Call of Duty: Black Ops – Escalation Game Review [Rating: 8/10]
Game Review by Eurogamer [7/10]
Hi Eurogamer! Last time we looked at an inevitable and overpriced map pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops together, we met Dave, my future brother-in-law. Dave and other (but not all) Daves are the reason that Activision can charge 1200 Microsoft Points for five maps while maintaining direct eye contact and avoiding a tell-tale blush.
Dave is new to gaming, and his 360 is almost exclusively a Call of Duty machine, only occasionally gasping for fresh air on the pitches of FIFA. In terms of the hours of play he’ll get from it, the best part of a tenner doesn’t seem much to refresh the COD man-shoot experience.
Dave doesn’t realise it, but a battle for his immortal soul is about to rage in the gaming heavens. EA is sharpening a trident imbued with runes that spell out Battlefield 3, Activision is feeding raw lightning into the machine that powers the COD conveyor belt and THQ has lit a tealight and whispered a few sad words in front of post-it note on which someone has scribbled ‘Homefront!’ in red felt-tip.
Game Review by Metro.co.uk
Activision might like to think that Call Of Duty is review-proof but we suspect they might be in for a shock with this year’s sequel, given the groundswell of discontent amongst fans. But what certainly is review-proof are these ultra expensive map packs, which everyone says they resent but always end up buying anyway.
By now everyone knows exactly what to expect here: five new maps, no new thrills, and a £10 hole in your pocket. In that sense Escalation itself is no different than any of its predecessors, but you still can’t help but admire its craft and the way it gives its audience, more or less, exactly what they want. Just like Black Ops itself in fact.
There are four competitive maps here and one for the Zombies co-operative sub-game. The latter is Escalation’s main draw, but there’s something of interest in all of the others.
Hotel is some sort of Cuban holiday resort and the biggest of the competitive maps. Despite this it does make an effort to avoid being a sniper’s paradise, although given the map’s size groups of players can get easily become distanced from each other as they all rush for the high ground.
Game Review by GTGD [9.0/10]
I like Treyarch. I really do. Considering they were given the arduous task of doing the ‘other’ Call of Duty games whilst Infinity Ward worked on the Modern Warfare series, they have constantly performed. Yet still they were the outcasts. In my honest opinion, out of the last three CoD games, Treyarch have made the top two.
Another thing that makes their games stand out is the DLC. Unlike the Map Packs for MW2, Escalation brings five brand new maps (no recycling here!), four standard maps and one zombie map (another thing that Treyarch brought to the franchise). With people starting to turn against the Call of Duty series, is this one map pack too far?
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