Call of Duty: Black Ops

[KallDrexx]

I definitely enjoyed MW1 single player.  Didn't play MW2 at all, and never played any MW or CoD multiplayer.

[Engels]

Ok, I must confess that I have no memory of the earlier CoDs, just MW onwards. I am pretty sure I played them, but they left such a weak impression that I have forgotten any aspect of the single player play entirely. Make of that what you will.

MW for me was the most anti-climactic moment in single player 'story driven' gaming I think I have ever experienced.

Edit: sorry, had to run off to work, which I found out just now is cancelled due to the weather. So anyways...after MW, I had low expectations for any CoD line. I tried, god bless me, to play the single player of W@W, but that too was ridiculous.

So far, I've played the first chapter of BO, and considering my low expectations, I'm not disappointed. It flowed, the combat was ridiculously over-busy yet pretty easy considering.

I also played a few rounds of Multiplayer and found it to be pretty much as expected. A few hitches here and there.

A quick question to those that might now: If you get to see someone's 'kill cam' and you notice that they're stuttering all over the place, does that mean that they're using some hack, or that their connection is weak?

[Azazel]

MW2 SP was not a step up over MW1. I'm not budging on that point.

Heh. I fucked up and said MW2 when I was talking about CoD4:MW. I still haven't played MW2 aside from the demo, since I'm only interested in the SP campaign. 
I'll pick it up when it's cheap, whenever that is. Same deal-io with Black Ops.

I wrote up my opinions on WAW awhile back.

[Engels]

Azazel, read your review of W@W and I concur on just about everything you said. BO seems to be more of the same. Squadmates, pretty much decoration, enemy respawn too quick to 'clear' anything. Lots of Run-while-wounded to next Yellow Waypoint, at which point the enemies behind you tend to evaporate. At one point, going down a hill with VietCong, I turned the difficulty down to 'recruit' just to get through it, and forgot to turn it back up to 'normal'. The next chapter involved a shotgun, and it was freakin hilarious. One shot from 6 meters away ignites your enemies. I can shotgun an enemy from a distance, too! It feels a bit like some Mario Bros game rather than a shooter. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, since this is how CoD does its single player.

As far as the story writing is concerned, its better than I expected, even if its a bit overly dramatic. I have no earthly idea why I'm so invested in this one Russian guy. Maybe its some numbers station programming, maybe I'm just a blithering idiot. I'm not sure. Either way, its hard to feel there's a whole lot at stake.

Technically, I am getting hitching in some of the busier single-player encounters. I'm a bit hesitant to turn off prefetch for the game, since it suggests that it'll run on raw memory alone, and I'm not sure my system will like that. I'll probably give it a try at some point.

[Muffled]

... I liked the BC2 way of fighting on a map a bit better, with 2 rounds lasting about an hour each pr match, compared to the max 5 minutes pr round with MW1.

Never played BC2, but two hours to complete a single match is way, WAY too long.  45 minute Starcraft matches strain my patience, and I rarely have more than an hour that I can just sit and stare at a screen non stop for any way because of real life things.

[Malakili]

... I liked the BC2 way of fighting on a map a bit better, with 2 rounds lasting about an hour each pr match, compared to the max 5 minutes pr round with MW1.

Never played BC2, but two hours to complete a single match is way, WAY too long.  45 minute Starcraft matches strain my patience, and I rarely have more than an hour that I can just sit and stare at a screen non stop for any way because of real life things.

I think thats over stating how long matches last in BC2 to be honest.  Maybe 45-hour is more reasonable based on my experience.  Though I think it could change based on what server(s) you frequent.  I do find the turnover in BO to be a little quick, but it feels about right, and given that the map rotation is all in all pretty solid, it keeps things fresh and the teams from getting stacked too much.

[Engels]

Not to mention that I've played on custom servers for CoD:MW with games that lasted quite a while too. Huge maps, 16x16 players, etc. All boiled down to the customization available for MW, which Activision subsequently horked. Maybe BO has the ability to make custom maps, I dunno.

[tgr]

While I'm not going to sit here and claim that it lasted at least 2 hour for each map (with one stint each as attacker and defender), I'm going to just point out that I don't play MW1/BC2 in "normal" settings, but in a LAN party where we're 50+ fat nerds whose sole purpose that entire weekend is to eat junkfood and play CSS, MW1 and BC2. I literally wouldn't complain at all if matches lasted for even more than 1 hour pr side.

[Engels]

So, I had a lot of hitching today in multiplayer. Turns out, setting Steam's process to Low on the task manager that then launches the BlackOps exe at low priority helped enormously with the hitching. The reason stated on some random steam forum post is that the game is meant for quad core processors (which mine isn't) and forcing the processing task to low pushes a lot of the game's workload into the GPU. Since my vid card is a 5870, this seems to have the beefiness to handle the processes otherwise choking my CPU.

[Nightblade]

So, I had a lot of hitching today in multiplayer. Turns out, setting Steam's process to Low on the task manager that then launches the BlackOps exe at low priority helped enormously with the hitching. The reason stated on some random steam forum post is that the game is meant for quad core processors (which mine isn't) and forcing the processing task to low pushes a lot of the game's workload into the GPU. Since my vid card is a 5870, this seems to have the beefiness to handle the processes otherwise choking my CPU.

