Overall, I felt that Modern Warfare 2 was a much better game. I can still play online and enjoy it more than I enjoy Black Ops. The story on Modern Warfare 2 was better, the graphics were better, the sound was better…everything was better.
In Modern Warfare 2, I could connect with my characters and feel like I was doing something helpful in the game. In Black Ops, I didn’t get that chance because it is hard to connect with someone who is out of his mind.
The story in Black Ops would have made a better movie than video game because I figured out the main plot twist in about two missions. If it were a movie, I would still get the awesome effects and visual treats that blockbuster movies have. The video game, on the other hand, forced me to play through some boring missions hoping to find out the plot twist that I already knew.
The revival of Nazi Zombies is everyone’s favorite feature about Black Ops, except me. In Nazi Zombies the whole point of the mission, if you can call it a mission, is to survive as long as you can against an endless horde of zombies that constantly gets stronger, faster and harder to kill. I didn’t enjoy fighting waves of enemies in a hopeless battle to see how long I could survive. Modern Warfare 2 had Spec-Ops, which were little side missions with many different objectives and locales in which to play. They were still not all that much fun, but it had a few missions I could continue to play.
The graphics on Black Ops reminded me of World at War. They were dark and gritty, but not very realistic. I understand that the bad graphics might help some people realize that the game takes place in the 60’s and 70’s, but I would much rather they be realistic.
The weapons on Black Ops were pretty good except for the sniper rifles. I don’t have five seconds between every shot to calculate for recoil to aim at the guy’s chest again and fire. If I shoot a guy in the chest, I expect him to die, not limp off to cover so he can recover and kill me.
The wager matches were fun and addicting though. I sat in front of my TV yelling because I got tomahawked and lost all of my points when I had been in first place for 10 minutes.
The controls and gameplay on Black Ops were good, however. It is a Call of Duty game, so the controls are still exactly the same as everyone remembers, with the exception of diving, which doesn’t really help at all.
Overall, I felt that Modern Warfare 2 was better than Black Ops. Often while replaying them for this column, I found myself taking Black Ops out to play Modern Warfare 2 instead because I don’t enjoy playing through an eight-hour game as a crazy ex-POW where I’m not sure if he actually did many of the things he remembers doing or if he was just hallucinating them.