Black Ops is a poor quality game: A long winded hate speech.
Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2010 2:20 am
Yeah. This is going to be one of those posts. My apologies. It's also going to be a veritable wall of hateful text. Once again, my apologies.
But before I say anything else, let me make a few of disclaimers.
1 - The following hatred is directed at the single player portion of the game. The multiplayer is actually alright. I don't particularly like it, but I can't honestly call it bad.
2 - I don't hate the Call of Duty series as a whole. I have fond memories of the original CoD. And World at War was kinda-sorta enjoyable. Modern Warfare was actually pretty good. Mostly because it felt like some actual writers had been involved at some point. Sure, MW2 dropped the ball somewhat, but, balance issues aside, there was still some fun to be had with the multiplayer.
3 - No, I am not writing this because I think that hating a popular top-selling game makes me cool. I'm doing it because I regret spending my hard-earned dollars on the game and writing a long and vindictive post on the internet will make me feel better.
...
Right, now that stuff is out of the way... time to crank the criticism. Let me begin by sinking my fingernails into the great oozing pimple that Black Ops laughably refers to as a story.
(This part will contain huge spoilers. Just sayin'.)
So, Black Ops has this Big Twist going on. Turns out your character, the one with the hilariously out of place Australian accent, has been brainwashed by the Russians. (Because Russians are evil don't ya know?) Now, to be fair, that could actually be a pretty interesting angle. That is, if it wasn't given away by clumsy attempts at foreshadowing halfway through the damn game.
Fairly early on a cutscene shows Mason meeting with President Kennedy. This is proceeded by Mason getting severe headaches and hearing a string of number in his head. Then we get a hallucinatory glimpse of him drawing a sidearm and aiming it at Kennedy's head. That's the first half of the twist given away. Mason has been brainwashed into acting as a double agent.
A bit later on Mason starts repeating Reznov's lines. "Steiner, Dragovich, that other guy, all must die" etc etc. Annnnnnd that's the second half of the twist given away. Reznov has hijacked the brainwashing process for his own purposes. Of course the game acts like this is all still a big mystery right up until the Big Reveal where it finally spells everything out in giant, glowing retard-proof letters and says, "Well, are you shocked? Are you surprised? Are you reeling with disbelief? Have you forgotten about how Bioshock did this several times better? Have you? Huh? Huh?"
Another central problem with the story is the overarching threat. Apparently the Russians (eeeeeevil Russians) have planted a whole lot of nasty chemical bombs throughout the USA and have a whole load of brainwashed sleeper agents ready and waiting to set off said bombs once they receive an activation code via radio broadcast. (One thinks it would be a lot simpler to just drop the chemical bombs from a couple of planes but whatever, we'll run with it.) So once the game has finished coughing it's Big Twist into your lap, you are sent off to and prevent this broadcast. Fair enough I guess. Problem is, before the explosive finale, this whole situation is mentioned a grand total of twice. The game screws around for about 90% of it's duration and then in that final 10% suddenly says, "Oh hey, by the way, the entire free world is under threat. Y'know, generic evil Russians and all. So yeah... you might want to get on that."
And then there are the characters. Oh the characters. Usually I would be tempted to call them cliche. But that would suggest at least some vestigial degree of characterization. At least enough to file them away under various trite and uninteresting stereotypes. But they don't even have that. Woods, Bowman, Weaver, Mason, Hudson... they all amount to so many cardboard cutouts. I cannot think of a single defining trait for even one of them. Of course the game thinks it has a wonderful cast on its hands. I kept getting the impression that I was expected to feel something when the characters started to die their hilarious deaths. That is to say, feel something other than, "Oh thank God I don't have to listen to him any more."
Actually, I would like to pause the flow of hatred long enough to say that Reznov was kind of cool. He was so hammy and over the top that it was impossible not to like him. Of course the game kinda buggered it up (resume hatred) by writing him out of existence toward the end. "Oh hey, that one notable character? That one you couldn't help but like? Yeah... he actually died in level 2."
(Phew. It's good to get that out of my system. Incidentally, if you're still reading up to now then you have my gratitude... and my pity.)
...
There is of course a rather obvious counter argument to all of this. The game doesn't need to have a great story. It's just Call of Duty. It doesn't have to be anything more then a big, dumb 10-hour action sequence. It's just the video game equivalent of The Expendables or something.
Well... y'know what? Good point. I actually agree with that. Although, it makes me question the need to cram all the bad writing into the end product. But hey, I guess the story does serve to give some context, regardless of it woeful quality. The fact is, not every game has to be work of art. Not every game has to show that video games could eventually be the equal of literature and cinema. Sometimes a game can just be about fun gameplay.
