Not a big deal, despite its overwhelming sales.
COD BO, as the game is commonly abbreviated as, consists of three components: a story campaign, online multiplayer, and zombie shooter. I've always been an honest critic, and this review reflects that statement. BO's story campaign is trash. Why so harsh? Because, in simplistic terms, the BO story campaign is distasteful and shameful to the COD series that it represents.
The campaign's story revolves around your first-person perspective as a captured soldier who is under interrogation in a dark and dilapidated room. The story begins with you completely restrained in a bloody chair with blood splattered on your shirt, the ground, the equipment nearby, and everywhere you look. Scalpels and needles lie on a tray near you, and broken television sets face you and broadcast weird and eerie pictures.
In other words, the setting revolves around "saw-world", and I couldn't enjoy the story because of this unnecessarily eerie and violent background that I had to watch for ten or so minutes before you get to run around, shoot, and do what a true campaign should allow you to do.
In addition to the gory background, the game displays a lot of suffering – not something I or anyone would enjoy witnessing. As previously described, you are held captive and your captors are regularly torturing you so that you'll experience flashbacks and enter the story line through that type of plot-cheap method. The screaming and overall suffering is so appalling that I couldn't even play through the first mission. In other words, the campaign is an utter disgrace because it focuses more on cheap suspense than deep and engaging story-telling.
With the campaign out of the way, I'd like you to know that the rest of the game looks brighter. First of all, I haven't played the zombie feature of COD BO, since I can't stand unnecessary gore, but I am a supporter of BO's online multiplayer.
Only multiplayer is fairly good, although I don't think it's the best COD multiplayer I've ever played. This feature is "server-based": you pick which servers to join and start playing.
Matches are naturally ranked which means that they affect your COD profile. Numbers such as "kill-death ratio" are affected by participation in ranked matches and express how skillful gamers are. However, the main point of using ranked matches is to gain experience points that raise your level and allow you to try newer weapons. In this regard, effort is greatly rewarded and I admired how the system of leveling and earning weapons worked. The system isn't original, though, since COD 4 was the first to introduce and use it.
Also, the multiplayer is unusually buggy. By buggy, I mean that your shots and movements don't respond as quickly as you press, so you'll often get killed even though you know what you're doing and are fairly skillful in other CODs. Also, shooting someone doesn't necessarily kill them; many times, I'd shoot someone for about 10 seconds while they turn around and fire once and kill me. Bugs like this deter the legitimacy and overall fun of the multiplayer system.
Still yet, BO's multiplayer allows the use of neat weapons at a lower level, such as being able to use the ballistic knives and good submachine guns at a low level. Compared to the other CODs, BO allows more at a lower level, so I admire that aspect of multiplayer. You won't need to be a slave to your PC and play for 10 hours a day to enjoy newer weapons.
Multiplayer also offers unranked matches. While you may think that these are great for relaxed practice, I found these unranked matches unnecessary and often goofy. In other words, you won't be able to practice well in unranked matches because of noobs firing rockets and grenades and getting a minimum of 5 kill streaks per shot. You'll also come across more cheaters that you won't be able to kill even though you're shooting at them for 10 seconds. In general, unranked matches was a neat concept in theory, but not a good concept in reality.
However, despite the bugs and cheaters, COD BO's online multiplayer is still worthy, because it is the first of the COD games to work with COD Elite: an online COD statistics and community website. The website allows in depth evaluations of your performance and match techniques. In other words, this game has introduced a crucial and powerful tool to the COD community.
With that being said, however, COD Elite is still in major development, so nearly none of its features work at the time. However, the fact that COD is expanding with COD BO as its first pilot makes COD BO a fair game. BO certainly isn't the best, however, despite having the best sales.
It seems as though the COD series is turning their fans into "buy anything with COD on it" fanatics. PEOPLE! Base your purchases on the situation and not on something as trivial as a series name so that developers won't be able to release anymore half-good games.
Point Breakdown:
5 points – for an overall solid multiplayer with bugs.
1.5 points – for an expansive COD Elite website compatibility (taking into consideration that it isn't fully operational yet).
0 points – for its pathetic, garbage disposal campaign.