Game: Call of Duty: Black Ops

[Buffalobiian]

For those who need an introduction:

Call of Duty: Black Ops is a first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch, published by Activision and released worldwide on November 9, 2010 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Nintendo DS (separate version developed by n-Space) consoles. Announced on April 30, 2010, the game is the seventh installment of the Call of Duty series, and the first to be set in the Cold War. It is the third in the series to be developed by Treyarch, and is a sequel to the developer's Call of Duty: World at War.

The game begins with Mason, Frank Woods, and Joseph Bowman attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba as a part of Operation 40. Mason apparently succeeds in the assassination, but their exfiltration goes awry, with Mason staying behind to protect the extraction plane. He is captured by the real Castro and the Cuban military. Having formed an alliance with the Soviet Union, Castro hands Mason over to General Nikita Dragovich. Mason is then held captive at Vorkuta Gulag for two years.

Black Ops has been very well received by critics.

I'm planning on getting this game next Tuesday.

I'll have to see if the new points system will kill it for me (as I've never liked having to commit to purchased upgrades), but the game and all reminds me a lot of COD4 (which is a good thing).

[Psyke]

I've been playing this for 2 days and I like IW's MW2 better..... at least for now.

[Xelbair]

There have been reports of it lagging as hell - but it did not happened for me. Multiplayer is fun - but different than mw2, but singleplayer in MW and MW2 was way better.

[Animeniax]

You need a pretty beefy system to play it is what I'm hearing, plus a patch is coming out to fix some CPU utilization issues.

From what I've seen it looks more cartoonish than MW2. If the gameplay is as fun as MW2 though I'll play it, though I plan to wait for Thanksgiving break so I don't fail any classes.

[KrayZ33]

isnt the patch already out?

im not to pumped up for this one, i like the CoD series but:

1. made by treyarch
2. BFBC2 has so much more atmosphere (multiplayer)
3. im not willing to pay 40€ for the singleplayer.

[Psyke]

I've always remembered hating Treyarch for that Spider-man 3 game which I hated so much for being buggy and ridiculous.

[Xelbair]

Well MW2 is more cartoonish than this(multiplayer i mean), CPU problems have been fixed, and game recording works on pc.

They did some great balancing - but fucked up one thing at least on pc.
Tube has way less splash, so its not so lethal.
Akimbo weapons are weaker, so no g18 fagging.
Knife lunge range is much lower.

Bad things:
no quickscope on pc - i can understand that auto-ai... i mean 'aim assist' on consoles made quickscope too easy - but it was not so easy on pc, plus it gave opportunity for snipers to defend themselves at close range.
Sniper rifles are nerfed too much, but at least they are usable.
Shotguns are useless, they got nerfed too much.

Game recording is great thing - your recent games are recorded by server and you can download it and watch the game from any perspective. Basically you can record movies without impact on performance from using fraps or something. Plus it will be great tool for spotting wallhackers and aimboters.

[KrayZ33]

Game recording is great thing - your recent games are recorded by server and you can download it and watch the game from any perspective. Basically you can record movies without impact on performance from using fraps or something. Plus it will be great tool for spotting wallhackers and aimboters.

wow that is cool indeed... I had to use a tool for Call of Duty 2 to do that and it is always fun to see urself owning from another perspective.

no quickscope on pc - i can understand that auto-ai... i mean 'aim assist' on consoles made quickscope too easy - but it was not so easy on pc, plus it gave opportunity for snipers to defend themselves at close range.
Sniper rifles are nerfed too much, but at least they are usable.

this makes me sad...

sniper were relatively weak in MW2 and even MW1...
I hate it that torso-hits won't always kill with 1 shot.

especially now since its probably possible to limit snipers per team to 1 or something like that. (dedicated servers)...gee CoD2 sure was good for Clan-Wars compared to modern CoD titles.

in MW1++ its alot easier to kill with a automatic rifle or even a shotgun @ midrange because the sniper rifles arn't lethal enough
also, on most maps the sniper is absolutely useless compared to other guns.

[Y]

The Call of Duty franchise is one of the only videogames that genuinely disturbed me, and I'm not just talking about the deliberately horrifying stuff like the introduction from the perspective of a soon-to-be executed leader, or the level where you slowly die of radiation poisoning, or whatever. The most disturbing level in videogames was the AC130 level.

You play as the gunner of an attack helicopter on a night mission over the fields of Whogivesafuckistan. You protect your guys doing their objectives on the ground by laying waste to pretty much everything in sight. The level was one of the high points reviewers pointed out in the original Modern Warfare, as it was praised for its graphical fidelity to real aerial combat footage and for the dispassionate commentary from your ground crew (the uploader comment on the video which I'll put at the bottom of the post even mentions he loves that part of the level).

