Call of Duty: Black Ops review (PS3) ★★★★

You play as Alex Mason, a grizzled, highly-trained specialist soldier voiced by Sam Rockwell of James Cameron's Avatar fame. That's right, your character is finally more than just a faceless name and Mason is actually written in as an important part of the story, rather than just another bod on the battlefield who just so happens to be quite good at not dying and blowing countless enemies away. However, an immensely personal, engaging story it is not. It's a shame that Treyarch chased the addition of an identifiable character with just one dimension, failing to flesh him out and introducing him with the words “fuck you”. That's far from the wisest way to have the player meet the protagonist for the very first time, let alone serve as a bridge to liking him. Unfortunately, this player-character disconnection is felt right throughout the game, which is ironically similar to what you need to do to enjoy the story experience if you've got a grasp on history: disconnect your brain. Black Ops' Campaign is indeed enjoyable if you just go along with it, like a popcorn movie, but I still firmly believe that the game should be more faithful to the period. I'm all for alternate histories – I find them incredibly interesting in any medium – but just about everything from weaponry to even the style of combat are incredibly inaccurate for the seven years of the '60s that you play through.

Although the narrative is ultimately linear, flashbacks, a non-linear device, are used to illustrate the main points of the story. You begin the game bound to a chair, surrounded by blinking monitors and at the receiving end of a grilling by a profanity-barking silhouette. An interrogation. From there the answers to the figure's questions, for the most part, take the form of missions from Mason's past. You fight your way through a blood-soaked near-decade of his battle-scarred memories in the “Cold War” that was just about as cold as fire. It's a very familiar experience for seasoned Call of Duty fans, albeit a little more challenging than previous titles, despite mounds of artificial unintelligence, with no shortage of predictable quicktime events, pretentious set pieces and the influence of film, television and other games, not to mention its celebrity voice cast that includes Gary Oldman, Topher Grace, Ed Harris and Ice Cube. Influence that smashes through the wall of homage, even going as far as ripping off the final level of 2003's Vietcong, one of the best first-person shooters I've ever played, and blatantly stealing the infamous Russian Roulette scene from Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter.

Of course, far too many players to mention will not be taking anyone's thoughts on Campaign into account as they immediately jump onto the multiplayer modes. This year the online side of the game feels a lot like Treyarch and Infinity Ward have united, with the Perk, Killstreak and customisation aspects added to the mix, but they've been greatly expanded on. You can now design your own emblems, choose your face paint and even have your clan tag etched into your weapons. And yes, the deadly dogs are back with a furry vengeance. Experience points are now on the scene as CoD Points, which you can use to purchase weapons and Perks, rather than just unlocking them as you reach various levels. The game is thankfully still focused on building yourself up, it's just a little more of a slow process unless you've been saving up for a good while. It now takes a lot longer to get to the point where choosing your guns resembles the Sex and the City girls deciding on what to wear. The points system has mainly been established for the brand new Wager match type, which pits thrill-seeking players against others who are gambling certain amounts of the CoD currency.

Sniping has sadly been all but eradicated as memories of Call of Duty 3 and beyond fade into the past. There is a selection of appropriate rifles, of course, but they're next to useless in a game where each map offers the same mindless, tactic-devoid scenario of run-shoot-kill. Still, although strategic play wouldn't go amiss, run-shoot-kill is very much a lot of fun and incredibly addictive.

Undeniably entertaining, slightly undead with the return of Zombies and visually pleasing, although a step down graphically from Modern Warfare 2, Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops is a solid game with a lot going for it, but to be contrarian, it has a variety of profound flaws that really should not exist at this stage in the franchise. With its explosive, high-octane story mode and extensive customisation features on the multiplayer front, it bleeds replayability and so it's not going to suffer from getting old fast like other top-tier action titles, making Black Ops a must for trigger-happy gamers everywhere.