...
Yeah... speaking of gameplay... sorry, but no. Black Ops's gameplay simply gets drowned under the weight of it own scripting.
Now, there is nothing wrong with scripting in games if it is well done. Heck, some of my favourite games are heavily scripted ones. But Black Ops goes one step further and keeps trying to script the players actions as if they were an NPC.
At one point in the first level I ran into a room, saw an enemy and shot him. He didn't die. He didn't react at all. So shot him again. Still no reaction. Then he shot me and killed me. Back to last checkpoint. Retry. Run in to the room. Shoot the enemy. Still no reaction. He shoots me, I die. Back to last checkpoint. Retry. Run in, shoot, no reaction, die, checkpoint etc. But this time as I die I notice the enemy being killed by one of my poorly characterized NPC buddies in a scripted sequence. So the next time I let the NPC go in first. Sure enough, the dastardly enemy gets killed in a scripted sequence. In other words, the game was screwing me over with unkillable enemies so it could show me its precious cinematic moment.
In another part your helicopter crashes (sound familiar?) and the player character gets thrown into a lake. The player then exits the lake by climbing onto a sampan. But God help you if you try and exit the lake any other way. Try to swim to the nearby shore? Death by mysterious instakill. Try to climb onto a different boat? Instakill. Try to climb onto the other side of the correct boat? Instakill.
In yet another part the game slapped me with a Game Over screen every time I wandered more then a few metres from the predetermined path. Once during the Kowloon level it gave me a game over for accidentally killing a civilian.
The smothering scripting is the main problem with the gameplay, but there are plenty of others. The checkpoints can be utterly retarded. Several times I was forced to start a level over because the game gave me a checkpoint while I was standing next to a live grenade, kicking off a sequence of load-bang-die-load-bang-die that would have been hilarious if it hadn't indicated an hour or so of lost progress. Oh, and the cutscenes and occasionally even the gameplay are constantly overlaid with flickering white lights and fleeting images apparently designed to give the player a headache.
Allow me finish on an ever so slightly positive note. The Vietnam tunnel section was pretty good. The Kowloon level had some fun moments. The level where you play as Reznov had awesome music. The gameplay is perfectly adequate standard-issue FPS when it manages to get away from the prohibitive scripting.
...
TL;DR: Black Ops has bad writing, non-existant characters and gameplay that is frequently ruined by its apparent desire to be a bad movie instead of a bad game.
But before I say anything else, let me make a few of disclaimers.
1 - The following hatred is directed at the single player portion of the game. The multiplayer is actually alright. I don't particularly like it, but I can't honestly call it bad.
2 - I don't hate the Call of Duty series as a whole. I have fond memories of the original CoD. And World at War was kinda-sorta enjoyable. Modern Warfare was actually pretty good. Mostly because it felt like some actual writers had been involved at some point. Sure, MW2 dropped the ball somewhat, but, balance issues aside, there was still some fun to be had with the multiplayer.
3 - No, I am not writing this because I think that hating a popular top-selling game makes me cool. I'm doing it because I regret spending my hard-earned dollars on the game and writing a long and vindictive post on the internet will make me feel better.
...
Right, now that stuff is out of the way... time to crank the criticism. Let me begin by sinking my fingernails into the great oozing pimple that Black Ops laughably refers to as a story.
(This part will contain huge spoilers. Just sayin'.)
So, Black Ops has this Big Twist going on. Turns out your character, the one with the hilariously out of place Australian accent, has been brainwashed by the Russians. (Because Russians are evil don't ya know?) Now, to be fair, that could actually be a pretty interesting angle. That is, if it wasn't given away by clumsy attempts at foreshadowing halfway through the damn game.
Fairly early on a cutscene shows Mason meeting with President Kennedy. This is proceeded by Mason getting severe headaches and hearing a string of number in his head. Then we get a hallucinatory glimpse of him drawing a sidearm and aiming it at Kennedy's head. That's the first half of the twist given away. Mason has been brainwashed into acting as a double agent.
A bit later on Mason starts repeating Reznov's lines. "Steiner, Dragovich, that other guy, all must die" etc etc. Annnnnnd that's the second half of the twist given away. Reznov has hijacked the brainwashing process for his own purposes. Of course the game acts like this is all still a big mystery right up until the Big Reveal where it finally spells everything out in giant, glowing retard-proof letters and says, "Well, are you shocked? Are you surprised? Are you reeling with disbelief? Have you forgotten about how Bioshock did this several times better? Have you? Huh? Huh?"
