CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS DECLASSIFIED

FAR FROM A SYSTEM SELLER.

→ NOVEMBER 16, 2012 If you’ve longed for a proper first-person shooter on Vita, one that makes excellent use of its unique capabilities and second analog stick, you’ll be sorely disappointed with Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified. Declassified’s clumsy controls exacerbate the frustration that comes from playing poorly designed single and multiplayer levels, while the horrible AI and lack of polish makes it feel like it was rushed out the door. No, this is not the Call of Duty you’ve been waiting for; it’s one you definitely need to avoid.

For all the criticisms leveled against the Call of Duty franchise, one thing that’s been pretty much untouchable when it comes to the console and PC versions is the responsiveness and precision of its controls. Declassified, however, doesn’t meet the mark. The controls feel floaty and the unchangeable aim acceleration made me constantly overshoot targets when trying to do small aim adjustments. The on-screen touch controls also function poorly, and I regularly hit them unintentionally simply because they’re either placed too close to one another or to the thumbsticks. This isn’t a matter of having to learn a new control system, it’s just unwieldy and aggravating to use.

Black Ops 2 shows that Call of Duty games can have great narratives, but Declassified’s is a mess. Instead of a coherent plot the “story” is a series of random events that happened to characters from the Black Ops series, with some shoehorned tie-ins to plot points from the first and second games. The story never builds up to anything, and there’s no progression or development of the characters. It’s simply a device put in there as an excuse to connect it to the Black Ops games.

The campaign levels themselves don’t do anything interesting with either the Vita or with their design, either. Each stage is a two to five minute distillation of something we’ve all

 done in every other Call of Duty game, with no pacing changes or moments of spectacle to provide a hook. One mission you’re rushing through to rescue some hostages, the next you’re sniping to cover an ally. You’re always on the hunt to gun down waves of cloned enemies whose atrociously bad AI will have them shooting walls or cars directly in front of them or getting stuck on parts of the environment. The levels couldn’t end fast enough, because, despite their short length, they feel monotonous and repetitious.

The repetitious nature of the stages is due in part to the lack of any sort of checkpoint system whatsoever. The levels only last a few minutes, but because the enemies seem to have some sort of X-Ray vision they’ll be shooting at you as you round corners, and whole rooms of them will pour entire clips of ammo onto your position, meaning you’ll be getting shot. A lot. Even on Regular difficulty you die surprisingly fast, making it so I had to sit through the same unskippable intro sequences before levels all too often.

The other single player components of Declassified come down to a series of survival missions and time-trial runs through environments filled with shooting range-style targets. Extra content wouldn’t be a bad thing, except that both are hampered by the same control issues as the story missions, and, in the case of survival, idiotic enemies. Survival might be worth it if you could play cooperatively, but alone it’s just an excuse to sit in a small map and fight both the enemies and the bad controls.

Multiplayer on the go should have been the reason for Declassified to exist, but it stumbles at almost every turn. First, the good: the menus look like the console Call of Duty titles, and I dig how Declassified manages to bring slightly less feature rich takes on custom classes and other multiplayer staples to the Vita. Things swiftly fall apart after you get into a match, though, with bugs that include players appearing mid-air and terrible spawn issues that make you start right in front of enemies. A small number of maps can work if they’re great, but all of Declassified’s feel tiny even with 8 players.

The few included modes would be enough for me if Declassified’s multiplayer was fun, but the poor controls make just getting through a match a lesson in patience. It’s one thing to lose because you’re outclassed by your competition, but another to fail because you accidentally slash the air when trying to call in a Killstreak, or you swing your weapon past your intended target because the aiming just doesn’t feel right. Sure, you could spend hours leveling up and unlocking stuff in Declassified’s multiplayer, but when it’s this bad why would you bother?

THE VERDICT

The Vita’s primed and ready for a great first-person shooter, but Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassifieddisappoints in almost every way. Bad multiplayer, awful story, generic level design and a host of other issues turn what could have been Vita’s biggest blockbuster into one of its biggest duds.