Multiplayer is where it is at for Call of Duty Black Ops, unfortunately the world of PC players and many console players experienced bugs, glitches and lag galore on the first few days. I personally experienced rubber banding and skipping so bad as to make the game almost unplayable, and to top off the bug experience, I went to change my voice key in game and was quickly thrown out to desktop, thinking I’d just restart and go back in, my hopes were quickly vanquished when Windows 7 gave the error: “BlackOpsMP.exe has stopped working” every time I tried to start multiplayer again. Reading through several posting to fix it, I read several articles on how to fix the lag manually and change different setting to fix everything from FPS caps to even making the game run better on multicore systems. After reading about 10-20 of these pages, and their suggestions, ranging from revalidating files on steam to even reinstalling, I finally decided to delete the MP configuration file, and magically my game started working again, most likely the CTD while in the key change menu had corrupted the file, but instead of proper error handling letting the user know the problem, the game just crashes, quite a big frustration for not even getting to play a single MP match yet..

After getting into the game successfully, I found the experience quite fun, despite some of the lag, and played for several hours on the new maps, just getting a feel for different tactics and locations. The game mode “Search and Destroy” was immediately a favourite, and I found it most similar to Counter Strike competitions that everyone is used to. For those that don’t know, search and destroy is where users are split into two teams, one side attempts to arm one of  two bomb sites and defenders try to keep them from doing so. If you die you have to wait for the next round, as each player only gets one chance during a round, but no worries at least you’ve got first person spectator view to watch your friends deal death to your enemies, and keep you occupied till the next round.

The multiplayer mode also has several new additions that put it apart from earlier versions of the call of duty series. Players now earn money to rank up their weapons and attachments, which is different from earlier games in the series where you just unlocked them through usage, it’s very similar to the old style, but gives users a choice of where they want to spend their hard earned, in-game currency. With the new currency options they’ve also included a new game mode titled “Wager Matches” which allow you to enter the round for a small fee, and the top 3 players of the round are “In the Money” receiving proportionate winnings to their  ranking. One of the other new features of Black ops is the ability to customize your player card and gun insignia with makeshift drawings using the stencil drawings provided in game. This gives the player the opportunity to set himself apart as far as images go, and to be honest can be fun, but also quite disturbing, especially if you game with the likes of some characters similar to the ones I play with.