I’m going to be a little less verbose than normal in this post, as CODBOPS has made me quite an emotional creature as of late.

I picked up my CODBOPS copy the other day, and for those who are thinking of getting on the PC and want the low-down, it is as follows.

• The story for the campaign seems awesome, especially if you have a degree of enthusiasm for Cold-War politics and Warsaw warfare. The characters also seem remarkable fleshed out. Woods holds his own against the likes of Price and MacTavish.
• The server browser has been working since launch (what a fucking surprise!)
• The meta-game has been expanded even more: there’s an absolute fuck-ton of stuff to unlock and you won’t know where to begin. The playercard system is also a really awesome step-up from MW2’s callsigns, as you can now custom-build your own logo of sorts.
• There are less weapons overall, as compared to MW2, but with the ones that we do have, we’re able to do a whole lot more with them. Attachment options are profuse and there’s a shit-load of camo’ schemes now. Hell you can ever have your logo on your weapon as a decal, along with the gouged glyphs of your clan tag.
• The map design is pretty good. There’s a healthy variety of maps and they come in an assortment of sizes. I think this is good, because it allows for a lot of different gamestyles.
• Nazi Zombies is back! Sure they didn’t really change the formulae of it, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it right? Also, there’s been a whole bunch of new stuff added to it.

But….BUT.

• All of the above is insignificant and eclipsed by how fucking laggy and unoptimised this game is. Like most people, I installed this game feeling fairly confident; my computer ran MW2 at mid-high settings at 60 frames per second, quite respectable really. But this game brings my computer (and a lot of others’ to its knees). Expect really, REALLY shitty frame rates as well as continuous as consistent freezes that last anywhere between half a second to a full few seconds. You might feel this is an unreasonable assessment, as this game is a lot newer than MW2, but I’ll also point out that graphics-wise, it’s pretty much on par, meaning the performance should be too.
• I’d have talked more about the campaign, but the fact is that the game runs so terribly that it’s completely unplayable.
• It’s worth noting that this game is running terribly whilst I have the settings on the absolute bare-minimum. So yeah, it sure looks like an ugly cunt, but it runs as if it’s Crysis on max settings.
• As an illustrative example, playing this game makes you feel as if you’re running it through your browser, and you get the distinct impression that the game is live-caching all the content along the way. The tragedy is that it’s not, and it’s just running like absolute shit.
• As you might have guessed the performance issues make the game all but unplayable for the most part. I can’t begin to list the amount of times I’ve been cock-blocked by the game’s crappy performance. Expect to miss a lot of kills because you saw an enemy and the game froze for a whole second upon you firing. When the freeze wears off, the enemy would have teleported to the side of you and put a hole in your skull.
• The server browser works, yes, but for a lot of people only a tiny fraction of the actual servers are appearing on the list. Some of my friends can see upwards of 500 Aussie servers, but a lot of people, myself included, can only see an average of 10.
• Less significantly, but of importance to me - What the fuck did they do to the knifing? The hit detection is RETARDED now. You practically have to have the enemy’s face fill your screen before you can land a strike.

This is all a shame, because I really feel like playing the game right now, but the frustration just isn’t worth it. I’m at serious risk of irreversibly damaging my computer because of how frustrating this rushed port is.

I worry because the fuckup is related to the game’s raw performance, rather than some sort of network issue. In the past there’s been a lot of games which have been hampered by a shitty network that was later updated, bringing the game into a very playable state, but I haven’t so far seen a case where developers have been able patch a game that simply runs like ancient arse. Modern Warfare 2 never ran like total arse, it just had a really crappy network architecture (IW Net) but they did eventually get that under control. This would have to be the first COD that is plagued by performance issues.

In conclusion, if you’re picking this up on console, don’t worry! I’m sure they didn’t totally fuck the release up on your simplistic and homogenized platform. If you haven’t picked it up on PC yet, then worry not - you’re not missing our on much. Better you wait until they unfuck it (if they do) before doubling down some of your hard-earned money.

DICE if you’re reading this, take notes and watch this game astutely. Treyarch are catching up to you on post-release fuckups.