333's Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified review

While the Vita installment of the popular first-person shooter, Call of Duty may seem lacking to many, after playing recent installments of its console-counterparts, the Vita title holds its own as a portable spin-off.

Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified launched on November 13th, 2012, worldwide, created by Nihilistic. Despite its many shortcomings, it really does a bang-up job at bringing a console-esque experience to the PlayStation Vita.

I bought the game for the hefty price-tag of $50 (Fifty Dollars, United States currency) from the PlayStation Store, and quickly darted into the Single Player mode, Campaign, to see what all the fuss was about, attempting to judge for myself.


Campaign Mode(s):

Operations:

The campaign itself, can easily be cleared within one to one-and-a-half hours, if you put your concentration into what you're doing. Despite the somewhat disappointing length of the campaign mode, the single-player experience felt like a Call of Duty one. Having cut the missions into 'parts', each mission would last about five to fifteen minutes, depending upon the difficulty settings you've chosen, really giving it the "on-the-go" feel. As each mission ends, and a new one begins, you're greeted by compressed videos, describing exactly what's been going on, and describes why you are heading into the following mission, although somewhat vague.

While the gameplay was adequate, I'd often found the AI to be incredibly stupid, or, "obnoxious", pushing the quality of the mode even further back, as they'd try to run 'through' walls unsuccessfully, to attack to you. The low-quality of the game didn't end there. Nihilistic felt the need to place no "checkpoints" into the game, so whenever you die from a mission, you'd find yourself starting back at the beginning of the chosen mission. Although not the worst thing in the world, it obviously managed to frustrate many throughout the internet.

However, despite these faults, not all was bad. Nihilistic did an amazing job making each following mission new and unique, bringing a whole new, "experience", if you will, to each mission. Also, cutting the 'story mode' into parts creates at least some form of replay-ability, as you can just pick up the game, choose your favorite mission, and jump right in. You can even try to beat your previous "record" as you change the difficulty, for each mission, which was also a nice touch.


Hostiles:

Lacking the timeless mode, appearing in many of the previous Call of Duty console titles, "Zombies", Nihilistic did manage to implement a somewhat gratifying mode called "Hostiles", which basically places the player on one of the multiplayer maps, killing "waves" of enemies, or "hostiles", one wave at a time, giving the user the 'feel' of zombies.
Despite holding similar gameplay of the famed "Zombies", Hostiles fails to hold the attraction. As in story mode, you'll find the AI to be very "stupid", again, attempting to push through walls to reach you. Overall, Hostiles seems to be lacking in many ways, even more-so than Operations, and definitely fails as a "Zombie" alternative. If you're looking for that same ol' "Zombies" experience, don't come to Declassified to fill that gap.



Multiplayer:

As you have probably assumed, or already known, like other Call of Duty titles, Declassified brings the obvious Multiplayer mode.
Multiplayer seems to be where the game really shines, giving players the 'feel' of the online Call of Duty experience.

Multiplayer, like its console counterpart, brings with it a few modes, to bring some diversity to the online game. These modes include, the traditional "Team Deathmatch", "Free-For-All" and "Kill Confirmed", bringing along with it, "Drop Zone" (which is a bit like King of the Hill, yet a tad different, and honestly, in my opinion, not worth the mention within this review). You'll also find the mode, "Team Tactical", which is a mode where the game-mode changes between "Team Deathmatch", "Kill Confirmed" and "Drop Zone", each match.

Multiplayer brings a "portable" yet "console" experience, bringing the action from console Call of Duty games, to to the handheld, giving you many options, such as "Creating a Class", editing your clan tag, and character customization (perks, weapons, primary, secondary, grenades, etc.), and even the option of "prestige", while bringing the portable feel, by supporting only 4v4 matches, smaller maps (Such as the map "Nuke House", which is basically "Nuketown", from Black Ops 1, just cut in half), and more-limited options for character customization.

Call of Duty: Declassified, multiplayer maps include, "Nukehouse", "Container", "Shattered", "Intel", "Rocket", "Range" - not to be confused with "Firing Range" from Black Ops 1 - "and Surplus".

As stated, Multiplayer does a fantastic job at bringing the Call of Duty experience to the handheld world. However, I've often found myself being booted from games, as the servers suffer severely from some unkown bug. It sometimes takes roughly four to six tries to connect to a multiplayer game.
Despite the few bugs shown server-side, the multiplayer really does a good job at bringing Call of Duty-like online gameplay to the PlayStation Vita.

(I've found myself playing Declassified, more-so, than any other Vita game, simply due to its additive multiplayer action.)


Overall, Call of Duty: Declassified brings the Call of Duty experience to the PlayStation Vita, despite lacking many things of which its console counterparts held. If looked at alone, Declassified plays just as you'd expect, and certainly is a good game, and deserves a solid 8/10. However, if you're expecting an actual, full-fledged "Call of Duty" game, you should expect to view the title as a 3/10 or 4/10.

Price-wise, 50-dollars is a bit steep, and solid price for such a title should be in the $35-40-dollar range.

Having played Black Ops 1, 2, and Declassified, however, here's my verdict:


Graphics: 7.0/10
Sound: 7.8/10
Replay-ability: 4-6/10 (Depending on mode)
Gameplay: 9.0/10


OVERALL:

7/10.

Yeah this game was underrated, I actually play it fairly often and the multiplayer is fun and works well as a online Vita shooter.

I play hostiles fairly regularly as well. Just a tip for anyone who doesn't know it, the difficulty of the hostiles mode is the same as the last difficulty you last played the campaign missions on.

So if you last played a campaign mission on veteran, the same difficulty will apply to hostiles and vice versa if you played with normal.

lights wrote:Yeah this game was underrated, I actually play it fairly often and the multiplayer is fun and works well as a online Vita shooter.

I play hostiles fairly regularly as well. Just a tip for anyone who doesn't know it, the difficulty of the hostiles mode is the same as the last difficulty you last played the campaign missions on.

So if you last played a campaign mission on veteran, the same difficulty will apply to hostiles and vice versa if you played with normal.

Yeah! I've been enjoying it! Fun stuff!

And I haven't gotten into hostiles, ya know?

But that's something i hadn't known! Thanks for the update

This game makes me want to vomit.

johngie wrote:This game makes me want to vomit.

You don't like it?