Nintendo 3DS launch titles announced

Nintendo today announced the full line up of 3DS games that will be launched on 25th March along with the console. In total there are 13 different launch titles catering for a wide range of gaming tastes! These games can all be seen in the table below:

Personally I’m a little disappointed that Nintendo aren’t launching any major titles of their own other than Nintendogs and PilotWings (A mii based flying game) on the day. However they have listed a few of the games that will come out in the following weeks / months, including: Kid Icarus, Star Fox, Ocarina of Time 3D, Mario kart, Paper Mario, and Animal Crossing.

Nintendo’s own games aside, it is also nice to see some other major publishers releasing games on launch. I am particularly excited to see how the Lego games, Street Fighter, and Splinter Cell play out in 3D. Plus who knows! There might be some suprise releases announced nearer the time! There’s still over a month to go.

Little Big Planet 2 Review

After playing through Little Big Planet 2 for a few weeks I can solidly say that the game is AWESOME! Though I didn’t really need to wait a few weeks to realise this, as the game has been amazing since day one. The levels are aesthetically well built together, with clever featues crammed throughout! This and the inclusion of various new features such as power ups and the sack bots just add to game when playing alone and with friends! My only dissapointment with the game was the lack of “Go! Team” in the soundtrack! But that’s something I got over quickly enough.

Little Big Planet 2 brings a whole new storyline to the game as Sackboy has to defeat the evil Negative-a-tron, a monster that takes all good in the world and makes it.. well.. negative. The story mode also brings in a complete new set of 3D creator characters that aren’t card cut-outs to the side! These characters are continuous throughout the game, aiding in narrating the game, and making the player aware of their objectives. This and the inclusion of new bonus levels such as survival, challenge and versus levels has seen Media Molecule take Little Big Planet to a whole new level since the last game.

As mentioned, Little Big Planet 2 brings an assortment of new features including power ups, controllable creations and sack bots. The power ups really add to levels as players are now able to grapple and lift any blocks, or other sack bots above their heads and throw them. No more slow dragging!  These features give an enhanced playing experience in both single and multiplay modes. In multiplay particular I find the grapple amusing as you can just shoot and drag other players, or grapple along with them.

Now the sackbots are a collection of tiny robots that are completely customisable in create mode. You can control pretty much all the aspects you need to in their personality and abilities, as well as looks! For example you can make them good or bad, able to jump or not, able to use power ups, and even dress them up like normal a normal sack person! The sackbots aid players in completing various levels throughout both story and online levels. Their survival also affects the end score and items you receive.

Finally there are various controllable creations, such as a rabbit. When controlling the rabbit for example, sackboy can jump super high and crush objects as he lands on various breakable objects. When controlling the dog sackboy gets to blast objects out of the way with supersonic howls, and the round.. ferret.. like hamster.. thing.. lets you roll through levels at high speed with the boost ability which basically lets you fly! Even though you already get to fly with the BEE!!! A creation that allows sackboy to shoot down enemies and objects whilst flying through levels to complete them. All in all the controllable creations were a nice little feature that gave more variation to the 2d mario-esque run and jump levels.

As with the last game, LBP2 encourages players to play along with friends or random people online as levels include x2, x3, and x4 features that require assistance in order to get a full 100% end score. This and challenging side levels which are made less stressful with a bit of help successfully encourage players to interact with each-other and co-operate as they go on to complete the game. I’ve personally found that multiplayer has been one of the most enjoyable features of Little Big Planet 2 for me, as I’ve always had a thing for co-op style game levels, so the ability to play ANY level in a co-op style. It’s also safe to say that I’d be nowhere near 100% on the gobotron shooter challenge level had I not played it with friends!

