So I just finished playing Call of Duty: Black Ops (CODBLOPS…) yesterday. I decided not to do a review, but a general complain…
And boy, I was disappointed. I mean, it’s a good game. It’s the best iteration that Treyarch made, rivaling with Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 scripting quality. But the game itself… No. Just no.
Let’s review the major issue that this game, and also most “new” FPS are suffering: Linearity. CODBLOPS plays and feels like a damn movie. OK, very nice, but I’d rather see a movie.
I’ll recall another game that, while it restricted my movements with its linearity, it was a really, really fun game to play: Max Payne. Max Payne, über scripted everywhere, had a very strong history (stolen from Marvel’s The Punisher, anyways) and the game was really fun to play, as I said before. Exploded the bullet time resource to the maximum.
But here, on CODBLOPS, an AAA title… While we did have a strong story with this one (amazing ending), the game feels like a movie. It just carries you until the end of the story, executing very complex actions with just the press of a button, something that we probably had seen on Medal of Honor franchise relaunch (didn’t played that one, yet).
I think, that, some 10 years ago, a title with this history could have been massive, and definitive. But today… It’s just a pretty game. And it’s sad, because CODBLOPS had so much potential.
Let’s hope that in the future, the industry will realize its mistakes.
But, the fact that this game even surpassed Modern Warfare 2’s launch in grossing sales… meh.
