The Call of Duty Franchise has sold Millions of copies over the years; we’ve seen the series go from Modern Warfare to the producer taking us back to World at War which focused around the WWII era (not one of the best COD that came out). One of the popular features has become the Zombie packs, gamers have been known to buy the game just for that. Now we have seen different story-lines when it come to COD, but Black Ops II truly has a unique feel to it.
STORYLINE
The story is told from the two perspectives, with one plot arc following the antics of original Black Ops characters Alex Mason and Sgt Frank Woods during the Cold War and the second Mason’s son in 2025 missions, both plot revolve around the characters’ fights against Bond-level super villain Raul Menendez and his terrorist organisation Cordis Die. What makes the plot interesting than other COD game? Menendez, who is supposed to be a villain, isn’t entirely evil. Menendez is a tragic induvial whose hatred of the Western world and the existing world order is entirely understandable.
Black Ops 2’s single player campaign has several different possible endings. Which ending you get is informed by your choices and success during the campaign’s missions. Who you kill or don’t kill will clearly change how the story will end.
As well as changing the story’s final conclusion, your choices also have an effect on the direction the main campaign takes. For example, if you fail to take out a target in a mission then you may run the risk that they will appear later, or kill the target prematurely and you might not get crucial intel that would make your next mission easier.
STRIKE FORCE MISSIONS
Strike Force missions are shorter objective-based segments of the game that add a real time strategy element to Black Ops 2’s core first-person shooter gameplay. This gives you control over a group of soldiers and various drone units and generally have simple directives like protect this area. The missions let you either take direct command of one of your units and play the mission as a shooter or take a more strategic view, ordering squads’ movements from an overhead map screen. You can switch between the two modes at any time, creating a hybrid RTS/FPS experience similar to the one seen in titles like Carrier Commander.
The strategy based game was my least favorite I will say it’s an interesting concept, but it falls apart within a couple of minutes of game-play . There is too much action to manage three or more units at once, at one point I got confused on where I moved them and what units I moved, since the units are not capable to tackle objectives on their own or smart/fast enough to make their way to objectives themselves after spawning into the map your only hope to get through this is by personally controlling individual units from the first-person viewpoint.
Now again completing these missions such as Strike Force or even the objectives in the main campaign will effect later events in the game so if you think “Oh I’ll just hurry up with this mission so I can get it over with” not a smart move, remember the better you do the better perks you will obtain ex.using information obtained from an interrogation to provide valuable information later.
MULTIPLAYER
I will say this I was more impressed with the Single campaign than the Multiplayer, I see Treyarch did try to add a couple of new things like pick 10 mechanic to its load out system and new score based reward system. Let me breakdown what Pick 10 is, this means that instead of having to create a load out based on the present rules of the game – one primary weapon, one secondary, grenade type, attachment, perks – you can now create a “truly custom” arsenal that lets you pick as many items as you want from each category.
The mechanic does this by allocating each item a “points” value. Creating a load out, players are granted 10 points that they can use to load whatever they want. This means you can actually create a “truly custom” load out designed to match your online playing style.
We also have the Score Streaks system which replaces the previously seen Kill Streak system. The change means that you no longer receive in-game rewards, like airstrikes and radar, for getting a kill streak. Instead in Black Ops II the rewards are handed out for scoring a set number of points in a row.
This thankful ends the tendency to reward hard-core statistics, who had developed a habit of using objective matches as a quick and easy way to improve their Kill/Death ratio statistic by picking off gamers actually looking to play the mission. When it comes to actual online multiplayer modes, Black Ops 2 boasts all the classic options seen in previous Call of Duty games, including Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Search and Destroy. The Maps are greatly designed and have great place for “campers” to hide, along with offer a good amount of stunning and diverse locales, which comes as a relief following the tragic, arenas of Modern Warfare 3 .
If you are new to playing online multiplayer on Black Ops II get ready to become extremely angry and frustrated, let’s be honest the COD community is unforgiving, these guys usually play all day and all night, some are even competitive gamers. The company did not do a good job in rank matches, seen in other games you will usually be matched with others in your skill level.
Let me give you an example; Activision sent me a copy of the game two days after the launch date (Two days is like 2 weeks when it comes to COD) Now the people who received the game before me of course are a higher skill level than me, I was thrown into a party where gamers were level 20, I got destroyed and here comes the trash talking, after we exchanged a couple of four letter words I eventually turned off the game before I threw the controller across the room.
LEAGUE PLAY:
This is something new to the COD series league play is all skilled based, you will play a few matches to get your skills ranking up at this point you will be placed into a group that has the same skill level, now this was more enjoyable to play you didn’t feel like you are going up against someone who has more experience than you, now why they didn’t use this method in the main Mutliplayer as an option is beyond me, hopefully that will change with the next COD.
If you are new to the series I strongly suggest you start here to learn basic skills before you continue on to the main online multiplayer mode.
ZOMBIES
This wouldn’t be a Call of Duty game without zombies being added. Zombie mode is back and has been revamped by adding several new things, namely Tranzit and a new mode called Grief. Tranzit acts as a campaign mode of sorts with a larger world, but where you’ll still be doing the same thing as in past Zombie maps, as you fend off waves, use points to buy new weapons, power-ups, or open up new areas to explore. If you want to shrink the map down to a more traditional Zombie map, there’s the standard Survival mode where each map area has its own rules.
Finally there’s Grief, where two teams fight to see who can survive the longest while trying to screw up the other team efforts as much as you can was pretty fun, you stun players who are trying to revive a friend or attracting zombies to a group and having them attack them.
Zombies is best played with a group of friends, playing against randoms isn’t as entertaining and yet again I don’t find the only matchmaking too great either, but playing it is was a whole lot of fun especially when you are yelling back and forth at each other “look behind you, you idiot” I did get a couple of laughs out of that.
CONCLUSION
Treyarch did a great job on the single player campaign, the cut-scenes kept you intrigued and couldn’t’ wait to see what Menendez was up to next. The story-line was refreshing, I would like them to really work on the online-match ups; I’m sure playing online for the first time is a turn off for some people, especially if they have no chance in leveling up if they are not able to make a kill. If the company tweaks a few sections in the game, I can see this franchise just getting better over the years.
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Developers: Treyarch
Publishers: Activision