Another familiar feature is the ability to play through other players published levels. This feature of the Little Big Planet games has molded the games so you can pick them up any time and do something  completely new. With all the new features in create mode that incorporate the games various new power ups, and sack bot players, users are able to create new and challenging levels that give that little bit extra to the gameplay. The sackbots can be modified to look like normal sack people, sizes of which can be altered! The best use of this I’ve seen so far was a level where you could walk into a sackbot and control it and its gun like a giant robot! To top this off, at the end of the level the author gives you a controllable zombie character for your own levels! Which is another feature of LBP I’ve always loved! The ability to share your creation with others to use in their own levels.

The multiplayer interface has been altered too to make it a lot easier to find genuine fun to play levels, rather than the “PLAY THIS GAME FOAR PHREE COSTUMEZ N ST00FZ!” traps that were spamming the Little Big Planet 1 online world. This is avoided with the inclusion of “MM Picks” levels – chosen by the people over at Media Molecule, these levels are generally all awesome and really make the best of the new features presented in Little Big Planet. There’s also a cool levels feature thats presents loads of top rated community levels that are equally as awesome. They even managed to help out people like me who can never pick which level to play with the “Dive in” feature that throws you into a random multiplay level with a random group of players.

It’s clear with Little Big Planet 2 that Media Molecule have really outdone themselves. The game was definitely worth the wait, and I can’t wait to see what DLC packs they release for this game over the coming year as even now I’m struggling to put it down!

 

10/10

Black Ops – First Strike

Something that was released this week was the first DLC for Call Of Duty: Black Ops. Now, for those familiar with the series, this is a huge deal, because the only thing more anticipated than this is the actual release of a new game. So it’s a big deal.

This map pack was released on Tuesday and it includes 5 new maps: 4 multiplayer and 1 zombie. And they are pretty good, and have some pretty wicked features. I’ll start with Berlin Wall. This is an awesome level set in Germany, surprisingly, by the Berlin Wall. The level features a load of buildings which provides good cover and sniping positions as you’d expect, but also there is this area where if you step inside, you’ll get blown apart by turrets. This area is denoted with red on the map and the floor, but tread carefully as you may not spot this as you’re running from your mates. I personally liked this map. Made me think a lot more about the whole gameplay aspect of the game and how to use my environment to an advantage.

The second map is Discovery which is set in the Antarctic. This level is pretty good as shows some of the snowier areas of the game, even though there are a lot of other snowy maps. This map features a lot of bigger, warehouse type buildings but combines it with more open landscape. You can see the northern lights, and somewhere down the bottom is a snowy bridge that you can blow a hole out of. That’s pretty sick to be honest. Makes those pesky RC things less of an issue. I did like this level, but not as much as the others.

The last map i’m going to talk about is Stadium, which is AWESOME!!! Well, i like it. It is held in a stadium area, as the name suggests, and there is a hockey rink involved, but sadly you can’t jump on it, which would have been awesome. But if you shoot the puck and the scoreboard, wicked stuff happens. There are also some other nice little things you can shoot which do things, but i’ll let you find them. This level features a lot of little places to jump and hide behind, but is pretty open, so bring close combat weapons to this fight and you will stand a far greater chance of success.

The other two maps are Kawloon and Ascension, both of which add completely new game play areas to the multiplayer and zombie modes respectively and are pretty sweet. All in all, for 1200MSP it’s not too bad a deal, but as with most of these map packs, is still a little over priced. I’d give it a hearty 7/10.

Sony NGP / PSP 2

Sony today send out a press release announcing their next generation portable entertainment system, which they have chosen for obvious reasons to codename “NGP”. The system will make its debut at the end of 2011, and promises to deliver “the ultimate portable entertainment experience.” At least that’s what sony are saying.. But we may infact be seeing a direct competitor for Nintendo’s up and coming 3DS.

Reading over the press release my first thought was that this could be the heavily rumored PlayStation phone. Fortunately I read on to discover that it is infact basically just the psp2.

The NGP brings wifi and 3g connectivity to Sony’s latest gaming device, promising infinite possibilities for its users to encounter, connect, discover, share and play with other users no matter where they are. The device will also feature various developer built applications that will enhance the devices general experience for users. Taking it past the focus of whatever game you have in the device, a bonus for anyone who gets bored of the same thing easily like me!

