Black Ops Multiplayer Review: Part Two.

Hey readers!

Hope you’re all having an awesome day today and I welcome you back, for part two of my Call of Duty: Black Ops Multiplayer review!

So, where were we? Ah yes, the bugs, glitches and other catalysts of anger. 

Ahhhh!!

Picking up from what I was saying about the new patch that was released early morning 16^th December for the PC, all of the fix reports do seem to be accurate, well, almost all. There is still one issue that hasn’t been properly solved though, despite the error being one of Treyarch’s main focuses, the random game freezes! I know that the weather is cold outside but it’s still no excuse for the game to keep freezing and crashing, so what on earth did they do to “fix” it? Simple answer... No alot! Even though a fair few gamers haven’t encountered this issue as of yet, it’s still happening to many others, myself being one of those unlucky ones. Now, I haven’t been able to find a fix for this as of yet, I have been trying many different possible solutions, but none of them have worked. When the game was first released, very few gamers were experiencing Black Ops crashing, if it did crash, it was more than likely something to do with the system specification of the gamer’s PC. However, the issue started when Treyarch released their first noticeable patch for the game, that’s when everything seemed to get worse, and oh my, was it noticeable. There’s just nothing more annoying than owning on a map, having 35 kills to 10 deaths, about to whip out your chopper gunner reward – “Friendly Huey on th-” to find out that your game just froze. Rage!

Before I get into an anger rant about that particular subject, we’ll just cut that paragraph short, as it will just turn into a complaints letter that I would copy and paste into an email addressed to the Treyarch HQ. *deep breaths*

Overkill?

Now, I’ve just made reference to the Chopper Gunner kill-streak reward that you can get in the multiplayer in Black Ops – it’s pretty damn cool when you get to use it, but we all know we’re a bunch of hypocrites. We, in fact, loathe the airborne annoyance when it’s used against us. The Hive, Cobra and Huey are just three causes of stress within the multiplayer, these of course being filed in the same drawer as the Claymore, Grenade Launcher/Noob Tube and anything else that doesn’t involve the use of an actual skilled weapon that fires actual rounds (bullets). The helicopters in the game are basically just used for preventing the enemy team from spawning whilst the user is racking up the points, and this can get a lot of gamers annoyed with playing the multiplayer, and also give drive to a lot of PC owners to purchase their own servers for the game so that they can create a rule against the use of certain kill-streak rewards. These kill-streak rewards are far too over-powered, it’s near impossible to avoid them – even if you’re in a building. You could be hiding between a canyon, under the cover of a boulder whilst sitting in a deep, armour plated bucket, and the chopper would still be able to somehow see you through the thick rock and be able to penetrate through it all and then kill you. Again, rage!

Another annoyance to the players of Black Ops is the remote control car! This, initially, was a fun creation – but when people were using it too much, again, it got annoying! This particular feature has a lot of potential. Instead of having it as an exploding car, I think it would help balance the game out a lot more if it were to have a camera on top of the car, just so you could have a look around corners and down the corridors, you know, to assess your situation to help you think up a plan of action! 

Sprayers? Throw them off the map!

After bringing up some of the annoyances and over powered features in the game, it now brings me on to talk to you about the general balance of the Black Ops Multiplayer experience. First of all, Call of Duty has always been a game that doesn’t take all that much skill to play, however, if you were to switch from being a PC gamer to an Xbox gamer – it would take some getting used to, but I ask, why would you want to switch in the first place? Anyway, because you can refer to the controls as a “Plug & Play” sort of game, it means that there’s a big chance you’re going to get noob gamers playing on your server –which also means that you’re going to get people stumbling around like headless goats spraying their SMG and Shotgun rounds your way when you’re trying to play the game properly, it’s kind of annoying if you’re more of a tactical gamer. Because Call of Duty has had the same feel to the game for the past 7 years, I suppose the developers don’t really want to change too much in regards to the controls, although it would be nice to maybe see at least some effort in tweaking it to make it a better, more tactically intense experience, which doesn’t invite such frantic rushing. 

For the weapons in the multiplayer, there isn’t too much of an imbalance to note, it’s pretty much the same as the Modern Warfare titles in the game’s own way, so you’re going to be used to it if you’ve played those versions of Call of Duty before. However, there is still a major issue with a weapon called the Skorpion. The Skorpion is a little, dinky SMG that you can unlock quite early on in the game, a weapon that has also been featured in Modern Warfare. The Skorpion has two different versions of the one problem – it’s too damn accurate for an SMG! What happens if you put a silencer on it? It gets even more accurate, despite the game stating that equipping the silencer on the weapon causes a decrease in the weapon’s ranged stats – it just doesn’t matter!  It’s been a glitch that has been marked up and complained about by thousands of gamers across the world since Call of Duty 4, on a lot of different forums - although, neither Infinity Ward nor Treyarch have bothered to balance it out... I guess we’ll just have to deal with it? *sigh*

Carentan, how I miss you.

