I recently reviewed Call of Duty: Black Ops for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, and all things said and done, it was a decent first person shooter. However, I can’t really wrap the Wii version up into that review, because the game was changed drastically in parts just to be compliant with the Wii’s hardware. Black Ops has some stiff competition in the Wii FPS market, going up against Goldeneye, which has the power of nostalgia backing it up. So how does Black Ops Wii compare to its HD console brothers?

Well, let’s start about what I disliked the most in Black Ops: The story. What was unimpressive in the HD version is now downright bad in the Wii version. The game follows the same plot, but certain cinematic scenes have been cut down in length and detail in order to satisfy the Wii’s hardware constraints. As a result, the game feels even more schizophrenic than it does on the HD consoles.

At the very least the HD version was able to impact you emotionally with in-game cutscenes that either got your adrenaline flowing or shocked you with excessive gore. Unfortunately, the Wii version doesn’t do either. All the gore has been taken out, due to Wii hardware limitations, so stabbing someone in the back of the neck doesn’t produce any blood or even leave any noticeable wound. The adrenaline packed fire fights have been toned down as well. The Wii version has fewer enemies on the whole, and vehicle sections are reduced to joyrides with very little action in between. Black Ops did its best to be a war-themed action movie, and when you remove the action from that formula, the plot unfortunately falls flat.

The single-player experience feels cut down for the most part. There isn’t a whole lot of action, maps are smaller and less interesting, and the whole thing is actually a lot shorter than its HD counterpart. Throw in the absolutely criminal removal of Dead Ops Arcade and Zork, and you have a recipe for major disappointment.

I hate to say it, but it’s really the hardware limitations that change the game the most. The problem is that Black Ops wasn’t made for the Wii, it was ported. So while other FPSs like Metroid Prime 3 look phenomenal on the Wii’s comparatively low grade hardware, Black Ops just looks sloppily compressed and gutted of any sense of visual impact. It also doesn’t help that the game suffers from numerous graphical bugs from clipping errors to … well . . . more clipping errors. I’ve even seen characters phase through the environment mid cut-scene, which is really inexcusable. Just because your graphics have to be toned down, doesn’t mean you don’t have to try.

Luckily, Black Ops makes up for all of this with its amazing multiplayer suite. Activision basically kicked Satoru Iwada in the balls and said, “fuck your friend codes” when designing Black Ops, and the game is better off for it. You can view the profiles of random people you play with, send them messages and friend requests, and even voice chat with anyone you want over the course of an online game. You would think this would cause you to listen to more than your fair share of racism and bigotry, but the Wii FPS crowd seems more chill than the HD crowd. Maybe it’s the whole “family system” allure. Whatever the cause, I was barely called a racial slur during online play, which is quite the achievement.

The good thing about online play is that it’s basically all there. All the weapons, items, and perks are present and then some. You still gain XP and currency, and you can spend the currency on anything you want. All the game modes are present from plain old domination, to the wager modes, to even the zombie mode. The multiplayer is certainly not lacking in terms of options.

Once again, there are a few drawbacks this mode suffers from just by virtue of being on the Wii. Zombie mode only has one map, and most other games are limited to having at most 10 players. There is no host migration, so if your host leaves the match, the match just ends. This is really annoying, especially considering the FPS crowd’s tendency to rage quit. The Wii’s fan base for this game is much smaller than the HD versions so it’s much harder to find a game. Kill cams and the theater are gone, so you won’t be able to rewatch your best matches and kills. There are also a couple of kill streaks missing and ground war is totally absent. There are plans for DLC, but considering that the HD version came with all these additions for free, it would be a slap in the face if we had to pay for them on the Wii version.

The controls sell the game; that is for certain. You will have to futz around with your settings a bit but once you find the sweet spot, the Wii controls feel smooth as butter. I’d say that the pointer controls are second to having a mouse and keyboard, allowing you to instantly point at what you want to be dead, and pull the trigger. The snap-to aiming isn’t as sticky as it is in Goldeneye, so you have to be more on your mark, but with enough fiddling with the Wiimote sensitivity, you will be popping off headshots before you know it.

So yeah, Black Ops for the Wii has some downfalls. It’s simply not as good as the HD version, but it’s still a good game in its own right. If this is your only option, you won’t be disappointed, as it easily ousts Goldeneye as the shooter of choice for the Wii. However, if you already have Black Ops on another system, you might want to give the Wii version a rent, just to experience it with pointer controls. You would be surprised how natural they feel, once you get the hang of it.

For all its flaws, Black Ops Wii is still, at its core, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and so we can’t fault it too much, regardless of what Wii-based errors the game has to deal with. None of these errors make the game unplayable or even bad, and regardless of its shortened low resolution nature, the game is surprisingly faithful to its HD incarnations. The HD versions are certainly better, but honestly for 10 dollars less, the Wii version isn’t that bad of a value either.

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