One of the most interesting announced features for is the multi-touch pad on the back of the device, as well as the one on the front. This presents a new three dimension-like motion for gamers through touch, grab, trace push and pull movements of the players fingers. Personally this will be the most interesting part to see executed. For a long time touch features on the casings of even iPhones have been desired by users. So to finally see it on a device will be awesome and hopefully a interesting new level of gaming will be achieved, similarly to when touch screen games first came out with the iTouch and iPhone.

 

The NGP combines touch features with the duel analogue stick features that make playing games on the playstation so playable. This will give an interesting new level of non-intrusive touch responsive gaming as your hands are no longer blocking the scree constantly, something that really annoys me when I’m playing Sonic on the iPhone… so to avoid this is great!

Other features noted in the release include:

• A “Super oval” Design!- Yes they actual use the term “Super”.
• A live area where users can interact with others, even possibly stalk them through a feature called “Near”.
• Two cameras! One on the front and one quite obviously placed on the back… Though it woulda been awesome if they were both on the back and made it 3D!!!! But no.
• A new game medium placing media onto flash memory cards… The latter probably being the feature that will make the NGP more costly as flash memory sizes vary.

 

From the press release this seems like it could be a good portable gaming device from Sony, maybe even something that will allow them to re-contend with the Nintendo DS! But of course we’ll have to see how it comes out first.

 

Ilomilo Review

Here is something i haven’t done, XBLA game reviews. Well, i’m going to kick off with an absolute cracker of a game. Like, seriously, if you have an xbox 360 with live, or a Windows Phone 7 phone, you should get this game. It is AWESOME!!!

Right, i’ll kick off with the main idea of the game. It’s a puzzle game where you play as two characters that are trying to find each other in this cuboid sort of world with several different environments. However, you can save these little things at the same time to unlock more stuff in the game. On top of this, there are these collectibles on the floor which help unlock memories which add more depth to the game. As the game progresses, the puzzles get more and more challenging.

Right, so the gameplay itself is very basic, which just adds to how awesome this game is. All there is to do, is:
Move;
Pick up usable items;
Collect memory bits;
Save the little things;
Find your friend.

That there, is the whole game in a nutshell. During the game as well, you can switch which person you are using, adding to the puzzle solving aspect of the game. This means you sometimes have to think a lot about what you are going to so. The usable items are wicked too. So far i have encounter 3 types of them: Fill in a single gap block, extending to fill a bigger gap block and the trap door block. These aren’t the real names, but that’s what they do, so i thought it would be appropriate to put it that way. Another wicked feature of the game are these sections that you can walk onto which changes the side of the block you are on. The whole world seems to move and it looks awesome. The sounds and music in this game are also amazingly cool.

Overall this game is amazing and for 800MSP (XBLA) or £3.99 (WP7), it’s pretty well priced. Especially as it is the most addicting game i have played since Angry Birds. This game gets a staggering 9.9/10.

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

Initially with Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood I found myself expecting a game purely focused on multiplay with little story involved. As a result of this I was thrilled to find this was not how it turned out and that It picked up right after the cliff hanger in Assassins Creed 2 with a further plot line that led to an even bigger cliff hanger!! Seriously! Like WOAH!

Assassins Creed Brotherhood picks up from where the second game ended and continues on with new memory sequences belonging to Ezio Aldetori. This for me added to the flow of the game as it made it familiar from the start and helped me get into the games plot and storyline a lot quicker, this and the way in which you can freely leave the animus as you wish gave a better playing experience than the previous two for me.

One distinctive change to the game is the ability to take your horse anywhere you want rather than having to leave it outside the city gates to never be seen again.. You can even call your horses in this game! Kind of like Link calling Epona… except in this case it’s Ezio whistling for the most recent horse he rode..

