Hello ladies and gentlemen. It?s that time of year again. It?s November, which means we finally get to play the latest installment of Call of Duty. This time, We?ll be taking a look at Black Ops 2; the direct sequel to 2010?s Black Ops.
The big hook of this game is, the story is divided between two time frames. In the year 2025, you take control of David Mason, while in the tail end of the cold war, you take control of an aging Alex Mason from the first game. This is pulled off pretty well by having talks with old man Frank Woods for the flashback sequences, who is still alive despite the motherfucking grenade he took last time. But I digress.
[HEADING=2]The Single Player[/HEADING]
What of the actual plot you may ask? Well, the United States is at war with China over rare metals. Then China try to join up with Russia and take over a fuck ton of other countries, which makes me think the UN is either non-existent in the future or are sitting on their ass. Then the real bad guy comes along and wants to wreak everyone with nano-viruses and....holy tits what am I trying to explain here?! The story will end up getting convoluted in about two hours in such a way that not even the most hardcore fans are going to remember a lot of the details by the time the credits roll. The fact that the plot moves about a mile a minute to fit everything in doesn't help matters either.
Although, the real saving grace of all this is the characters. I enjoyed having Woods and Mason back in the same way I loved seeing Price and Soap in the Modern Warfare games. I got really attached to these guys, which really gives me some depressing feels when shit starts going downhill. And I have to say, Raul Menendez is an excellent villain. You actually get a sense of why he's doing the things he is, and he's sympathetic to some degree. This is a welcome change from all the mustache twirling blokes we usually have.
But enough messing around, lets get to the gameplay. Now you can always expect a Call of Duty to have solid shooting controls, but what turned this up to 11 for me was the future segments. You?ve got sights that look through walls, guns that shoot explosives, and a wrist mounted grenade launcher. Not to mention the drones, going invisible, and just a fuck ton of gadgets that almost make you feel like you?re playing a different game. Both the past and future segments also have a good variety of different locations and set pieces, which is a breath of fresh air after playing through the 18th bombed out city in Modern Warfare 3.
Black Ops 2 also tries to do several things with its single player that will hopefully make it stand out from other Call of Duties. The first is the inclusion of a choice system, where doing certain things differently will give you a different branching storyline. These end up being vastly different from each other enough to warrant subsequent playthroughs. The second is that they made the levels a fair bit more opened up. It felt good to not be carted through a narrow street or hallway all the time, and it was pretty interesting when it work. However, by the time you've hit your third invisible wall in other areas of the game, you start to wonder why they didn't put more work into this feature. Also, for the first time, you'll actually be able to choose your own loadout before a mission. I personally enjoyed being able to take my favorite weapons into my missions in place of having a seemingly random set of equipment.
The one place where Black Ops 2's campaign fails is the inclusion of Strike Force missions. How this works is, you?re given control over several units that you can move around with an overhead camera, or take control of directly. You then use all these units to defend a position from attacking enemies. It's more or less a mini RTS game. I appreciate that would try to give us something new like this, but the game mode is a jumbled mess. These are better left untouched if you?re playing through the single player.
[HEADING=2]Multiplayer[/HEADING]
The multiplayer in Black Ops 2 is just as fun and addictive as you'd expect it to be, but if you?re still playing a previous installment, it might end up feeling like more of the same. The pick 10 system is good for customization, but does little to change up the gameplay experience. In fact, I?d say the multiplayer over all is worse than the first Black Ops.
Black Ops 2 has taken out the COD point in game currency, contracts, and wager matches. Without the in game currency, we?re stuck with the MW3 system of unlocking attachments by leveling up the gun itself. This feels like a step backwards if you're coming off of the first game. There, you could just buy whatever attachments you wanted as soon as the gun was unlocked. There is absolutely no reason why it should take longer to unlock a silencer than it does for an ACOG sight. Neither of them is objectively better. It's all a matter of personal preference. Add to this the fact that the wager matches are just regular game modes and no longer getting the challanges from the contracts, and what you get is a multiplayer mode that's devoid of all its former personality.
[HEADING=2]Zombies[/HEADING]
And of course, what would a Treyarch game be without the infamous Zombie mode. The standard 4 player survival mode is back, where you and 4 players have to hold off the never-ending drones of zombies for as long as you can. There?s also the new transit mode where the survivors are carted around town in a bus from location to location. Having to shoot the zombies off of you as they climb into a claustrophobic moving deathtrap provides some tense moments.
The last zombie mode type is grief, where in your team of four must outlast the other team of 4, and the game doesn't end until the other team is dead. The only problem is, you can?t harm the opposing side. You can only do as much as you can to fuck them over until the zombies bring them down. This is a god send for me. At last, acting like a jerk to the other people on the map can actually be labeled as constructive.
[HEADING=2]Final Thoughts[/HEADING]
The thing I'm struggling with is if I can recommend that someone buy this game. It feels like Treyarh put a plenty of work into the single player, an all of the content as a whole made this an enjoyable game and well worth the price of admission. But I feel like the weakest part of the game this time around is the multiplayer due to the things they pulled out. And that's really what everyone's going to be doing months from now.