The Call of Duty multiplayer franchise has always been released with maps that are adored and played joyfully by millions, over and over again. These include Carentan, Brecourt, Dawnville, Foy, Burgandy, Beltot, Toujane, Ambush, Bloc, Crash, Strike, Crossfire, Highrise and Scrapyard. (Sorry if I missed off a favourite of yours.) Now when it comes to Black Ops, there isn’t, as of yet, a massive favourite of mine. I mean, I can’t even list the map names to you now because I’d have to look them all up because I’ve forgotten all of their names, a lot of other people are also having this difficulty. There just isn’t one that sticks out and cries to me, “I’m so well planned out and I even have spawn points that make sense!” It’s really disappointing, and in some ways, it pushes me away from the game. Maybe I am being too harsh – I mean there are a few decent maps out there, but they’re just not that memorable, you know? They are hardly classic map material.

So, you’re probably thinking to yourself that with this many negative markers, why the hell you bought the game in the first place, or why the hell you would want to buy this game, if you haven’t already. Well, I will answer the first question now for you, you bought the game because it’s a Call of Duty release - it has to be bought, even if it’s just out of curiosity. I bought the game because it was CoD, and there was far too much hype about the game to ignore it, you couldn’t help but get excited, at least a little bit. Even though there are all these negatives surrounding Black Ops with the games imbalance issues, system errors and the glitches, it’s still a Call of Duty game! It’s still fun, it will still be there to play when you need to pass time when you’re bored stiff, it’s a little lifeline. As I’ve said, it’s not a game you have to think too much about because of the control style, it’s not too much of an arcade style game and at the same time, it’s not too realistic either. It’s a casual game that you can just jump into whenever you like, and to be fair, that’s what we want from some games occasionally. Don’t get me wrong, I love realistic first person shooters, actually love them because of the effort put in regarding the authenticity of the game – it also puts your skills to the test as a gamer! But when you’re not in the mood for hardcore gaming, and you need a break from time to time, it’s always good to have a game like Call of Duty, to just click play, and you’re straight into the thick of it. It’s just fun! You eventually get used to being owned by choppers and RC Cars, but in the end, it’s just a case of brushing it off your shoulders and taking it on the chin the next time it happens.

So, here’s my simple conclusion for Black Ops Multiplayer for those of you who haven’t bought the game yet. If you’re a hardcore gamer and you don’t like people running around like maniacs with noob tubes and RPGs around you, then I suggest that you maybe avoid this game, unless you’re after a game that offers a more casual experience whilst you recover from playing too much Flashpoint or Socom, etc. However, if you have bought all or most of the Call of Duty titles prior to Black Ops, then I would recommend you to at least give this game a try as it will still offer you the same experience in the games own way. I predict that every single major bug will be flattened out within the next month or so, because despite them not fixing the game freezes in the last patch, they still fixed a lot of other things and actually did an alright job – although it is still no excuse for Treyarch what so ever to have released a game as buggy as Black Ops was in the first place. It seems to me that to both Infinity Ward and Treyarch now, it’s about churning out a new release every year and doing it as soon as they possibly can – I just hope that they don’t lose sight of what they’ve managed to achieve in the past and go down-hill from here. Although, Infinity Wards next Call of Duty is rumoured to be Space Warfare? We shall see, eh? 

On that note folks, this is the Black Ops review coming to a close! I hope you enjoyed the read and I hope to see you back on here again for my next post, which will most likely be on the new Battlefield release, titled Bad Company 2: Vietnam! It’s literally promising to be a scorcher!  I should have my hands on it at either midnight tonight or sometime through the day tomorrow (18^th December) so expect a ‘First Impressions’ post this weekend!

Thanks a million for taking the time to read, and if you have anything to comment on either what I’ve said or on the Call of Duty titles in general, then by all means feel free to share!

TTFN and take care,

Jayhmmz    (‘’’)(O.o)(‘’’)

Black Ops Multiplayer Review: Part One.

The multiplayer aspect of a computer game is what gives the game the life span it needs to keep gamers happy for a long time, preferably up until the series’ next instalment. Multiplayer offers gamers the chance to match up against other players from around the world, online; to compete against them, to shout at them, to virtually beat the crap out of them and so on and so forth

Image courtesy of IGN.com

Call of Duty is no stranger to Multiplayer. You could say that they changed online first person shooters for the better. It was definitely a turning point either way. Collectively both Infinity Ward and Treyarch have just over 7 years experience, Infinity Ward being the guys and girls that started the franchise off back in October 2003 for the PC platform. It was a massive hit, earning an average 91% rating on Metacritic. The first Call of Duty alone grabbed a lot of awards, including Game of the Year 2003 from several reviewers, Game of the Year 2004, Outstanding Innovation in Computer Gaming and many more. 

