Call of Duty: Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Ops from 2010 took players into the Cold War and secret agent operations from Cuba through Vietnam to the Soviet Union, with a story full of conspiracies and an unreliable narrator. On the main platforms, it was an extensive, cinematically staged campaign complemented by an extremely popular multiplayer mode with a custom emblem system and saved match recordings.

The Nintendo DS version was developed by studio n-Space, which specialized in bringing big action titles to portable hardware, and it was a fundamentally different game built on its own, simpler engine. The campaign was shorter and simplified in terms of story, the graphics ran in 3D but with markedly lower texture resolution and fewer details, matching the limitations of the DS hardware. The controls used a combination of buttons and the touchscreen, something the main console versions didn't have at all.

Multiplayer worked over a local wireless connection between several DS consoles, not over the internet like on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. So this was an independently developed, significantly lightweight variant of Black Ops aimed primarily at younger players or those who wanted a taste of the series on the go, not a faithful port of the main game.

n-Space had already chosen a similar approach for previous DS entries in the series, and Black Ops was no exception in this regard - it was an established model in which the main console and PC versions received full technical treatment, while the portable DS version worked more as a lightweight companion for players on the go. Even so, the DS version retained the basic skeleton of the Cold War story and allowed at least a simplified form of multiplayer matches, albeit only over a local network between consoles in the same room and with noticeably fewer maps and game modes than on the main platforms. It was thus more of a lightweight reminder of the big game than a full replacement for the PC or home console version.

Why play: For players who wanted to have Black Ops with them on the go and can make do with simpler local matches instead of online multiplayer, this is a solid lightweight companion to the big versions, not a replacement for them.