About the game
Call of Duty: Black Ops is a 2010 first-person shooter developed by Treyarch and published by Activision. It is the seventh main Call of Duty game and the sequel to Call of Duty: World at War. It was released worldwide on 9 November 2010 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows, with Wii and Nintendo DS versions as well, and an OS X port in 2012.
It keeps the series' core play: two weapons at a time, a knife that kills at close range, and new tools such as crossbows, a shotgun that fires Dragon's Breath rounds, and ballistic knives. Some levels have you flying a Hind helicopter or guiding troops from an SR-71 Blackbird. Multiplayer launched with 14 maps and brought in COD Points, a currency to unlock gear, a second version of Create-a-Class, and Wager Matches.
The campaign is set during the Cold War in the 1960s. CIA operative Alex Mason recalls his memories to find a numbers station that would signal Soviet sleeper agents to release chemical weapons across the United States. Levels visit Cuba, the Soviet Union, the United States, South Vietnam, Hong Kong, Canada and Laos.
Zombies is a co-op survival mode for up to four players online or two on a split screen. The base game has the maps Five and Kino der Toten, plus Dead Ops Arcade, a twin-stick arcade shooter that unlocks by typing DOA into the data terminal in the main menu.
Development started in 2009 and the game was announced on 30 April 2010. It runs a modified World at War engine at 60 frames per second on every platform except Wii. Treyarch put the whole studio on this one game, with separate teams for each mode, and consulted veterans of US and Soviet special forces. Four paid map packs followed in 2011, each earlier on Xbox 360 than on other platforms.
Reviews were positive, with 87 out of 100 on Metacritic for the Xbox 360 version. Criticism mostly pointed at a linear, rail-shooter feel in the campaign. It sold 5.6 million copies in the US and UK in its first 24 hours, a launch record at the time, and took in US$650 million worldwide in five days. Activision said over 25 million copies had sold by August 2011. Retrospective reviews rank it among the best in the series, and it set up features that became series staples, including Wager Matches, Gun Game and the Nuketown map.
The text above is adapted from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What critics said
Metacritic 87 out of 100 from 89 reviews (Xbox 360). Individual reviews: Edge 7/10, Eurogamer 8/10, Famitsu 39/40, Game Informer 9/10, GamePro 5/5, GameSpot 9/10, GamesRadar+ 9/10, IGN 8.5/10.
Extra content
Four map packs came out in 2011, each on Xbox 360 first. Together they add 21 achievements worth 700 gamerscore, all in the same list as the main game.
- First Strike: Four multiplayer maps (Berlin Wall, Discovery, Kowloon, Stadium) and the Zombies map Ascension. 4 achievements, 150 gamerscore.
- Escalation: Four multiplayer maps (Zoo, Hotel, Convoy, Stockpile) and the Zombies map Call of the Dead, based on George A. Romero's films. 5 achievements, 150 gamerscore.
- Annihilation: Four multiplayer maps (Hangar 18, Hazard, Drive-In, Silo) and the Zombies map Shangri-La. 5 achievements, 150 gamerscore.
- Rezurrection: Five Zombies maps: four remade from World at War (Nacht der Untoten, Verruckt, Shi No Numa, Der Riese) and the new map Moon. 7 achievements, 250 gamerscore.
Good to know
- Dead Ops Arcade unlocks by typing DOA into the data terminal in the main menu, and a second achievement comes from playing Zork on the same terminal.
- The Prestige Edition includes a real RC-XD car that gives video and audio feedback to the controller.
- The German release has toned down gore and a removed level, "Sympathy for the Devil", and the Japanese release censors dismemberment.
- Xbox 360 owners got each map pack roughly a month before PlayStation 3 and Windows.
- After Black Ops became playable on Xbox One via backward compatibility on 17 May 2016, sales of the Xbox 360 version reportedly rose by 13,000 percent.
- The 71 achievements add up to 1,700 gamerscore: 1,000 for the main game and 700 for the four map packs.
- Cuba condemned the game's depiction of a failed attempt on Fidel Castro.
Made by
Director Dave Anthony, Director Corky Lehmkuhl, Producer Pat Dwyer, Designer David Vonderhaar, Designer Jimmy Zielinski, Artist Colin Whitney, Writer Craig Houston, Writer Dave Anthony, Composer Sean Murray.
