As many of you may recall, I was very excited and optimistic about Call of Duty Black Ops leading up to its release. After the release of so many disappointing PC titles recently, I hoped that Black Ops might be that game that could actually revitalize and strengthen our community that has played CoD for so many years. I felt like we might finally have a game that we could rally around and call our game. I drew on the surprising level of support Treyarch offered the PC for World at War as well as the promising comments made by the studio about their plans to continue this support and really crank out a superb PC title. I trusted Treyarch would do just that and I frankly couldn't wait until launch day.
Along with many of you, I played the heck out of the game for about the first month after release. However, around the beginning of December and much to my own surprise, I quickly lost interest in the game. I have spent a fair amount of time asking myself why exactly I don’t enjoy this game as much as I have tried to convince myself I should. Technical problems aside, there was one striking reason that I kept coming up with.
Yes, on the surface, the game seems absolutely packed with content. Zombies, a decent, albeit overly scripted single player, a currency system, theatre mode, wager matches, and character customization all add up to a pretty impressive feature set. Unfortunately, these additions mask the fact that there is next to no innovation on the competitive MP side of things, the real backbone of CoD.
As a comparison, in Modern Warfare 2 and as some of you know almost too well, a game I certainly played my fair share of, you could get in a flipping AC130 or Chopper Gunner and send the opposing team running for their lives or even call in a Tac Nuke and end the game. Arguably, horribly unbalanced game mechanics but the WOW factor was certainly there, it was fantastic. Nothing like this exists in Black Ops. It simply seems like a re-skinned version of the previous IW title. The same thing happened with Treyarch’s previous title, World at War. IW introduced many new game mechanics in Call of Duty 4, weapon customization, killstreaks, perks, ranks. World at War followed much the equation set by IW and it came off as a World War II re-skin of Call of Duty 4. Treyarch removed a lot of things from MW2 deemed "unbalanced" but didn't add anything back in. There isn't anything new in Black Ops that makes me laugh, smile, or cry, it's emotionless, it's boring. It feels like an empty shell that didn’t build on the MW2 equation at all. Unfortunately, simply re-skinning the previous IW title isn’t going to cut it Treyarch.
The game did not meet my expectations, or as it seems, the expectations of many in the community. Hopefully Treyarch continues to patch the game towards a playable state on a wider range of systems. If they can do that, I believe many players will return. However, until I see some real innovation and new ideas coming out of Treyarch, which I know they are capable of, I doubt I will be able to purchase another of their games.
-H4WKE
PS: The other thing that I find constantly gets in the way of my enjoyment of this game is, somewhat surprisingly, the selection of servers itself. No, I don't want to play in a 24/7 Nuketown, or a TDM or DM. I prefer tactical game modes such as DEM, DOM, SD, and CTF. In my opinion, server admins need to consider what types of game modes and maps people who aren’t twelve actually enjoy playing in, not simply what draws instant traffic when setting up their servers. Not pointing any fingers at anyone specifically, just realized that finding a server that isn’t 24/7 Nuketown, TDM, or DM, with a decent ping isn’t as easy as I would think it should be.