Fast forward to 2010 and the release of footage from an attack helicopter depicting the murder of a Reuters journalist and his bodyguard in Baghdad, Iraq while they are trying to rescue a wounded man from a battlefield. For the non-Americans or culturally illiterate Americans, I'll link the footage at the bottom of this post. Notice any similarities? Not just in the visuals, which of course were crafted in the game based on real life footage, but in the casual discussion the crew has trying to get permission to shoot them to death. They are just waiting for the innocent targets on the ground to do something, anything, that will justify engaging them and finishing the job... like they were waiting for a scripted sequence to begin.

Remember how videogame enthusiasts and journalists scoffed at the media portraying games like Doom as training simulations for killing? When I saw this video and thought of the game level, I actually got a little nauseous. The real murders in the gunship predate the release of Modern Warfare 1, and the release of the video publically postdates it, so I am not claiming these military men were actually hyped up by playing this level. This type of casual disengaged attitude toward violence is developed, with the same techniques, by both the games industry and the US military. Depersonalization techniques, distancing the subject from the actual act of killing though multiple layers of separation... the military has clearly learned from the games industry and vice versa (as evidenced by the ample amount of advisory and support that Infinity Ward and Activision received on this series from US military personnel). I can't help but shudder at how game-like military personnel operating UAVs from the safety of an air-conditioned trailer in Texas is, and what effect that has on civilian death and collateral damage in modern warfare. And the games industry, through direct examples like this level and more broadly through the cultural influence it exerts about violence and militaristic fetishization, has to bear some of the blame.

"Death From Above", November 2007 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAscuD4loh8

"Collateral Murder" July 12th, 2007, Baghdad Iraq
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0

As for the topic, W@W's multiplayer had better balance than MW2 so I expect Black Ops' is pretty good. But is that really what you ought to be thinking about?

EDIT:

I didn't even think about how insidious the aftermath of the bomb experience is. It transfers a scene unique in reality (the aftermath of a nuclear explosion) from the innocent civilians it was used on in real life by American forces, to something that happens TO American forces.

EDIT EDIT:

And the assassination introduction scene... a country's leader being killed and throwing the country into the hands of reactionaries, something the CIA has been doing for years, fitting nicely into the typical state propaganda of political strife from within.

[Animeniax]

I'm sure you've all seen it but it deserves to be reposted:

[Raven]

A question... Google seems to be giving me mixed answers, so please give me a straight one.

Does this game have LAN play?
I've heard that it has dedicated servers but you have to pay for them... or something.
I've also heard you can play LAN games but each PC needs a connection to Steam for verification, which makes sense, but the game itself is played over the LAN connection.

The ability to play on a LAN will tip the scales on the decision to buy the game, for both me and my friends. We usually have about 16 people at least at our LANs, and our connection is so bad that it's virtually unplayable if we all try to connect at once for an online game. We pretty much skipped MW2 for this reason.

[Xelbair]

I've also heard you can play LAN games but each PC needs a connection to Steam for verification, which makes sense, but the game itself is played over the LAN connection.

<- It is true - but you need to have internet connection online to play on lan too. The game is on LAN but stats and joining is handled via internet.

For LAN on MW2 try this small thing called AlterIWnet... :>

[animus]

Just Prestiged for the first time today. Don't plan on prestiging any more after this however.

So yeah, the AK47 in this game is by far my favorite gun.

[Xelbair]

I went back to MW2(actually to alterIW net), because black ops on pc has serious issues.. it worked fine before last patch for me, but after it i always get hardcore lag when firing at someone who is firing too..
plus only usable riffle is famas - it is just OP.

[Animeniax]

One more week of classes, then dead week with 2 finals and a term paper, and then it's 10 hours a day of CoD:BO.

[Pandadice]

I think my favorite addition is the way you can rewatch any match you play from any players perspective. So like, if you play with someone whos really good then you can go rewatch the match and see how they played. And when noobs are saying you cheated you can tell them to just go rewatch the match. And you can watch yourself play, and really observe and critique your style to fix problems.

Also I like Black Birds.

[Psyke]

I'm at level 50 and about to hit my first prestige. While I want to progress with the levelling system, it sucks if I lose my Challenge stats since I've been trying to clear as many as I can and there's still so much to do.

Most probably I'll get stuck at level 50 and keep doing challenges (which has no meaning since I can't level up anymore). Well, I don't think the game can sustain my interest to hit any more prestige levels anyway.

[itadakimasu]

I went back to MW2(actually to alterIW net), because black ops on pc has serious issues.. it worked fine before last patch for me, but after it i always get hardcore lag when firing at someone who is firing too..
plus only usable riffle is famas - it is just OP.

I don't know what they did... I got it at release and it was probably 90%. The only issue was occasional stuttering during matches. Now though, I have constant lock ups or loss of connection.

I had been hitting ctrl+alt+del and closing the process when it freezes but let it go last night and it just hangs for about 3-4 minutes and finally unfreezes and I was still in the game.

does suck to lose challenges when you prestige. I'm on prestige 3 and don't think Im doing it again.

[Buffalobiian]

Apparently a patch is coming out that will fix a shitload of problems. Dunno when that will be though. I'm waiting to see if that works before I buy the pc version.