Another notable feature is the ability to recruit and train assassins into the brotherhood. Recruited assassins can be called into battle anytime, or used to take out enemies to help you stay undetected. They can also take out every single enemy in the area in an arrow storm! I found this to be a handy little feature and a fun side game to send assassins off on missions and train them up! It was like leveling up Pokemon… but with people that kill other people rather than monsters that hit eachother..

The game doesn’t necessarily leave you short of things to do after completing the story either as it contains a whole abundance of awesome challenges and tasks from the courtesans, thieves and mercenaries! Though these are all quite similar as they are generally just assassinations and races, I found it was more interesting as the level of difficulty varied between the challenges as they contained more variation rather than the same old “save the lady from guards”

Now the multiplayer! This is the feature I thought I would hate, as when I played it at Eurogamer it was utter bollocks! Just walking into someone would make you assasinate them.. which was silly.. there are people all over so missing people was pretty hard in itself.  FORTUNATELY however! This was not used in the final release as you now have to choose to assassinate someone before they are killed rather than just strolling into them. I mean COME ON! Imagine if you killed people by bumping into them.. I’d be a serial killer or dead by now! Maybe both.

I feel the multiplayer adds a competitive edge to the game where it was lacking before. I also think the inclusion of levels online is a good touch as it encourages you to play to unlock more online features and be top of the class. Though for me I’m just leveling up so I can have 100% on my PSN trophies as I get the level 50 achievement!

All in all, not many games will push me to get all of the achievements available, and the fact I’m still playing it says enough! I love this game!

9/10

 

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Review

The other day, a kind company known as Push Start Media sent me Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit as i won a competition. Now, this was one of the games going on my christmas list, but now it doesn’t need to be on there. Anyway, so i’ve been playing it, and i’ve noticed some awesome things about it, and some not so awesome things, but here is my review.

Need For Speed is usually a game that is brilliant for the tuning up of cars and making them look gangsta. Along with this, they are usually very similar to arcade style racing games. This all changed when they released Shift. That game was very realistic and less gangsta than most of the other and also focused on actual racing more than street races. This was different, but fresh.  Hot pursuit however has kinda gone back to what the games were before, but with a fresh perspective on street racing. You get to play as the police that shutdown the races. And that is so much fun, but more about that later.

As it is developed by Criterion Games, you expect a few things. Great graphics, awesome maps and arcade style handling. In this you get all three of those things, and a lot of Burnouts best features appear in this game. It has great graphics and all the cars look nice and shiny, until you crash them, then they just look destroyed. It’s awesome. The map is huge, which is similar to Burnout: Paradise and it covers a lot of different environments. And the cars handle just like the burnout series. Drifting is easy to do, and the cars are just fast and epic really. Along with that, the nitrous system is pretty much the same too. The more dangerously you drive, the more of it you get. Essentially, this is just a new Burnout game, in a new skin, and it’s fantastic.

One thing that has been taken out from this game that is in other Need For Speed titles is the car tuning and upgrading. I’m not too sure why it’s been removed, but it is missed. Instead of buying a car and turning it into a beast, you get to drive pretty beasty cars in their natural form. As you progress through the game, you get a rank for both street racing and policing, and the higher your rank, the more cars you will have access to. On top of this, you get to take part in races that require different car types as you progress.

There are a few race types: Standard race, Hot Pursuit, Time Attack and Free Drive. Standard races sees you racing against cars of the same type along part of the map at stupid speeds. Time attack is a one man race to drive a length of road in a certain time. Free drive is, well, free drive. Hot pursuit is brilliant. It sees you either as a police car or race car going essentially head to head for superiority. You have access to several weapons in these races which include Spike Strips, EMPs, Turbo (Racer Only), Jammer (Racer Only),  Road Block (Police only) and Helicopter (Police Only). All of these harm your opponents progress in different ways and really shakes up the gameplay from other titles.  All of these race types, along with driving dangerously and completing milestones give you bounty. Bounty is used to level you up and unlock more cars. The more bounty you have, the more cars and speed you will have.

