Call of Duty Black Ops Revisited

Call of Duty Black Ops was somewhat of a sequel to World at War and launched Treyarch's most successful contribution to the franchise. Taking place during the Cold War the core protagonist was Alex Mason, a strong willed individual with some brain washing issues. Taking on this role of being the one sent on dangerous secret missions, you attempt to tackle secret Soviet threats around the globe. This largely is based around dealing with a deadly chemical called Nova-6 across many unique locations and behind enemy lines. Black Ops is the seventh Call of Duty game, developed by Treyarch and published by Activision. The game released on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC with the game later being available on Xbox One through backwards compatibility.

The campaign had a dark story following many scenes of death and some interesting cinematic moments. The cast was huge including talent such as Sam Worthington, Ice Cube and Gary Oldman in many of the lead roles. The story brought players to many interesting and authentic locations from the Cold War while weaving its own conspiracy theory filled narrative. There were many iconic characters introduced including Mason and Woods with Reznov making a stellar return.


The multiplayer of Black Ops wasn't anything new, but just further developed the series' core strength of custom class creation. It did however add a small twist by having players purchase items with points earned by playing the game. This added an extra bit of depth to it and these points could be gambled in the newly introduced Wager Matches. For those that played it at the time, they most certainly remember Tomahawking each other to cause bankruptcies as that was a blast. The regular online play was solid as well being competitive and well tuned as most Treyarch titles are. The spawning was somewhat bad when coming back to the game though just part of it. The maps were very creative with the DLC ones being particularly strong and even more so was the zombies.

I truly consider this to be the definitive version of zombies and it would be incredible to see the map list released as a standalone. While that will probably never happen, one can dream. The core set of zombie maps headlined by Kino Der Toten were amazing, just perfect. This was followed by the intense Ascension, a Soviet launch pad. The next map was Call of Dead featuring big celebrity appearances and while George A. Romero was annoying, the map itself was great. I wasn't a huge fan of Shangri La, but it still brought some interesting mechanics and puzzles into play. This excellent set of maps was capped off by the holy grail of Rezurrection. Not only did we get the Moon map which was fun, but we got all four of the classic World at War maps for such a perfect finisher.

I definitely enjoyed revisiting Call of Duty: Black Ops finding it to still be that solid entry which followed Modern Warfare 2. It had a distinct system for multiplayer and many hours were spent with friends in Wager Matches. The story was intense setting up some interesting sequels that grew on its history bending strength. My friends still call me Mason occasionally to this day based on the main characters name and that's quite funny. The zombies was the definitive version and it has never been this good since. I love going back to play this game as the entire package was just perfect. The graphics still hold up as well thanks to the gritty realistic look and hopefully it continues to.

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