The Call of Duty games have paved there way into gaming history over the past decade with eight main games and over ten spin offs even taking down the grand master of all console first person shooters Halo. Unfortunately this did not continue with the latest addition to the growing blockbuster franchise, Call of Duty: Black Ops did not stand tall with its ancestors and here is why.  The story was mediocre at best. I know Call of Duty games may not be the most well known titles to have  deep and immersive single player epics I still felt that Black Ops had an unpolished confusing story that seemed as if it was put in with the final multi-player product just to say it had one.  It seems to be a more and more prevalent in gaming today for developers to invest most of there effort in either a single player campaign or multi-player and simply throw on the other to add some merit a 60$ price tag.  While this may not be a big deal to most gamers seeing as how the multi-player is what really holds on to people and gives them a reason to come back, I feel that being the powerhouse franchise that they are having a rounded game should be expected, this no matter who is developing!

While this may not be a big deal to most gamers seeing as how the multi-player is what really holds on to people and gives them a reason to come back I feel that being the powerhouse franchise that they are having a rounded game should be expected.

Black Ops’ decent Multi-player was simply an unpolished version of Modern Warfare 2′s great multi-player. There is no problem in games taking the things that worked in past games and reusing them Halo’s multi-player has remained the same sense Combat Evolved and it has worked every time. The reason Black Ops did not fare as well as Modern Warfare is because it tried to change what didn’t need changing. While the key basic components of the great Call of Duty multi-player system were still there the little things that bring them all together were tampered with. The perk set was changed to a similar but still unfamiliar one while the changing of the perks and other small things  themselves may have only had slight affects, there impact as a hole on game play was profound changing it for the worse. Although other changes such as a theater mode, file sharing capability, and  gun/character customization were nice and welcome additions, but it does not cancel out what was done wrong with the game.

Now that I a finished talking about what was wrong with the game I will wrap up what was good about it. Zombies. What started out as a simple extra in Call Of Duty: World at War has turned into so much more. While not a full game in its own right the Zombie game mode in Black Ops is not far off, with the addition on the new DLCs adding more zombie maps it only become more and more of a selling point for future Call of Duty games and is a welcome addition in Black Ops as something that was not taken from the success of MW2 and something done very well.

In the end the Zombies, with almost MW2 multi-player, good graphics, and decent sound quality where not enough to make  Black Ops anything special with a 6.5 out of 10. If your a fan of Call of Duty and can pick up Black Ops for less then 35 bucks it may not be a bad buy being a Call of Duty game it still has plenty of life left in it and the multi-player community will continue to be active for years to come. But if you haven’t picked it up yet you may be better suited waiting a little while and getting Modern Warfare 3 when it comes out this November.