You know him as your local neighborhood MC ass hole... we know him as Mr. I'll Shoot You In The Face via X Box... on to the review... - LFTD
Admittedly, I haven't finished the campaign, so I'll touch on it briefly. The story is very good. You are a operative for the US Gov and at times report directly to President Kennedy. While it is immersive, the biggest problem I had were the cutscenes. Just when you've finished a pretty heavy piece of action and it feels you are about to enter more, you are pulled into another cutscene. This aside, I'd recommend the game for those that mainly play campaign modes of FPS'.
Zombies:
Zombies are back. The game mode has kept all of the good qualities of the improvements offered in the later DLC maps and gives them right off the bat. There are 2 actual zombie maps, and a top down Contra-esque zombie map called "DOA". Not only can you play with a few friends at the house, but now you can take your friends to XBox live and play there as well (more on that later).
My favorite part of Zombies is probably the map called "Five" which is a reference to the maps setting, The Pentagon. You play as one of 4 characters: John F Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Secretary of Defense at the time Robert McNamara, and oddly enough, Fidel Castro. The map has many levels to descend into. I still haven't figured it out entirely, as I've only played it once with Akshun. But there's this scientist that for some reason will walk up to you and take your gun, or separate you from your party (and you can't do shit about it), and you have TO rely on team communication to find your way back. Very fun.
On a side note: If you want to unlock all of the zombie maps without having to go through gameplay, I have a code for you:
When at the main menu, press RT and LT alternatively, rapidly, to break free from your chair. Go around to the back of the room and press X to get onto the computer. Type in: 3ARC UNLOCK and press enter. This will unlock ALL of the zombie maps. Not sure if it takes away achievements to use with caution.
Multiplayer:
This is by far my favorite part of the game and pretty much the only reason I play the series anymore. Many of the complaints so far have been about the graphics, which are on par with MW2 at best. I've had no problems with them really. I guess others were expecting some big advancement. But when you consider that this is a game made separately from IW's MW2, the graphics HAVE improved since Treyarch's last release in the series, CoD: World at War.
The other complaint is sound. Treyarch intentionally nerfed it. Many players had an advantage if they went out of their way to buy a set of Turtle Beach headphones and Treyarch apparently saw this as a disadvantage and inherently unfair to the players who either didn't know of such headphones, or didn't have the money for them. Either way, I agree that it is very unfair to a person who has shelled out 60 bucks for this game, only to have someone who shelled out an extra 120 bucks for the headphones slaughter them anytime they get near. That said, I disagree with the amount they have reduced the sound.
Your own footsteps seem crazy loud and it is nearly impossible to hear when someone is around you, even if you are still. I never felt I was at a disadvantage with the sound as it was, I actually did better because I could just turn around and kill whoever was pursuing me trying to get an easy knife kill and I did it with the sound as it was through my TV, without headphones. Now I have to rely on shadows from the sun or the reaction of teammates as an indicator of enemy locations in my vicinity. This is supposedly changed with the Ninja Pro perk. Though I haven’t used it, I’ve heard that it doesn’t improve the sound of enemy players much at all.
A glaring omission in the “Perks” is Stopping Power (Though Juggernaut has not made a return either). The lack of SP makes guns like the 3 round burst M16 and the single shot M14 (Think M1A1 from WaW) and FAL all but pointless to everyone but the most accurate of players.
However, the lack of Stopping Power means that if you run out of ammo, and are proficient on the wide array of weapons Black Ops offers, you stand the same chance as the next man who has that specific weapons system equipped on a dedicated class.
They’ve nerfed sniping considerably, and quick scoping has been strongly discouraged as even the developers have been quoted as saying it is a cheap way to play, and not at all intended purpose of a sniper rifle, a fact obvious to anyone with a brain. The maps vary, but very few are even remotely friendly to snipers, as the porousness of a map allows for many ways to sneak up on a sniper. Couple this with the fact that they can only have one Claymore, and cannot use Scavneger Pro to get more after the first one was used, and it is all but impossible for a sniper to cover all Avenues of Approach adequately.
COMMANDO PRO IS GONE! This will come as a welcome relief to a lot of you guys, especially Jcart lol. The biggest complaint of MW2 has got to be the introduction of the Commando Perk. It allowed a player to avoid a close ranged death by allowing him to knife from halfway across the room, regardless of whether he was being shot at or not. Many players (Myself included) combined this perk with Marathon Pro and Lightweight Pro to become essentially an unstoppable running and knifing machine. Those of you who like to camp a room, or just control an area while knowing your back is covered, will also be pleased to learn that no combination of Marathon and Lightweight allows you to simply run past Claymore Mines any more either. In this respect, the game has gained some sorely needed balance.
