Black Ops articles

Hey guys, just to let you know I got an article published on www.fwizforward.com. This will hopefully be the first article of a few that I may be posting on this website so read it below and tell me what you guys think.

Thanks guys!
Mikeccb

The successes and failures of Call of Duty: Blackops and its effects on the Call of Duty Community.
January 5th, 2011

The newest gaming venture within the Call of Duty franchise, Call of Duty: Black Ops can be seen to have been a ‘hit or miss’ case with many of the online gaming community. This can be seen throughout internet forums, such as the Call of Duty forums themselves, and within the YouTube.com video commentary community, however, this article will be aimed towards addressing the issues surrounding this title and coming to balanced conclusions as to the overall success of the game itself.

The first thing that can be said in favour of Black Ops is the way it rewards gun skill. As opposed to previous titles within the Call of Duty series there is no perk that either increases health or increase bullet damage (essentially reducing health of your opponent). This, along with the reintroduction of significantly higher levels of recoil in the majority of weapons, meant that players with better skills with the controller should triumph over those with lesser skills with a controller in the majority of cases. However, this also opened the door to an increase in dependence on the connection to host as the more bullets that you require to kill your opponent the more dependent you are on your shots actually going where they are intended to go.
This is one of the large downfalls of Call of Duty: Black Ops, a high dependence on host along with an inadequate (in terms of previous Call of Duty titles) system of hit detection means that less skilled players can still overcome better players if their connection to the host is better.

However, when all connections are the same or similar, it provides the most competitive Call of Duty since the days of Call of Duty 4, some would even argue it surpasses those standards; however this is a completely opinionated topic. This also shows one of the great triumphs of Black Ops, the competitiveness of the game and Treyarch’s willingness to cooperate with representatives of the MLG community means that the game sufficiently fulfills the requirements to have it put on the MLG Pro Circuit. This means that it will be represented at the majority of MLG LAN events providing a great improvement to the top end of the Call of Duty competitive scene and gives the Call of Duty series a step up into an area that the Halo franchise has dominated in terms of first person shooters.

The final positive that shall be discussed in this article towards Black Ops is the effort being put in by Treyarch in its listening to community feedback. So far there have been three major patches to Call of Duty: Black Ops. This simply puts to shame the two patches that Modern Warfare 2 released in the year that it was out before the release of Black Ops. Also the time in which these patches are released is phenominal; the first major patch for Black Ops was being worked on within the first two weeks of the games release in comparison to exploits that lasted for months in Modern Warfare 2 before being patched and some exploits within that title still exist to this day.

On the other hand, there are also flaws that can be seen in the design of the game. With the higher emphasis directed towards the competitive gaming environment we see a fall in provision for new players or simply the casual gamer. Yes, the intent was present to provide for these players with the introduction of a ‘Combat Training’ mode, however, this has proved to be, in this writers opinion, not the same experience as the gamer gets from playing against actual players online.



This is the key point in the split within the community regarding the popularity of Black Ops. Many casual gamers, and even some more than casual gamers, have found the transition from a game that had more of a catering towards the casual gamer such as Modern Warfare 2 to a game like Black Ops which is more like Halo in that it requires more teamwork and gunskill to win even in public matches.
In conclusion, we can see that Black Ops has several positive points and several negative points, like any game within the gaming industry. What the community needs to understand about the gaming industry is that ‘the perfect video game’ does not exist. A game is not ‘broken’ because there are some bugs that require fixing in the online multiplayer, and no video game can cater to all. It is the opinion of this writer that Call of Duty: Black Ops may very possibly be set to be the most successful Call of Duty title within the competitive environment, however, some will also struggle with the transition over from Modern Warfare 2. My advice to this would be to simply play the game that you personally enjoy; noone is forcing anyone to play either title so arguments in online forums and chatrooms as to which of the previous two Call of Duty titles is better are naive as they cater to two very different sides of the community. It is also naive to argue that Call of Duty: Black Ops is not a successful game with the fact that it has been the single largest grossing video game of all time providing overwhelming evidence to the success of the title itself.

- Michael Evans

Hey Man, Love Your Article And Can't Wait To Read Some More Of Your Stuff. Keep Us Updated On Your Writings. Also, Your Welcome To Write Some Reviews And We'll Post Them Here, And Link Them To Everyone We Know.

Thanks Ash man! can't believe so many people have viewed it on here, in fairness i never really thought the article would see the light of day at all but they seemed to like it!

Thanks for the support guys, really appreciate it!

You have some talent you basically captured what most people in the community are thinking. Hope you post more stuff really enjoyed reading it.