Call of Duty: Black Ops

[Jae Onasi]

I loved the E3 trailers. It might actually pull me in to playing an FPS, especially if I can play multi-player with some buddies.

[Mav]

I'm not convinced 'til Price makes a cameo appearance to deliver a 2-minute philosophical monologue.

His appearance will be in a special sniping mission that starts as a covert op and turns into a blood bath, only instead of an urban wasteland, or a snowy sub base, we will be in a sweaty jungle... with a POOH-MUH!

[DarthParametric]

Apparently Black Ops could be "the most helicopterest game of all time":

 

[youtube=hd]_YYSlycEQCA

[TriggerGod]

I totally did not see this coming

 

And by that I mean it was totally expected. For you people too lazy to read the article, we can expect Zombies to make a return.

[JediAthos]

So release day is Tuesday...anyone planning on buying at release? I'm not at the moment...but the game is on my short list and I will probably get it as some point.

[Ctrl Alt Del]

I, for one, do not ever recall seeing a major-budgeted WWI game.

 

That's because no one would like to play a game where you must stand still for weeks on a trench in which your only enemy are poisonous gases, diseases and feces.

[Sabretooth]

That's because no one would like to play a game where you must stand still for weeks on a trench in which your only enemy are poisonous gases, diseases and feces.

 

That one sentence is pretty well-embedded in my mind. Did we read it from the same source? I can't remember where I picked it up from.

[Ctrl Alt Del]

That one sentence is pretty well-embedded in my mind. Did we read it from the same source? I can't remember where I picked it up from.

 

Random history books? Heh, I suppose that's just how we all picture the WWI.

[Mav]

I don't think I'll get it at release since nobody I know seems to be getting it for PC, so there's that, plus the fact that these games are $60 USD at launch now instead of 50.

[Sabretooth]

I don't know, unlike MW2, it sounds like this one might actually be worth that much.

 

/hypocrite

[Ztalker]

I'd like to advise everyone who would go out and buy this to leave it alone.

It's the worst piece of coding I have ever seen, including unpatched Neverwinter Nights 2 and Battlefield 2.

 

My PC meets all the necessary system specs, even more. My video card is 512 MB (256 above the minimum) I have an AMD 4600+, 3 gigs of ram (1 gig more the needed) and I attempted to play it on Windows 7.

 

It's impossible. Seriously. I turned everything down to the lowers, which made it look like a Playstation 1 shooter, and still had single player and multiplayer lag. It's probably the worst 50 quid I have ever spent.

And this comes from someone who bought Aplha Protocol too. That was MUCH more bearable then this. I played it for 2 hours (or tried) and I'll uninstall it right away.

 

Best part is, everyone has it. And no word yet on how they are going to fix this.

 

Mind you; My PC could show my Bad Company 2 one of the highest visual settings.

 

Again, it's impossible to play. Literally.

[Sabretooth]

Is your version patched? A lot of people say that the lag was fixed with the first patch. Probably may not affect performance, though.

 

Saying that it is worse than Alpha Protocol is just cruel though, Black Ops is just five hours long.

 

FIX DAT LAG

 

Didn't realise there was a plain config.cfg tucked away inside the Players folder of the game. There's two versions of the file with independent settings, for the two independent .exe files. Editing it, I managed to get the performance to finally become smooth and totally playable like Modern Warfare 2.

 

This is thanks to the genius minds at Treyarch who decide for some reason that allowing players to turn off Smooth Smoke Edges is going to make their game is a failure.

 

Inside the config.cfg file of your choice, scroll down till you reach the values prefixed "r_", these are the graphics options. Here's the ones I know (doesn't include options already available in-game):

 

seta r_blur_allowed

Not sure exactly which blur, but I disabled it. Possibly the blur you get when you die?

 

seta r_distortion

The mild distortion effects you get when you fire a weapon or are looking over fire. Not much of an fps hit, though.

 

seta r_dof_enable

Depth of Field. I turn it off as a matter of taste (thanks for the no-option, Treyarch!) but it gives you some extra fps.

 

seta r_glow_allowed

Very mild fps hit. It removes the slightly magical-looking glow you get at some places. Because you know, you can never have enough bloom.

 

r_motionblur_enable

Self-explanatory.

 

r_multithreaded_device

Something of a biggie. It's a wonder why Treyarch chose to keep this disabled by default, but if you have a multi-core processor, you should turn this off.

 

r_specular

FPS Hit, makes things look shiny. It looks terrible when off, so I recommend you leave it on.

 

r_use_driver_convergence

Not sure, but the Internet told me to keep it on.

 

r_zfeather

This little ****ing value is the Smooth Smoke option IW always provides in their games. Disabling this should give you a sizable FPS boost and almost no noticeable loss in quality.

 

r_waterSheetingFX_allowed

Possibly some water-enhancing technology? I turned it off.

[Lord of Hunger]

A friend and I got Black Ops for XBox and have had a really awesome time with it. This easily beats Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer. Actually, beats is an understatement. It DESTROYS Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer. The weapon damage, relative to game modes and lag, is far more realistic. I myself am not a major fan of realism, but there comes a point where it affects game balancing, and Modern Warfare 2 was insanely unbalanced.

