
The mission never tells you what to actually do and even misdirects you. No one else in the office ran into that one, but everyone who'd played Black Ops has run into a major design issue at the Battle of Khe Sanh. There are also a few design flaws and annoyances, not least of all was a game-ending bug in the first level that made me restart the entire mission. I once watched a friendly shoot the back of an armored car that he was using for cover for a solid 20 seconds. Both friendly and enemy soldiers behave like fools for most of the campaign. The artificial intelligence of both your friendly soldiers and the enemies you face is pretty poor. I tried to not pull back on the flight stick when the game told me to, just to see if there was any other alternative to taking off, but the Blackbird lifted off on its own.


Just one example is when you "guide" the takeoff of an SR-71 Blackbird. Black Ops is not just a linear game, but sometimes feels like it's on autopilot.
