Gaming Call of Duty: Black Ops Review

OK, CardJoe. I believe you. But 3.5/10 was the average from having so many people rate it a deserved zero for being unplayable. The game is broken for many. Just going by what I have read, it is CPU bound so a quad core is a must to reduce problems but doesn't work for everyone, SP and MP stutter and lag, netcode is completely borked and not even beta quality.

As for user opinions being irrelevant... well that's nice. Is that what think of bit tech readers too, Baz? User reviews are more relevant because they can stop people from wasting £40 on a broken game and save a lot of stress and anger. Some professional reviews have reported the problems. You deny they exist? Tell me if this video is just ill informed, venomous ranting...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0KCwPK9sE8

 

i dont think he said they were irrelevant, it's more a case of skewed results

maybe the people who might put up reviews of 8,9, or 10/10 are enjoying the game too much to take 5 minutes to write a review
OR
maybe people who wouldnt have written a review at all, but due to the game being unplayable (and therefore them having some free time), decide to write a review giving it a low score...
how many times have you over reacted just because you were angry, and then when you think about it the next day, realise that its not such a big deal

just look at amazon, the number of good items that get bad user reviews because some idiot somewhere didnt read the instructions, or games that get bad reviews based on non game related items (e.g. MW2 last year and no dedis)

8/10 = good game, not great and far from perfect
(havent played it but) sounds like CoD to me

 

I don't think Harry meant to say that your opinion was irrelevant, merely that Metacritic user reviews aren't a hugely reliable basis - if he's saying personal opinions aren't relevant then I'll join you in disagreeing with him, in fact.

The point is, Metacritic user reviews are always polarised and always come from people biased one way or another. Users can hide behind anonymity and have no repercussions or reason to temper their opinions, let alone incentive to put things fairly or considerately - they just put 'Sux. 2/10.' or 'Perfect. 10/10', by and large. Professional reviewers, on the other hand, have standards they have to adhere to and are hired on their ability to write in more detail and with better judgement.

Case in point; the opening quote from this user review of The Path, which scored the game at 30/100 compared to the 79/100 critic average: "I can tell you now I haven't played the full game. I've played the demo, but surely the demo is meant to show the best of the game…"

Also, surely if the game is unplayable as you claim, that's a 0/10, not a 3.5/10? Just a thought.

As for the problems cited in some of the user reviews - laggy netcode being the biggest complaint I hear -, it's not that I'm saying it doesn't exist, merely that it didn't happen to me. In fact, of all the people who I had spoken to when I was reviewing the game, only one had had that issue - and it was then a fixable Steam file problem. On the other hand, readers were contacting myself and Harry as we played it and saying "OMG, 10/10". The only thing I can do in that situation is report on the game as I experienced it, which I did. I saw a few bugs in SP, mainly awkwardly placed save points, but it was really very minimal. My complaints were more with the content and were expressed in the review text.

As always, I think many gamers approach titles with rose-tinted glasses and are quick to reach for vitriol without considering the full 1-10 scale. Just because this isn't the game for you or because a vocal minority are having issues, doesn't mean that you should immediately drop it to 3/10, because if that's the scale you're operating on then where do you put the games which should REALLY get 3/10, like Conspiracy Island 2? Where do you put the games that are really great, like Mass Effect 2?

The 8/10 represents my own experience of COD. I liked it, but not enough to give it a universal recommendation. As I say in the review, it only just gets an 8/10, putting it just barely above the average of what you'd expect for a AAA game (which is different from the true, statistical average that would likely emerge if we had the manpower to review every single game that was released).

 

Personally I think anyone who uses the final score on a review as a reason to buy/not buy a game is a fool.

You can't put a score on a game, sure there are god games, bad games, spectacular games and flops but even these ratings are subjective and some games that seem complete rubbish to most people may have a particular feature that a small following loved. Sometimes it isn't just a small group who value the game differently for example Far Cry 2 was either spectacular or a big bag of human faeces depending on who you ask and sometimes even the mood of the person when you ask them. Even if you forget about these anomalies it's incredibly difficult to give an exact rating to a game and decide where it lies inbetween two tiers and arguments over a score difference of one points or even two points out of 10 are often futile as the placing on such a fine scale is often arbitrary. Giving us information about the game is far more useful than rating it.

