Black Ops declassified - PS VITA review

[teddymeow]

Imagine having some time consuming repairs done on your car. You deliver it to the mechanic who starts working on it right away. Ten minutes later you come back stopping the process and take your car with you. The car is still broken. Who's to blame: The mechanic or you?

I don't drive.

I get what you're saying but 3 bad games on the bounce, regardless of publisher interference, does not a successful developer make.

[wakka]

Imagine having some time consuming repairs done on your car. You deliver it to the mechanic who starts working on it right away. Ten minutes later you come back stopping the process and take your car with you. The car is still broken. Who's to blame: The mechanic or you?

I can understand your position here Alex. If Nihilistic had a proven track record of making good games and only these last 2 had been poor, I would certainly be able to sympathise with them more. Although it's obvious that their chances of making a good game were severely hindered by limited development time, we have no basis on which to assume that given enough time they would've managed it!

Have you actually played this game, Alex? It's indescribably poor. It has worse production value than the Modern Combat series on iOS (an obvious knockoff of CoD) - those games retail for about ?4.99 each. Declassified is ?44.99, yet requires a 400MB day one patch to add ad-hoc multiplayer (!), has utterly broken online (as in: it genuinely doesn't work. You cannot play it. At all), and a single player consisting of poorly designed corridor levels roughly in the same vein as Wolf3D.

I was incandescent with rage upon playing this for the first (and only - I'm returning it today for store credit) time. The potential for a Vita CoD is so so so great. Lobby and class loadout settings could be entirely refashioned into a slick, fast and user-friendly interface using the touchscreen - instead the interface feels like a GBA version of proper CoD. The one gesture towards the Vita's features is throwing grenades via touching 2 (absolutely gigantic) buttons on-screen. This only serves to hinder play as you can imagine.

Everything about this game is poor and rushed. It's telling from the moment you touch its icon on the Vita home screen - there is nothing on the Live Area. Just a grey to black gradient basically. No buttons to jump straight into multiplayer, no info on what level you're up to and what your current loadout is. No way to jump to your current position in SP. Nothing. I'm not saying that an intricate and useful LiveArea is essential for every Vita game - but as an example it shows the lack of polish and pride that have been put into this title. CoD is a premium product, and gamers have every right to expect it to rise above the majority of other titles. As it stands Super Monkey Ball is a far, far better game (which retails for ?14.99, incidentally), and has clearly had a lot more love and innovation put into it.

The only way to describe how I feel about buying this game is cheated. Genuinely ripped off, like as if someone had put their hand in my pocket on the tube and nicked ?45 off me straight up. Having sunk ?500+ (at least) into Vita hardware and games in the last year, this is a slap in the face. It should've been Christmas 2013 and it should've been a ****ing excellent game.

[Brad]

With games like this Vita is going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Don't put any work into the vita version of blops, that platform's almost dead, no one wil buy it. Game comes out, it's ****, no-one buys it, those thinking of getting a Vita when COD arrives don't buy one. Activision - see, told you etc.

[wakka]

The fact that Sony even allowed this to be released is a travesty. It actually makes the Vita seem really **** - people will play this and assume that this is the best the system is capable of. Which is really sad. I'm gutted the Vita looks so doomed lol. Thank god Virtue's Last Reward and Persona 4 Golden are coming out this month too.

[MisterBubbles]

We should all be getting on at the real villains in this piece. Yes my favourite publisher, Activision don't give a **** about Vita, they didn't give a F*** about guitar hero, they only care about their bottom line and until everybody see's this, we'll have a lot more crap games at christmas.

[Dogg Thang]

With games like this Vita is going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Don't put any work into the vita version of blops, that platform's almost dead, no one wil buy it. Game comes out, it's ****, no-one buys it, those thinking of getting a Vita when COD arrives don't buy one. Activision - see, told you etc.

This is it in a nutshell.

[Brad]

The fact that Sony even allowed this to be released is a travesty. It actually makes the Vita seem really **** - people will play this and assume that this is the best the system is capable of. Which is really sad. I'm gutted the Vita looks so doomed lol. Thank god Virtue's Last Reward and Persona 4 Golden are coming out this month too.

I was thinking this this morning. It would have been awesome if Sony just said no during cert.

[wakka]

The fact that it's available bundled with the system just makes it worse. I've returned my copy and am now the proud owner of a ?42.99 HMV gift card (great, lol).

Who rated this game 7? Come on, own up.

It would have been awesome if Sony just said no during cert.

Yeah, it would have been.

What an infuriatingly **** game.

