Here's an attempt at a professional sounding review..

Call of Duty: Black Ops hits every high point, and low point, the franchise has to offer but leaves you feeling like you’ve bought a ticket to a matinee during a Broadway show’s closing week.
In short, every feature you enjoy in our console generation’s FPS game is there from permanent special abilities to an overarching rank up system barring you from game content right out the gate, but every tweak and addition to the formula feels mechanical and route in nature after the title’s four predecessors.

As with World at War and Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops divvies its core gameplay up across three game modes alongside a slew of bizarre, surprisingly well thought out, miscellaneous side-games.

The Campaign, one of these core modes, tosses aside the Infinity War developed fiction and focuses on further expanding the universe established by World at War. Establishing you in the role of Alex Mason, a CIA op currently under interrogation by forces unknown, the story traces your violent, decade long struggle against a trio of Russian rebels up to no good in the shadowy background of major Cold War conflicts.

Unlike Modern Warfare or the prior Call of Duty titles set in World War Two, the Campaign sticks largely to a single plot thread and only acclimates you with new characters on two or three missions. Instead, you’ll follow Mason’s personal odyssey from a failed assassination attempt on Castro to a climatic battle with Russian, British and German forces all gunning for you.

There’s a lot to digest plot wise in the campaign’s six hours, but the steady clip of how the game doles out its numerous revelations and shifting alliances will keep most players engaged until the end.

As with previous titles, you have the option of selecting from a number of difficulties, but ultimately boils down to experiencing a low-impact shooter on easy/normal or gunning for achievements on the unfairly hard “Veteran” difficulty. Most players would honestly serve themselves better by running through the game on the lowest difficulty to absorb most of the plot and memorize enemy encounters before running head long into the brick wall challenges of Veteran. If meaningless game numbers mean absolutely nothing to you, you’ll probably enjoy the game far more than most “hardcore players” will.

During the actual gameplay, you’ll find yourself going through all the motions long considered staples of the series that’ll start to border on cliché now. You’ll fight against overwhelming odds with nary a weapon on you. You’ll stealthily shoot and stab NVA troops. You’ll even fly a helicopter at one point. Yet all of these actual gameplay moments feel secondary to brief glimpses of Mason’s madness that permeate the levels from his obsession with numbers to several brushes with a old friend only he seems to care about.

The occasional plot based level, which typically neatly ties into several great cutscenes and even some live actors, are undoubtedly the highpoints of the campaign’s missions. It’s just a shame there’s little game connected to them, probably a sign that the bombastic “creep ahead while taking out targets which shoot back” FPS style of the series has reached its inevitable evolutionary conclusion.

Upon completing the game, you’ll find there’s a massive amount of Cold War silliness afoot in the game’s hidden collectables, establishing an actual use of the miscellanea you’ve been acquiring since Call of Duty 4. Each yellow tape recorder found throughout the game reveals notes from a redacted file associated to each level. Furthermore, you can discover a secret computer boasting a complete Unix-like file structure that’ll pull back more of the curtains on Manson’s, and even several “faux-real” political figures of the 1960’s.

Doing away with the cooperative campaign of World at War and the one off missions of Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops uses Treyarch’s signature “Zombies” mode as the main cooperative experience. Shipping with only a scant two maps, folks who ordered the $80 and $150 versions of the game will get a code for the four Zombie levels from World at War. While the maps are a nice bonus for the additional cost, they’re ultimately meaningless since fans of the mode have undoubtedly played these games to death already.
The two included maps continue the Zombies style of shooting monsters, buying guns and repairing damaged barricades, but all fall into the trap of becoming route exercises.

The main meat of the game for most players will undoubtedly be the multiplayer mode, which boasts the most comprehensive set of features yet for the franchise.
As millions of fans know by now, you’ll work your way up the ranks via kills and side missions to unlock a number of power ups, weapons and even face paints to deck out virtual, PTSD-free, self as he battles through a number of locations drawn from the Campaign and “artist renditions” of Cold War battlegrounds.

Oddly, due to the limited number of actual historical locations or factions, the game’s multiplayer feels infinitely more “gamey” and less a simulated doomsday conflict. To be certain, past titles in the series have thrown most of their reality out the window by allowing the Taliban to carry experimental US arms or having Brazilian rebels packing weapons which never left the production line, but this game feels devoid of the series eerily plausible encounters with the US and Russia over a downtown apartment complex or Taliban’s attempts to ambush US forces with a nuclear weapon in the middle of NotIraqistan. Furthermore, the loss of the excitable announcers and chatty squad-mates from previous games makes matches sound oddly muted in the face of causality heavy conflict.

