In a series which has essentially become an annual celebration of war's Greatest Hits of the West, it was only a matter of time before a Call Of Duty title turned its iron sights towards the paranoia-gripped Cold War era of the late 1960s. By doing so, Treyarch manages to cover off many of America's ongoing obsessions in one fell swoop, embracing Vietnam, Cuba, crazy Russian megalomaniacs and even the Kennedy assassination. At the buffet of war, Black Ops demands an extra large plate.

With such a scattershot approach, its perhaps inevitable that Black Ops' seven-hour campaign struggles to focus on anything for long enough for any sense of coherence to emerge from the mire of screeching plot twists and the imminent threat of Soviet chemical warfare.

Played out in particularly shouty flashback, Special Forces operative Alex Mason finds himself under interrogation, endlessly gril ... Read more »