Call of Duty: Black Ops

• 1. Introduction

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  Call of Duty: Black Ops sold more than 5.6 million copies within 24 hours of going on sale in November 2010. That total beat the record set by Modern Warfare 2 by roughly 2.3 million copies. Treyarch built the game and Activision published it, as the seventh title in the Call of Duty series and the follow-up to World at War. Its story sends a CIA operative across the Cold War, through Cuba, the Soviet Union and the jungles of Southeast Asia. His mission is to find a numbers station, a radio broadcast of coded digits, that is meant to order Soviet sleeper agents to release chemical weapons across the United States. The hero also cannot fully trust what he remembers. How did a studio turn Cold War secrecy into a record-breaking launch? What made the multiplayer and the zombie survival mode last so long? And why did an entire country object to the way the game told its story?

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• 2. A Mind Under Siege

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  April 1961 opens the campaign with an assassination attempt that goes wrong. CIA operative Alex Mason joins Operation 40 with two fellow operatives, Frank Woods and Joseph Bowman. Their task is to help Cuban exiles during the Bay of Pigs invasion and to kill Fidel Castro. Mason kills a body double instead and stays behind so his partners can escape. The real Castro hands him to a Soviet general named Nikita Dragovich, and Mason ends up in the brutal gulag at Vorkuta.

  Inside that prison, Mason befriends Viktor Reznov, a former Red Army soldier who shares a history with Dragovich. Reznov recalls October 1945, when he and his comrade Dimitri Petrenko recovered the ex-Nazi scientist Friedrich Steiner and a chemical weapon called Nova 6 from an outpost on Baffin Island. They acted on orders from Dragovich and Colonel Lev Kravchenko. Dragovich betrayed them because he wanted to see what the weapon would do, and Dimitri died horribly. Reznov destroyed Nova 6 himself, then was captured and sent to Vorkuta.

  In October 1963, Mason and Reznov spark an uprising, and Reznov stays behind so that Mason can escape. Back in the United States that November, Mason is debriefed by his handler, Jason Hudson. At a Pentagon meeting, President John F. Kennedy orders him to assassinate Dragovich, while Mason struggles with anxiety and murderous visions. His team rescues the operative Grigori Weaver at Baikonur Cosmodrome and destroys a Soyuz spacecraft. Mason seems to kill Dragovich in a car explosion, but he doubts it and spends five years tracking him.

  January 1968 takes the team to Vietnam as part of MACV-SOG. They defend Khe Sanh, and in February they slip into Hue City during the Tet Offensive to extract a Soviet defector, who turns out to be Reznov. In Laos, they try to recover a Nova 6 shipment from a downed Soviet plane. Viet Cong and Spetznaz forces led by Dragovich capture them, and Bowman is executed in a forced game of Russian roulette. Mason and Woods escape in a Mi-24 Hind helicopter to Kravchenko's base. There Woods stabs Kravchenko, who primes grenades on his belt, and Woods pushes them both out a window.

  The shock arrives on Rebirth Island in the Aral Sea. Mason believes he watched Reznov execute Steiner, yet Hudson and Weaver saw Mason commit the killing while calling himself Reznov. Under interrogation, Mason learns what Hudson knows. Dragovich brainwashed him at Vorkuta to assassinate Kennedy, and Reznov then reprogrammed him to kill Dragovich, Kravchenko and Steiner as revenge. In truth, Reznov died during the breakout, and Mason's visions of him are hallucinations caused by the brainwashing.

  Mason then remembers that the numbers station sits on a ship called the Rusalka in the Gulf of Mexico. After an assault on the ship, he and Hudson enter the submarine base directly beneath it on the seabed. Mason shuts down the broadcast and kills Dragovich. The final image is footage of Kennedy's assassination, which shows Mason standing at Dallas Love Field.