Most of the perks are the same, but one new perk deserves some mention: Hacker and Hacker Pro. With this perk it allows you to see enemy Claymores, Turrets, and Equipment. When you buy the upgrade (The game has a point systems like currency called “CoD points” as opposed to “Unlocking” a perk. Weapons still need unlocked but must be purchased as well, including attachments and customizations like reticules, reticule colors, shapes, and lens colors) you are able to “hack” the enemies turrets and if you steal a care package, you will leave the care package box behind, but booby trapped so that the enemy tries to pick it up and is killed when it detonates.
The spawn system is a terrible, buggy, piece of shit, and seems to spawn enemies randomly until you realize that the game doesn’t give a fuck if you are in the enemy spawn or not, people are going to spawn there, making turning your back once there a dumb move.
You earn money by purchasing completing “Contracts” in a given time. Harder contracts cost more but allow more time to complete and obviously yield a great ROI.
Your player emblem is now customizable with different shapes, numbers, and letters (up to ‘E’, I’m assuming to prevent offensive words being used) and up to 12 ‘layers’ you must purchase in a sort of mini-Photoshop arrangement.
All player stats, like KDR, weapons killed by, best weapon used, Death heatmaps, kills heatmaps, and other options previously available only on the CoD website, are now accessible straight from your player card. The catch is, other players can see this too. So unless you really ARE good, keep your shit talking to a minimum, cuz I WILL check. You also have the ability to save clips or entire games on your profile in “Theater” mode; it also allows you to bring your entire gameplaying party seamlessly entire the Theater to watch your clips with you. However, you can only upload (at the moment) clips UNDER 30 seconds to the CoD website, which you can link your YouTube page to to publish automatically there as well.
As I stated earlier, you can now bring up to 3 friends online with you, from the same XBox. This is very good for those who are having a casual get together and have always wanted to have your friends play with you, instead of the boredom suffered waiting for the sticks to make the rounds. But don’t plan on taking your matches serious, as the split screen takes some time to get used to and severely hampers your field of vision, and as such, your gameplay.
I’m VERY dissappointed TreyArch did not include vehicles in this game, but I digress.
The compensated for this somewhat by including all new controllable killstreaks like the RC-XD and the Gunship.
The RC-XD is a killstreak reward earned at 3 kills with no deaths. It takes you out of your character (So use it somewhere safe, like a room with one door protected by claymore) and into a remote controlled car which you drive up to an enemy and then detonate using the trigger. It is possible for the enemy to shoot it before you reach him, so choose your approach wisely. If your car is being shot at, a simple push of LB for the Turbo Button should get you through the fire to quickly kill the enemy.
The Gunship (Earned at 11-0) is a BEAST of a reward as it is something like Chopper Gunner (Now earned at 9-0) except that you are in an Apache Helicopter and you ALSO control the helicopter. So now you don’t have to wait for the chopper to swing around to get those enemies hiding driectly behind a building, you can maneuver there on your own. It throws out flairs, making it hard to bring down in just 2 missile strikes, usually requiring 4.
Another new AWESOME edition is the SR71 Blackbird (Available at 8-0; Akshun LOVES this reward). This KS reward is something like Spy Plane (The new name for UAV) except that it tells you the enemy location in REAL TIME (No scans) and even tells you what direction they’re facing and the location of all turrets and sentry guns they have on the map. While it doesn’t directly generate kills for the user, it is well worth it for the amount of kills you can indirectly rack up from the intel.
The last new feature I can think of right now is the addition of the “Combat Training” lobby.
This is a sort of “Single Player” multiplayer in which you play against dummy (or robot) players that use the names from your friends lists. You can choose the difficulty at which you want to play, and even rank up as you normally would online, however the credits, weapons, killstreaks, and stats do not transfer over once you go Live. They are exclusive that particular game mode. Combat Training is particularly good for improving, trying out new techniques, trying out new weapons, or pretending you have friends. Also, if you are one of the people that let your Xbox Live sub go as a result of the economy, I’d imagine it being a fun way to pretend your online, while getting better once you can actually do so.
All in all I would heartily recommend this game to ANYONE who is holding out. The campaign is solid. The multiplayer has been DRASTICALLY balanced and Zombies are as fun as ever. No matter what originally drew you to the series, this game appears to be the pinnacle of the years of refinement the series has had.
I urge you to at least rent the game and give it a go.
--Profit Money
No comments:
Post a Comment