As a follow up to Modern Warfare 2, last year's superb entry in the Call of Duty series, Black Ops' single player experience is a significant disappointment. In its best moments, the campaign feels like more of the same — a lateral move for the series — at its worse, Black Ops feels like a stale, incoherent retread of what we've already seen before.
With its two Modern Warfare games, developer Infinity Ward told stories of military conflict and geopolitical intrigue. They were bombastic, Clancy-esque action movie plots that gave the player an excuse to shoot up thousands of virtual combatants, but the stories were well executed and featured some surprisingly unforgettable characters. With Black Ops, developer Treyarch takes a page from films like "JFK" and "The Manchurian Candidate", whipping up a silly conspiracy scenario that doesn't really make much sense. Worse, it doesn't have any particularly interesting characters worth caring about.
Instead, we get cardboard villains and macguffins straight out of a direct-to-TV movie. General Dragovich… Nova-6 - deadly nerve gas… you've got to stop him! "Brainwashing" and "mind control", too, are plot devices gluing Black Ops' narrative together far too conveniently. And while Modern Warfare 2's campaign confirmed Captain Price as one of the coolest, most badass action heroes I've ever come across in fiction, none of characters in Black Ops come close to being as memorable. As much as I wanted to like characters like Hudson or Reznov — voiced by Ed Harris and Gary fucking Oldman, my God — neither of them are particularly interesting.
Even the gameplay in Black Ops feels constricting. All the Call of Duty games are scripted, smoke and mirror thrill rides, but something about this campaign felt especially contrived. I don't remember previous games taking player control away from you quite so often as Black Ops does. There's the thing where a scripted explosion knocks you off your feet, and you look on helplessly from the ground as a choreographed fight sequence takes place before your eyes. It's cool the first time, but the scenario (or variations of it) occurs so frequently that it quickly stops being interesting. Maybe it's Treyarch's heavy-handed execution, maybe it's the generally uninspired story, or maybe it's the awesome Zimmer/Balfe score that's missing — for whatever reason, I was much more aware of being stuck on a linear path the entire game with Black Ops than any previous Call of Duty game in recent memory.
That's not to say Black Ops is all bad — moments in the Hong Kong level recalls the energy and momentum of the Modern Warfare campaigns, and the graphics are often impressive. I haven't spent much time with the online component, but it seems to be more of the same robust multiplayer suite that millions of players flock to each year. Most people who buy Call of Duty games probably don't even play the single-player campaign. For those who do, however, it's unfortunate to find that Black Ops is so far inferior than last year's installment.