Amateur hour FPS game of the year.
The following year I purchased COD:WAW and was initially less than impressed. I learned to enjoy some of the aspects of the game over time and ended up really enjoying the community of players playing the tactical servers and zombie maps. It took awhile to grow on me, but it never really blew me away or came close to the playtime I invested into COD4.
Last year I purchased COD:MW2. Simply put, I really did not enjoy the game on any level. Sure, some of the improvement in graphics and gameplay gimmicks were satisfying, but the onslaught of multiplayer cheater's, 4 hour single player campaign, lack of dedicated servers, overpriced DLC, high initial price tag, etc., etc., etc, totally ruined the whole experience. I ended up spending less than 30 hours in the multiplayer in the past year which was completely unexpected. Heck I probably spent that much time playing COD4 and WAW in a week sometimes since I bought MW2.
Now a year later after a lot of heartburn, I decided to pull the trigger on COD:BLOP. My expectations where pretty low, but I was hoping for something fun to keep me entertained thru the winter since there was really nothing showing up on the PC FPS horizon.
Like some reviewers, I found the game downright broken and generally unplayable. What a complete letdown for sure. I sort of remember WAW being a complete disaster the first month or so, but Treyarch managed to get the game running fairly smooth over time. I have to believe they will continue to patch this game and improve it in the coming weeks, so I will base my review on what I see and how I feel and not on the glaring technical issues this game has at times.
To keep things short, Black Ops really doesn't disappoint. The single player story was well done and almost twice the length of COD:MW2. The graphics are great but nothing spectacular. If they can fix the performance issues and get it playing as buttery smooth as COD4, then the graphics will seem more and more impressive in my mind. The gameplay, customization, game modes, currency system, easter eggs, zombie modes, dedicated servers, gimmicks, perks, weapon balance, maps, and the many other little details are truly great and should not be overlooked.
I believe this game will be considered a true sequel to COD4, but will never quite achieve it's greatness due to the fact that COD4 was such a ground breaking experience. If this game would have come out the year after MW1 and 100% polished, this may have become one of the greatest FPS of all time. As it stands now, it is basically a great game with some issues and somewhat good, but tired COD goodness.
I have to dock this game .5 for it's performance issues which will hopefully be fixed, another .5 for somewhat cheesy sounding weapons, and another .5 for high initial price tag and likely pending high priced DLC. My final score is a 8.5 which I think is pretty fair considering how amateur hour the quality control was for the release.
I consider the game a return to COD greatness and can somewhat safely recommend it to all COD fans.
*update: I felt I should revisit this review. Well, it seems Treyarch was unable to fix the lag issues and the online will likely remain an unplayable laggy mess and aimbotting/hacking is now all too common so I feel my initial review of 8.5 was a little to generous. I feel my current score better reflects my experience.