One awesome feature of this game is the Autolog. This acts like a social media center for the game and is the hub to everything. It gives you news, updates, general information and your friends scores. It uses live leaderboards to mark your progress in the game against your friends, but this also affects your bounty within the game. You post the fastest time out of your friends in a race, you get an extra 2000 bounty. Your friends are better than you at this game, you get no extra bounty. Competitive types, like me, will love this feature.

Overall, i love this game. It’s the perfect arcade racing game available at the moment. It combines racing and law fighting like no other game has before it. Even though it is lacking in a few places, you don’t feel it needs it when you are driving a Bugatti Veyron at over 200MPH. 8.1/10.

Noble effort from Bungie – Noble Map Pack 1 Review

Ok, so Halo: Reach was a massive game this year, and i had the chance to go to the premiere event in London before release. Since then, it has gone on to be the biggest selling Halo game of all, and has the largest number of players to go along with that. But does that mean the pressure is on Bungie to make awesome maps for multiplayer like with Halo 3?

With the release of the Noble Map Pack for Halo: Reach, we see some of Bungie’s latest work on the title with the creation of 3 new maps: Anchor 9, Tempest and Breakpoint. I will start with the latter, Breakpoint.

Breakpoint is a HUGE map, and i mean proper big. It’s should be used mainly for big team battle, as it can take forever to find anyone. It is very similar to the older map, Avalanche, which was awesome for big team games. On the map you get a variety of vehicles, and 2 bases that are linked together through the mountain in the middle. I found it to be quite a challenging map as people like to use the jet packs, sniper rifles and the top of the mountain to generally wipe everyone and everything out. On top of that, as soon as some one is in the Banshee, if you don’t take it down, you are destined to die over and over again. It’s a pretty irritating thing, but it happens. Overall, i was pretty disappointed with this map, it isn’t as fun as Avalanche and can get a bit tedious when people keep slaughtering you with sniper rifles and Banshees.

Map 2 is Tempest. This is a pretty average sized map, very similar to Valhalla. There are two base structures at either end with a fighting ground in the middle, with varying surface types and different height levels. There are a few cave passages and a river to one side. This map is brilliant for 6 v 6 team battles, and even some rumble pit game types. A lot of the fighting here is medium to long range, but you can get some close range encounters, so it’s worth carrying a shotgun or something. There are no vehicles on this map, which makes the battle a lot more even, and means you can spread out a lot more. I have found the best tactic is to hang wide with the DMR and pick off the weaker ones with head shots, and just back up people on your team with cover fire. This is a pretty fun map, but i don’t see myself picking it over some of the pre-existing maps.

The final map is Anchor 9, and this is a small map. Built in a space station, you can battle inside, or outside in space. That part is pretty epic, and sounds awesome. However, you are very very vulnerable when out in space as travel is slower and jumping can take a while. Inside is a place of death, just pure death. It’s pretty hard to find somewhere that is safe from enemies, especially if you need to recharge your shields. I found that this map is perfect for the smaller team games, and rumble pit games too. Head hunter is brilliant on this map, and can really test a players skill. Again, there are no vehicles on this map, but that’d be silly if there were. This is by far the best map in the pack, and is a favourite of all the maps in Reach.

This map pack overall is pretty average, and at 800MSP is a pretty good deal. It does add an extra 250 achievement points for you crazy achievement hunters and really shows what the developers can do with maps. I have enjoyed this map pack and am looking forward to the next one, whenever that maybe.

Gran Turismo 5 Review

So, the coveted Gran Turismo 5 is finally out in the world, after about 6 years of delays and teasers, we got the final product in our hands on Wednesday. The only thing is, was it worth the wait?

Well, I’ll start with the initial movie at the beginning. It looks superb, but I can’t quite figure out if it is rendered graphics, or real life video, but it’s spectacular none-the-less. One issue with it though, is it doesn’t actually show any cars driving around, or anything like that. It’s just a lot of industrial footage with some cool crazy pianist playing in the background. Still, it’s pretty cool.

