CoD: Black Ops Is Done, Bid Farewell...

Well, tonight on Nov. 8, Modern Warfare 3 comes out and a billion people will go run to the stores and buy it.  I'm neutral to the game right now.  I'm not buying it but I'm moreso pissed that everyone keeps whoring out this stuff for so long.

And it's the last day that Call of Duty: Black Ops is relevant.  By tonight, this game is now "null-and-void."  But I do have some good things to say about Black Ops, if you don't mind.  Here are my thoughts:

1. Probably my favorite thing is how they assigned your player models according to what your Blue Perk was.  In previous CoD's (or any other FPSes for that matter), if you picked an assault rifle, you were some regular old soldier.  If you picked a sniper rifle, you were a ghillie suit guy.  If you picked an SMG, you were the lightweight guy.  Etc.  Here, at least have some say over what your guy looked liked and that was kind of cool.  Plus not to mention it doesn't make sense for a regular Joe soldier to be able to hide from radars but the ghillie suit man can't.  Also, you can be the flak jacket guy, awesome.

Real men don't need ghillie suits to snipe anyway.  You know what they say...now you see me *POW* now you're dead.

2. They got rid of the Stopping Power perk.  Now why is this so good?  Because in previous CoD's, stopping power usually meant you could kill someone with one less bullet (3 instead of 4).  First of all, the idea that your bullets can magically do 40% more damage makes no sense.  It was pretty much the best perk in Core modes outside of maybe Juggernaut and Camouflage.  Seriously, it's a reflex game so if you can kill someone slightly faster, than you win.

On the other hand, Stopping Power was USELESS in Hardcore--all kills were one-hit anyway.  Everyone (including I) abused that perk.  It was good that they did away with it.

3. Treyarch did a good job releasing more DLC maps than any other game before it.  There's 26 multiplayer maps and 10 zombie maps (excluding Dead Ops Arcade which is not your usual zombie map).  So there's four map packs.  Each has five maps and costs $15.  So that's $3 a map.  Well, it could be worse.  Each pack could have only four maps in it instead of five.  And the maps are okay by me so I think Treyarch did a fine job there.

4. Speaking of Treyarch again, I think they did a good job trying to come up with a new Call of Duty style.  Infinity Ward/Sledgehammer is just running away with the "Modern Warfare" title.  Treyarch made CoD:3 and CoD: World at War before this one.  So at least they found a good niche in that 60's Cold War era.  I thought that was good instead of the same old "SHOOT THE TERRORISTS" plot of the supposed future.

Also, speaking about the theme, the game's story was pretty cool.  I mean, I'm not about to play through the campaign again but gee whiz, it beats MW2's airport massacre OMG NOW THE WHOLE WORLD IS AT WAR scenario, dammit.  MASON, WHAT DO THE NUMBERS MEAN!?!?!?  And another part that was interesting...**SPOILER** Reznov was dead the whole time.  Sixth Sense style!!!

5. Dual mags.

6. Being able to create your own gamer emblem.  Okay, now this is, in some ways, absolutely horrific.  The amount of sexual innuendo is staggering.  Eventually, a few months in, the obscene pictures went away so that's good.  I created the Sega emblem which I rode out for pretty much my entire career.  I also saw some other funny pics that were worthwhile.

This is a funny story that I haven't really mentioned yet.  So I was playing Call of Duty jumping from host to host.  One game, I ended up in a server from the East--people from Japan and Korea.  Konichiwa!!!  So a lot of the emblems were little chibi faces and foreign letters.  Then I went back to a Western server and what did I see?  Heh...boobs, asses, rabbits mounting rabbits, horses mounting gorillas, more boobs, guy sticking his finger up someone's ass, it's lovely.  I feel really good about America's future.

But really, this has to be my favorite gamer emblem I've seen thus far...just think it looks really slick.

7. Treyarch did a good job continuing the Nazi Zombies series.  Like how they threw JFK, Castro, and crazy actors like Sarah Michelle Gellar and Danny Trejo into the mix.  But what I like the most was the crazy plot Easter eggs they threw in there.  Like the Ascension trick which was on crazy pills, man...

8. The RC-XD.  From a realistic standpoint, this is incredibly stupid.  BUT, from a gameplay perspective, it's actually good for weeding out campers.  Plus, it's a car so it's fun to drive around.  Haha, yes.

9. They nerfed grenade launchers/noob-tubes so people will hopefully STFU about them once and for all.

10. First Call of Duty to have the Galil.  And the AWP (L96A1 Sniper Rifle).  And the variable scope zoom. How you can have a non-variable scope sniper is beyond me.

11. The tactical insertions in this one were kind of cool.  Like one of those twisty-cap deodorant things but with sweet-looking knobs...

12. The killstreaks.  Well, they're not perfect, but they're miles better than MW2's.  For one, no nukes, they were interesting at first but now they're just stupid.  Not only that, but in Black Ops killstreaks no longer contribute to other killstreaks.  So in MW2, a common method was to get 7 kills, deploy a harrier strike, get 11 kills, call in a Chopper Gunner, and hope you get 14 more kills and then you have a nuke.  Now how stupid is that.  To make things even stupider, some killstreaks like the Sentry Gun or the standard copters didn't add on to your kill-streak.  So screw this whole killstreaks giving you more killstreaks nonsense.  Black Ops did away with that and that's for the best.  Okay, I hope this point made some sense.

13. Loads more gun camos and customizable red dot sights.  Love it, it looks damn cool.

14. It has Ice Cube doing voice overs (the US Vietnam radio guy).

15. Uh...it has 15 Prestiges instead of 10!!!

16. It has the Ballistic Knife and Exploding Crossbows.

17. No more Commando perk.

18. No more deathstreaks.

19. They nerfed the FAMAS so it's fair game now.

20. No quickscoping noobs


21. Hmm...it has a lot of guns from Counter-Strike in it: M16 (sort of), AK-47, Galil, Famas, Aug, Commando, AWP.  EDIT: MP5k and Mac-11 (not the same).  UMP, P90, USP, Glock are in Modern Warfare.

22. Still love the friggin sweet reload animations & sound effects.

23. Game introduced that Clip Creation feature which makes for some damn good YouTube montages!!  Hooah!



24. At least Treyarch, as a studio, is still intact.  Infinity Ward is toast.  So round of applause for Treyarch for not falling into Activision's Russian Roulette???

25. All the little kids are finally moving on to MW3 so have fun playing Black Ops in peace!!!  Go play MW3 or even Battlefield 3, GTFO off Black Ops now.  And don't send me comments like "call of duty sucks lolololol" cause I ain't taking it today, tomorrow, or ever so you STFU noob...

See the Call of Duty Wikia page for loads of information.