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• 3. Treyarch Goes Cold War

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  In May 2009, a rumor said Activision was seeking licenses for music from the Vietnam War era. Fans guessed that Call of Duty 7 would be set in Vietnam. In November 2009, just days before Modern Warfare 2 went on sale, Activision announced a new Call of Duty title for 2010 during its third-quarter financial call. A casting call in February 2010 pushed the speculation toward the Cold War, with some battles in South Vietnam. On the 30th of April 2010, Black Ops was officially announced.

  Treyarch had earlier worked on World at War and the tie-in game for the James Bond film Quantum of Solace at the same time. For Black Ops, the studio gave its full attention to a single game. Separate teams each took charge of one game mode.

  The technology was an enhanced version of the World at War engine, which itself had been improved from Call of Duty 4. The game ran at 60 frames per second on every platform except the Wii. A streaming texture technology, also seen in Modern Warfare 2, made bigger levels possible, such as the mission called Payback, where the player flies a helicopter. Lighting was improved too, and the engine could render 3-D images on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions.

  Motion capture similar to the system used for James Cameron's film Avatar recorded the whole performance of each actor, including accurate facial expressions. The studio also consulted special forces veterans from both sides of the Cold War. Major John Plaster, a retired US Army officer, had served in MACV-SOG during the Vietnam War. Sonny Puzikas, a former Soviet special forces operative, taught the developers how Spetsnaz soldiers react in combat, such as rolling out of the line of fire. The Spetsnaz characters in the game are modeled on him, from his tactics and movements to his face.

  The classified nature of real black operations gave Treyarch room to write its own fictional story on top of a historical backdrop. Players can also turn down the blood and switch off the profanity.

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• 4. Voices and Soundtrack

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  Sam Worthington voices Alex Mason, and Ed Harris voices Jason Hudson. Gary Oldman returns as Viktor Reznov, the role he played in World at War, and also voices Dr. Clarke. James C. Burns voices Frank Woods and provides the performance capture for him. Ice Cube voices Joseph Bowman and also serves as the multiplayer announcer for the SOG faction. Gene Farber plays Grigori Weaver, Eamon Hunt plays Nikita Dragovich, and Andrew Divoff plays Lev Kravchenko. Robert Picardo voices Secretary Robert McNamara, and Emmanuelle Chriqui plays a live-action character called Numbers. Dimitri Diatchenko, an American-born actor and musician, voices the Spetsnaz faction and several other characters because of his strong Russian accent.

  Licensed songs from the Vietnam era give the game its period sound. The Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil plays during a gameplay sequence and over the credits, and it also hides as an easter egg in a multiplayer map. Creedence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son is in the game as well. Eminem's Won't Back Down, featuring Pink, plays over the credits and turns up as an easter egg in the Zombies map called Five. In the Zombies map Call of the Dead, the Avenged Sevenfold song Not Ready to Die is hidden as an easter egg.

  Sean Murray, who had scored World at War, composed the original music, and Kevin Sherwood wrote the music for Zombies. The official soundtrack came out on the 9th of November 2010. A second soundtrack, drawn from the Zombies mode, followed on the 25th of January 2011.

  The Rolling Stones saw a measurable lift in sales. Their song Gimme Shelter sold 2,000 copies in the week before the launch trailer was revealed, then 5,000 the week after. In the week after the game's release it sold 11,000. Sympathy for the Devil enjoyed a similar boost as players discovered the band.

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• 5. Customization and Killstreaks

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  Fourteen maps shipped with the multiplayer at release, with more arriving later as downloadable packs. Team Deathmatch rewards the team with the most kills, while Capture the Flag has players steal the enemy flag and carry it home. Free For All drops teams altogether. Black Ops keeps the experience points and unlockable rewards that the series has used since Call of Duty 4, but the focus turns to socialization and personal style.

  The Create-a-Class 2.0 system lets players change their appearance and equip upgradable perks. Weapons accept writing, emblems, attachments and camouflage paint, and even the reticles can be modified. The choice between a red dot sight and a reflex sight is a small example. They share many traits, but the red dot fills less of the screen, which many players want. Character models now depend on the first-tier perk rather than the weapon type, and face paints can be unlocked.

