfort zone into unfamiliar game types and bad when people knew the majority were trying to get a certain perk and exploited the situation.
There should have been an option to buy a flag cap or a bomb plant with COD points.

Bad
Matchmaking still a mess after ~ 12 months, whats the point in updates if they're largely redundant or worse?
Perks guns or equipment becoming broken after launch, ie strella failing to lock on, jammer not disrupting claymore, tactical mask pro not showing hit markers, dying from single grenades with flak jacket
DLC content on the whole average to poor value for money
Hit detection is awful coupled with weaker guns this was a constant issue
Poor gun selection and many useless attachments. Only 4 Shotguns, sniper rifles and lmgs and 5 pistols?
Sound was poor, only one gun sounded truly awseome; the stoner.

Finally it didn't have that feeling that you get from an IW title, for me a truer name for Black Ops is Bland Ops as got boring fairly soon into it's lifespan (read easy to master and easy to put down) and even though I tried using new or bad combinations of guns and stuff to up the difficulty I never really felt any sort of draw to it like I would have from an IW title.

For whatever reason it felt like I was playing a game that never really pushed or challenged me that caused me restless nights, sure it infuriated me but for me the mark of a great game is one that gets under your skin and stays there, always challenging you, making you stay for that one more game. Truth be told I've had more intense and memorable moments in football manager; playing black ops now is a relaxing game in comparison.

Even with all mw2 fcuk ups (and there are plenty) there is something there that is to me addictive and allows me to see past the Danger close noobtubers which black ops hasn't got and I can't look past it's lesser shortcomings as easily. IW took a chance on Mw2 and came up short, Treyarch didn't risk as much and didn't achieve a great deal.

mufcboy1999

good game and a lot better than that disaster of a game in mw2, could have been better though but a lot more enjoyable than mw2 which was too heavily reliant on killstreaks and the likes at least in black ops they took the emphasis of them and allowed the skill of the player to shine instead of calling in a harrier and hiding in a corner like many people did in mw2.

if mw3's multiplayer is like mw2's its going straight in the bin.

but there was still a good few letdowns in black ops i.e the maps were pretty bad and most of them were just too big... also it had serious connection problems haven't played it lately but im hearing it has got better... also the re-spawing was bad.

still though it was better than mw2.

Rastapitts

one of the best games i ever played. its about a year since its release and i still play it often cant say that about many games

x43r0

I would echo most of yimrag's sentiments.


When I compare the two I use the woman analogy. Black-Ops is the reliable girlfriend who doesn't cause you that much grief and is always there. The steady, not very exciting girl who your parents like. She enjoys baking, going on walks and the missionary position.

MW2 is that crazy ex who you used to skip school to hang out with. The one who comes over to meet your parents and has her hand down your pants under the dinner table. The one who your friends warn you against but for some reason unbeknownst to you, you can't get enough of, even though she does your head in and quite frankly scares the **** out of you at times.

senordingdong

Was I the only one that felt there was too many options in multiplayer?

I've barely gotten to play them all.

Bohrio

In my humble opinion Black Ops lack of the combination of things that made other COD great.

for example I think the perks were in the wrong tier. This made motion sensors for example, hard to counter.

For example, to counter the motion sensors you had to use hacker, but then you would be heard, make in it very hard to enjoy it.

Maybe a game type without secondaries etc would suit me better

But this is just my opinion, maybe it just doesnt suit my game style. I like rushing, found it much harder to rush as I think I am way too noisy...

Also I only play Search

Thomasheen

I'm not goin to waffle, I liked it

dan hibiki

well, this was my first cod game. i played the solo demo on psn, didnt enjoy it, so wasnt bothered about getting it. saw it on sale, pre-played for 20 quid so i bought it and havent looked back. multiplayer is engrossing. i play this almost exclusivley now. it is a huge amount of fun despite all of the little things that could have been better. there is no such thing as a perfect online multiplayer game, but this is as good as i have played. btw, zombies is muck imho.

Klair88

best COD IMO, Zombies and multiplayer are fantastic! played MW2 the other night and it was dirt. (personal view) theatre and combat record are genius while wager matches and zombies shine the best, treyarch are much much better than IW.