[gambit6613]

Blimey didn't realise this was included in a Vita bundle, normally pack in games make sure to showcase the hardware, in this case it would pretty much put me right off. In a stupid way it almost seems as if someone within Sony actually wants Vita to fail.

[davek22]

I got this and have been playing online solidly since I got it. Enjoying it a lot in multiplayer. Either my standards are lower than everyone else or you guys are being overly harsh. I am basing my experiences comparing to other portable FPS multiplayer games btw and not on full console FPS

[djtickle]

I got this and have been playing online solidly since I got it. Enjoying it a lot in multiplayer. Either my standards are lower than everyone else or you guys are being overly harsh. I am basing my experiences comparing to other portable FPS multiplayer games btw and not on full console FPS

I've been doing the same and have been playing it when i've not had a console at my side. I'm enjoying it too, the controls do take a little bit of getting used to but after 5 games i was rolling with a 1.5% KD! It just lacks content really, but again I suppose its been treated as the MP is where its at.

Like AC3 i'd call it Black OP's light.

Dave my psn tag tickle if you want to add me for some killing of xXSnip3rK1d2222Xx

[PaTaito]

I got this and have been playing online solidly since I got it. Enjoying it a lot in multiplayer. Either my standards are lower than everyone else or you guys are being overly harsh. I am basing my experiences comparing to other portable FPS multiplayer games btw and not on full console FPS

Yeah its great online with all the god awful collision detection, horribly animated/jilted character models, crazy bad jumping, lousy glitchy sound effects, sluggish controls, super crappy selection of air support/packages, analogue control that has to be the worst ever encountered in a fps(60fps should have been possible at this quality, and would have helped the awkward controls dramatically imo), god awful touch screen throwing of nades/tomahawk(yes let me NOT aim while i throw).......oh and if you want the pleasure of this quality, remember you need to jump through hoops for AGEEES to even have a chance to get into a game, which again is so often fruitless because people have a terrible habit of rage quitting, leaving so much of the time 1 guy on one team, who himslef inevitably leaves......either people are dumbasses for doing this, or just recognize the absolute ****ness of the game.

Also its back to the days of massively overpowered noobtubing, which understandably is happening because people cant control a proper weapon.

Its annoying me that people are defending this steamy pile of excrement, on neogaf its like attack of the sony fanboys who will not hear a bad word on this.

...And i dont judge it against other online portable fps, as the vita is so much better than that, and to be frank this is the kind of **** i'd expect to see on the psp in its dying days.

Even if you did judge it solely against portable fps, its still a **** game.

I've been doing the same and have been playing it when i've not had a console at my side. I'm enjoying it too, the controls do take a little bit of getting used to but after 5 games i was rolling with a 1.5% KD! It just lacks content really, but again I suppose its been treated as the MP is where its at.

Like AC3 i'd call it Black OP's light.

Dave my psn tag tickle if you want to add me for some killing of xXSnip3rK1d2222Xx

My kdr is currently 1.81(and will forever remain) and i still hate it.

In fact my 4/10 vote was probably generous.

[wakka]

I am basing my experiences comparing to other portable FPS multiplayer games btw and not on full console FPS

You're judging it solely against other portable FPS? Um, so Modern Combat and NOVA on iOS (which retail at roughly 10% of the price of Declassified), and Metroid Prime Hunters? It should be a million times more sophisticated than these games. We should demand so much more when the Vita is capable of so much more.

What pisses me off most about it is the fact that it is such a pale, pale shadow of what it could be. It doesn't just lack content, it's literally the bare minimum that it could be. I've said it before but the potential for this game was HUGE. Being able to derive some fun from the fact that it's basically mini CoD shouldn't excuse the fact that it's both a massive rip off and an extremely lazy release. Having said that, I couldn't even get that bare minimum of fun out of it. It shouldn't even BE mini CoD, it should be ACTUAL CoD, but tailored around the Vita. And no I don't mean a 'lob grenade' button on screen at all times.

Even if you did judge it solely against portable fps, its still a **** game.

Lol, yup. Modern Combat is actually way better online.

[davek22]

By default the multiplayer on this is better than those iOS titles purely for the physical controls. I am not saying its perfect just that I am enjoying it in multiplayer. I can switch on from standby and be in a multiplayer match in a couple of minutes. Have a quick blast then put it back in standby. If I judged everything in life by what it could have been I would be a man with many regrets. I prefer my life half full

[teddymeow]

Activision promised that this would be ?a true Call Of Duty experience? on Vita. Perhaps it should have told Nihilistic Software, which has made something that resembles Call Of Duty in the same way that a movie trailer resembles a feature-length film.

Along with a lovely 2/10.