Another central problem with the story is the overarching threat. Apparently the Russians (eeeeeevil Russians) have planted a whole lot of nasty chemical bombs throughout the USA and have a whole load of brainwashed sleeper agents ready and waiting to set off said bombs once they receive an activation code via radio broadcast. (One thinks it would be a lot simpler to just drop the chemical bombs from a couple of planes but whatever, we'll run with it.) So once the game has finished coughing it's Big Twist into your lap, you are sent off to and prevent this broadcast. Fair enough I guess. Problem is, before the explosive finale, this whole situation is mentioned a grand total of twice. The game screws around for about 90% of it's duration and then in that final 10% suddenly says, "Oh hey, by the way, the entire free world is under threat. Y'know, generic evil Russians and all. So yeah... you might want to get on that."
And then there are the characters. Oh the characters. Usually I would be tempted to call them cliche. But that would suggest at least some vestigial degree of characterization. At least enough to file them away under various trite and uninteresting stereotypes. But they don't even have that. Woods, Bowman, Weaver, Mason, Hudson... they all amount to so many cardboard cutouts. I cannot think of a single defining trait for even one of them. Of course the game thinks it has a wonderful cast on its hands. I kept getting the impression that I was expected to feel something when the characters started to die their hilarious deaths. That is to say, feel something other than, "Oh thank God I don't have to listen to him any more."
Actually, I would like to pause the flow of hatred long enough to say that Reznov was kind of cool. He was so hammy and over the top that it was impossible not to like him. Of course the game kinda buggered it up (resume hatred) by writing him out of existence toward the end. "Oh hey, that one notable character? That one you couldn't help but like? Yeah... he actually died in level 2."
(Phew. It's good to get that out of my system. Incidentally, if you're still reading up to now then you have my gratitude... and my pity.)
...
There is of course a rather obvious counter argument to all of this. The game doesn't need to have a great story. It's just Call of Duty. It doesn't have to be anything more then a big, dumb 10-hour action sequence. It's just the video game equivalent of The Expendables or something.
Well... y'know what? Good point. I actually agree with that. Although, it makes me question the need to cram all the bad writing into the end product. But hey, I guess the story does serve to give some context, regardless of it woeful quality. The fact is, not every game has to be work of art. Not every game has to show that video games could eventually be the equal of literature and cinema. Sometimes a game can just be about fun gameplay.
...
Yeah... speaking of gameplay... sorry, but no. Black Ops's gameplay simply gets drowned under the weight of it own scripting.
Now, there is nothing wrong with scripting in games if it is well done. Heck, some of my favourite games are heavily scripted ones. But Black Ops goes one step further and keeps trying to script the players actions as if they were an NPC.
At one point in the first level I ran into a room, saw an enemy and shot him. He didn't die. He didn't react at all. So shot him again. Still no reaction. Then he shot me and killed me. Back to last checkpoint. Retry. Run in to the room. Shoot the enemy. Still no reaction. He shoots me, I die. Back to last checkpoint. Retry. Run in, shoot, no reaction, die, checkpoint etc. But this time as I die I notice the enemy being killed by one of my poorly characterized NPC buddies in a scripted sequence. So the next time I let the NPC go in first. Sure enough, the dastardly enemy gets killed in a scripted sequence. In other words, the game was screwing me over with unkillable enemies so it could show me its precious cinematic moment.
In another part your helicopter crashes (sound familiar?) and the player character gets thrown into a lake. The player then exits the lake by climbing onto a sampan. But God help you if you try and exit the lake any other way. Try to swim to the nearby shore? Death by mysterious instakill. Try to climb onto a different boat? Instakill. Try to climb onto the other side of the correct boat? Instakill.
In yet another part the game slapped me with a Game Over screen every time I wandered more then a few metres from the predetermined path. Once during the Kowloon level it gave me a game over for accidentally killing a civilian.
The smothering scripting is the main problem with the gameplay, but there are plenty of others. The checkpoints can be utterly retarded. Several times I was forced to start a level over because the game gave me a checkpoint while I was standing next to a live grenade, kicking off a sequence of load-bang-die-load-bang-die that would have been hilarious if it hadn't indicated an hour or so of lost progress. Oh, and the cutscenes and occasionally even the gameplay are constantly overlaid with flickering white lights and fleeting images apparently designed to give the player a headache.
Allow me finish on an ever so slightly positive note. The Vietnam tunnel section was pretty good. The Kowloon level had some fun moments. The level where you play as Reznov had awesome music. The gameplay is perfectly adequate standard-issue FPS when it manages to get away from the prohibitive scripting.
...
TL;DR: Black Ops has bad writing, non-existant characters and gameplay that is frequently ruined by its apparent desire to be a bad movie instead of a bad game.