The latest instalment in the multi-billion dollar Call of Duty franchise dropped this week, with Black Ops 2 receiving rave reviews from most games journalists and gadget sites around the world. The same success hasn’t been enjoyed by the PS Vita version of the game, Black Ops Declassified, however.
Early reviews of the handheld title have been scathing, with most reviews finding the game extremely poor and disappointing. Some reviewers have even called the developers out for creating a game that’s merely something to appease Sony.
UK site Metro gave the game a measly 3 out of 10, with a verdict: “This was make or break for Sony’s portable, but such a shamefully underdeveloped shooter disgraces both the PS Vita and the Call Of Duty franchise. “
The cons consisted of “Insultingly poor single-player modes, with non-existent artificial intelligence and no proper story. Multiplayer maps are tiny, only eight players at once, and serious technical issues.”
After that scornful review we came across GameInformer’s piece on the new game, where things don’t really get much better. Dan Ryckert uses the headline “A Complete Embarrassment For Gaming’s Biggest Franchise” to set the scene.
“Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified is appalling. In dramatic fashion, it completely fails to live up to the high bar of quality gamers expect from the Call of Duty name.” The game again scored a meagre 3 out of 10, with too many F-bombs and “goofy” touchscreen controls being amongst the main gripes.
We thought that there might be some more positive reviews out there, but after scouring the web we really couldn’t find anything even remotely praising the game. To round things off there’s Pocket Gamer’s review, which unabashedly claims that the game is merely Activision following through on a promise of a CoD game on the Vita for Sony.
“Declassified is a cynical, half-baked, tired little mess of a game, and Activision knows it”
Ouch.
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