"We live in such a silly world that we keep coming up with new ways to celebrate mediocrity."


Recommend... „Call of Duty®: Black Ops“-Multiplayer

Since there have recently been some free multiplayer weekends on Steam especially for the „Call of Duty“-series, I finally came to the decision to use such an event and give it a try – playing „Call of Duty: Black Ops“ and see if this game might be worth its price of 59.99€. (in words: fifty-nine, ninety-nine)

„Call of Duty: Black Ops“ or should I rather say „Call of Duty 8“(?) is totally a game you imagine to be after 7 other games of its series:

(I'll compare this game with the 4th part of the series „Modern Warfare“ - the grounding of all following emulating „Call of Dutys“ - which actually was a very pleasant game.)

Only 18 players are allowed to join a server what directly leads us to the maps which are accordingly tiny and affect the game-play immense.
Because of their size, the game gets more and more arcade-styled. You don't have to search the enemy for long, he'll either find you or vice versa and then you press the trigger no matter how far he is away and you keep it pressed until he or you is/are dead from weapons which seem to not have any recoil, be it a machine pistol or a heavy machine gun.
Oh, and there are sniper rifles but I'm afraid you won't find them very useful because of the map size and your fully-automatic-30-round-sniping-machine gun you already possess.
What mustn't be left out in the modern „Call of Duty“-series is of course your reward – receiving tons of different highly relevant messages, for example, how awesomely you humiliated another player or what kind of important new rank you gain when leveling up or simply killing dozens of enemys without being killed once!
The prize for such an pr0-like kill streak must be really super-awesome so you can look cool. And seriously, what can be cooler than a napalm or B-52 air raid against a maximum number of 9 enemies?? A nuclear missile? (I still hope for the instant-win-button for a player after a kill streak of 3 but that will certainly take some time... perhaps in „Call of Duty 10“?)
Such fantastic kill-streak bonuses naturally need some good-looking BOOM!-effects which actually look like total garbage – the napalm flames on the ground look horribly botchy and worse than fire in „Call of Duty 2“, but who cares, it's the same engine used half a decade ago!
Effects made by 2005 are coupled with animations being recorded in the Stone Age.
Moving looks clumsy and you feel like a chicken circling the map all over again until it ends – pointless.

So what is my conclusion of the game?

Well, it is one hell of a cash cow, relying on the stupidity of the customer, buying the same game again and again, year after year until the earth explodes or whatever prevents him to buy „Call of Duty 2148953287567563976“.
I cannot understand this „Call of Duty“-hype at all but perhaps I'm not susceptible enough to fall for this continuing piece of crap.
Who knows...

Written: on 06.06.2011, by Ðǿŋ Đǿŋį