I just played Call of Duty: Black Ops on PC yesterday for the first time. I was disappointed, and I certainly won't be picking it up. This new Call of Duty feels even more haphazard and rushed than Modern Warfare 2.

Just like MW2, Black Ops relies on "flare" to trick its players (or should I say viewers?) into thinking its an impressive game. Treyarch did everything they could to hide the bugs, poor gameplay, and all-around below average flow of the game, all the while taking the next step towards becoming an interactive movie as opposed to a first-person shooter.

The game loads slow and runs poor even on high-end machines. The menu screen is ridiculously gratuitous, and you're forced to watch a fairly lengthy, jittery, and flickering logo splash when you first start the game, and an equally-flashy and jittery action scene collage when you try to quit the game.

The game itself is glitchy and stutters almost to the point of being unplayable. The storyline is difficult to follow and you're thrown into situations that make little sense. Your only reprieve is that there is always that yellow arrow and distance meter that you can follow to guide you through each gauntlet.

The game is both too easy and too hard at the same time. The AI is poor and incredibly unrealistic (nothing new here). Enemies stand around like targets, follow the same path, and generally do the pop up and shoot, duck, pop up and shoot, duck pattern. At the same time, the game pushes you into enemy-saturated areas, while yelling at you to keep running, DON'T STOP!! My advice: Do stop! And don't listen to your NPC teammate's constant nagging. Clear each area of generic, predictable enemy bots before proceeding. You may think you're an FPS master, but not even a master can win against this many aimbots when all you have to hide behind is a little, apparently bullet-proof, woven basket.

Oh, and lastly, why do I have to "Press any key" to start the menu screen? (this is after I've been bombarded with the flashy logo splash cinematic and have clicked the mouse button to continue)

Series	Game Reviews
Tags	call of duty   black ops   review