Of course you can have rigourous requirements for each score which may work for hardware where there are lots of numbers but games are a living thing and the experience that each player has will be vastly different. As an example, I really enjoyed Shattered Horizon but not because of the gameplay but due to the general ambience of the game and the thrill of floating around in space, another example is Battlefield Bad Company 2 where I gave up playing because I was so used to the fast action of Call of Duty and I didn't have the patience to invest enough time in learning to play well. There's also factors such as having the right people to play with, L4D would be very boring without a group of people to play with and I can't tell you how much fun I've had playing split screen with my brother on some really piss poor games just messing around.

I'd like to see Bit-tech do a review without a final score as a test as I think we all probably put a bit too much faith in the number at the bottom of the last page.

 

my cousin likes cod and he was disappointed.. haven't picked it up

 

I'd love to, but for various reasons it just isn't likely to happen. We just have to be aware that it can shoot us in the foot, as it did with our review of The Path: http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2009/03/22/the-path-review/1

 

I was a big fan of mw1 and mw2 and I was a big player on mw2. I picked it up

I agree there wasn't as much polish as MW campaigns BUT that being said there were some very beautiful moments and a larger variety of tasks such as flying a helicopter or piloting a gunboat. The plot was predictable, but had enough interesting gameplay moments that it was worth it.

Finally near the end *spoiler alert if you care* where you are let out of the chair and stumble through the hall, did some things I had never seen before and hands down when you start hallucinating and the ceiling disappears and you see the rocket launch that was perhaps one of the most cinematic moments in gaming I've ever seen. I mean that really floored me with all settings on high, the numbers wizzing past and a rocket launching above. That game definitely had more cinematic moments than MW2, but the plot was far weaker.

MP is meh, I'm glad they have a proper lobby system now, and create a class 2.0 is nice for fun. but the gameplay doesn't seem as tight as MW2 and maybe it's being more accurate to the time period but most of the weapons are rubbish and it's much more difficult to rack up kills.

 

I found the score didn't really seem in line with the tone of the review but thats all up to Joe. My own experience with the SP campaign is that it's pretty boring. The pacing is all wrong and you just never feel connected to it. There were some pretty tense moments in MW2 even though the plot was rubbish but I don't really feel the same about BOPS.

 

And this is why we'll probably never see Half Life 3,

Like it or no (and I don't), multi-player is the way things are and great single player games are at a disadvantage. That, plus the need to program for cross platform compatibility and two very different UIs (console vs PC) means that there is less incentive to make good plots.

 

Yes that was meant to be the point. So many people have problems that the rage and score the game a 0 or a 1 on metacritic. A few people like it and obviously the game is working for them. At least I would hope it's working (some people seem are easily pleased while others like me are quick to complain).

The numbers work out neatly. Two thirds gave it a negative score and a massive three quarters do not give a positive one. The net average of all that is 3.4/10 at the moment.

Just one last thing... it would seem reasonable to me to rate the game 3/10 (which I read as a poor effort), with the intention of revisiting it later in the year to re evaluate it. If the game is poor but can be fixed then the score can change. £40 is top tier compared to most games. It should at least work as a minimum requirement.

 

I don't think 8/10 is unreasonable when looking at the score guide, but that's from the point of view of a certain kind of player:

Some FPS gamers like funnelled level games designed to point you in the right direction while dazzling you with the latest special effects and cutting edge graphics, i.e. CoD/MoH/Metro 2033 etc. For that person, this is might well be an 8-10 rated game.

Some FPS players are focussed primarily on the multiplayer features and longevity, along with the brilliant and latest technical aspects. For those players this might also score highly or not depending on the bugs.

Other FPS players might be solo types that like a good imaginitive single-player campaign, plenty of immersion, unpredictable gameplay and high replay value. For them, this would likely fail with a low score and therefore not be suitable.

Bit Tech review text covering all these aspects varies greatly from game to game. It maybe because you expect the reader to have some background on the game already and therefore know whether it's for them or not.

If not, than I think modifying the score system might be a good idea, ensuring that every game is rated clearly to different kinds of players. For example, you might rate a game on several areas rather than one encompassing score:

Graphics - g/10
Replayability- r/10
Multi-player - m/10
Single-player - s/10

Gameplay Score = [(g+r+m+s)/4]/10

 

I'm still not comfortable, and have never been comfortable, with how the CoD games are priced. It's just too much for too little.

