When a franchise consistently delivers massively popular, high-quality games, each new entry in the series comes laden with expectation. Call of Duty: Black Ops has some big shoes to fill, but it does so admirably. The engrossing campaign is chock-full of exciting, varied gameplay and drips with intrigue and intensity. The excellent multiplayer boasts some invigorating new features, and the new combat training mode finally gives novices a way to enjoy the competitive action without suffering the slings and arrows of outrageously skilled veterans. Cooperative zombie killing and video editing tools help make Black Ops the most robustly featured game in the franchise, and though you may have expected it to be the case, this is undoubtedly one of the best shooters of the year.

The single-player campaign is set largely during the 1960s and takes you to Cold War hot spots like Cuba, Russia, and Vietnam. You are an elite covert operative, and your globe-trotting adventures form pieces of a puzzle–a puzzle that your mysterious captors are trying to put together by interrogating you. Each excursion into the field is a memory, and these missions slowly come together to build momentum as each interrogation cutscene puts another piece of the puzzle in place. It’s not a very original mechanic, but it gives a coherent context to the action, and a few strong characters and dramatic moments give the story some genuine intrigue. The blurry edges of your consciousness conceal information that must come to light, and the erratic visual effects and eerie audio echoes that accompany your interrogations sometimes bleed into your mission memories, which creates a great tone of uncertainty that plays out in surprising and satisfying ways.

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