Call of Duty: Black Ops opens with a man strapped to a chair. Monitors ring the room. Two interrogators want to know about a numbers broadcast, and Alex Mason answers by remembering.
That is the frame Treyarch built around its 2010 shooter, and it is the best idea in the game. The campaign runs from 1961 to 1968, 16 years after Call of Duty: World at War. It follows CIA and SOG operative Mason through a secret history of black operations behind enemy lines, told mainly in flashbacks. Cuba, the Soviet Union, the United States, South Vietnam, Hong Kong, Canada and Laos all appear.
Trailer, via Call of Duty.
Alex Mason and the Numbers Station
The structure earns its keep. Mason’s interrogators push him to recall specific memories, and each memory becomes a mission. The plot’s target is a numbers station meant to order Soviet sleeper agents to deploy chemical weapons across the United States.
Black Ops breaks from the series’ usual three-country campaign. There are two playable nations here, Russia and the USA, but only an American campaign. The playable characters are covert operatives, and they speak while the player controls them, a first for the series.
Dolphin Diving and Dragon’s Breath
The shooting is the same shooting. A player can carry two firearms, throw grenades, and kill with one knife blow up close. Standing, crouching and prone each change movement speed, accuracy and stealth. Running and dropping straight to prone gets called dolphin diving.
The new toys are the interesting part. Crossbows fire standard bolts or explosive ammunition. A shotgun loads Dragon’s Breath rounds. Ballistic knives join the arsenal. Red damage glow fades as health regenerates, and a live grenade within blast radius gets an on-screen marker showing where it sits relative to the player, so the choice to run or throw back is an informed one.
Fourteen Maps and COD Points
Multiplayer ships with 14 maps and multiple objective-based modes. Loadout options and killstreak rewards get real improvements. COD Points, a virtual currency, let players buy weapons, character customization, and attachments and customization for those weapons.
The list of what matters most:
- The interrogation frame, which gives a shooter a reason to jump between years and continents.
- Mason as a character who talks back, rather than a silent pair of hands.
- The crossbow, the Dragon’s Breath shotgun and the ballistic knife, which push loadouts away from another assault rifle.
- COD Points, which turn unlocks into purchases and change how a match’s economy feels.
- Fourteen maps at launch, a number that decides whether the multiplayer lasts past December.
The Hind Helicopter Problem
Not every idea lands. Certain levels put the player behind the controls of a Hind helicopter and have them guide friendly troops, and the game’s first-person footing does not travel with them. Black Ops is at its strongest when the camera stays low and the objectives on the heads-up display pull a squad forward. It is weakest when it hands over a vehicle and asks the player to be a commander instead of a soldier.
Development began in 2009, with Treyarch coming off World at War and the tie-in game for the James Bond film Quantum of Solace. The studio’s reach shows. The Cold War material is treated as a puzzle to assemble rather than a history to honor, and the flashback structure is the mechanism that makes the puzzle work.
Zork on the Disc
An extra game sits inside Black Ops: Zork, the Apple II text adventure. It is a strange passenger for a 2010 military shooter, and it says something about the people who made this one. They knew the campaign’s memory puzzle was a game about games, and they were willing to wink at it.
What Black Ops Gets Right
The campaign’s ambition is real. A shooter that asks the player to hold two timelines in their head, and to trust that the gaps will close, is doing more than most of its peers attempted in 2010. Mason’s interrogators are the reason the structure holds. Without them, the globe-trotting would read as a mission list. With them, every location is a thing a man is trying not to say.
The multiplayer is the safer half. Fourteen maps, COD Points, killstreaks and loadouts are refinements, not reinventions, and the vehicle sequences are the clearest sign of a studio reaching past its grip. Black Ops is remembered for its story, and that is the correct memory.
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