These atmospheric changes will mean little for most players compared to the seemingly small yet paradigm-shifting alterations performed to the “Perks” customization which put the franchise on the map.

The numerous alterations to perks falls well outside the scope of the review, but the two most pivotal changes which should be mentioned include the removal of any life or damage boosting perks from the game. Rather than giving players two choices to build their entire character around, or one in the case of Modern Warfare 2, players are far more free to customize their own play style through insidiously well designed new perks.

For instance, the “Scout” perk at first merely lets you hold your breath for extended periods while looking down a sniper scope. While it may appear useless at first brush, its “Pro” variation allows you to instantaneous switch between weapons with a long draw animation. Combined with a fully automatic handgun, snipers will find themselves suddenly deadly at any range.

Killstreaks too have undergone a “less is more” approach to their design. Forgoing the game ending silliness of nukes or spawn locking air support of Modern Warfare 2, you’ll find the return of World at War’s dogs and the delightfully silly, on a far smaller scale, RC Car Bomb. Mordern Warfare 2’s killstreak system rewarded a rapid application rewards and chain combos to keep the kills coming, Black Ops settles for perks that operate far slower and with more of a focus on map domination.

The carpet bombing, a series trademark since Call of Duty 4, now leaves behind a napalm trail in its wake that blocks off a good section of the level for a few moments by horrific fire. For your teammates, it’s an opportunity to steal a few flags while the enemy team crosses their fingers for one of their players to have a class with the Flak Jacket perk.

Levels themselves also continue upon the franchise’s obsession with tight narrow corridors flanked by open, and deadly, expanses. Though a few maps offer a creative spin on a comic book inspired Cold War world, such as the pristine 1950’s “Nuketown”, most fall into the mold of generic factories or snowcapped radar stations.

A number of PC mod inspired game modes called “Wager Matches” have also made their way into the core experience as well. Earning you addition money to buy weapons rather than XP, these matches require you to pony up a small amount of your cash to compete in some wild and wacky situations that’ll have you shifting between weapons at 45 second intervals or fleeing for your life from a gun with only one lethal bullet in the chamber.

If none of these modes tickle your fancy, extensive private match options and a file sharing system allow you to create a spin off of your own design. Unfortunately, compared to the Halo Reach approach of giving you complete control of every game aspect, you’re fairly limited in your options here with options restricted to player health amounts, starting weapons and so forth.

Your countless defeats across the world can even be remembered for years to come thanks to the power of the game’s theater mode, which records your most recent matches and allows countless preteens around the world to upload their sniper rifle kill montage to Youtube with your melon as the centerpiece kill.

For fans who want to enjoy some multiplayer fun without dealing with the internet at large can dabble in some AI-controlled bot matches, limited to only deathmatch or team deathmatch modes and two human players, or play up to four players in split screen fights.

Throwing a bone to local couch fans, everything is unlocked for all players from the start to play with. Unfortunately, this has the added side effect of removing some of the long term fun from local play sessions. Say what you will about the “deep combat experience” that keeps you coming back, one can’t deny most of the series fun dervies from seeing that yellow XP bar fill up.

In another bizarre design choice, local players can’t partake in any of the fun Wager Match modes, record and upload gameplay clips via the Theater mode, or even alter the rules sets of their games. If there was any point in the package which suffered the most, it’s split-screen battles.

Summarily, Black Ops serves as both an excellent third effort with the series for Treyarch and an important franchise branch for Activision. With the loss of the series main developer Infinity Ward, Black Ops has become a defacto turning point in series. Most players could take to Treyarch’s slower paced style of gameplay or many might feel the loss of speed compared to Modern Warfare 2, but many casual fans might just start feeling the fatigue of three years worth of XP grinds before any of the game’s subtle alterations come to light.

Going back to the Broadway example used earlier, Treyarch’s b-list cast put on an a-list performance this year. Sadly, the technical staff is bored with the same motions, the director wants to wrap up the show and start the next as soon as possible and the audience themselves have likely read a summary of the show beforehand, ruining any suprises that might come their way.

It’s a well put together package, but just too much too late.