Surprise! Black Ops II sold tremendously well. Now, take a moment to sit down, have a few deep breaths and recover from that shock. Are you okay? Good.
Treyarch’s covert sequel’s dominance of the UK Games Chart is slightly tempered by the fact that it didn’t sell as well as the previous three games in the series during its opening week. It goes down as the UK’s fourth biggest game launch, after Black Ops, Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3. 60 per cent of those sales were on the Xbox 360, with 38 per cent on the PS3. Meaning that just 2 per cent of sales were the boxed copy of the PC game. Maybe they’d have done better if they’d advertised the accidental Mass Effect 2 bonus disc? I’m joking, of course, most PC sales were probably through the digital retailers that aren’t counted in these charts.
Black Ops Declassified, the Vita version, has a strong (for the Vita) launch at 16th on the chart. That’s despite being a really terrible game. We haven’t reviewed that yet because I’m struggling to actually play the hour or so of campaign missions it offers – it’s that poor.
Sony’s big release of the week – Wonderbook – managed to hit number 25 in the chart. That’s not great when other casual titles like Skylanders Giants and Just Dance 4 are climbing, presumably as parents begin to get their Christmas shopping done. It’s not too bad though, considering it’s a new concept they’re trying to sell.
Here’s the top twenty:
- CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS II – ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
- HALO 4 – MICROSOFT
- FIFA 13 – ELECTRONIC ARTS
- ASSASSIN’S CREED III – UBISOFT
- SKYLANDERS GIANTS – ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
- NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED – ELECTRONIC ARTS
- JUST DANCE 4 – UBISOFT
- BORDERLANDS 2 – TAKE 2
- THE SIMS 3: SEASONS – ELECTRONIC ARTS
- FOOTBALL MANAGER 2013 – SEGA
- WWE ’13 – THQ
- THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM – BETHESDA SOFTWORKS
- MOSHI MONSTERS: MOSHLINGS THEME PARK – MIND CANDY
- DISHONORED – BETHESDA SOFTWORKS
- FORZA MOTORSPORT 4 – MICROSOFT
- CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS DECLASSIFIED – ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
- KINECT DISNEYLAND ADVENTURES – MICROSOFT
- NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 Â – NINTENDO
- MEDAL OF HONOR: WARFIGHTER – ELECTRONIC ARTS
- RESIDENT EVIL 6 – CAPCOM
Get the full chart from UKIE.
Tuffcub
And the entire top ten is sequels, in fact there are only three new IPs in the whole top twenty.
djhsecondnature
And? We’re in the seventh year of this generation.
Tuffcub
And precisely what has that got to do with being inventive?
djhsecondnature
I’m not arguing about innovation, I’m arguing why you consider that a problem – or at least that’s how it sounded from your wording.
Tuffcub
Wel it is a problem if you like playing new games.
fattyuk
Gaming is like a sport a lot of people want the same each year and it sells well so everyone’s happy.
Dazbobaby
Nearly ALL the titles are sequels :(
Sympozium
Whos buying Black Ops Vita? Shows many defy the dark words spewed from reviewers and Jim Sterling. Gloomy times.
Shame the new Sega racing game isn’t in the top 20 its brilliant.
Peter Chapman
I bought it :(
Tuffcub
There seems to be mixed opinions – reviewers hate it, gamers seem to be enjoying it.
The Lone Steven
So that’s why we found up covered in empty Dr Pepper cherry flavour cans last week and mumbling something about wanting to erase it from my memory without the use of beer.
LTG Davey
Glad to see BLOPS2 is top of the pack. Hardly surprising but at least this COD deserves to be there, unlike MW3 which was just awful imo. Spent a large chunk of my weekend taking advantage of the doubleXP event and made it to level 45 in just under 6hours :D
Halo4 is also amazing, though I can’t see myself going back to the multiplayer very often now that I’ve dinged the Level20 achievement.
Most importantly, its nice to see Warfighter falling out of the charts. Broken, unfinished piece of rubbish.
jimmy-google
Only saw my first Wonderbook advert yesterday, it’s no one I’d expect people to rush out and buy on release. I’d expect it to be a slow burner. The ps3 bundle with it on amazon black friday deals sold out pretty quickly today.
Declassified will be a rental for me, no idea if i’ll like it as I haven’t enjoyed a cod game before but always open it trying something else on my vita
pantherjag
I bought black ops on the vita more out of curiosity than anything else as not a huge cod fan and can genuinely say im really loving it. Sure its a bit expensive and a little more content would have been good but i like how everything can be played in short bursts and at times it looks really good visually as well as being very smooth
I have read lots of reviews that have given it 3-4 out of 10 but i really think the reviewers have missed the point of the game, they slate it for having a short campaign with 5 min missions but its only short if you play it on 1 star difficulty, put it to hardened(2 star) and you’ll get far more milage(never mind 3 stars). The lack of checkpoints give a tenseness to the play as you approach the spot where you died last time with extreme caution and believe me when you die(often) you will restart the mission.
I get the impression form most reviews that if this game had a 8-10 campaign with a story if would score much higher but such things dont really work well on a handheld, as good as golden abyss was i played through the single player and then never looked at it again for 6 months until i felt like playing the single player again, even then i never really got going again on it. The format of all the modes on declassified means that everything can be played if you just have 15-20 to fill and the fact thats theres leaderboards for everything means you will replay all modes and try get 3 stars
Controls wise this is standard fare cod and they work well on the vita, the touch controls work fine to and feel unobtrusive on the gamplay.
Multiplayer isnt 100 smooth as the moment id say i have about a 75% sucess rate in finding and completing a match but what game doesnt have issues online these days, when you get a game its great fun, hectic and even if its only 4v 4 the action is always close.
So sure its not perfect, no proper story, little light on content and yep at times you’ll spawn in front of an enemy in multiplayer but its still call of duty and plays exactly like you would expect
Put it this way when your sitting in the pub on a sunday night in a dreary train station with an hour to burn before your train leaves on what else can you play classic call of duty multiplayer………Thats when declassified comes into its own
Score 8
LTG Davey
Nice summary. I dont have a Vita anymore but I would certainly be picking this up (and AC:Liberation) if I did. The short, punchy missions sounds a lot like Unit13, and that game was pretty rad :)
hazelam
Black Ops?
that name sounds familiar but i just can’t place it.
how does a game get to number one and nobody’s talking about it? ^_^
only one game that isn’t a sequel, of sorts, i’d imagine there have been moshi monsters games before, in the charts.
actually let me rephrase that, wow, one game that isn’t a sequel. ^_^
McProley
What was Dishonored a sequel to then?
Awayze
38% of the people are still waiting for their PS3’s to stop freezing………
RudeAwakening
I think by the time Christmas rolls around we will probably see Wonderbook climb up the charts.
supersmithnetwork
Knew Black Ops II would top it.