The reviews are in, and Treyarch’s confidence has paid off with exceptional review after exceptional review. There was a lot of worry about Black Ops and whether it would be able to deliver when compared to the Infinity Ward developed Modern Warfare 2, which redefined the franchise.

In the past, review scores for the Infinity Ward-developed Call of Duty titles have always seemed to outpace the Treyarch-developed titles, but this time around Treyarch has delivered its best Call of Duty title to date, if not one of the best in the series, depending on which reviews you read. Currently, the game is averaging a score of 90 on Metacritic, which, of course, is excellent.

The reviews do indicate that strong sales are expected to continue, with players satisfied with the experience of Black Ops telling their friends; which naturally will lead to more sales by word of mouth. If word of mouth doesn’t help with the sales, the big advertising campaign that Activision is running to promote the title will make sure that the word is out about its arrival.

While initial sales estimates have yet to be released, we have been told by a number of our retail sources that midnight launch sales were some of the best ever, with many buyers picking up their pre-orders at midnight. We expect to hear some sales numbers starting to trickle out from Activision next week when they have a chance to digest all of the numbers and figure out what records they might have broken. In the meantime, the best news might be that there seems to be no product shortage; so you should be able to get a copy if you didn’t pre-order without much trouble from most retailers.