Call of Duty Black Ops Wii Review

Call of Duty Black Ops Wii Review
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Black Ops Game Basics (4 out of 5)

Black Ops is a first person shooter and the seventh in the Call of Duty franchise history. This time you play as special forces operative Alex Mason. The missions in this game take place during the cold war and include Vietnam, Russia, Laos, and Cuba. The games missions are a series of memories from Alex Mason as he is interrogated before each one. The interrogation sessions give Black Ops a very dark feel to it at times. The games story is quite good and one of the better ones in the Call of Duty series. During each mission you’ll get access to a wide array of weapons, grenades, and in many missions you’ll drive vehicles or man different guns.

General Game Play (3 out of 5)

The Wii version of Black Ops has decent game play but the game suffers from a few basic problems. While the Black Ops story is good the game features far too many cut scenes and scripted events that interfere with the flow of your game. You’ll start each mission with a cut scene, and often during your mission more scenes will play out along with numerous scripted events. You end up doing mundane tasks such as moving bodies or a scripted event such as wrestling with an NPC. These tasks don’t add anything to the game play. Another problem with the game is the “follow the leader” aspect to it. You need to follow your NPC characters and have little opportunity to explore the game. You end up moving from one objective to another and it all just feels like a big rush to finish the level. The game does feature some nice intense firefights and it has a few good levels but overall the game is too short. Two levels are in fact nothing more than big cut scenes. You feel like you’re in a movie and not a game at times. A couple of the levels are so short it takes about five minutes to run through them.

Graphics/Sound (3 out of 5)

Black Ops Wii

The graphics on the Wii for this game are quite good and some of the best graphics you’ll find in a Wii game but they are not perfect by any means. You’ll find some slow downs during intense fights at times and the Xbox and PS3 graphics are of course much better. There’s blood in the game and it looks good on the Wii for the most part. As you play the Wii version you won’t notice the graphics unless you play other consoles where the difference is noticeable. The sound on the other hand is mediocre, especially the sounds of weapons and grenades Weapons tend to sound the same and grenades go off with a puff of smoke and that’s about it. The voice acting in the game is good and helps the story tremendously.

Controls

The controls for the Wii are pretty responsive and easy to use. The aiming is good and in general the controls are responsive in the game. Here’s a rundown of the basic controls for Black Ops Wii:

  • A Button - Use/Sprint/Interact
  • B Button -Fire
  • Up Pad - Jump
  • Down Pad - Melee
  • Right - Cycle Weapon
  • Left- Inventory
  • + button - Lethal grenade
  • - Button - Tactical grenade
  • C button - Change stance
  • Z button -Aim down sights
  • Shake Nunchuck to reload
  • 1 Button - Objectives
  • 2 Button Multi-player scoreboard

Zombie Mode

Black Ops Wii

You can play zombies in the Wii version offline but the game only ships with one map. The other consoles have access to other zombie maps such as the pentagon map after the campaign is finished or through cheat codes. The Wii version doesn’t have this other map. It is not known at this time if the other maps will be included in any downloadable content in the future. Overall the zombie mode is quite fun and a good challenge especially if you try and go for it as a single player.

Multiplayer (5 out of 5)

Black Ops Wii

Wii Black Ops has a full multi player mode and the ability to use bots for practice. This bot mode is however only available if you have your Wii hooked up to the Internet and not offline like it was previously believed to be available. As you gain experience in multiplayer you’ll gain access to new ways to customize your load outs. Points can be critical to getting the weapon load out you want in the game so you should spend them wisely. One curious device added to the game is a radio controlled car that many online players don’t like since it seems cheap and out of place in this shooter. The game also features a wide assortment of game modes for you to try out. This review just skims the surface of the great multiplayer experience that awaits you in Black Ops.

Conclusion (3 out of 5)

Black Ops for the Wii is a mixed bag. The story for the game is good and quite different from any previous Call of Duty game. The game play isn’t that great in the campaign and the cut scenes interfere with your game.The graphics look decent on the Wii but the sound in general is terrible, although the voice acting is good. The multiplayer and the zombie mode help to bring Black Ops over the top and give it a positive rating. Future Call of Duty games really need a single player campaign with at least twenty missions since the series has campaigns that are just too short.

This post is part of the series: Call of Duty: Black Ops Reviews

List of reviews for Call of Duty: Black Ops on various consoles as well as some custom Black Ops related hardware.

  1. Call of Duty 7: Black Ops Review
  2. Call of Duty Black Ops For Wii Review
  3. Call of Duty: Black Ops Preview: Can Treyarch Live Up to Modern Warfare 2?
  4. Call Of Duty Black Ops FPS Freek Prestige Review