I love this
game, the opening is a little weird (the whole marathon man/24 vibe it's got going on) the flashback missions have been fun so far, and like I said short learning curve and I'm loving online.
As with most war games the first mission is basically an introduction to the controls. They run you through aiming, firing, attachment usage, weapon swapping, weapon pick up/exchange, item usage, and a little bit of driving. In black ops you play a dude called macon, you were part of a 3 man team who was assigned to kill castro. After some Cuban guerillas come into the bar and start throwing their weight around you are on a mad dash out of the bar to escape for the "kill castro" mission. In all honesty killing castro was the easy part, I didn't die til we tried to escape. Word to the wise close up that light machine gun chews up and and all people in front of you, once you are fighting the long distance foes, ditch it for the AK-47 to your right. It may be on single fire but thats all you need to head shot most of Castro's special protection force.
Oh and keep your ears open for the "lets keep going cues" I took quiet a few shells in my kiester behind not listening to those. Now if this is your first call of duty game, get ready unlike Modern Warfare 2 there is no "we're gonna train you in the safety of a firing range" tutorial, it's figure out what is the same and what is different and get to it. Oh and by the way those cuban police cars do not blow up quickly when hit with a grenade from your gun, just warning you if you roll out there like your name is Leroy Brown they will bury you on the spot.
I also finished the russian labor camp mission, let me just say the russians cheat BADLY, you start out with a knife and will be able to pick up other guns along the way(and trust me you want to do so, oh and stay out of Sergie's way just trust me). You get to use quite a few interesting weapons dring the Russian labor camp mission.
Now let's be honest ain nobody that interested in teh campaign, it's a first person shooter in 2010 yes some Trophy collectors may play through the whole mission, but what you want to know about IS THE ONLINE PLAY. Man I love this game online, it took me a little bit over an hour to start getting as many kills as I had deaths in a match, but I think I mostly got it down. I am having a kvetch moment though I can't figure out YET how to place my C4, past that I have gotten a few care packages, called in a few spy planes got the ability to change my kill streak rewards and have been captain Rc car killer a few times, I mean they give you a verbal warning that it's coming but you still ain ready when it does. By the way hit R1 to get the car to explode, I damn near had 4 people but I didn't know how to make it explode yet.
Just like in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 the "base" configurations Give you access to guns you won't get til later in the game as well as some ordinance. They have also gone from 2 of everything to 3. I mean it's still a primary and a secondary weapon, they haven't given you three weapons, or let you go all I got it all like in Halo:Reach, but they have gone from 2 grenade types to 3 carry along slots, you get a Lethal(you frags, Semtex and one more that slips my mind right now I've only played it through the one sitting), a tactical( willie pete, concussion, nova gas, one more).
Let me pause for a second, to all my Willie Pete, or White Phosphorous users in previous online games this ain the blow them up as set anybody nearby on fire Willie pete's that you are used to. This one does a LITTLE bit of damage and obscures the view instead, of course this is supposed to be a more covert game so I guess the big explodey damage of the old willie pete was a little much. Okay back to the online discussion.
You also get an item, C4 falls in the item category(where before it would take the place of your main grenade)(camera spike and 2 more) so you roll out with 3 ways to distribute death on people besides your two main weapons. So if you've seen someone toss their one lethal and their one tactical don't get too happy they may be on their custom configuration and may have sucked you in for a trip to ride the C4 train.
You also get 3 perks now and they have broken them into separate sections So now you can not only do Scavenger and Ninja at the same time, you can add on one more bit of fun past that. Remember these are my first initial thoughts after playing for about 4 hours before I went to sleep last night, I haven't really gotten in depth yet.
Another new change to online play is "cod" points. Not only do you still gain experience and level up but now instead of having to WAIT to level up and complete challenges earn a lot of you add ons, attachments, and new equipment types each match you points instead so wait that red dot scope? Kill enough people to buy and and you can have it. By the way you can buy a flamethrower attachment right out the box now after you play a few matches in the early levels. I have bought some crap haven't really gone through and decked out my weapons like I did in MW2 yet, I have shot up to level 11 quick as hell though. You still will get in some rooms with people with lousy connections(yes the red dot kings will still exist, why don't you folks get some real broadband so we can all play evenly) but this game is a lot more frantic.