When it comes to either buying, renting, or just passing this game over entirely; I'd say this gets a solid recommendation to rent it. Try it out for a bit before deciding to add this to your library.
The big hook of this game is, the story is divided between two time frames. In the year 2025, you take control of David Mason, while in the tail end of the cold war, you take control of an aging Alex Mason from the first game. This is pulled off pretty well by having talks with old man Frank Woods for the flashback sequences, who is still alive despite the motherfucking grenade he took last time. But I digress.
[HEADING=2]The Single Player[/HEADING]
What of the actual plot you may ask? Well, the United States is at war with China over rare metals. Then China try to join up with Russia and take over a fuck ton of other countries, which makes me think the UN is either non-existent in the future or are sitting on their ass. Then the real bad guy comes along and wants to wreak everyone with nano-viruses and....holy tits what am I trying to explain here?! The story will end up getting convoluted in about two hours in such a way that not even the most hardcore fans are going to remember a lot of the details by the time the credits roll. The fact that the plot moves about a mile a minute to fit everything in doesn't help matters either.
Although, the real saving grace of all this is the characters. I enjoyed having Woods and Mason back in the same way I loved seeing Price and Soap in the Modern Warfare games. I got really attached to these guys, which really gives me some depressing feels when shit starts going downhill. And I have to say, Raul Menendez is an excellent villain. You actually get a sense of why he's doing the things he is, and he's sympathetic to some degree. This is a welcome change from all the mustache twirling blokes we usually have.
But enough messing around, lets get to the gameplay. Now you can always expect a Call of Duty to have solid shooting controls, but what turned this up to 11 for me was the future segments. You?ve got sights that look through walls, guns that shoot explosives, and a wrist mounted grenade launcher. Not to mention the drones, going invisible, and just a fuck ton of gadgets that almost make you feel like you?re playing a different game. Both the past and future segments also have a good variety of different locations and set pieces, which is a breath of fresh air after playing through the 18th bombed out city in Modern Warfare 3.
Black Ops 2 also tries to do several things with its single player that will hopefully make it stand out from other Call of Duties. The first is the inclusion of a choice system, where doing certain things differently will give you a different branching storyline. These end up being vastly different from each other enough to warrant subsequent playthroughs. The second is that they made the levels a fair bit more opened up. It felt good to not be carted through a narrow street or hallway all the time, and it was pretty interesting when it work. However, by the time you've hit your third invisible wall in other areas of the game, you start to wonder why they didn't put more work into this feature. Also, for the first time, you'll actually be able to choose your own loadout before a mission. I personally enjoyed being able to take my favorite weapons into my missions in place of having a seemingly random set of equipment.
The one place where Black Ops 2's campaign fails is the inclusion of Strike Force missions. How this works is, you?re given control over several units that you can move around with an overhead camera, or take control of directly. You then use all these units to defend a position from attacking enemies. It's more or less a mini RTS game. I appreciate that would try to give us something new like this, but the game mode is a jumbled mess. These are better left untouched if you?re playing through the single player.
[HEADING=2]Multiplayer[/HEADING]
The multiplayer in Black Ops 2 is just as fun and addictive as you'd expect it to be, but if you?re still playing a previous installment, it might end up feeling like more of the same. The pick 10 system is good for customization, but does little to change up the gameplay experience. In fact, I?d say the multiplayer over all is worse than the first Black Ops.
Black Ops 2 has taken out the COD point in game currency, contracts, and wager matches. Without the in game currency, we?re stuck with the MW3 system of unlocking attachments by leveling up the gun itself. This feels like a step backwards if you're coming off of the first game. There, you could just buy whatever attachments you wanted as soon as the gun was unlocked. There is absolutely no reason why it should take longer to unlock a silencer than it does for an ACOG sight. Neither of them is objectively better. It's all a matter of personal preference. Add to this the fact that the wager matches are just regular game modes and no longer getting the challanges from the contracts, and what you get is a multiplayer mode that's devoid of all its former personality.
[HEADING=2]Zombies[/HEADING]
And of course, what would a Treyarch game be without the infamous Zombie mode. The standard 4 player survival mode is back, where you and 4 players have to hold off the never-ending drones of zombies for as long as you can. There?s also the new transit mode where the survivors are carted around town in a bus from location to location. Having to shoot the zombies off of you as they climb into a claustrophobic moving deathtrap provides some tense moments.
The last zombie mode type is grief, where in your team of four must outlast the other team of 4, and the game doesn't end until the other team is dead. The only problem is, you can?t harm the opposing side. You can only do as much as you can to fuck them over until the zombies bring them down. This is a god send for me. At last, acting like a jerk to the other people on the map can actually be labeled as constructive.
[HEADING=2]Final Thoughts[/HEADING]
The thing I'm struggling with is if I can recommend that someone buy this game. It feels like Treyarh put a plenty of work into the single player, an all of the content as a whole made this an enjoyable game and well worth the price of admission. But I feel like the weakest part of the game this time around is the multiplayer due to the things they pulled out. And that's really what everyone's going to be doing months from now.
When it comes to either buying, renting, or just passing this game over entirely; I'd say this gets a solid recommendation to rent it. Try it out for a bit before deciding to add this to your library.