 

Player tactics on Hardcore are awesome to watch and participate in. I've seen people pulling off maneuvers in Black Ops that you simply could not do on Mod 2. Noobtubing, camping, run & gun, etc. are all still there but in less quantity (at least on Hardcore) and are used as legit tactics rather than as a spam.

 

The COD points system works extremely well. While it might get annoying to find so many things worth money that you would think you'd get for the XP, it manages to preserve the balancing (not everyone has claymores or uses them) and highlight alternatives (some use stuff like the camera spike).

 

There are still some spams. The RC-XD is the most common, parallel to the Predator missile on Mod 2. However, it is not only destroyable but if you have flak jacket you will probably survive. Irregardless, it is so common that it gets annoying to hear "enemy RC-XD has been spotted in your area" every few seconds on Core/Normalcore. Helicopters are even more powerful as they are harder to kill, however they are less common. Also, they removed tactical nuke which in my opinion was a good move. Sure it's fun to just "win" the game (if you count vaporizing the battlefield as a victory) but it was also incredibly cheap.

 

Wager matches have an issue: In one mode, when someone is knifed in the back, they get demoted in weapon tiers. This tends to put them with dual pistols while everyone else has assault rifles or better. One could say "learn to play" but those dual pistols have very little range and so inaccurate compared to any other weapon aside from some of the shotguns, so if you get unlucky you tend to be stuck in the lower ranks with no way to ascend other than a miracle.

 

Again, lag is still an issue. On XBox, you will find yourself unloading entire clips into someone else's head and being killed by a single bullet to the knee.

 

If you liked quickscoping on Mod 2, it's not entirely gone. It is, however, extremely hard. The animation prevents instantaneous aiming with the sniper rifles. I only recommend quickscoping to those who were true masters on Mod 2. Sniping in this game is mostly sniping in the real world sense: Long range single shot kills, preferably to the head. Sniping is very balanced: at range with a good overwatch position a sniper can dominate, at close range they're pretty much screwed. My friend and I took advantage of this: he'd snipe with the Druganov using a variable zoom (in our opinion, one of THE best attachments you can buy) while I'd set up a claymore and over his position. We'd rake in a good amount of kills before the entire enemy team had to move in on us or someone landed a lucky shot on us (this strategy worked very well on "Jungle").

 

Split screen is one of the best features of this game. At last, someone decided to make a major co-op multiplayer game for XBox that wasn't Halo or Gears (nothing wrong with either, IMO). Individualist online gaming is PC's department, not XBox.

 

The major flaw in Black Ops multiplayer is the spawn system, which is far worse than Mod 2's. Spawning right in front of enemies is very common, and irritating.

 

Nazi Zombies is fun as always. Haven't tried the hidden minigames yet. The single player campaign is good until the ending, which is somewhat lacking. The story is very deep, but a bit hard to follow unless you're into that sort of plot. The plot twist is interesting. The Soviet Communists are heavily demonized

*SPOILER*

Show spoiler

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but mostly because they are actually part Nazi

which I'm guessing did not help sales in Russia. If you are prone to seizures, do not play! Hell, I was worried that I was going to have one with the endless red and white flashing.

 

I have read that the PC version had serious issues with servers and performance (the latter fixed by a patch). I am guessing this is Activision not getting that across the board support is generally a good idea. Then again, there are few true PC gaming companies at this point.

 

So yeah, I recommend Black Ops for the XBox. I'd say it's worth that $60.

 

Oh, and the crossbow is badass.

[Rabish Bini]

Halo's multiplayer is better in every conceivable way

[Titanius Anglesmith]

Reach was absolutely horrible. I'm actually enjoying Black Ops, which is definitely an improvement over Modern Warfare 2.

[TriggerGod]

Hoping to get Black Ops through steam's giveaway, otherwise I'll probably end up getting it for Christmas. Being the COD fan I am, I was even a little wary about spending 60 dollars on a COD game after MW2. But after hearing about how good it is from pretty much everyone (except the PC users, who whined incessantly about how its laggy on multiplayer), I'll definitely wanna get it for Christmas.

 

which is definitely an improvement over Modern Warfare 2.

 

Pulling teeth without any anesthesia while being stabbed with a very large knife is better than Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer.

 

(you got tetanus as a result)

[Rabish Bini]

]Reach was absolutely horrible[/b]. I'm actually enjoying Black Ops' date=' which is definitely an improvement over Modern Warfare 2.[/quote']

 

Care to expand or are we just gonna start hurling insults around like the generic COD/Halo fanboys?

[Titanius Anglesmith]

Care to expand or are we just gonna start hurling insults around like the generic COD/Halo fanboys?

I wasn't aware I made any insults. As a non-fanboy of either Halo or CoD, I'm sorry if you're offended that I didn't like Reach.

[Sabretooth]

Care to expand or are we just gonna start hurling insults around like the generic COD/Halo fanboys?

 

Halo is a pretty insulted guy, eh cuts wrists and doesn't afraid of anything.

[Mav]

Halo is a pretty insulted guy, eh cuts wrists and doesn't afraid of anything.

He doesn't afraid of commitment? [studio Audience]OOooooOOOooooohhhh![/studio Audience]