When a franchise consistently delivers massively popular, high-quality games, each new entry in the series comes laden with expectation. Call of Duty: Black Ops has some big shoes to fill, but it does so admirably. The engrossing campaign is chock-full of exciting, varied gameplay and drips with intrigue and intensity. The excellent multiplayer boasts some invigorating new features, and the new combat training mode finally gives novices a way to enjoy the competitive action without suffering the slings and arrows of outrageously skilled veterans. Cooperative zombie killing and video editing tools help make Black Ops the most robustly featured game in the franchise, and though you may have expected it to be the case, this is undoubtedly one of the best shooters of the year.
The single-player campaign is set largely during the 1960s and takes you to Cold War hot spots like Cuba, Russia, and Vietnam. You are an elite covert operative, and your globe-trotting adventures form pieces of a puzzle--a puzzle that your mysterious captors are trying to put together by interrogating you. Each excursion into the field is a memory, and these missions slowly come together to build momentum as each interrogation cutscene puts another piece of the puzzle in place. It's not a very original mechanic, but it gives a coherent context to the action, and a few strong characters and dramatic moments give the story some genuine intrigue. The blurry edges of your consciousness conceal information that must come to light, and the erratic visual effects and eerie audio echoes that accompany your interrogations sometimes bleed into your mission memories, which creates a great tone of uncertainty that plays out in surprising and satisfying ways.
Your interrogation-fueled flashbacks are not beholden to the linear flow of time, allowing your missions cover a wide variety of geography and gameplay. A dramatic breakout from a brutal Soviet prison is one early highlight, and later missions feature frontline conflicts, urban firefights, and mountainous incursions. The environments are richly detailed, and though the campaign is not without a few technical hiccups (like occasionally problematic checkpoint markers and the odd teleporting ally), these moments aren't likely to hinder your enjoyment. In addition to the on-foot action, you use a number of vehicles to achieve your objectives. Some put you in the gunner's seat while others put you behind the wheel, and though the vehicle handling is unremarkable, the thrill of blowing stuff up and speeding through hostile terrain is undeniable. The core running-and-gunning mechanics remain as exciting as ever, and the gameplay variety throughout the campaign keeps the action moving at a great clip.
There are two new modes that help make Black Ops the most fully featured Call of Duty game yet. Combat Training simulates a competitive multiplayer environment with AI opponents and allows you to set the enemy difficulty to match your skill level. You gain experience and unlock gear in the same way, and though this progress only applies within Combat Training, it's a great way to get the excitement and challenge of competitive multiplayer without submitting to the vicious predations of actual humans. The other new mode is the Theater, which lets you view replays of your games, take screenshots, and edit clips to share with the community. You can string together a number of different segements from a given game, and even render a video lasting up to 30 seconds for upload to the web, though the rendering feature is not fully functional at launch. Reliving moments--both glorious and shameful--is a lot of fun, and the community has already started cranking out content for your viewing pleasure. And though it may only apply to a small percentage of the population at this point, you can also play Call of Duty: Black Ops in stereoscopic 3D, providing you have the proper cables, required glasses, and a compatible television. The effect is novel and fairly intriguing, though it takes a significant mental adjustment and may not be comfortable for many players CKNWDYH9FYMF
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While it may not take the signature Call of Duty action to dizzying new heights, Black Ops is a thoroughly excellent game. New modes and mechanics give a jolt of energy to the lively competitive multiplayer, and the engrossing new campaign develops into one of the best in the series. Combat training allows anyone to enjoy the thrills of arena combat and the satisfaction of leveling up, and the opportunities for cooperative play, local competition, and community video creation provide even more outlets for entertainment. Call of Duty: Black Ops lives up to the top-notch pedigree that the series has earned, giving players an awesome new shooter to enjoy just in time for the holidays.
The ladies of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood have both bark and bite. If you played Assassin's Creed II, then you already know Caterina Sforza, the comely Italian countess with a soft spot for sly, rugged assassins. She's not the only female character with an important role to play in Brotherhood, however. Claudia Auditore is no longer just a submissive bookkeeper, but rather a strong young woman who eventually learns to handle a blade. And then there's Cesare Borgia's cunning sister Lucrezia, whose sharp tongue is matched by her severe, almost vampiric appearance. These willful women are ensemble players in the continuing drama of Ezio Auditore, the self-assured star of Assassin's Creed II. His story continues in Brotherhood, which begins directly after the events that closed its predecessor. This follow-up tale doesn't have the same impact of the story that spawned it, but Ezio's world is a wonder to inhabit, filled with amazing architectural detail and bursting with tons of enjoyable content.
Many towers you climb don't allow you to simply ascend with little care; they require more conscientious navigation. In fact, numerous towers not only require climbing, but must be burned to the ground as well. The Borgias have spread their influence around Rome, and to undermine their rule, you destroy their edifices. Before you can do that, you must assassinate a commander in the vicinity. Often, your target will flee if you directly engage the guards that surround him, so you will want to approach carefully. In many cases, this gives you a chance to put a new weapon, the crossbow, to good use. Not only is it handy for picking off one of these key figures, but it's also useful should a number of enemies charge you on horseback. In any case, once you have offed the key officer, you may climb to the top of the nearby tower and torch it. Afterward, you automatically take a leap of faith into a hay bale or wagon of leaves conveniently placed beneath, while melodramatic organ chords signal the importance of your endeavor.
The Smackdown vs. Raw series has been around for more than a few years now, and like a time-worn WWE superstar, it is starting to get creaky in its old age. The core mechanics that fuel the entertaining action still set the stage for some great fights, but the perennially problematic collision detection and finicky positioning mechanics are taking their toll. The new modes and refinements in Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 are more focused on setting up matches than landing gut punches, which makes the game feel more like a meddling manager than a reigning champion. Yet though the series may be getting long in the tooth, there's still enough action to satiate those with a penchant for powerbombs.
