| 2010.11.14 |
It took little time to play through Call of Duty Black Ops. According to Steam,
through which the content is controlled, I've played for six hours. I'd believe that.
The story line is that you're a CIA operative, named Alex Mason (voiced by Sam Worthington), who
holds the key to the origin of secret radio broadcast to Soviet sleeper agents in state
capitals across the United States. It is 1968, and the Soviets are about to unleash the
deadly toxin Nova-6, wrested from the Nazis in World War II, on an unsuspecting American public.
Your CIA handler, Agent Jason Hudson (voiced by Ed Harris), is urgently interrogating you to learn the
location of the source of the broadcasts.
The framework of the game is supplied by the interrogations: each step in the interrogation
takes you back to a specific event; it is in these events that you, the player, play the game
(generally as Mason). After each scenario, you find yourself back in the interrogation room,
under the bright lights and the scrutiny of the pitch-shifted voice of the interrogator.
A constant companion throughout many scenarios is Reznov (reprised from Call of Duty: World at War and again
voiced by Gary Oldman), a Russian to whom Mason is seemingly inextricably linked, and to two
fellow SOG teammates — Bowman (voiced by Ice Cube) and Woods (whose voice actor I didn't recognize).
The scenarios take place in Cuba, Laos, Viet Nam, and in Russia. (I've seen press reports that suggest
the Cuban government is angry about the mission to kill President Castro.)
The game also offers some very rich likenesses of Presidents John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara, and the aforementioned Cuban President Castro, for which I applaud Treyarch. This is
the first time in the COD franchise, which is founded on events in the history of war, a release has
involved the likenesses of historical figures in the gameplay. And the figures are very beautifully done.
I thought McNamara in particular looked astonishingly good.
Also seizing upon the popularity of zombie scenarios, Treyarch and Activision included a mini-game
at the end of the campaign (but may be played independently), where you play as any of the aforementioned
historical figures, repeling a zombie attack from within a federal office building. In the first such
scenario, you play as President Kennedy, fighting from within a briefing room and its adjacent hallway.
Treyarch and Activision are also to be commended for another first: using era rock music in the campaign.
Most notably, The Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil is used in a scenario during which you attack
targets while driving a river boat. Credence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son also appears in gameplay.
The ending credits features Eminem's Won't Back Down. My guess is that licensing these for the game was
a big deal.
I have only two things about the game which don't seem to add up. The first concerns the age of Mason.
Considering the scope of the events in which he participated, it seems the character should be a little
older. Granted, I wasn't yet alive when these events unfolded. It just seems the artist should have
depicted Mason with a little more milage. The second concerns the choice of Ice Cube as Cpl. Bowman.
This, I really don't buy: Ice Cube generally doesn't speak like somebody from that era; his intonation
betrays his character severely in a couple of spots in the game. Cpl. Bowman simply shouldn't come
off as a rapper from South Central LA. (But then, to be fair, Worthington's Australian comes loose a
time or two as well.)
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