  New killstreak rewards include explosive R/C cars, guided missiles and controllable attack helicopters. Among the new weapons are crossbows that fire ordinary bolts or explosive ammunition, a shotgun that fires Dragon's Breath rounds, and ballistic knives.

  A virtual currency called COD Points lets players buy weapons, cosmetics, accessories and clothes. Players can gamble those points in Wager Match, a free-for-all playlist built from four game modes. Time-limited objectives called Contracts can be purchased to earn more currency and experience points.

  Combat Training lets players face AI opponents, alone or with friends, under a separate progression system. Online split-screen returns on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. For the first time in the series, clips of online play can be recorded. On PC, Steam is the only platform, dedicated servers come from Game Servers, and Valve Anti-Cheat guards the game. The Wii version is the first Call of Duty on that console to include voice chat, and Nintendo and PDP partnered on a headset called the Headbanger Headset.

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• 6. The Zombies Crew

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  Four soldiers from enemy armies share one fight in the Zombies mode. They are "Tank" Dempsey of the United States Marine Corps, Nikolai Belinski of the Red Army, Takeo Masaki of the Imperial Japanese Army, and Doctor Edward Richtofen of the Wehrmacht. The mode first appeared in World at War and was revamped for Black Ops. It spans several eras, mainly the final year of World War II and the 1960s. Up to four players can team up online, or two can play on a split screen.

  Everyone starts with an M1911 pistol and faces an unlimited number of waves. Points come from killing zombies and from repairing barricades on boarded-up windows. Spending those points opens new areas, buys stronger weapons or upgrades existing ones. When a player is attacked enough times, a teammate must revive them within a set time. Otherwise they respawn in the next round with their weapon progress reverted. The game ends when every player has fallen. The base game offers three maps: Five, Kino Der Toten and the unlockable Dead Ops Arcade.

  Dead Ops Arcade opens when a player types "DOA" into the data terminal on the main menu. It turns the mode into a retro, twin-stick shooter with extra lives, unique mini maps and zombie bosses. Up to four players can join over Xbox Live or split screen.

  Downloadable map packs kept the mode growing. The First Strike pack reached the Xbox 360 on the 1st of February 2011 and added the Zombies map Ascension, set at a Soviet launch site. The Escalation pack brought Call of the Dead, a ship overrun by zombified crew. Its trailer showed Danny Trejo, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Robert Englund and Michael Rooker as playable characters. It also teased a zombified version of the horror director George A. Romero. The Annihilation pack added Shangri La, set in a legendary shrine lost in a jungle.

  The fourth pack, Rezurrection, was made up only of Zombies maps. It fully remastered the first four maps from World at War and added a new one called Moon. In Moon, both the players and the zombies fight in zero gravity.

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• 7. Marketing and Sales

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  An unmarked envelope arrived in early April 2010 at various gaming news publications and the homes of high-profile Call of Duty fans. Inside was a USB flash drive holding sound and text files. Those files were codes, and decrypting them led to a mysterious teaser site for an unnamed game, with more codes released over time.

  The first full-length trailer aired on ESPN after the third quarter of an NBA Eastern Conference Finals game on the 18th of May 2010. At E3 2010, studio head Mark Lamia opened the Microsoft press conference by playing Black Ops on stage. A remixed version of the trailer, set to Eminem's Won't Back Down, was released on the 14th of June, ahead of an Activision event where Eminem performed. A multiplayer teaser followed on the 9th of August, and a full multiplayer reveal came on the 1st of September.

  Chrysler built a limited-edition Call of Duty Jeep, because the Wrangler appears in Black Ops. On the 11th of October, a single-player trailer aired during the NFL Monday Night Football game between the New York Jets and the Minnesota Vikings. The next day it ran at half time of England's qualifier against Montenegro for the 2012 European Football Championship. The official launch trailer was released online on the 29th of October and aired during an NFL game between the New Orleans Saints and the Pittsburgh Steelers on the 31st. Rupert Sanders, who later directed Snow White and the Huntsman and Ghost in the Shell, directed it, and it used the Rolling Stones song Gimme Shelter.

