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. The multiplayer introduced a system of custom emblems and so-called combat records, which allowed players to save and share match recordings, and the game became one of the commercially most successful in the entire series.

The Wii version was released simultaneously with the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 editions, and unlike previous entries, where the Wii version was either missing or arrived late under a different name, this time it was developed directly by studio Treyarch. The graphics were significantly simplified due to weaker hardware, with lower-resolution textures and fewer details in the scene, and the controls used the Wii Remote with Nunchuk – aiming by motion, reloading and grenades by gesture, so different from the classic gamepad on the other consoles.

In terms of content it was the same campaign as on the more powerful platforms, but the multiplayer offered smaller maps and a more limited number of players per match. The Wii version of Black Ops was thus proof that Treyarch took the motion-controlled console seriously as a fully-fledged platform for the series, not as a second-rate afterthought.

Unlike the Reflex Edition, which for the previous game was created only with a delay as a modified adaptation by another studio, the Wii version of Black Ops was developed simultaneously with the other platforms directly by Treyarch itself, which showed in how well the control schemes fit the motion sensors – from aiming through grenades to melee knife attacks. For Wii owners who wanted to follow the series in real time along with the rest of the player community, and not with a delay of years, this was the first opportunity since the early entries of the series to achieve that on a Nintendo console, albeit with noticeably smaller maps and simpler graphics than the simultaneously released versions for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 offered.

Why play it: For the well-adapted motion controls, from aiming to knife attacks, which Wii players will appreciate if they wanted to follow the series in real time even at the cost of smaller maps and simpler graphics.