 

The idea is to rely on fewer quantifiable numbers, not more. A single figure is the least Bit-Tech can get away with whilst not alianating the 3/4 of readers who skip to the last page solely to look for the score.

Question for you all: Given the game crippling bugs some people have experienced with BLOPS, but Joe didn't, should Joe have scored the game on his experience alone (i.e. no bugs) or the general experience of everyone (i.e. lots of bugs)?

If the former option is the answer, then complaing that the game should have got a lower score due to the bugs is a totally moot point, as Joe didn't experience any.

 

I understand where you are coming from but I respectfully disagree. I don't think the majority of Bit-Tech readers navigate to here to get a short and sweet synopsis of their latest games. There are too many other sites that do that better, most of which compliment their written summary with a video review.

Like the hardware reviews, at least speaking for myself as a visitor for several years, I like Bit-Tech because here you can often get a more real world appraisal of products: what will it be like to actually own and live with the device or software I'm interested in?

If offering more than one number at the bottom of a game review will alienate users, as you say, then why is that not the case on hardware reviews where there is a separate and averaged scoring system?

The single score suggests there is a one-size-fits-all way of measuring a game's appeal or a user's experience. Many games these days are a mix of classicly separate genres to some degree, i.e. RPG+FPS or 3PS+Strategy, which in itself challenges that view before you bring single-player vs multi-player into the mix.

Firstly, it depends if Joe was even aware at that point if the game was rumoured to have multi-player issues. If he was not, then from his experience plus the assumption that that was going to be the general case, he summed it up correctly.

However, if he was aware there were problems being experienced in the wider community, than it is something that could have been investigated more before publication, and/or mentioned in the final coverage.

 

The multiplayer option on PS3 is a nightmare, if i see game lobby closed, or connection interupted one more time i am likely to send a really stern letter to treyarch advising them of my anguish.

 

To be honest, ever since I somehow fixed the performance issues of the game, it's been excellent (although not flawless) and I have had a lot of fun playing Demolition and Domination.


I'm curious to know if it will work for more people. Theoretically, all you need to do to duplicate my test is to delete the config file and start the game

 

this was posted in the general forum.. but they are hillarious

part 3 was put up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRftU9URsS8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXFw9mFzSVw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuqubd4vtJM

 

Why are all these review sites bashing the game and then giving it a high rating? Does just being a COD game automagicaly make it great? $59.99 plus tax, so really `$65, and only a 5 hour campaign? wtf? I still haven't finished CODWAW, CODMW, and CODMW2 multiplayer yet so I doubt I will be buying this until it hits $30 to $40. It just seems that the further into this series we get the less substance we get for our money. One thing I have yet to read or hear is whether or not this game will support mods. That is a very important thing to me and is one reason why I regret buying MW2. While I like the matchmaking and game finding in MW2, I hate that games are not served by a dedicated machine with admins, and that it does not support player made maps and addons. A hybid of this would be ideal, dedicated servers with an easy way to join a random one or find your friends without having to sit at the server select screen on vent going OK, Do you see the one called blah blah blah? No? how about X X X? Ok join it. Oh crap auto what is this balancing teams crap???? *Rant OFF*

 

Even after the patch it's still not playable because of 'hiccups' videolag on enemy contact, even though my PC exceeds minimum requirements* with graphics settings set to medium, shadows off. Crysis runs like a charm though, as do all other games I throw at it... just really disappointing. I guess Treyarch had monkeys as QA employees for the PC platform, and that's almost an insult to monkeys. Any half-assed gamer would've picked up on this, it baffles me how Treyarch dropped the ball.

* Core2Duo 3.16 GHz, 4 GB RAM, AMD Radeon 5850

 

anybody playing this on xbox system link because i am in Iraq and we play the bajesus out of MW2 but it was getting old so we started playing black ops and all the weapons are unlocked and there is no tracking of your account so there is no unlocks to get and no way to look at at your games, is there a patch for fixing thas or what because the patch they came out with just disabled hardcore team deathmatch. any help? We can't play it on xbox live the internet in Iraq is horrid.