Once again we are being served a great story and exciting game play. There is very little to spoil the fun.
The Story
You play as Alex Mason (most of the time), a CIA operative tasked with various missions. One main objective is to get a rogue Russian general who is planning on attacking US but it is a little more complicated than that. All of the missions are flashbacks as you are now being interrogated by CIA because you came into a possession of some secrets. More or less. What is great in Black Ops and has been great in CoD since Modern Warfare is the variety of things you do:
Assassinate Castro, base jump off the big cliff. enter the room in slow motion off a rope and see the window crack slowly from your bullets, escape a Russian prison, fly a Russian attack helicopter and reign havoc, fly a blackbird and provide overwatch for your team and switch back and forth between ground and plane, defend against Vietnamese offensive, crawl spider holes, be forced to play Russian roulette (like in the Deer Hunter), interrogate people, run in a hazmat suit and get it punctured and die from a deadly gas, accept mission personally from Kennedy, save your friends, see the die. There is all.
Even though some of these moments are awkward (you destroy like 5 or 6 tanks all by yourself at one point) and sometimes the camera switches to 3rd person for some reason, it generally works and get you immersed in the game world.
One difference is that the story is pretty grim. It is no that clear that you are that good guy and in the end you are not really sure if you won. Many of the characters die (sure it is war). The game even tries to be ironic as in the end one of the characters tells you - "It's over, we've won"
Nevertheless it is worth it to get to the end.
The Gameplay
It is pretty much what you've already seen and liked in other CoD games. One addition is leaning, which you will never use. Also soldier can get dismembered now so expect heads flying off, limbs get thorn off and other grim things. The weapons seem disappointing as you don't get any high tech stuff and it turns out to be fun to try out many different things. A few gripes though:
- Checkpoint are horrendous. Many times you will find out you killed like 20 people, died and there was no checkpoint in between. And attacking the same base for the third time and 20 minutes is no fun.
- Also you can barely tell you are almost dead or enemy head shots actually kill you quicker. Agreed, it is more realistic but I like how the screen got more and more red in Modern Warfare. Here you can just stand out from the corner and immediately get shot. Enough with the realism, this is not what CoD is all about.
- Infinite waves are stupid. And spawning is pretty random. Many times I rushed into enemy positions to find a guy just behind me, who wasn't there a moment ago. It would also help if my team mates helped me a little.
The Music
All the sound is just right, The right tune hits up just in the right time. I love having Sympathy for the devil play through the credits.
To sum up: The game is pretty great, revisiting Cold War turns out much better than expected and saving the world feels as good as ever. There are small hiccups but overall I say: go buy it.