You can also craft stories of your own in the enhanced story designer. Improved menus, a new tutorial, expanded options, and the ability to create branching paths make the second iteration of this feature even better. The rest of the creation tools are still very impressive, and you can easily lose hours making your own superstars, finishers, entrance videos, highlight reels, and move sets. You can also enjoy the fruits of other players' labors by browsing and downloading content from the online community creations hub. Competitive multiplayer has more options than before, but even the new stuff is plagued by old issues.
TV Superstars is an exploration of the world of the manufactured star, where catchphrases, affectations, and empty theatrics serve that sticky philosophy--even you can be a star! Yes, you!--found in so many reality TV shows. This game could almost be a telling satire of the modern predicament, but sadly there is no irony behind the controller as you learn to correctly apply makeup, mix paint, stir ingredients, and shoot paintball guns in a series of reality TV-style showdowns. When it works properly, the gameplay is fun and engaging, but this enjoyment is often interrupted by the game's one-dimensional context and features that don't work as they should.
Though the context of TV reality shows makes good fodder for some entertaining minigames, the overall premise is a little too friendly with the perils and pitfalls of fame. The feeble attempt at a linear story is nothing more than a series of slow-loading vignettes that show your progression from fame-seeking desperado to catty socialite. Situations where you must record a commercial by performing a series of consecutive moves with the controller (move left and right, look up and down, swing around!) to match your avatar's onscreen movement and endorse a particular product offer an interesting change of scene, but the wanton abandonment with which you associate your face with toilet bowl cleaner feels mildly cynical. This underscores the will-do-anything-for-fame attitude that pervades the game. The fashion reality show also revels in the same shallow endeavors of that field: putting on make-up, walking down the catwalk and swinging the Move controller in time with your hips, and stripping off to your underwear for numerous clothing changes. Again, the minigames can provide some lighthearted entertainment, but the celebration of vanity here is slightly offputting, particularly during the make-up minigames, which suffer from the aforementioned accuracy issues when required to paint colours within small areas on the screen, and often result in your avatar looking more like The Joker in The Dark Knight than a model.
In The Shoot, your targets may look like cowboys, robots, or zombies, but they're actually just thin wooden cutouts populating a film set. The gameplay in this arcade shooter is similarly two-dimensional, offering up some interesting Move-controlled shooting without much depth. But just because it's shallow doesn't mean it's not fun. The Shoot is an entertaining but short-lived romp that makes good use of the PlayStation 3's motion-sensitive add-on, and its simple mechanics and violence-lite approach to blasting bad guys makes it accessible for gamers of any age.
The real challenge in The Shoot lies in racking up combos where you continually hit targets without missing. It's good fun to try to maintain accuracy whilst shooting at the many enemies that clog up the screen at once, and there's a good variety of foes on show with specific weak points that add to the challenge. Vampires, for example, are only vulnerable around their heart, while bats are fast-moving, small targets that are difficult to hit. Robots and zombies normally take two shots to bring down, but if you score a headshot, they crumple in one. Building up combos also opens up special abilities that can be used in battle; showtime slows everything down onscreen and is triggered by spinning your body around on the spot (or swinging the Move in a wide circle above your head); shockwave destroys everything onscreen and can be performed by pointing the Move down and shooting; and rampage turns your weapon into a fast-firing machine gun and is deployed by pointing the Move controller up. Using these power-ups makes an already easy game even easier, and having to spin around to deploy showtime is much more annoying than it is fun.
It's a sad fact that among the constant flood of games based on popular anime series, many succeed at delivering lots of characters, music, and other content that appeal to devoted fans, but can't manage to support all these goodies with a compelling gameplay experience. It's refreshing, then, that the Ultimate Ninja Storm series continues to deliver moments that capture the bristling energy and excitement of Naruto. Unfortunately, these terrific bits are separated by a great deal of dull filler, but the intensity Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 delivers at its best makes enduring these tedious stretches worth it in the end.
The tale you experience in the Ultimate Adventure mode is told with a great deal of dramatic flair, and it's clear that a lot of care went into doing these characters and events justice. As the hotheaded young ninja Naruto and his friends struggle against evil forces to protect Hidden Leaf Village, moody music, effective camera movement, and great voice acting all enhance the impact of their brave struggles and the poignancy of their noble sacrifices. Unfortunately, the story also casually throws around so many characters, organizations, and obscure terms without explanation that much will be lost on those who come to Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 without knowing their Akatsuke from their Kazekage. This game is unapologetically one for the fans, and it makes no effort to embrace anyone else.
Like a great Bond movie, James Bond 007: Blood Stone jumps headfirst into a spectacular action scene before the opening credits even roll. Going from silently dropping enemies on a ritzy yacht right into a pair of harrowing chase scenes--first by boat on the Mediterranean and then by car on the streets of Athens--this third-person action game from Bizarre Creations makes a thoroughly memorable first impression. What follows is a game that takes its sweet time stepping outside the shadow of this explosive prologue, as a number of early levels fall prey to flat pacing and drab, predictable level design. Such woes don't last forever, though, because the invigorating energy of that opening scene returns full force in the latter half of the adventure. The result is an uneven yet worthwhile James Bond experience, aided in no small part by stellar production values that make it easy to forget that this Bond story isn't tied to a new movie.
For the most part, the variety established by the globe-trotting plot is echoed in the game's action. Blood Stone is very much a hybrid of genres, a game that tries its hand at a lot of things and succeeds at most of them.