  The game reached Microsoft Windows, the PlayStation 3, the Wii and the Xbox 360, with a separate Nintendo DS version from n-Space. Aspyr ported it to Mac OS X in September 2012. A side-scrolling mobile version from Glu Mobile has its own story, set in the Vietnam War in 1967. The Hardened Edition added a SteelBook case, a medal in a display case, four exclusive co-op levels and an avatar outfit. The Prestige Edition also included a real RC-XD remote-control vehicle modeled on the in-game reward. Square Enix distributed the game in Japan, where dismemberment was censored. Germany censored gore, removed Sympathy for the Devil, and removed Nazi symbols considered anti-constitutional there.

  The launch earned $360 million, more than twice what the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 took in its opening. Five days after release, worldwide sales reached US$650 million, surpassing the $550 million that Modern Warfare 2 earned in the same time. By the 22nd of November, the game was still the bestselling title in the United Kingdom, even though sales there had dropped by 85 percent. By the 22nd of December, worldwide revenue had passed $1 billion.

  On the 3rd of March 2011, The Hollywood Reporter named it the best-selling game ever in the United States. In the UK it held the all-time sales crown until Grand Theft Auto V overtook it in November 2014. Activision announced in August 2011 that it had sold more than 25 million copies, and by November 2013 the total stood at 26.2 million.

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• 8. Reception and Legacy

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  Metacritic summed up the critical response to Black Ops as generally positive, except for the DS version, which drew mixed or average reviews. GameSpot gave it 9.0 out of ten and praised an engrossing campaign and exciting competitive multiplayer. Edge awarded 7 out of 10 and said that for all its polish, the game "feels more like a yearly update than a sequel". Several reviewers complained that it played like a rail shooter, and PC Gamer called it "barely interactive".

  Technical trouble hit players hard. Reviewers called the PC version buggy, with multiplayer lag that left the game almost "unplayable" for some. The PlayStation 3 version had serious bugs too, including compatibility problems with 3-D televisions. As of the 12th of November 2010, three days after release, Amazon.com user ratings averaged 3.1 stars for PC, 3.1 for PS3 and 1.8 for Xbox 360, on a scale of 1 to 5.

  In January 2011, a player complained about the remaining connection problems on PlayStation 3. An Activision customer service representative replied that the company could shut down the PlayStation Network servers for the game at any time. After some days of attention from the gaming media, Activision social media manager Dan Amrich said that, although they could do so, they had no current plan to.

  Cuba condemned the game for showing American special forces trying and failing to kill a young Fidel Castro. The Cuban website Cubadebate, which supports Castro, said the game "encourages sociopathic attitudes of American children and adolescents, the main consumers of these virtual games."

  Awards followed. At the 14th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, now known as the D.I.C.E. Awards, the game was nominated for Game of the Year and Action Game of the Year, along with animation, online gameplay and visual engineering. It was also nominated for Game of the Year at the British Academy Games Awards and the Spike Video Game Awards. In February 2011, GameSpot named the Xbox 360 version the top title on Xbox Live for 2010.

  Retrospective assessments rank it among the series' best, and many see it as an improvement over World at War that lifted Treyarch out of Infinity Ward's shadow. Digital Trends singled out the vocal performances of Sam Worthington and Gary Oldman, and Sam Loveridge of GamesRadar+ called it Treyarch's best game in the series. The multiplayer introduced features that became mainstays, including CoD Points, dolphin diving, Wager Matches, and modes such as One in the Chamber and Gun Game. The maps Firing Range and Nuketown became fan favorites, and Nuketown was re-released in every later Treyarch game in the series.

  On the 9th of November 2015, Microsoft announced that Black Ops would become backward compatible with the Xbox One. It had ranked sixth among the Xbox 360 titles fans most wanted on the new console. When it arrived on the 17th of May 2016, sales of the Xbox 360 version rose by 13,000 percent. A sequel, Black Ops II, came out in 2012. Black Ops Cold War, released in 2020, is set in the gap between the two.

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