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Before I say anything, I need to let everyone know that I'm no fanboy, and I'm not here to bash Blackops. I am making a suggestion to save you money based on my experience with the Call of Duty series and Activision.

I recommend that nobody who reads this get Call of Duty: Blackops.

These are some of the many reasons why:

First and foremost is that Activision does not care about its customers. It consistantly refuses to acknowledge the feedback it recieves for any of its games (though I'm only going to talk about the CoD series in this thread). Many times people have complained about the Perk system making the game broken, especially the Juggernaut perk. It took Activision 6 tries just to get rid of that one perk and they thought it was a good idea to replace it with with Pain Killer in MW2.
To talk about perks for a bit, what's up with Stopping Power? Apparently Activision discovered some magical force that increases the damage that bullets inflict on whatever they hit.
Speaking of bullets, neither of the two companies that Activision has hired to make its games has been able to keep from screwing up the things that fire them. They may get the appearance of any given gun right, but they never get anything else right. When a .50 caliber sniper rifle feels like an air-soft rifle, there's something wrong. InfinityWard even got the name wrong on the TDI Kriss Super-V. They call it the Vector. Perhaps they think that the 'V' stands for vector, but in fact it doesn't stand for anything. That's it's full name. And while I'm on the subject of the "Vector", I might as well say that they got the fire-power wrong as well. The Kriss Super-V shoots .45 caliber pistol rounds and has as close to no recoil as any gun has ever gotten. The "Vector" is nothing close to this and has a tendency to use up a 15-round clip in less than 3 seconds, which you will need all of half the time in order to kill someone.

Moving on to other games than just MW2 (though I wanted to talk about Commando as well, I won't), Activision fails at story. They try to add moral decisions (as seen in WaW and MW2) and shock the audience with random deaths for pointless plot-twists.
In World at War, moral decisions are attempted with the choice between saving your captain or your medic. You know neither of them save for them being around for the whole game. And in MW2 it was making the decision to play through the "No Russian" level.
Nothing is revealed about any of the characters, so you feel nothing when the intended shock factor is unveiled. In CoD 4, the big "shocker" was the death of the light machinegunner. In World at World it was that guy who gets a bayonet in the chest when he tried to open a door. And in MW2 it was Ghost. With all of these characters the story is the same: They're there, they say few things and do fewer, and then they die.

Now to talk about Blackops, because I know that some people who have noticed all of the above listed flaws still think that this one will be great.
To quote one such person who I go to school with: "I know that the others all sucked, but this one is going to take 'Game of the Year'".
Trust me when I say he is wrong.
I don't need to wait for this one to be released to tell you that things are very wrong.
I have no doubt that guns will still be off, but I don't need to talk about those.
Perks have been promised and few of them have been fixed from the last game, only renamed and given another twist.
The noob-tube has been promised to make a return, which names its own flaws, so I don't need to list those.
Now to get to the new things: the tomohawk, balistic knife, and crossbow.
Starting with the crossbow, I was blown away when I heard that they had this in the game. I couldn't believe that Activision was that low on ideas that they'd bring in a weapon that hasn't been used in combat since the 1500s. It stopped being useful in warfare during that time because guns were dominating the battlefield.
Nobody can casually throw a tomohawk. That's a dual-purpose axe that was used in close-quarters combat as much as it was for throwing, yet in Blackops you just nonchalantly toss it like you do with the throwing knife in MW2.
And now to the balistic knife. The balistic knife is a spring-loaded weapon that can easily launch a blade at least 12 feet (probably more) and still solidly puncture any target. That said you can't just slam a new blade in like nothing. I know a person who has one in his collection and I watched him reload it. He's a big guy, but even he had to push against it with all his strength until he heard that click that signifies that it's in place. Seeing this guy's face go red as he did this gave me an idea of how much strength is needed to put a new blade into that thing. In Blackops, though, apparently there are super-soldiers that can do things the Spartan II's from Halo would blush at.

If you still want to get this game, that's fine by me, but I would suggest that you wait at least a month after it comes out to do so. Let he hype dissolve and keep track of reviews from actual players, not just those of the professional reviewers (even Adam Sessler though MW2 was good enough to take Game of the Year).

I don't blame you. Call of Duty for the DS was a horrible idea. I can't understand why they thought it was a good idea. That's about as good an idea as Guile's haircut from Streetfighter.

I wasn't intending to get the game, but that's just because it's not my genre of choice. I must say though, your knowledge of firearms and other weaponry impresses me.

Ehh, I never really liked FPS's in the first place. And in my opinion, any more Call of Duty games now are just silly cash cows. People b***ed about Final Fantasy XIII and said it sucked, but at least it gave a brand new twist on an old series which kept the game fresh. (Don't get me started on FFXIII and why it was GOOD.)

*ahem*

Anyways, those are very valid points, as this is supposedly a "realistic shooter." And I won't buy it since I don't like FPS's.

And, a crossbow? Seriously? Geez. That's like bringing a stick to a sword fight!

We should totally start another thread discussing the merits and flaws of FF then.

Back to the matter at hand, I can totally see where you're coming from with the comparison of Halo and any historical or modern war FPS. But the crappy part is that no matter how botched up the realism is, people are still going to end up buying it, and it's still going to be commercially successful. And thus the cycle will continue because the companies at fault will never learn.

The problems pointed out with the latest FF and Any FPS game is pretty much the same. If you are expecting something in the same series to deliver exactly the same thing and sell...it just wont happen. If you dont like change, then prehaps you arnt looking to play a game in a particular series.

the FF series and the GT series are the only ones on the PS that I have ever really gotten into. Though shadow hearts was good too.