Call to Duty: Black Ops set during Vietnam War

Call of Duty: Black Ops has plenty of elements engineered to trigger protest. It's mostly set during the Vietnam War, still a touchy subject for any pop-culture treatment. And there's a mission based on an attempt to assassinate a young Fidel Castro. There's some entirely gratuitous torture. And there's a weird postgame fantasia in which Castro joins President John F. Kennedy and future President Richard Nixon in fighting off a zombie invasion.

The campaign traces the career of U.S. Special Forces operative Alex Mason, who's being interrogated by an unseen tormentor. His adventures are presented as flashbacks, bouncing from the streets of Cuba to the jungles of Vietnam to wastelands of Siberia from 1961-68. The story draws unashamedly from cinema, cribbing not just from Vietnam movies like "Apocalypse Now" and "The Deer Hunter," but also from Cold War thrillers like "The Manchurian Candidate."

All the usual first-person shooter locales are in place: You fight in a city, you fight in the snow and aboard a sinking ship. The combat is relentless; the controls are slick and satisfying.

Black Ops delivers a visually dazzling adventure. Its twisty, time-skipping narrative is more ambitious than expected, though the missions themselves are generally predictable.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

RATING M for Mature

PLOT The Cold War gets reheated

DETAILS Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, $60

BOTTOM LINE You won't be disappointed if you're a Call of Duty fan