So I have been watching this game since it was announced, and I must say I am still on the fence about it. Have you heard of the new demo? The new demo of Call of Duty: Black Ops that Activision is showing at Gamescom 2010 doesn't quite start off with explosions or terrible screams of battle. You start the level trapped inside a downed helicopter sinking to the bottom of the Huong River. It's a good plot device because you have the stress of making it out alive, but also the realization of the perils of war as those less fortunate than you sink to the bottom lifeless.
And if the sight of those bodies sinking to the bottom of the river while you're trying to swim to the top of it doesn't grab you, then the level's rollercoaster pacing will. The whole level, dubbed Victor Charlie, starts off slow and methodical, climaxes in the middle, and slows back down for a bit toward the end. Once you get out of that river, you make your way through some waterfront huts and meet up with your squad mates, which consists of some badass special operations crew with even more badass skinart. With them at your side you slowly and silently creep into an enemy hut while one of the bad guys, asleep on the job, is taking a nap. ((Not sure how he is able to take a nap considering a giant fucking helicopter just crashed into the river, but whatever.
With World at War we saw the gore that Activision wants in the new Call of Duty games, but this takes it to a new level. Essentially you creep into the tent, place your hand over his mouth, and slit his throat. You continue along at a similar pace in order to get through this dangerous area unseen while dispatching a few more foes and taking another dip or two into the river, which includes some underwater FPS action, before getting to a village a bit farther inland. Now I didn't get to play the demo, I only got to see the demo. So I am not sure if when you are not quiet if the game gets incredibly hard, or... if you fail your mission. Then things get absolutely insane. The mission requires you to plant some C4 on a target building, and that explosion obviously attracts a lot of attention. The transition from the cloak and dagger feel, to the eat lead motherfucker phase, is actually surprisingly delightful. There were times in previous Call of Duty games where it was nothing but action at the beginning of the level, then it petered out. Well, not with this one my <BS> friends.
The firefight is a bit more of that classic Call of Duty, with fast-paced gun combat and more than a few explosions. A few of the highlights we noticed were the ways those wooden structures erupting into splintered shrapnel when you hit them with your M16's underslung grenade launcher, and of course with suicidal soldiers that charge out to stick you with a knife. After the intense fight, you enter this creepy tunnel sewer thing whose spaces are so tight, it's bound to give you Left 4 Dead flashbacks and a little symptom of itchy trigger finger.
After the mission, they showed, although it was low quality with my school connection, the helicopter level that Treyarch demoed during Microsoft's E3 2010 press conference in June. Named Payback, this level takes the aircraft sequences we've seen from time to time in previous Call of Duty games and lets you actually pilot the thing, which would have been amazing in the last game with their 'save the sailors' mission. After sneaking up on a group of soldiers guarding a Russian Hind helicopter and taking them out, you hop into the attack chopper and fly through a river canyon shooting down on-foot enemies, armored trucks, helicopters, and entire bridges. Frankly, to me it looks like Call of Duty was molested by BFBC2, but in a good way. I still don't see how they are going to go through time, or if they canned that idea and stuck with the Cold War. Hopefully, things will pick up.
