The two synonymous questions on most peoples minds as they sit down to gun through the Call of Duty: Black Ops single player campaign are: will this be as good as Modern Warfare 2? And: Can Treyarch pull this off and make us forget all about Infinity Ward? After taking a weekend to make my way through Black Ops campaign my final conclusion is an unfortunate no and no.

Almost, very close at times, but no. Don’t get bummed out or send me hate mail (I get enough all ready), Black Ops is still ahead of the shooter curve in many ways. But in a few years, maybe as soon as two, when people point to the dried up husk of a franchise that Call of Duty has become Black Ops will most likely be the game pointed out as the first stumble, the first time we saw a star athlete show their age on the field.

You're buddies from Nam, and most of the other missions, I took to calling them Lenny and Carl

You, for the most part, are Alex Mason (not to be confused with Alec Mason from Red Faction Guerrilla. Seriously game developers lets start casting a wider net for character names). Things are currently not going well for poor Mason. He’s being held some where against his will and is repeatedly drugged and tortured to uncover the details of a code that he frequently hallucinates. Under interrogation Mason has flash backs to the various cold war era missions he has carried out for the CIA in Cuba and Vietnam and a brief but tough stint in a Russian work prison. To fill in some of the story details a few missions are played as Jason Hudson, Mason’s CIA handler, and some as Viktor Reznov (a surprising return character from Call of Duty: World at War), a Russian ex-soldier Mason befriends in prison.

You can almost hear some iconic piece of 60's music when you see a Huey laying down suppressing fire, probably not Octopuses Garden though

The plot begins with a groovy Manchurian Candidate vibe as its clear right from the beginning that Mason’s memory of his previous missions and the actual events have some inconsistencies. The plot hints that there could be more to the otherwise formulaic, cackling madman with a weapon contrivance that makes up the core of the plot. But then unfortunately reveals that no, there isn’t really much more to it than that. The story telegraphs too much information early and ruins what could have been some exciting twists and turns. It feels more like the plot exists to be used as a device to drop the player into a greatest hits style list of Cold War conflicts. Of course it should be the other way around, the missions should feel like a natural production of the plot but it seems like Treyarch came up with a list of missions and then made up a plot around them. I’m not saying that this was necessarily a bad thing on their part, but they could have worked harder to conceal the fact.

The level where you capture a Russian Hind helicopter is a nice diversion from corridor shooting

Black Ops is a little gorier that previous titles due mainly to a number of nasty stealth kills with a variety of knives and garrottes, resulting in a lot more blood and brain matter visible than in previous titles. It’s not exactly Hostel levels of brutality, but it’s interesting to note a darker direction for the series. If you’re mum is likely to be monitoring your gaming you’re given the option to tone the gore down at the games start and at any time from the options menu.

There is a segment of the game equal, and to some possibly a lot worse, than the infamous No Russian level of Modern Warfare 2. At one point you carry out a short, but nasty, torture procedure on a character who’s villainy is, at the least, subjective. What’s odd is that the game prompts you with a few button presses to carry out this torture, when it could just as easily have been a normal in game cut scene. In the No Russian level you had the free will to at least not fire upon the civilians, even if you could do nothing to prevent the slaughter. In Black Ops you’re not even given that much option. You can press the two buttons to torture this unarmed, restrained man, or you can stop playing Black Ops at this point. It’s a short moment in the game that most people probably breezed past but it made my ethical hairs tingle and it likely deserves more thought than it has been given.

The very cool crossbow is the most notable new weapon in the single player campaign, fulfilling the role of a sniper level, but with explosive rounds available

None of the characters really pop either. Despite his interesting mental state and the fact he’s being tortured for most of the game, Mason is never particularly engaging. Possibly due to Australian Sam Worthington’s voice acting not bringing much to the role. You get the impression at times that the characters were designed with familiar character traits to tweak fans of Modern Warfare. Unfortunately Frank Woods, your wingman for most of the missions, is no Soap Mactavish and Reznov, with his odd facial hair and brass balls toughness is a poor substitute for Captain Price. Treyarch would have been better to use a fresher angle in their characterisations, and we're long overdue for the fairer sex to make some small contribution to the war effort in Call of Duty. Likewise the actual period isn't represented pretty well, for most of the game if you didn't have the actual date prompts you wouldn't know the game was set during the cold war, the characters don't speak or act with the colloquialisms of the time. Except for one cut scene level in the Pentagon Black Ops doesn't go out of its way to remind you you're playground is a time and place a good thirty to forty years prior to now.