Instead of jumping straight into career mode, I played arcade mode for a while. Now, this menu is pretty simple to use, and it’s is very easy to navigate. You get to choose from 4 games modes. Single Race, Time Trial, Drift Trial and Split Screen. Yes, that’s right guys, Split Screen. That’s a pretty rare feature today what with online gaming taking over. In single race, you can choose from your favourite cars, a selection of arcade cars, or cars from your garage. There isn’t that much of a choice in the arcade car selection, but it does hold host to some cool cars. You get to choose from the gran turismo original tracks, a selection of real world tracks, city tracks, snow and dirt tracks and to my surprise, your own tracks. The same goes for all the other modes in arcade. You get very basic tuning functions such as tyre type and ABS and other little things, and there are 3 difficulty levels. Pretty basic arcade mode to be honest.

Now, the actual racing is what you have bought this game for, and I shall review that. Did you play Gran Turismo 5 Prologue? Because if you did, then you will be very familiar with this game. I was very disappointed with this. The physics engine doesn’t seem to have had much of a revamp in the 5 or so years since Prologue was released. The handling feels very heavy, but with that it’s very easy to spin your car. I’m not too sure what it’s like in real life, but this is pretty annoying in a game. However, one thing they have kinda got right, or fun as it should be said, is their dirt engine. When you are racing on dirt or snow, the cars are pretty easy to slide along and it’s incredible fun. I mean, it’s not the best dirt engine around, but this is still very fun. Especially with the drift trials. They are a party game in themselves.

Something that was shown off was the weather engine and the change of light. These two features alone get a part in the review because of what they actually add to the game. When rain starts, it doesn’t just start full on like in other racing games (need for speed underground 2), it gently brings it in and then it can start thrashing should it wish to. This really affects the handling and causes your car to be more likely to slide. It is in fact very similar to the weather engine used in the F1 2010 game, which is fantastic. Now, the change of light is also epic. The way the sun sets, and the lights come on is epic, and not just that, but the lights reflect off dust clouds and road signs and it looks the balls. It is the most advanced light feature I have ever seen in a game like this.

Something else that was bragged about was the amount of detail put into the cars, eventually bringing it the title of most realistic looking racing game of this generation. I must admit, I am a little disappointed here as well. You get two classes of cars in the game. Standard and Premium. The premium cars hold up to the most realistic looking racing game as the in car detail is spectacular, and nothing has been missed out. Even when you look behind you see the back seats and the rear of the car. On these premium cars, there are a few extra features too, such as working windscreen wipers and a horn. That’s right, you can beep the horn throughout the race, annoying all the other racers. However, these features don’t appear on all the cars. The standard cars, which make up the most part of the selection only have the outside. You can’t even get behind the steering wheel. Compared to Forza 3, this is pants. Literally, pants, and coming from a game where it says it goes into extreme detail on the cars.

The career mode is very similar to that of forza 2. Some races are only accessible when you reach a certain level as a driver. This gives the game some form of progression, which is nice. However, the menu is scattered all over the place on the home page, and can be very confusing when trying to find your garage as some of the options aren’t labelled.  In career mode, you unlock special races which are races designed to test you. Now, these races are really cool. One of them is a camper van race on the top gear test track. That’s awesome fun, and another is a karting race. The issue with these races is that they are shown as being a huge part of the game, but they aren’t. They are only special races. Well, up until the professional races that is, i haven’t got any further than that.

The car customisation isn’t better than forza, and is actually still at a very basic level. You can tune up your cars by buying parts and such unlike the prologue, but other than that, it isn’t too good for the amount of time we’ve waited for the game. The theatre mode returns so you can save and watch your replays back, especially if you did something awesome. A feature i haven’t been able to test is the Playstaion Eye feature. Apparently you can look left and right just by turning your head or something. That’s cool, but i’m sure it’ll get really confusing should you turn to look at your cat, or to get a quick drink on a straight. Another feature i haven’t used is the track builder. I can only imagine what it will be like, but i’ll leave that for you to comment and tell me about.  On top of that, you can play the game in stereoscopic 3D if you have the capabilities. I tried that out at eurogamer and it was awesome, especially the view that overlooks the whole car. The car popped out the screen while the track went into the screen.

