The gameplay is similar to that of the previous series, some new features such as making your own player insignia’s, purchasing your weapons, attachments, and contracts for achievements have added a little bit of excitement to the game, but overall I felt its just a re-skin of an old game, hopefully with map making mods and tools this one might be able to keep players interested longer, and you won’t just see the diehard soldiers on the battlefield.

 Single player in Black ops was a fun experience, albeit as short as MOH was, with only about 5.5- 6hours of game play if you’re lucky. The plot was decent; you’re a captive being interrogated for information from black ops missions you’ve participated in, from the cold war days. You flash back to your previous memories during these black op missions, and relive the experience in-game in regions of world such as Russia, Cuba and even Vietnam. The computer AI in the game could have definitely used a little work, friendlies were basically bodies running with you and really didn’t give any advantage to most combat, in fact, they were even lame enough to push me out from cover at times, especially if the game happened to see fit to tell the character to move to a point where you happened to already be hiding. The Enemy AI is repetitive and obviously it’s the same if you die, remember where the enemy is positioned and fire in that direction gameplay. I recall specifically in the Vietnam portion, sitting behind a mounted MG gun and firing on enemies that just kept coming back to the same spots and same animations over and over again for a good five minutes.

Overall, the single player mission was very straight lined, your choices limited on your attack methods, if you didn’t follow your team closely, or act stealthy right when it said so, you would find you or your squad had been killed and it would force you to restart the section from the last save point. It seemed like they tried to get you more involved in the gameplay, but there were several failed attempts, such as taking off in the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird where they gave you the option to press a button to start the engines, and a button to take off, but that’s about as far as your involvement got until it gave you the options to direct troops from the sky by telling them to move to a certain position or duck for cover if troops were passing by.

The story was decent, with a semi-realistic feel to it, I did feel like a loner in the game, and squad feeling/ relationship with other in-game characters just wasn’t there, at least not like what I had experienced in Medal of Honor. Probably one of my most memorable moments in game play, was rappelling through a window where the game entered into slow motion mode as I headshot each of the stunned enemies in the room, it truly was a grand gaming moment. Maybe it was just my train of thought, but all in all I just kept waiting for Sam Worthington’s voice to start into the avatar speech:

“The Sky People have sent us a message... that they can take whatever they want. That no one can stop them. Well, we will send them a message. You ride out as fast as the wind can carry you. You tell the other clans to come. Tell them Toruk Makto calls to them! You fly now, with me! My brothers! Sisters! And we will show the Sky People... that they can not take whatever they want! And that this... this is our land!”