Pleasingly the gameplay is pure Call of Duty. You know what to expect and it delivers, a part realistic, part aim assisted arcade shooter experience, bad guys charge onto screen and dive for cover or blind fire around door ways. Dust flies, bullets streak, smoke… uh, dissipates maybe, and visibility is generally obscured. Black Ops performs an admirable job of simulating the panic and chaos of a life or death firefight. Very often you’ll find yourself getting killed and have no idea where the shot has come from. It’s not quite Operation: Flashpoint levels of reality, but shotgun charging enemies in cover is still a quick way to get yourself killed, even on regular difficulty. Veteran is painfully hard, as you'd expect (to this day I've never finished any Call of Duty game on Veteran), made even more difficult by several timed challenges in the game. Checkpoints are well placed for most of the game, but there are a few frustrating levels that have the checkpoint prior to a cutscene followed by a dangerous moment where its not quite clear what you need to do. Dying in these situations can be pretty damn frustrating as you have to sit through the same in game cut scene four or five times till you realise you need to do whatever you need to do.

Don't worry mate, we got you, and we'll check the lost and found for that eye on the way out

Again a Call of Duty mainstay, the comprehensive arsenal, is on hand to shoot communists of various nationalities. A few missions even have the room/wall of guns from which to choose your two equipped death makers. Given this is the Cold War era don’t expect exciting teched up weapons. It’s all functional and utilitarian with few exotic toys. The most fun you’ll probably have is with a crossbow that can shoot exploding bolts which is a lot of fun for the short times you get to play with it.

Graphically the game is pretty good. The textures do look a little rougher in parts against Infinity Ward’s work on Modern Warfare 2, but the all important particle and smoke effects look great. Black Ops has an unusual amount of graphical bugs, items in the environment can behave oddly, falling at odd angles or disappearing all together, or better yet floating in the air. Enemies have a tendency to die in some messy rag doll fashions here and there and often get hung on an invisible hook, as if the corpse is leaning on a wall that isn’t there. Considering the money that’s gone into the game and the reputation of the Call of Duty brand for quality it’s pretty poor that there are so many graphical glitches like this in Black Ops.

You go on ahead, I'll watch from here

The missions are a mixed bag. I loved the single player of Modern Warfare 2 (read the review here if you don't believe me) and if you asked I’d been hard pressed to name a really bad mission in the whole campaign; it was smooth, fine tuned and exciting from start to finish. Black Ops has its peaks, but it also has its valleys. For a start there’s no tutorial level, a definite black mark. We all know the controls, but that’s not the point, those tutorial missions were always fun and challenging. The very first mission, a police shootout on a Cuban street is exciting but ends far too quickly, this is a complaint I had with many of the missions in Black Ops. There also aren’t any really game defining moments. Think about the ghillie suit level in Modern Warfare, or defending the suburban fast food restaurants in Modern Warfare 2, flying into that castle in the choppers or watching that nuke from a space station in orbit. Absolutely epic gaming moments. There isn’t anything nearly as epic as any of those in Black Ops. Now there are plenty of cool moments in Black Ops, a boat ride down a Vietnamese river that’s very reminiscent of Apocalypse Now, an escape run across rooftops in China, but not the wow factor moments you’d expect.

The best level by far has a bunch of soldiers being supported by a supersonic Blackbird (probably not a big deal if you're younger than 25 but the Lockheed Blackbird was THE cool machine of the 80's, as posterised as the Lambourghini Countach). You play as both the pilot directing the troops and then jump down to play as the troops when they engage an enemy, the mission leads to an awesome stealth assault on a satellite station. It's easily the best mission of the game, but I can't help but ask why all the missions weren't that good. One of the coolest moments in the game is actually a cut scene that happens in the Pentagon, I won’t spoil it, but it’s something I’ve never seen in a game before and to me that’s a cool thing.

Hold very still and I'll get it, I think it's laying eggs in your tear ducts

All up the campaign isn't enough on it's own to be a full game the way the previous Call of Duty campaigns have been. Black Ops is not the super star of the season, even though it'll no doubt make enough money to appear so. Call of Duty Black Ops is not a bad single player experience, it's fun, well paced, challenging in the right places, a total bastard on Veteran as you'd expect. But it lacks those levels and moments that make you sit up and just say wow, those game experiences that have you pause the game and quickly tweet or post to a forum that you've just had a moment of truly blissful gaming. You get the impression, and this is wild speculation on my part, that Treyarch were put under the pump to get this one out for the holiday season, that if the ginger powers that be had been content to wait a year, or even six months, they could have a really mind blowing title on their hands, something to make people say 'Infinity who?'. I, perhaps unfairly, hinted at the begginning of this review that Black Ops could be likened to the beginning of the end for the franchise; if the developers get some breathing space I think there could be some truly epic Call of Duty games in the future. But I don't think that space to work is going to be available, there's going to be quarterly forecasts to be met and deadlines to be adhered to and Call of Duty will make money right until it doesn't. Then it's off to the retirement home with Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk. But for now Black Ops is, as it is, it might have earned it's stripes, but it's not the four star general you'd expect from Call of Duty.