All in all, a 6 year wait for a game is pretty rare, especially when it is promised time and time again. Considering they pushed the release date again and again, the game doesn’t really hold up to it’s expectation. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic game, but doesn’t really beat anything else out at the moment, especailly Forza 3. The handling is heavy, the cars are too easy to spin, the graphics are good, but too rich. I’m giving this game a 7.1/10.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops review

So, one of the biggest releases this year was Call Of Duty: Black Ops. Now, on a personal level, I don’t like the Call Of Duty games at all. And i thought this was going to be another one that i didn’t like, but it surprised me.

So, when release day finally came, my friend was all like “do you wanna go to the black ops midnight launch with me?” So me being me, went along for the ride. I took some of my older games so if I decided to buy it I wouldn’t have to pay too much. And guess what, i did end up buying it that night. Mental, I know, but I wanted to see what the fuss was about.

Anyway, upon playing it I found that it is a lot more than I expected it could be. A lot more. Firstly, the campaign is awesome. The story has so many twists and turns in it, it’s like a country road somewhere here in Britain. On top of that, the characters are very well-developed from the very beginning. The game really draws you in from the start, and makes you want to find out what happens. I completed it on hardened in two sittings. Now, i’m not saying it’s an easy game, i’m saying that i wanted to get to the end to find out what happens. It’s that good, and seriously, the ending is incredible.

Normally in a Call Of Duty game though, the story blows, just like with Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, so it relies quite heavily on the gameplay itself. Not, in terms of first person shooters, this game is more advanced than your basic shooter, but less advanced than a really good shooter. It sits pretty comfortably in the middle, and it does it quite well too. The few new features they have introduced are the dive. When sprinting, hold the crouch button and you dive to the floor into a prone stance. It’s pretty fun, especially when moving forward behind cover. Other than that, the game is very much the same as the others. The graphics aren’t great and the gameplay can get a bit intense, especially on the harder difficulties.

Another thing they have changed on this game, is the level progression in the multiplayer. Instead of having to use a certain weapon for a certain amount of kills to get a cool attachment, you can just buy it. Useful if you don’t have the patience to get 150 kills with a weapon before you can start using a scope or red dot sight. On top of that, the customisation has kinda gone all Halo on everyone. They have taken one of the best aspects of Halo, and applied it quite well to a modern war situation. You get to choose your weapon attachments, your side arms and even the colour of the weapons. Yes, that’s right, i’ve been killed by someone who had a purple gun. PURPLE!! It’s epic.

All the features we all know and love about Call Of Duty online are still there, and all the game types too. Treyarch have just added some more. There are Wager matches now. In these, you place a bet and get put in a random game type out of a choice of four. If you win, you win your money back, and then some! It can get quite addictive, so i made sure i played that before playing the other multiplayer modes.

Another thing that has made a return for this game is the Zombies mode. Yup, that’s right guys, the thing that made World At War worth playing has returned. And this time, it’s that little bit more epic. When you complete the campaign, you are greeted with a cut scene of epic proportions that involve a few people from history, and i must say it’s hilarious. This then takes you to a game of Zombies and you play as an ex-president. It’s very much the same as World At Wars zombie mode, but with an added hint of awesome in the way of characters. The zombies this time aren’t Nazi’s which is a shame, but there is supposed to be Nazi zombie mode with the Prestige edition. It’s a fun game type to play with three other people to see how long you survive.

All in all, i would say that Black Ops is a good game. Not game of the year, not by a long shot. But it is something special. The campaign mode really gives it pull as well, especially compared to all the other Call Of Duty games. On a whole, the multiplayer experience hasn’t changed much, but has some nice refreshing features added. For that the game gets 7.9/10. Like it’s good, but not that good.