So understandably, there is a hell of a lot of hype and expectation when a new Call of Duty game is announced for production, especially when they’re considered veterans of the online gaming world. It’s been a bumpy ride to say the least for the Franchise in regards to how well the games have been received, and Black Ops is the latest release to be brutally ripped apart and analysed by gamers and critics alike.  

I was really excited to get started with the Multiplayer. Straight away I could see that they had made a few changes to the menu system, confusing at first, but never the less an improvement. The new character customisation feature in the game is really cool. It still has the usual custom class setup that you come to expect from the latest CoD releases, nothing much has changed there, apart from one notable thing... no more martyrdom! Yes, that’s right folks! You will no longer be subject to killing someone outright, only to hear that feint clink of metal bounce off the terrain followed by shell shock and hurt. However, for those of you who haven’t played this game yet, let me share with you an unpleasant fact – Claymores are still in the game. Those horrible little blocks of pain which when you run in front of one, make that trigger noise, giving you enough time to say, “Awww shi-”     boom.

Image courtesy of rmdclan.com

Now, Treyarch added two really awesome features into the customisation menu this year, the first one being the all new player card editing screen. This will allow you to create your player card with much more flexibility compared to what was offered in MW2. For instance, you can now create your own logo to go onto your player card by using a variety of designs, images, letters, numbers and shapes – you can literally go crazy and do pretty much whatever the hell you want. I’ve saw people that have managed to create South Park characters out of the resources available. Just to give you an example though, mine is pretty simple, I have a skull and two Enfield assault rifles crossing over in the background to make it look like crossbones. Once you’re happy with the logo you have created, you can then slap it onto your weapon! This is as well as having your desired clan tag etched into your weapon also. This feature is basically win, which brings me to the next win feature, face paints!  Now if you’re like me and love Brave Heart, Dutch (Arnie) from Predator and The Joker, you will not be disappointed, as you can have the option to give your guy a pretty similar, and well made, face paint design that’s a worthy representation of said characters. But apart from those three designs, there’s a shed load of other designs to choose from also, this will contribute to Treyarch’s mission to keep gamers happy, is it working? Read on

 

Image courtesy of tgntimes.com

Modern Warfare 2 for PC was missing one vital thing, dedicated servers. Giving a PC game an option to run dedicated servers for multiplayer is just the right thing to do, period. So a lot of gamers were angry that MW2 turned out to be “just another crappy, lazy console port.” Matchmaking is for consoles only, it works well for consoles. PC? Not so much. You will have always encountered a session that on every other map, the match had to stop because a player’s connection was so dire, he or she cannot host anymore. So you, and all of the other players, were left sitting there until the new host was found. This often took about an annoying 10 to 15 seconds of your gaming time away from you, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re in the flow of owning noobs, it’s a lot! So a bit thumbs up and a golden star to Treyarch who re-introduced dedicated servers to the Call of Duty franchise, because as I said earlier, it’s the right thing to do!

Now, with Call of Duty having been around for so long, you would have thought they would be able to release a game pretty much perfect from release, right? Wrong! There were many issues that came with the release of Black Ops. A mammoth issue that was not dealt with so swiftly by Treyarch was the consistent game play glitches that gamers were experiencing when moving around maps and coming into an encounter with the opposing team. Not all problems were able to be resolved client-side, either, so it was left up to the patching team. Unfortunately, PC gamers were the ones suffering from this massive problem more so than the console gamers – to my knowledge their problem wasn’t as bad as the PC’s version. This sparked mass anger being channelled through the Treyarch forum and third party forums alike, expressing disappointment and resentment toward the developers, so it was easy to see that it had been an evident shaky start by Black Ops.

Image courtesy of IGN.com

For a multiplayer game the graphics are decent. As I have already said in my single player review, they could be better, but they don’t have too much of a negative impact on the game itself. When the game was first released, there were some graphical glitches popping up here and there, such as texture and general terrain processing issues – although these were dealt with by team Treyarch quite quickly.

It took Treyarch a good few weeks until they completely abolished the problem, but at least they eventually fixed it, and all was well in that department. However, there were still quite a few issues to be fixed, here are a few examples:

• Final Kill Cam lag
• Server connection problems
• Unable to join friends’ games
• Game freezes
• Ranking up to then be put down back to the rank you started the session at

By now, most of the problems have been fixed, both on PC and on console. More notably for the PC, as December 16^th brought a new patch for gamers that had been highly anticipated for many weeks since the release of the game back on November 9th. The patch contained a fix for pretty much everything that was wrong with the game, the main issues anyway, such as sorting out the incredibly annoying final kill cam lag, general server connection problems, certain system performance issues, team changing and much more. Go to http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/66855 for a full list of fixes.