Warning to my fellow new players, Nuketown is a kill box. It doesn't matter if you like close in maps if this is your first map expect to get spawn raped(for those who don't know what spawn raping/camping is basically it's when someone is waiting in your respawn point after you die to RAPE YOU WITH BULLETS repeatedly, yeah just enjoy that) if you don't know all the doors, windows and openings(and no you don't so don't even mention your superior skill right here) somebody is either gonna team up on you or else they are going to rush you and it's going to get real ugly real quick. The online pacing was good though. They have spread out maps, they have close in maps they have medium maps as the campaign seems to jump through various points in recent(last 40 years) history some of the maps I have played are: Hanoi, Nuketown(think Indiana jones and the crystal skull, yes THAT type of NUKETOWN), Firing Range(which really is a training firing range, with moving "targets"), WMD, Jungle, and this weird kind of looks like an oil refinery place so far. lots of places to sneak around and get snuck up on.
As you level up new options are available to you(you don't get to create a custom class until you hit level 4), new ways to tweak your configuration(I believe you get 8-10 custom classes now), you get access to challenger, contracts, new ways to customize your online characters look. The contracts system is fun, bet a little bit(or a lot if you are feeling froggy) of you already earned COD bucks that during the next match or series of matches you can complete up to 3 types of contracts:number of kills over a period of time, Number of wins over a period of time(or ranking in a match, during a win over a period of time) and I forget the last one. And by period of time the counter is on the body and it says "In game life", which means actually playing missions, so if you have a long drawn out match with not a lot of kills and you took a "kill" contract expect to lose your money(or have to hustle in the next match). The harder and more detailed the contract the more money you win. So the just 20 kill contract doesn't pay as much as the 25 kills with the dragonov contract, or the 75 with the shotgun(which I'm not touching til I get the spas-12). You also have to level up to unlock certain weapons before you can buy them, but once bought got the COD dough you can trick it out.
So far I have tried 3 weapon classes SQB, Assault, and the one with the shotgun as the main weapon, oh did I forget to mention that shotguns are no longer secondary weapons, you can use shotgun as your main and have a pistol, a launcher or a "special" as your secondary weapon. The special I saw was a bowie knife and something else but you get a single canister launcher, an RPG, and a china lake as your launchers now, your basic pistols I have access to a makarov, m1911(I think) and the one you start with, it's nothing special. You can add attachments to your pistols.
They've made the AUG an assault rifle now, it's dropped in class from an LMG. Oh another nice new feature you can upload your "favorite match moments" (up to 6 of them) to the community theater, as well as clips of your favorite matches(did you go on a 6 kill or 17 kill run, cut that clip out and load it up to clips) or if you have a funny screen shot from when you got somebody hey snip that and let folks see that too. So it seems they have gone along with everyone else and included some bragging rights items into Black ops it's kind of fun, you can actually watch your whole match over again and see it from other peoples angles see how you got somebody and how they got you. I was trying to get some sleep last night so I didn't go through and super parse any of my matches yet, I'm at a .66 ratio so yes I had died lots but I'm starting to either even up or else stand kills on top of deaths in many matches now(it's been 4 hours and I haven't played every map I'm still gonna be under for a while). Oops by .66 ration I mean kill to death ratio: when you divide my kills by my deaths I have more deaths than kills, I've had a few matches where I had a bunch more kills then deaths(haven't run the table and not died yet, who doesn't die in a FPS). I've been playing team deathmatch I haven't engaged in a lot of trash talking yet because I'm still getting my feet wet, there are folks who have had this game since 12:01am Tuesday morning(NEEEEEEEEEWBS) so there will be some spankings I am going to take, but again it's only been 4 days you ain that far ahead of me yet, and it's a first person shooter point and shoot, Aim Down the Sight and it's all gravy.
Okay word of warning I know some have seen the scenes where you can sick dogs on people, well you can also shoot those dogs to keep them from killing you. So while it's not a MAIN portion of the game yes you may hear some dogs whimpering. that means somebody almost got the jaws of death and weren't having it. I just got to the level where I could switch my kill streaks(not too long ago) so while I have gotten the rc car(3 kills once you can switch) I haven't doused anybody with napalm YET, I did get a Valkyrie missile though from a care package, gotta learn how to use those better supposedly thats a remote control missile.
Aiight I called this initial thoughts so that I could get some sleep last night and then finish playing it today to get a more in depth take on it, the full review will be coming in a few days but I just wanted to talk about what I liked.
