Suddenly the Cold War Is a Cool Event
A screen shot from Call of Duty: Black Ops from Activision, in which players fight around the world in the cold war. The game shattered the industry’s one-day sales record when it was released on Tuesday.
By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: November 12, 2010
I never play games twice. But Call of Duty: Black Ops has made a very happy liar out of me.
As soon as I finished Black Ops the other night on my PC, I got up, walked out of my computer den, went into the living room, fired up my Xbox 360, plopped down in my big, overstuffed chair and started all over again.
I wanted to try to assassinate Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs invasion again. And break out of a Soviet prison camp in the Arctic again. And pilot a gunboat through the Mekong Delta again, shooting up sampans while listening to “Sympathy for the Devil.” Black Ops glistens with such moments. The cold war was never so much fun.
Exciting, intense and engrossing, Black Ops has immediately become the definitive contemporary first-person shooter (although if you want to shoot aliens rather than Russians, Halo: Reach is your game). Black Ops, published by Activision, does not really innovate, but it doesn’t have to. Rather, it reflects a keen intelligence and a rigorous, disciplined understanding of each individual element of modern game design and production. Just as important, it then executes and delivers on each of those elements in a way that demonstrates how well oiled a game-making machine Robert A. Kotick, Activision’s chief executive, has created.
When you compare how Activision has managed and built the Call of Duty franchise with how its main rival, Electronic Arts, failed to compete with its recent shooter Medal of Honor, it becomes clear why Activision is the top publisher in gaming today.
A little background: the Call of Duty franchise was created for Activision by a development studio called Infinity Ward and was originally set during World War II. The series was quite successful in its first incarnation but took a leap forward in both setting and popularity with the introduction of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007. On the strength of Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, Infinity Ward became a very hot property. Meanwhile, Treyarch came to be known as the Call of Duty “backup” studio, working on less ambitious titles in the series like Call of Duty: World at War.
This stew of money, ego and creative control finally boiled over with some of the main people from Infinity Ward ending up in a legal battle with Activision. The upshot was that Infinity Ward’s key people left (and struck a publishing deal with Activision’s competitor Electronic Arts), and the Call of Duty franchise remained in Activision’s control, with Treyarch at its helm.
So the question was whether Treyarch could truly step up and deliver a Call of Duty game as finely honed as Modern Warfare 2. If not, Mr. Kotick would have been seen to have made a colossal mistake by alienating the original team at Infinity Ward.
But for now, Mr. Kotick’s haters (including the Cuban news media,upset over depictions of assassination attempts on Mr. Castro) will have to wait for another day to enjoy his comeuppance. That is because Black Ops, which shattered the gaming industry’s one-day sales record when it was released on Tuesday, makes almost no mistakes. The action is taut and compelling. The overall tone of storytelling is both witty and mature. The fighting comes first, but Black Ops is populated by one of the most interesting casts of characters you’ll see in a running-and-gunning game. (In short, an American special forces killer and what you think is a Soviet dissident soldier appear to make common cause against their venal leaders on both sides; plot twists ensue.)
The game’s core-level design and artificial intelligence scripting are seamless. Some players have complained that the PC multiplayer version suffers from programming faults that make the game’s frame rate stutter, but I did not have any of those problems. Meanwhile, playing Black Ops in 3-D on a suitable television is a revelation. (In a gesture of intercompany detente, I played in 3-D on an Xbox 360 and a glorious Sony television; the combination worked flawlessly.)
Black Ops is what happens when a creative company is at the top of its game. I may even play it a third time.