On that note, that concludes Part One of my Black Ops Multiplayer review! I hope you've found it interesting and enlightening! Part Two will be up tomorrow, where I will be sharing more about the gameplay and controls, the current stability of the game to date and a general conclusion for Black Ops. Should you really buy it, or not?

Thank you very much for reading, and I hope you'll leave a comment sharing your own personal experiences with the game! If you have any questions so far, please feel free to send them accross for me to read, and I will get back to you! 

Thanks again and TTFN!

Jayhmmz    (''')(O.o)(''')  

Good Mornin' Viet..... Oh wait, false alarm.

Good Day Gamers! 

 So as you can probably tell by the title of the post, Bad Company 2: Vietnam wasn't actually released today, much to my disappointment. I was given the impression that the general release date was going to be on the 18th - which makes the three day early start date today! - But, because a lot of gaming sites were mentioning the 18th a lot as the release date, it got a lot of people (me included) excited that we could play the game today! So there's been quite a few complaints and queries on various forums, such as Steam, as to why the game hasn't been automatically downloading and installing for the BF faithful.

All disappointment aside though, I still cannot wait to play this game. Battlefield Vietnam was one of my all time favourites, and still is. But as I've mentioned before about games, it got a little outdated graphics wise - I reinstalled it 4 days ago on my PC, and let's just say it made me sad :( You seem to remember old games in all their glory, eh? Tip for you guys and girls: Love an old game and want to play it again real bad? Then just take into account that the game may not be as glorious as you remembered it! Beware! 

Just in case you haven't actually got around to taking a sneak peek at BC2: Vietnam's progress, check these awesome videos out:

• Courtesy of XboxViewTV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC2AjUUVNfY
• Courtesy of VisoGames: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxtgAXz0jfI

Stay tuned though folks, to fill in the gap for tonight's blog, I'm going to be doing a personal, as brief as possible, review of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Now I know there's a lot of reviews already out there, but you can't go wrong with another Gamer's perspective - Also, there's a lot of people who are still sitting on the fence about the game, so hopefully I can contribute toward your decision of whether to buy the game or not and clear a few things up for you. I'll be putting forward some of the most talked about points in the franchise and casting my opinions on them, as well as throwing in my own sub-topics. We all know that Treyarch is going to be one of the main focuses, am I right? :P 

Anyway, I'm off back into the world of gaming - I feel that there's a bit of DiRT 2 on the cards, can't beat a good racing sim! It's a damn impressive looking game too. 

Remember guys, feel free to leave comments and hit the follow button on my blog :)
Another thing to remember readers - Ninjas can't catch you, because you're awesome!

TTFN

Jayhmmz     (''')(O.o)(''')

*Door Creaks Open* Hello? Anyone there?

Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening and Merry Easter! Wait... What?
 
So, this is my first ever blog, ever. I mean, I write a lot on my Facebook and Twitter updates, but that's not blogging, that's just freaking annoying! So I thought to myself... I'm doin' it wrong!
Just in case you're a new comer into the thoughts of Jayhmmz this is basically just an introduction post, for you to get to know me, enough for you to follow my blog... *glare* Yes, you! It's the sensible thing to do! Also to give you a quick preview on what's to come!

So I'm up pretty late tonight, 2:50am as I type. But I told myself I have to get this finished before I go to bed... and no I don't make a habit of talking to myself - Not yet anyhow!
In terms of gaming news, I'm hopefully going to be playing Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam today! I pre-ordered it off Steam, and they promised me I could play it three days before the retail release date. I was actually hoping the download would start at midnight, but it hasn't... *sigh*

That's gunna be the first main thing I'm doing on my blog, exciting stuff! I'll give you a proper review of it for all those who are still not sure what to expect from it... Apart from loud noises and fire of course. Even if you've got it, then still have a read of my review and come and relate, post your thoughts in the comment section. I'll give no BS and I'll pull up the win points and fail points.
Besides new releases, I'm also gunna post some thoughts on games that are out now, and games that I miss playing - all of which you'll be able to relate to. Same goes for films too, so I hope you will enjoy reading! 

Anyway, I really should get to bed before I face roll the keyboard and sign the post off with "BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB..." or wherever my nose lands first. I hope you'll come back and keep an eye out for my new posts. If you do, I promise good things! Remember to click follow before you vacate the page, even if it's just a sympathy follow!

TTFN (Ta Ta For Now).  

Jayhmmz.   (''')(O.o)(''')