Call of Duty campaigns are one of my guilty pleasures. Some are great, some are terrible, most are so-so. Unfortunately, this one falls into that middle category. It sucks that it sucks because I absolutely adore the Vita. I'm not generally a handheld guy, but the Vita is my big exception (I don't count the Switch as a handheld since I play almost exclusively docked). I had hoped that this would be a legitimate even if scaled down Call of Duty campaign. They put out halfway decent Call of Duty games on DS, and the Vita is *significantly* more advanced, so surely Call of Duty would be pretty decent here, right? The core gameplay isn't the problem. The game plays pretty good in all honesty. There are a couple of quirks due to the way the handheld's controls; you hold your breath when sniping by touching and holding the back touchpad, you use your knife by swiping on the touchscreen, and you use grenades and gadgets by touching and dragging across the screen. That's pretty easy to get used to, though. The problem is how the campaign is structured. The campaign is broken into ten missions each of which are only loosely connected and take place in different years. This could be fine, but each mission is so short that you never end up feeling any investment in what's going on whatsoever. Most missions can be completed in a couple of minutes. The game also feels more difficult than console Call of Duty games. It might be the controls, but I felt like I died way more easily than I did in console Call of Duty games. Visually, the game is fairly impressive. The Vita doesn't have an HD screen (no matter what Atari Jaguar-esque marketing crap Sony tried to push), but the hardware is pretty competent for a ten year old handheld, and Call of Duty does a pretty good job of showing that. Just as importantly, it doesn't just look good; the frame rate stays pretty good, too. On a technical level, it's a pretty impressive game. The multiplayer still works although I was only able to find games with two other people. If you happen to have a group of friends who also have a bad Call of Duty game for a failed handheld, then you can get an ad hoc multiplayer game going. Unfortunately, in 2022, multiplayer functionality in a game from 2012 is usually a moot point, and it definitely is here. Call of Duty: Black Ops - Declassified had a lot of potential, but it ended up being a slap in the face to Vita owner and Call of Duty fans. Multiplayer, when it launched, was probably pretty fun, but with empty multiplayer servers and an insultingly short and shallow campaign leave this game with very little to offer in 2022. It may be impressive technically and competent in terms of gameplay mechanics, but the actual content - the meat on the skeleton - is about as lackluster as it gets. The game usually goes for around $30 or $40 complete on the secondhand market, and it's definitely not worth that. I paid $25 for my copy last week, and I still feel like I overpaid. My Rating - D |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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