What a let down :(

User Rating: 5 | Call of Duty: Black Ops PS3
Well it had to happen, you look forward to a game for months and when it arrives its a huge let down, i bought the game at midnight and have given it 12+ hours of game time over 3 days to give a fair opinion.

Treyarch really have messed up with this installment in the COD series, its truly awful.

Firstly the game looks rubbish, i cant believe how bad the graphics and animation are, im playing it on a 42" screen in HD and it looks terrible, its like playing a game on a PS2. When you compare the graphics and the game engine to MW2 its no where near as good, true, graphics should nt be the be all and end all but in 2010 you expect a certain standard, BO just looks awful.

The sound is my biggest problem, its so bad i find myself laughing when im playing, i play with 5.1 surround sound and it does nt work properly, im constantly thinking there is someone behind me but its my own footsteps which are coming out of the wrong speakers, then sometimes you have no footsteps fx at all, terrible. Then theres the guns, explosions, aircraft fx etc, what a joke, how can they have sat in the recording studio doing the sound fx and thought 'this sounds great'? Truly awful, some of the worst sound fx i have ever heard in a game, when you throw a grenade it sounds like you a throwing an empty tin of beans, laughable. The guns all sound the same and i have to turn up the volume 8 or 9 levels higher than MW2 just to get some oomph!

Most of the maps are rubbish, big sprawling boring rat traps, nothing interesting about them at all, and as for nuke town, whats the point?

I know its launch week, and obviously a lot of people are playing online but should nt they have anticipated this and had the servers to cope? The game is juddering around all over the place, i dont think ive played 1 game that didnt glitch, judder, motion blur or have some glitch, so dissapointing.


The point im trying to make is regarding the graphics & the sound, is that in a series (COD) or a sequel, surely the game must at least match what has gone before? and the goal should be to better the previous installment.

The graphics, animation & sound especially, are all a step backwards from MW2. Of course gameplay is the number 1 priority in any game, BUT the enjoyment of playing BO is hampered by a bad graphics engine, jerky animation and some truly awful sound fx.

I really wanted to like this game, every time ive gone to play it ive thought 'maybe this time i'll get it' but i come away disliking it even more, such a shame as there are some great ideas in there, wager matches and the theatre mode are great, but the game itself is a turkey.



Roll on MW3.