That title is actually a little misleading. It should probably be: Modern Warfare 2 – The Reskinning! (Now featuring the Bungie Theatre and other new stuff!)
Guess you can tell how this review is going to go, so we might as well get started.
Honestly if you pick up CoD:BO and tell me that this is some new game with super new mechanics, you have gone full retard and should buy yourself a Styrofoam helmet and wait for the short bus to show up to take you to work.
If you have played MW2, you have played Black Ops. Yes, there some new tweaks to the game, but it’s still the same game. I am not bringing the hate onto Treyarch; they have taken the beta that was MW2 and polished that turd to what MW2 should have been within six months of release (well, actually to what should have been out of the box, but that is a rant for another time). I guess the same thing could be said for other games as well (Halo: Reach plays like Halo 2) but BO is just a better functioning MW2 with new maps and monetary system for getting your perks and attachments.
So let’s go over some stuff that is actually new:
Theater
This is a great addition and I am glad to see a developer taking stuff that is very popular in other games and putting it into their game. You can replay your games from the past seven days. When you select a game to watch in the theater, you will see a menu guide at the bottom of the screen listing what button corresponds to the theater menu screen. For example, RT controls the fast forward of the video, the A button plays or pauses the video, etc. You can also toggle the HUD on and off, watch in first person or third person view, select different players’ points-of-view, and record a clip or take a pic of that sweet ass Ballistic Knife kill you got. The theater menu also has a nice time bar at the top that visually marks your kills (green bar) and your deaths (red bar). You also have a free camera mode that lets you fly around the match check out the action.
Once you have taken a pic of that sweet kill, you can rename it and upload it to your file share, where you can check it out from the Theater.CallofDuty.Com website, as well as copy and save that pic from the website and do what ever you want to it. They are not very large (775 x 408 pixels), but they will work out great to put up in the 2o2p forums to show off your l337 skills. Below is an example of a pic from me leveling up to level 4.
You can also render up to 30 seconds of actual game footage, and as far as I know you are not charged for it. The only down side is that it uploads at a resolution of 360p, so I am assuming they are not charging because of those limitations. As a bonus they are loading it to YouTube as well so you can copy the link and send it to your buddies. You will find your screen shots and uploaded videos at Theater.CallofDuty.com. You also only have six slots to save pics and vids to. Check out the badass ballistic knife kill below.
Monetary System
Money, Money, Mooney … Mon-ney!! That is the tune that will be going through your head as your try to snatch up as much coin as possible to buy that red dot or to unlock that next perk.
Everything you want to use in this game costs money; attachments, perks, clan tag on your gun, layers for your player card -- all need greenbacks to unlock. You earn money in several different ways. You get them for kills, contracts (more on this in a bit), wins, leveling up and wager matches.
Every time you unlock a weapon and want a red dot sight, grenade launcher, silencer, extended magazine, etc. you will need to purchase it. Once you purchase it for that weapon, you own it (not sure if that resets when/if you prestige). This also applies to supplies ( i.e.claymores, stick cameras) and grenades (smoke, symtex, concussion, etc.) Once your purchase a perk or kill streak you can use it in multiple loadouts/kits, but you do not need to purchase it more then once (again, not sure if this still applies after Prestiging).
You can earn extra coin by buying Contracts, of which there are three types: Mercenary, Operations and Specialist. These are different than wager matches. You purchase these contracts (you can do one from each type, bank roll permitting), and if you complete the contract you will get paid more than you spent.
For example, in the Mercenary contracts, there is the “Hired Gun” contract that costs $25 to buy. It requires you to get three kills in a game without dying and pays out $100. The only restriction is you need to do them in a certain amount of time. It appears all contracts purchased must be completed within 40 minutes of game time. So plan it out if you are going to buy three contracts make sure you can get them all done in the allotted time or else you lose your “buy in.” You can complete these contracts in any game mode as long as the contract you purchase is not game-type specific; for example you could not complete a Domination contract in Team Deathmatch.
Wager Matches
I am not going to get a lot into this; there are a ton of videos and explanations out on the inter-webs, but basically they are FFA game types that you all ante up some cash. If you come in the top three spots you cash in, otherwise you are assed out.
Player Cards and other customization:
Remember those banners you unlocked in MW2 and got to select them? Well, now you can make your own banners in BO. The player card works on a layer system much like that of Forza franchise when decorating your car. You purchase a layer, and then get to purchase a piece from that layer to put on your player card. You can zoom in, zoom out, tilt, rotate, move left, right, up, down -- almost any damn thing you like. You can then put layers on top of each other to create different images. I give the over and under of 48 hours before someone makes a image of a dong being swallowed or a set of Gigantic Tits being made (I am already working on this one … I’ll keep you posted on my progress).
Other customization includes player camo selections, red dot sight types and colors, colored clan tags, gun camos, etc. it really is almost ridiculous the amount of customizing you can do in BO compared to what you did in MW2. Just remember everything is going to cost money, so keep making yo’money, playa!!
That is basically all the new multiplayer items in Black Ops.
Final Thoughts
Gameplay, mechanics, perks, are all pretty much the same thing as MW2. Some of the names of perks have changed and some have been removed, but for the most part you guys have all seen it before.
I have not run into any Stabby McStabbersons or rampant noob tubes. This is probably due to the unlimited ammo for the grenade launchers being removed and the commando perk being taken out.
Grenades do not seem to have the same blast radius as in MW2, but that does not mean people are not spaming them into common choke points. So pay attention for incoming pineapples.
Kill steaks do not stack kills on top of your existing kills; which is nice/sucks depending on your camp of thought on this.
I should also mention that XP and money are two different things. XP levels you up, but you do not spend XP when you purchase something, you only spend cash.
Overall this game appears stable and has some nice little tweaks to it, but if you thought there was going to be some drastic differences in gameplay, perks, mechanics, you are going to be disappointed. BO is a polished game. It’s what MW2 should have been.
Will this game kill off Reach for the top spot in the XBL charts? Maybe for the first two weeks of release, but after that the shinny newness will wear off and only time will tell.
If anything I believe BO will kill the ranking for MW2, and it will plummet off the charts. After all, it’s the same game.
