Call of Duty: Black Ops – Not Your Father’s FPS

This week, fans of online first-person shooter (FPS) video games rejoiced with the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops.  In the first 24 hours after launch, more than 5.6 million people brought the game home on disc and fired up their XBox 360′s, Playstation 3′s, and even their Nintendo Wii’s to get a piece of the action.  Since the game launched this past Tuesday, I’ve read exactly two reviews (this one and this one).  After the second review, I decided to quit reading them.  I fired up the old wood chipper and fed all the reviews I’d been planning to read right into that baby (grumble, grind, buzzzzz).  They all went the way of Steve Buscemi’s character in Fargo.

Unfortunately, all the reviews I was planning to read were on my PC.

With the demise of the reviews, I lost the most tried and true method of learning what the game was all about.  I did some research and decided that the only method remaining at my disposal, since none of my friends were answering their phones for some reason, was to actually sit down and play the game.  I was going to have to gut my way through it and… (gasp!) write my own review.  I steeled my nerves, stocked up on highly caffeinated beverages, and dove in head first.

If you know my opinions on the majority of game reviews, you’ll know that I’m not a fan of listing a few things I liked about a game, a few things I didn’t like, and assigning numbers to a bunch of different categories.  I’m not even a fan of “star” ratings for games.

Roger Ebert’s thumbs?  Use them for something else.

I want to know more about the game than a reviewer can convey with a few numbers or symbols.

If you want a more traditional review of this game, check out fellow Geekcentricity writer Jonathan’s review here.

Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

My Review of Call of Duty: Black Ops

I can summarize the most important thing about this game in a single sentence: “This is not your father’s FPS.”

The FPS genre came into its own back in 1992 with Wolfenstein 3D.  While that game did have a definite narrative element (The protagonist, B.J. Blazkowicz, is an Allied spy who is captured and imprisoned in Castle Wolfenstein. His goals are to escape the castle, stop the Nazi experimentation with biological and chemical weapons, and eventually to confront a mech-suit-encased Adolf Hitler), that narrative was reduced to almost nil while the player ran around a maze of rooms and hallways killing hordes of genetically enhanced Nazis and finally the aforementioned Robo-Fuhrer.

I’m willing to wager that many of the players who took Wolfenstein 3D for a spin didn’t even know the protagonist’s name, nor did they care one whit about his story.

I haz a gun!  BANG! BANG!  I can kill Nazis!

Call of Duty (2003)

Cut to 2003.

The new FPS on the block is a game by Activision called Call of Duty.  The narrative arc in this game is a little more convoluted.  The player fills the shoes of several characters across three different campaigns.  None of the three protagonists really has any link to the others.  The narrative isn’t even really their story.  They participate in the greater story of the unfolding events of World War II.

Both Wolfenstein 3D and that original Call of Duty were excellent games by the standards of their respective times.  They were critically acclaimed and well-received by countless thousands of gamers.

Let’s face it, FPS fans were just not all that concerned with the strength of the narrative in their games.

They wanted carnage.

The latest installment in Activision’s Call of Duty series delivers carnage in spades.

It also delivers a strong, cohesive narrative arc.  I’ll admit that the story has some holes and flaws, and that its integration into the mechanics of the game isn’t always well-executed, but it is there and it permeates the entire game.  There is no escaping it.  Best of all, it’s generally well-done.

Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010)

This is not your father’s FPS.

Since Wolfenstein 3D was released about 18 years ago, first-person shooters have changed.  The graphics have improved.  The controls, for the most part, have become easier to handle.  The selection of weapons has greatly expanded.  And now, the narrative arc has become the driving force behind the game.

Sure, it was there in Modern Warfare 2.  That game had a definite narrative.  The U.S. was being invaded.  You were the only one who could stop it.  Cut scenes were used to invest the player emotionally in the story.  Still, it was possible, for most of the game, to put the game’s narrative aside and just create carnage.

Black Ops ups the narrative ante.  There’s no escape from the protagonist’s mental (and often physical) hell.  Even when the player is thrust into the shoes of a different character, the story continues to unravel in front of you.  Gone are the independent campaigns of the original Call of Duty.  This game wants to get under your skin.  It wants to crawl into your head.  It toys with your mind.  Sure, it uses plenty of cheap theatrics to get there (flashes of light, repetitive vocalizations, eerie sound effects, ghosting).  It also uses buckets of blood, a huge display of pyrotechnics, and a cast of thousands (someday, CGI characters will be joining the SAG, mark my words).  Ed Harris and the rest of the cast deliver excellent performances in bringing this game to life.

Are some of its methods cheesy?  You bet.  Is it a ton of fun?  It was for me.

If you have no clue what I’m talking about, then you’ve obviously been playing the multiplayer portion of this game online.  That’s fine.  I know many people who won’t even touch the campaign mode a single time while they own this game.  They’re probably already into the prestige levels.  Or, they’ve already ditched this game and gone back to Modern Warfare 2.

If you want some neat cut scenes, be prepared for a treat after you complete the campaign.

Also, if you’re a fan of old school top-down shooters like Contra, then escape from the chair in the game’s interactive lobby and wander over to the computer in the corner.  It’s a DOS machine.  You remember DOS, right?

No?

Get off my lawn!!!

If you play around for a bit, you’ll discover an addictive little game called DOA (Dead Ops Arcade).

What are your thoughts on Black Ops?  Did you like it?  Hate it?  Make sweet love to it by candlelight?  I wanna know!

Now, let me strap you into this chair while you tell me all about it.  I want you to start with Cuba.  What happened while you were in Cuba?