A detailed review.
GRAPHICS: 8/10
No, they aren't revolutionary graphics. But I could care less. The graphics are believable. I don't feel like I'm fighting plastic army-men. An FPS doesn't need the best graphics known to man to be a great game.
SOUND: 8/10
Great? I'm not really an audiophile. I like that they toned down the sound of footsteps even when people aren't using ninja. People aren't that loud when running on sand you know.
CAMPAIGN: 7/10
Very good campaign. It reminds me of one of my favorite movies (Fight Club). It isn't the most fun campaign in the series. It didn't grip me quite as much as other CoDs. However, I do give it credit for being more down-to-earth and a little less fantastical. I might actually believe some of the stuff happened as opposed to MW2.
The only problem I had with it was how they handled Veteran mode. Instead of making it difficult by forcing you to fight many enemies, or with inferior weapons, or decreased amounts of ammo, or the like... they basically just gave the AI an increasingly more effective aimbot as the game continued. By the last mission of the game you literally poked your head out and were instantly shot down because EVERY enemy NPC instantly targeted you with far more than superhuman accuracy. It really got to the point where it took me out of the experience because I noticed how many times I couldn't even SEE the NPCs before I was shot down. I think most people can agree that in a firefight with multiple people on each side the entire enemy side wouldn't drop EVERYTHING and instantly target one guy when he poked his head out. The only reason why you could get by was because you could memorize where certain enemies were and then begin firing before you pop around the corner. Or you would have to study how the AI reacted until you found a flaw and exploited it to eliminate the AI before they saw you (I had to memorize a lot of their spawn points and shoot them through walls). This kinda ruined the idea that I was a CIA agent and I was fighting humans... it was exactly like fighting humans... with aimbot. And, the health regeneration always takes me out of experience. It gets kinda ridiculous thinking about how many bullets you just took and then realizing you just took a few deep breaths and then they all magically fell out of you and you healed back up like wolverine (but I know that is CoD for ya).
But I mean hey, they had to make Veteran really hard somehow... and that is just how they chose to do it. Pretty frustrating though.
MULTIPLAYER: 7/10
Multiplayer is great overall. They rebalanced a lot of things. They didn't get rid of all of the stupid crap, though. Most people won't agree with my particular list of desired changes... but that is why this review is my opinion.
I still don't understand why the designers of this game believe that a single knife slash to any part of the body (or clothing for that matter) causes you to immediately go into shock and die. "Aw but d00d you have to imagine you are doing some crazy CQC move like Solid Snake when you slash 'em!!!" That is all fine and dandy but it takes TIME to grab somebody, restrain them, deliver the death blow, and then move on to what you were doing. That whole time you are vulnerable (and basically immobile). That isn't the case in Black Ops (I know it has always been that way). It just ruins the whole idea that I'm an elite operator fighting other elite operators when all I have to do is nick someone with a knife to kill them. You have to see how unbelievably cartoony that looks in the midst of the rest of the action.
"Look that guy over there is taking cover, that guy is diving across the gap in the bridge, that guy is out of ammo and switching to his pistol, and... that guy is charging straight towards the guy with a fully automatic weapon because he knows that all he has to do is tap him with his knife and he will no longer in any way, shape, or form be able to continue to fight."
I was excited when they took out the throwing knife and added the tomahawk. A throwing knife isn't going to instantly kill you when it is thrown into your toe. At least a tomahawk has some mass to it and can be pretty damn deadly. BUT, a tomahawk to the foot (just like a bullet to the foot) won't kill you either. So it is still kinda goofy seeing someone take a tomahawk to the foot and then immediately going into shock and dying. Even if you took a tomahawk to the chest you wouldn't die instantly. You would have a decent chance of going into shock, though. But if your adrenaline is pumping and used to combat (like an elite operator would probably be...) you would continue to fight until you bled out (which would likely be the cause of death from a large laceration to the chest). So I would prefer taking a tomahawk to the chest then stopping in your tracks and being able to fight a couple of seconds before succumbing to shock and THEN dying... but not instant death (of course a tomahawk to the head would practically cause instant death).
Unfortunately, even though they removed the throwing knife they added the ballistic knife... which with a little background information shows that it is barely deadlier than a throwing knife. In reality it will hurt just slightly more than a thrown knife (its only propelled by a spring... a strong spring... but just a spring). The blade does travel in a straight line though... so that pretty much eliminates the possibility of just smacking them with the handle of the knife... but it still isn't an "instant kill" weapon. So, when a spring powered knife hits someone in the shin and kills them it ruins the illusion of fighting hard-as-nails special forces.
