Call of Duty: Black Ops for PlayStation 3 Reviews by Gamers

I know a lot of the reviews compare this to MWF2 which I have yet to play on console (top of my queue), so i'm reviewing this game by itself not just basing it on if its better than MWF2.

SP, is decent enough. Theatrical, scripted, although not nearly as bad as MoH. As usual the story is a little hard to follow between missions. There's just cuts scenes and fancy graphics, no real briefing or time to stop and plan ahead. (Something I miss from the first few Rainbow 6 or Ghost Recon games) There were fewer pre-planned vehicular chases (thank goodness) and no Tank missions. If you don't plan on playing multiplayer RENT! The single player campaign is certainly not worth retail price.

MP, has it's issues. It's very fun when working, but server issues pop up more than they should. About 50% of the time you will migrate to new server (and resume the game), but the other half the server closes, your game is lost, and you have to find another. Sometimes game lobbies will hang and even though you have 12/12 players a game will not start. These issues seem to be most prevalent during peak hours. Last night (friday night) there were 480,000 people on the network, now, with non-dedicated servers, i'm not sure why this should be such an issue but it is. Muting doesn't always work in lobbies, the player has to be actually talking for you to mute them. That means the can have an active mic, but if they stop talking it won't actually mute them. It will cross out their mic as if they are muted, but it won't silence them. Next time the start talking, you can hear them even though their mic is muted. You have to unmute them, and then mute them again, while they're talking, in order to keep them quiet.

5.1 audio in this game is very good. On multiplayer the surround is a huge asset as you can directionally hear players moving as they run behind you, pull pins on frags or most functionally, run up stairs that are hidden by a wall.

I really liked this game when I first started playing it. Then a strange, I guess not so strange, thing happened. The Multi-player started to lag a lot. I mean, every match I would get in would have a delay that was just bad enough to notice. Some games were obviously worse than others and my score would reflect that. I finally got it in my head that I wasn't going to keep playing/supporting a game that was making me angry/frustrated. I decided to break the abusive cycle and send the game back.
When the game is good and working the way it should, it is a great game. It has a slightly different feel to it than MW, I cant quite put my finger on what it is but I like it. But, alas, just like all the other COD games, the connection issues suck the life out of the game for me. I had this game originally rated as an 8. That score was what this game could have been, what I wanted it to be. That score could have been higher but the single player campaign was not as good as was hyped (surprise), and it does not look all that impressive. It's not ugly, but we know it could be better.
Maybe they will get the connection issues fixed, doubtful, but if they do, I will rate this game an 8 and recommend it to all who enjoy shooting other people without the fear of jail.

Final say: Rent the game, play the single player for yourself cause only you know what you like. Try the multi-player, if that's your thing, and who knows, maybe your connection will be flawless. If that is the case, then I think you will have a good time with this game.
As always, these are just my opinions and observations. You should make up your own mind. Happy Gaming.