14 DAY TRIAL // Andrei Dumitrescu: How can anyone expect to just stand by and let the Call of Duty gaming tsunami pass by?
Like millions of other players in the world, most of them true fans of the series, some of them just interested to see where one of the biggest franchises in the industry is going this time, I will spend a good chunk of my weekend exploring the Cold War battlefields that Treyarch has explored for their most recent title.
The first hours show the usual flashy presentation of Call of Duty and a solid shooting experience, but it seems that there is nothing truly new that Black Ops can offer.
Let's hope that at least the narrative side of things is most structured and finally makes more sense than Modern Warfare 2.
And if shooting people with complex weaponry proves to be too much I can always return to Fallout: New Vegas, trying to complete a fourth run through, this time without exploring all the locations and trying more creative solutions to the quests I have already experienced once, twice or thrice.
Andrei Dobra: This weekend will be filled by three big games for me, as Vanquish, Call of Duty: Black Ops and the eternal Fallout: New Vegas will occupy almost all of my free time.
I've played the Vanquish demo more than enough times to remember, and I'm eager to see what Shinji Mikami and the team at Platinum Games managed to deliver.
The first level was extremely intense, and if the rest of the game keeps that feeling, then I'll be an extremely happy gamer.
Next up, Call of Duty: Black Ops, most probably the multiplayer mode, will occupy some of the rest of my time.
I've almost reached the end of the single-player campaign, but the whole experience has been made much more special as I've gone through it in 3D, thanks to Nvidia technologies.
While Treyarch managed to carve a really intriguing story, it's that much more impressive when experienced in 3D, even if the cost of all the equipment required is quite steep.
Last but not least, I'll probably squeeze in a few hours with Fallout: New Vegas, as I'm also pretty close to reaching the end-game quests for each of the different factions in the post apocalyptic role playing game.