On 9 November, Call of Duty: Black Ops, went on sale in the UK. And by the end of the day it had sold 1.4 million copies in the UK alone, making it the biggest launch in the history of console gaming.
Everyone who picked up a copy knew they'd bagged themselves the latest entry in the annually updated, frequently excellent Call of Duty series. But how many people knew they'd also bought arguably the highest-profile showcase yet for the new 3D technology?
Activision, the studio behind the game, announced just weeks before the game launched that it would be playable in 3D on both Xbox 360 and PS3, using one of the new breed of 3D HDTVs.
And while the decision seemed alarmingly last minute considering the effort needed to create a convincing 3D image, it certainly chimed with the widespread belief in the AV world that it will actually be games that make or break 3D's latest quest for world domination, rather than films or TV shows.
The potential for 3D to enhance a gaming experience is clear. It should, for instance, help make a game world feel more real, engaging and, above all, immersive. Furthermore, the addition of depth could be used to introduce an extra layer of skill to shoot-em-ups and driving games.
Basically, adding 3D to games could make them feel more lifelike, thus satisfying what's seen as one of the holy grails of modern game development, at least where certain genres are concerned.
Black Ops 3D on Xbox
As ever, though, the proof of the 3D pudding is in the eating. So it's time to don our camouflage gear and a pair of 3D glasses, and settle down to the cold, hard business of shooting things in the third dimension.
Will 3D help engross us more in the game world? Will it give us an edge or prove a hindrance, especially in the super-fast world of online play? And will it deliver the same experience on both the two main consoles?
Kicking off with the Xbox 360 version, choosing the 'Stereoscopic 3D' mode from the options menu immediately kills the mood.
For up comes a page of dire warnings about the potential effect long-term 3D viewing might have on your health. This hardly fills you with confidence about the experience that's to follow, and you have to question if any technology that comes with a health warning can ever become truly mainstream.
Trying to put such thinking behind us, we fired up the Executive Order single player level, on the grounds that it contains an impressive mix of very wide, open spaces and tight corridors that should test everything that 3D has to offer. And pretty much immediately we felt mixed emotions.
Sense of depth
On the upside, the sense of depth is, as expected, more pronounced than it is in 2D mode. However, the impact isn't quite as strong as we would have liked, suggesting that the game designers 'played it safe' in depth terms as a result of applying 3D retrospectively to an already complete game engine rather than designing it with 3D in mind from scratch.
It might have been helpful if the option to shift the sense of depth yourself had been provided, as it was with the first 3D console game, Avatar.
The depth effect is still sufficient, though, to boost the sense of space that you're dealing with and moving within. A bit of good technical news, meanwhile, is that while the game runs a tad slower in 3D, things still feel pretty fluid. In fact, there actually seem to be less moments of slow-down during very action-packed sequences than there are when playing in 2D.
It becomes apparent once the shooting starts that having a real third dimension to aim into does change the gameplay mechanics. Though not necessarily in a good way, as the gameplay actually feels harder.
There appear to be two reasons for this. First, if you press the left trigger button to look down your gun's sight, the extremely sudden shift in depth of the picture throws your vision off momentarily, leading you to lose focus briefly on your target.
More disturbing, though, is the fact that aiming just seems to become less accurate in 3D. Your crosshair's relationship with what you're shooting at isn't as tight, turning even fairly accurate players into 'spray and hopers' at times. Not ideal if you're playing on the game's intensely tough Veteran difficulty.
The more we played Black Ops in 3D, the more we started to feel convinced that it's not just enough for a game to be available in a 3D render; the gameplay itself should also ideally be tweaked to suit 3D play.
If this proves true of all games, it could be a real problem for 3D, since it could make the cost of making 3D games substantially higher.
There are two other more technical issues you should be aware of when playing Black Ops in 3D on the Xbox 360.
First, the picture is noticeably less detailed and sharp than in 2D. The game requires you to set your console into 720p mode rather than 1080 'full HD' before the 3D output will work. Then, crucially, it outputs the left and right images needed to create the 3D image onscreen simultaneously, which inevitably means you're going to suffer reduced resolution as effectively two images share one set of pixels.
Crosstalk noise
The other big problem is crosstalk noise. This, actually, isn't as much to do with the game's production as the ability of current 3D screens to keep up with the extremely rapid frame rate required by full HD 3D.
The glasses you wear with 3D TVs use a shutter system to alternate full HD images between each eye so fast that you get a 3D effect tin HD, but if a screen can't refresh its pictures fast enough it can result in double ghosting over parts of the picture.
This is crosstalk, and it really can be extremely distracting, making the picture look unfocussed and causing your eyes to feel fatigued very quickly.
In fact, with the two LCD TVs we played Black Ops in 3D on, Samsung's 46C8000 and LG's 47LX6900, the crosstalk issues both hindered our gaming abilities and made playing for more than half an hour at a time really tiring. Oh well - we guess that's one way of curing our Black Ops addiction.
Happily the crosstalk issues were much reduced when we played the game on a plasma 3D TV - Panasonic's P42VT20 - reaffirming our growing sense that right now, at least, plasma is the only technology capable of delivering a truly convincing 3D picture. Even on the P42VT20, though, crosstalk appears just often enough to make us suspect that many people will go back to their pristine 2D pictures instead.
Black Ops 3D on PS3
On paper, at least, the PS3's 3D performance should fare better. For instead of putting both left and right stereoscopic images on screen at the same time, the PS3 makes use of its high-capacity HDMI 1.4 connection (vs 1.3 on the Xbox 360) to present its 3D pictures 'stacked' vertically, delivering a tidy 720p HD frame to each eye.
Oddly, though, we didn't really feel that this potential jump in detail or sharpness materialised. In fact, if anything the 3D PS3 Black Ops looked a touch softer than the Xbox one.
In any case, though, this was rendered a more or less moot point by the fact that the PS3 seems to struggle with its 3D load; gameplay feels rather slow, making the controls slightly unresponsive and generally reducing our usual sense of COD adrenaline.
The only thing in the PS3's favour is that for some reason its pictures suffer a touch less with crosstalk.
No killer app
The bottom line with all this is, as you've probably guessed: Black Ops in 3D isn't exactly the 3D 'killer app' we'd hoped it might be. The developers have played it a touch too safe when adding depth to the image, meaning that 'going 3D' doesn't add as great a sense of depth to proceedings as expected.
Much more troubling, though, are the technical issues with both the 3D screen hardware currently available, and the two games consoles (resolution and crosstalk with the Xbox, sluggishness and softness with the PS3).
These concerns actually make you feel more detached from the game rather than more immersed in it, as well as making you feel at more of a gaming disadvantage. In other words, our 3D experience of Black Ops was more or less the exact opposite of what we'd hoped we'd find.
Here's hoping the upcoming launch of Gran Turismo 5 in 3D turns out to be a rather more successful poster boy for the supposed 3D revolution, otherwise our already nagging doubts about the public's appetite for 3D will really start to take hold...
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