I noticed that the Black Ops multiplayer had a training mode, so I decided to fire it up and see what it was like against "the dummies". (That's what the in-game description said.)

The game loaded, the map appeared before my eyes and at the bottom of the screen read:
"Stumpy_Cat connected".
Me: "What the?!"
"Shepp connected".
Me: "Uhh.."

It quickly dawned on me that the game had grabbed a load of names from my Steam friends list and populated the server with bots using those names. ENJOYABLE!

(Rightclick an image and choose "VIEW IMAGE" for the fullsize.)
At the beginning of the round:


At the end of the round:


The bots have a [3arc] tag. Which I think comes from the developers name "Treyarch". Maybe.

I was surprised to see a Gav bot in the game, considering that he only ever plays L4D2. :-P
At one point I also noticed that there was no-one (teammates or otherwise) shooting me in the back... a quick gander at the scoreboard reveals why... no Gaz bot :-P

So yeah, it was good fun and this mode also allowed me to level/rank up/get new gear etc.

Nice, highly recommended.

Representin' fer the underdogs. Get in!

Also quite nice how the game manages to give you a 20 ping to... yourself! How does it run in comparison to MW2? I seem to remember having reasonable FPS on that over the demo weekend.

DY357LX said:

The ping isn't that odd to me. I think you get a 5-15 ping when playing against bots on Counter-Strike Source via LAN etc. (Even 7/8 years ago with PODbot you got that. Not sure why.)

Aye, true, but it was the bots that got the ping, they threads were connecting to 'your' server after all. Now it looks as if you're connecting to theirs

But aye, cheers for the info/review. Will put this on the 'to consider' list.

Nice touch with the names grabbage.
Actually with 4 kills and 11 deaths for me it seems accurate there too....

Was thinking of asking for this (I've got birthday and Jebus' birthday approaching). Guessing you think this is worth it Pete? Read nothing but hate online for the PC version - but that might just be the vocal minority.

PS - I also play Pokerstars, GRID, Dirt2, UT3 and Trackmania. So theres.

Cannonfodder said:

Nice touch with the names grabbage. Actually with 4 kills and 11 deaths for me it seems accurate there too.... Was thinking of asking for this (I've got birthday and Jebus' birthday approaching). Guessing you think this is worth it Pete? Read nothing but hate online for the PC version - but that might just be the vocal minority. PS - I also play Pokerstars, GRID, Dirt2, UT3 and Trackmania. So theres.

The Black Ops hatred is based on the fact that some people are have having issues with the multiplayer executable.
(It's 99% fine for me.)
The dev's have responded to the moaning and a patch is in the works.

If you're having doubts Gav, watch the review on Gametrailers.com or on Gamespot.com or the review site of you choice.
(Quite frankly, a strong review from Gametrailers and Gamespot are usually enough to cement a sale for me.)

Looks like Treyarch kept their word regarding a weekend patch:

Quote:

Updates to Call of Duty: Black Ops have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include: Call of Duty: Black Ops CPU performance improvements Zombie matchmaking improvements Fix for locked ADS after pressing shift-TAB to bring up Steam overlay Fix for ADS while holding shift as a sniper