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Black Ops Declassified is a Call of Duty game minus the spectacle. And for a series that has placed almost all of its energy into developing spectacle over the past few years - the snowmobile leaps over famished ravines, the horseback charges into tank fortresses, the collapse of the Eiffel Tower - this leaves us with something of a flaccid anachronism, one that exposes the tired heart beneath the bluster. Of course, for some, the set-piece has destroyed the first-person shooter in recent years: an invasion of Hollywood showmanship that has robbed soldiering games of their flexibility and tactical breadth in favour of a tightly controlled pyrotechnical show. But while Black Ops Declassified casts out the set-piece (or, more truthfully, hasn't the budget to pay for it), the game maintains the underlying Call of Duty format: a series of unyielding play corridors that must be trudged through en route to the mission's exit - an exit that isn't punctuated by nuclear explosions or toppling landmarks.
Nevertheless, it would be dishonest for any critic to breathlessly praise its heavyweight PC and console brother, Black Ops 2, for its vainglory before gasping in indignation at this handheld expansion to the fiction. Black Ops Declassified may be short, it may be devoid of spectacle, it may be missing that spark of creative life force that keeps the annual routine of Call of Duty games from truly stagnating - but the two games undeniably share a soul and a structure.
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