The downtime really didn't bother me all that much, I have a pretty good library of PS3 games so I just played mostly single player titles like Red Dead Redemption & Assassin's Creed while Sony's network was being rebuilt.
Buying an XBox wasn't even an option on this end, all of my friends who have them have had to send their systems in for repair, sometimes multiple times, I'll take a temporary interruption in online gaming over a complete system failure any day.
Anyway I think Black Ops is pretty decent, certainly isn't what I would consider the crown jewel of the COD series but I am still having a lot of fun playing it.
Red Dead Redemption is an awesome game. My nephew loves getting the horse going full speed and capping it so he falls off when it dies and somehow he almost perfected getting the horse to jump off cliffs and landing on the horse as it tumbles down the different rocks on the way down. He'd only get slightly injured. We also liked jacking the trains on a bridge before shooting at people. They jump to their death.
If you get bored of Black Ops, check out L.A. Noire. I've played it a ton since I got it (Friday I think) and have a bunch of side missions and cars to unlock. Pretty good game.