Now I could go on and on about many other things... but the things mentioned so far pretty much prevent matches from boiling down in even a semi-believable manner. When I sneak up behind three guys and throw a tomahawk in to one guy's butt (instantly killing him through sheer embarrassment), firing my ballistic knife into another guys Achilles heel (a wound that commonly causes instant death /sarcasm), and then nicking the final guy with my knife which causes him to give up from sheer pain and die... it really looks and feels stupid. We might as well let airsoft guns inflict mortal wounds in this game. But, like I said, many of you would disagree with that opinion of how the game should play.
I know that there is a point where you just have to let a game be a game and not worry so much about realism. BUT, you do have to admit that these details really take away from the idea that we are pretending to be super-soldiers when knives are deadlier than bullets. We don't go to war with bandoleers of ballistic knives.
I do like the idea of a normal mode and a hardcore mode. However, I have been waiting for a third mode that is more realistic. It is frustrating firing an M14 at someone's head for it to be shrugged off and having to take a shotgun blast in return. I really hope that I don't have to explain that helmets... do not protect you from pretty much any military rifle... ever made. They protect against small arms fire, shrapnel, and grazing hits... that is about it. Military rifles don't just penetrate a helmet... they go through both sides of it. So it is really annoying firing a rifle round into someone's head and watching them pretend like nothing happened. It does not have to be a sniper rifle to pierce a helmet (and as a matter of fact... the M14 is still currently used as a designated marksman's rifle on the battlefied today... it is a sniper rifle). And, of course hardcore mode is the other extreme and also very unrealistic. Depending on the type of kevlar and/or plate load-out a guy is wearing it takes far more than one bullet from a rifle to put them down. For some reason the designers thought that going from 100 health to 30 health was a great idea. Nope... cool you can get head shots in one hit now... but it takes one shot to kill anywhere else on the body anyway... so is our brain now located throughout the whole body now? I don't get why they had to make it THAT easy to die. Certain parts of the body are weak... certain parts are strong... depending on what is damaged determines how quickly we die from it. I was hoping for something along the lines of... one in the head and your dead... and a few in the chest and you die. Just a nice cozy middle ground between normal and hardcore (which happens to be quite a bit more realistic).
I know I have been yammering on about a bunch of things that most of you won't care about. I know that many people are thinking, "Oh well it wouldn't be any fun if it was like that." Well think of it this way. It probably wouldn't be fun for people who rely on being able to take many bullets and regenerate their life. It probably wouldn't be fun for people who are incapable of accurate shots to exploit what should be a major weak spot for a human (the brain). So, yes, in a sense it wouldn't be fun for people who don't know how to take cover and prevent themselves from taking damage and it wouldn't be fun for people who are incapable of scoring head shots... but that is where skill comes into play.
Thankfully for most lovers of the CoD series they don't have to worry about dying easily or taking cover (normal mode)... or if they do they don't have to worry about being accurate because all they have to do is hit the enemy anywhere (hardcore mode).
For these reasons I would have liked to have seen a more realistic mode. This mode would be for players who understand that taking cover is necessary and failing to do so shouldn't be rewarded with regenerating health and that spraying bullets isn't an effective way to shoot on a battlefield save for at extreme close quarters or for suppressive fire.
VERDICT: 7.5/10
The graphics are more than adequate for what this genre of game requires.
The sound is great and is adequate for what is needed to play a FPS.
The single player campaign isn't as "fun" as other games in the series. However, that is only due to them trying to weave a little bit more believable story which ends up being at least a little deeper than previous installments in the series. I did enjoy the story even though I wasn't doing completely over-the-top missions like the previous games in the series. I didn't like how they chose to go about increasing the difficulty. They just gave the computer better and better aimbot throughout the game instead of making the circumstances legitimately challenging in more realistic ways.
Multiplayer is far better balanced than it was before. Noob tubing is all but extinct as far as I can tell. Perk combinations aren't as game-breaking due to how they have been tweaked and in what combinations they must be chosen. I would have liked to have seen a more believable damage system. But that would have probably made everyone cry.
Overall it is still a great game. I do not regret buying it. I will definitely play it until I'm blind. I just wanted it to cater a little less to poor tactics (charging around like Rambo and the like). But I guess I will have to continue to wait for a more tactical and believable game to become popular.