Review by: Jeff McAllister

Developer Treyarch has been the low man on the Call of Duty totem pole for a while now; its games are considered subpar when compared to the mighty powerhouse that is Infinity Ward. However, with the intense action, striking visuals and impressive storytelling found in Black Ops, the company has finally ripped that monkey off its back. This may very well be the best Call of Duty to date.

Black Ops puts you in the shoes of Alex Mason, an operative who—from the get go—is being interrogated about a set of numbers retrieved from a numbers station and is repeatedly questioned about their meaning. Strapped in a chair and surrounded by numerous mind tweaking television sets, this view is the hub of the game as during each of the interrogation sequences, questions are screamed and you eventually black out, which then begins each mission as a flashback.

These parts of Alex’s memory range over the span of the Cold War years, extending from the early sixties in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs to the latter part of the decade in Vietnam, and everything in between. As each mission plays out, you start to get a little more insight into what is happening in Mason’s head and although it all comes together in a somewhat predictable manner, it all still manages to be quite impressive right up to the end.

Black Ops doesn’t stray too far from the Call of Duty formula, and as per the norm of other games in the series it will have you jumping from one character to another over the course of the game. When you take the role of another character, it’s still part of the close knit storyline, but is viewed from a different perspective. Thankfully this keeps the narrative together and doesn’t allow the body swapping to get too confusing or unnecessarily complex.

Another staple of the recent Call of Duty games has been the one-upping of over the top action sequences with grandiose, if not unrealistic, events. Black Ops certainly has its “wow” moments, but thankfully it keeps them grounded with a more realistic tone. You won’t find any snowmobiles soaring across ridiculously wide canyons here.

As is expected with any FPS, the majority of the game is spent mowing down enemies who appear at the business end of your weapon. To keep things from getting too repetitive and stale, Black Ops mixes things up by throwing in sections that require vehicular combat in different capacities. These range from being the gunner on an airplane about to take off, manning a chopper as it creeps low between hills, and rocking out to the Rolling Stones tune “Sympathy for The Devil” as your gun boat skulks through a Vietnamese river. One particular standout mission switches back and forth between being the pilot of an SR-71 Blackbird and the squad of soldiers on the ground. As the pilot you direct the squad where to go using an overhead map with objectives and when trouble arises, you switch to a first person view of the team on the ground to deal with the concern. It’s executed brilliantly.