Yeah, that's a complete and total load of shit. There is absolutely nothing in this game you need a quad core processor for.

[Engels]

Well, my happiness was short-lived. After getting rid of the hitching issue by lowering the process priority, I now have sound stuttering! Fixes include restarting the sound serve each time a new map loads! Yay!

Nightblade, I'm not sure its a canard. I'm reading reports that WinXP on DX9 runs this game fine, but Win7 64 on DX10/11 runs less well. Sounds like the code for DX10/11 wasn't done too well, and that the processor speed makes up the difference. I'm running a E6750 C2D which is a bit long in the tooth if the game has to use processor power to mitigate poor DX10/11 coding.

Edit: Well, I updated drivers, still now love, but then I forced VSync and switched from headset to speakers and the problems all vanished. No earthly idea why.

[Nightblade]

Well, my happiness was short-lived. After getting rid of the hitching issue by lowering the process priority, I now have sound stuttering! Fixes include restarting the sound serve each time a new map loads! Yay!

That's pretty much the thing with every "fix" it works fine for a bit then suddenly DERP GAME IS UNPLAYABLE AGAIN.

Nightblade, I'm not sure its a canard. I'm reading reports that WinXP on DX9 runs this game fine, but Win7 64 on DX10/11 runs less well. Sounds like the code for DX10/11 wasn't done too well, and that the processor speed makes up the difference. I'm running a E6750 C2D which is a bit long in the tooth if the game has to use processor power to mitigate poor DX10/11 coding.

This game does not have Direct X 10/11 support.

[Engels]

Well, my happiness was short-lived. After getting rid of the hitching issue by lowering the process priority, I now have sound stuttering! Fixes include restarting the sound serve each time a new map loads! Yay!

That's pretty much the thing with every "fix" it works fine for a bit then suddenly DERP GAME IS UNPLAYABLE AGAIN.

Yep. About 20 minutes after I posted, on the same settings after a game restart, the game went back to stuttering audio and hitching graphics.

[Sheepherder]

A quick question to those that might now: If you get to see someone's 'kill cam' and you notice that they're stuttering all over the place, does that mean that they're using some hack, or that their connection is weak?

Bad connection, usually.

[Nightblade]

A quick question to those that might now: If you get to see someone's 'kill cam' and you notice that they're stuttering all over the place, does that mean that they're using some hack, or that their connection is weak?

Bad connection, usually.

Its a known bug, one of many.

[K9]

I finally got around to playing through the campaign for this on my housemate's 360. The campaign definitely got better towards the end, although I'd say the overall story wasn't as involving or fluid as COD4. I guess single player isn't where the main focus of development is, although this is a step up from MW2. Definitely worth a playthrough sometime, and the zombie modes are good fun.

[Azazel]

Arise!

So anyway, This has dropped low enough in price to make me interested in using a coupon to purchase it 

I'd normally favour the PC as my platform of choice for a FPS (duh!), but I've become corrupted and I don't actually mind playing CoD's multi on console (well, WaW on occasion), and all those issues listed above (I'm running an i7 870 8-cpu with DX11) make me think that perhaps I should let the PC price drop even lower and just get the 360 version for now...

thoughts?

[tgr]

* tgr holds up the cross to ward off the evil spirits.

[Nonentity]

Arise!

So anyway, This has dropped low enough in price to make me interested in using a coupon to purchase it 

I'd normally favour the PC as my platform of choice for a FPS (duh!), but I've become corrupted and I don't actually mind playing CoD's multi on console (well, WaW on occasion), and all those issues listed above (I'm running an i7 870 8-cpu with DX11) make me think that perhaps I should let the PC price drop even lower and just get the 360 version for now...

thoughts?

Performance has gotten notably better on PC with recent patches. If you have an i5 or better, the game will run fine.

[Malakili]

Arise!

So anyway, This has dropped low enough in price to make me interested in using a coupon to purchase it 

I'd normally favour the PC as my platform of choice for a FPS (duh!), but I've become corrupted and I don't actually mind playing CoD's multi on console (well, WaW on occasion), and all those issues listed above (I'm running an i7 870 8-cpu with DX11) make me think that perhaps I should let the PC price drop even lower and just get the 360 version for now...

thoughts?

If you like playing twitch shooters, the PC is the place to do it, and I got about 50 hours out of this on PC during a gaming dry spell last fall.  If you want the game for playing with friends and such, then console is probably the better choice, I guess depending on who your friends are.  I played the single player once and then never again, so if thats your angle I don't have anything useful to contribute.

[Azazel]

hmmm. yeah. Obiovusly the PC is the "better" platform for shooters, I don't have any friends that play shooters with me, except for some friends who come over on Friday nights/weekends and play some BC2 of L4D2. My wife plays co-op stuff with me, and she prefers console for shooters.

I guess I prefer the PC for "serious" shooters - stuff I'm going to sink a lot of time into, while the console is good for "Michael Bay" shooters or stuff I'm going to run through a short campaign on, and then just pick up and muck about with occasionally online. Your BF:BC2 is a PC choice, while I played CoD4 on PC, CoD: WaW I played on PC, and later picked up to play the co-op biuts with my wife on console, but then muck about with in MP on console rather than PC.

Hm, probably console, then. And pick up on PC later for a "proper" playthrough of the campaign.