Call of Duty: Black Ops came out last November, which means its pretty late for it to be reviewed with any real purpose other than just to talk about it, but that’s what we’re all about here on BcR anyway, so why the hell not, eh?
Matt:
So yeah, Black Ops came out a while ago, and we played it on launch day, finished in two sittings. It kinda became the biggest selling game ever made, so I guess it deserves a review…..
Paul:
Even though it’s about 3 months late, yeah, it does.
Matt:
I liked it.
Paul:
Me too. A lot more than I expected, actually. I thought it was going to be a dud, for some reason, but it surprisingly turned out to be a pretty solid shooter, right up to the graphical and gameplay standards of Modern Warfare 2. With it not being an Infinity Ward game, I was expecting a crock.
Matt:
It’s Treyarch’s best game to date, I reckon. Which is a good thing, since Infinity Ward are all but dead now, it’ll be them who has to carry the CoD-shaped torch now. Black Ops is the same old formula albeit with a slightly different approach to the storytelling – the flashbacks giving a good excuse to travel to a whole load of places and time-lines kept it engaging and fun.
Paul:
Yeah you certainly never catch a break in Black Ops. The pacing is non-existent, because the flashes make sure to keep you in the heat of combat 99% of the time. Kind of takes a bit of the excitement out of the huge combat set-peices a bit though, if you ask me.
This guy is like your best friend for the whole game. He's pretty bad ass. Or is he? We can't remember...
Matt:
CoD has always been that way, but its now getting a bit stale, that’s the problem. They’ll need to start doing something drastically different eventually, but until the mammoth sales figures start to dwindle, they have no reason to take any risks. Still, I can’t knock it too much because there aren’t many other big-budget blockbuster FPS’s out there any more.
Paul:
If it wasn’t for CoD though, I guess the others might actually stand more of a chance. You already commented on Activision’s neglect of the awesome Singularity, and in my experience of it so far, it’s a bloody fantastic and pretty unique game, but nobody fucking heard of it, so it practically died a lonely death. Can’t blame the publishers for backing their strongest games though, can you. I just hope that with the breakdown of Infinity Ward, Modern Warfare 3 (inevitable) isn’t going to end up a steaming mound of badger feces.
Matt:
The Call of Duty name is so strong these days, Activision could make a game about badger turd soldiers and it’d still sell millions. So long as it has the standard-but-solid multiplayer component, that is. CODBLOPS didn’t add much to the Modern Warfare multiplayer template, but I found it enjoyable enough to put in about 20 hours. Remote control car-bombs are amusing…
'Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!'
Paul:
Is it just me, or is Call of Duty: Badger Turd starting to sound intriguing? It’s probably just me.. Anyway, the game itself, regardless off the background with Activision and who bought what and why this is that or how pigs taste great in bacon form doesn’t matter. The most important thing is I really enjoyed CODBLOPS (still not keen on this abbreviation, it sounds too much like an STD of some kind) and I found the multiplayer mode in it far more enjoyable than I did with Modern Warfare 2, and the inclusion of the Halo ‘Theater’ esc. match recording tool was a brilliant idea. Endless fun to be had watching that completely fluke kill you got by hitting someone in the head with a grenade, regardless of whether it explodes or not.
Matt:
I did enjoy Black Ops, though I regret paying the full £35 or whatever for it. The singleplayer story was great fun blasting through it back at i41, and we had a laugh in the multiplayer. The people reading this probably don’t even need us to tell them if its any good or not, coz chances are they’ve already played it.
Paul:
£39.99.. It certainly wasn’t worth that on release day, but we had the added pressure of needing something new to play at i41 about a week later. I certainly made the most of it, so I don’t feel too bad for paying full price. But yeah, if you’re reading this, you likely played the game already, so this is almost entirely pointless. However, it felt like there was a void on BcR where CODBLOPS was meant to be, so it’s about time we filled it.
Matt:
Yeah, now go buy Singularity.
The trenches were a blast. And a flamethrower to the face. And a bayonet to the chin.
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
Format: PS1 & PC
Release date: 1997
I’m not sure what to tell you about FF7. Simply put, it’s one of my all-time favourite games, and the hordes of fans it has makes me feel like a bit of a cliché to even include it in this feature. But I have to. It changed my life, I think. Before this, I had not played a game with such a deep and engaging story, an epic tale about a host of very likable characters, all unique and fleshed out with interesting back stories. It’s just wonderful.
It’s safe to say that Fumito Ueda’s third game was one of my most anticipated titles of the previous generation. Announced in 2009, I eagerly watched every gameplay trailer and read up every snippet of information I could. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus remain two of my most beloved games, and I found the idea of another game by the same studio a mouth-watering temptation. A multitude of delays and long periods of silence from both Sony and the developers led many to believe it would never see the light of day, not to mention the troubling news that Ueda himself had left the project due to creative differences with Sony. The game lingered in development hell for several years and its fate was uncertain. Ueda and his team remained with the project as consultants and the game eventually had a release date set for December 2016. My excitement rekindled and I wondered how it could ever live upto 7 years of anticipation. So, was it worth the wait?
Hades is a great example of a coffee break game. You can play through a single run within 30 minutes, but if something comes up and you have to stop mid-run you can save and quit in whatever room you’re in and continue later. As the father of a toddler, I find this particularly appealing these days. I like to squeeze in a quick game during my baby girl’s nap time, and since I never know exactly how long she’s going to sleep for, I need games that can be played in short bursts. I’m starting this new mini-feature series with Hades, because you’re almost always guaranteed to have a good time, no matter how long you play for.
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