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Players love, hate Call of Duty: Black Ops

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Call of Duty: Black Ops sales may be off the charts, but the reviews for the game released Tuesday show a different picture.

Reviews from 42 professional game critics gave the Activision Blizzard title with an average Metacritic score of 90 out of 100, which the website calls ‘universal acclaim.’

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But average players gave the game, developed by Treyarch, a 6.7 average out of 10, or roughly speaking an ‘F.’ Did players really find it that dreadful?

A closer look at the user reviews revealed a more complicated scenario. Nearly two thirds of the reviews, 88 out of 137, were positive as of Noon Wednesday. Of those, the vast majority rated the game either 9 or 10. Among the rest, 43 said they hated the game, with most giving it a score of 0 or 1. Only six users, or 4%, gave Black Ops middle-of-the-road scores of 5 or 6.

It seems gamers either loved or hated Black Ops, with few in between. Statisticians call this a bi-modal distribution, with data points clustered on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Love it or loathe it, millions of people bought the game -- 2.8 million Americans reserved a copy, along with 1.7 million Europeans, giving Black Ops a record total 4.5 million pre-orders.

The entire Call of Duty franchise rang up an estimated $3.5 billion in retail sales worldwide, according to Wedbush Securities.

‘With Black Ops, it’s going to sail past $4 billion with its eyes closed by the end of November,’ said Michael Pachter, a Wedbush analyst.

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For Wall Street, that could let the 7-year-old franchise easily keep its AAA rating.

-- Alex Pham

Related:

Call of Duty: Black Ops launches Tuesday; Will it measure up?

Chart: Metacritic.com

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