This year’s Call Of Duty has arrived with some seriously lofty expectations. The 2010 original was,
and still remains, one of the most successful best videogames of all time, hoovering up over a billion dollars after just a single month of sitting on the shelves of supermarkets and game stores. In 2011 we saw the arrival of Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 3, a sequel that turned out to be the strongest entry in the Modern Warfare series to date in spite of the Zampella/West hoopla surrounding its release.
Still, two years on and Treyarch’s knack for obliterating records looks set to continue. Case in point: after just a single day on sale, Black Ops II has raked in half of that billion dollar haul its sibling managed to clock up, so we here at Play expect nothing short of stratospheric numbers by the time the bean counters at Activision have finished tallying things up. Record-breaking aside, what’s
really interesting about Black Ops II is the developer’s approach to crafting the sequel. Treyarch could have played it all very safe by simply re-treading familiar ground, but didn’t. Call Of Duty continues to be one of the few series that can easily get by on popularity and hype, but instead the team opted to take a cast iron formula that’s been perfected by both the Santa Monica-based developer as well as its rivals at Infinity Ward, and – shock horror – change it up a little.
It’s an incredibly bold move and one that pays off in spades, especially in the games’ single-player campaign, which has been considerably beefed up in comparison to that of the 2010 original. Now at the outset of each mission you’re given the option to craft bespoke loadouts and equip perks, much like you’ve been so used to doing in the best videogames of all time’s multiplayer mode over the years. Even the missions themselves do more to encourage exploration, rewarding you with some useful intelligence or, in some cases, a better weapon to slaughter the minions of the game’s nefarious villain, Raul Menendez, who also happens to serve as the anchor for Black Ops II’s duelling storylines.
Flip-flopping between missions in the Eighties with returning hero, Alex Mason, and his son, David in the year 2025, both narratives are suitably bonkers despite the fact that Hollywood scribe, David Goyer, had a hand in weaving them. Playing through Mason senior’s tale, you’re taken on a dark and twisted tale that charts the rise to infamy of Menendez, a Nicaraguan narco-terrorist and leader of a
group of diehards known as the Cordis Die. Despite being referred to as the single largest threat to the free world since Bin Laden, Menendez is arguably one of the showiest villains the entire Call Of Duty franchise has ever seen. At one point Goyer and his writing partners attempt to humanise him in an earlier mission that puts you in control of him during a botched raid on his home that also happens to take the life of his sister. It fails for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is that one
mission later we’re watching Menendez behave like all the other murderous maniacs we’ve taken down in previous shooters with aplomb. Still, for just a beat or two, Menendez manages to transcend the norm and become a villain with some genuinely surprising depth (even if the aforementioned handling is quite clumsy), his motivations for total world domination often weightier than that of the game’s entire playable cast.
Fast-forward to the year 2025 and it’s all cloaking armour, robot spiders and a huge roster of awesomely enticing weaponry that too often appears for an incredibly brief amount of gameplay time, before disappearing completely into the ether in later chapters for no apparent reason. Regardless, the switching back and forth between the two time-frames offers up two very distinct flavours to Black Ops II. Mason senior’s sections feel like the Call Of Duty we all know and have grown accustomed to over the years, whereas his son’s feel like a glimpse into the future of the
series in the hands of Treyarch. Up until now, the campaigns in Call Of Duty were almost looked down upon, something to be rushed through as quickly as possible before you moved onto and assimilated an entire twelve whole months of multiplayer and game packs. With Black Ops II, Treyarch has yet again bucked the trend by way of a thoughtprovoking, branching storyline that really does require you to think about your actions rather than pummel the bejesus out of the trigger
finger in a rush to watch the credits roll. In total, there are six endings for you to experience, each of which is tied to the decisions you make at certain points. Layered on top of these are even more reasons to play through the solo sections on multiple occasions, including a swathe of mission-based objectives crying out to be bested at every turn.
And then there are the Strike Force missions, Treyarch’s attempt at infusing strategic gameplay into the fold by allowing you to take control of multiple units on the battlefield via a top down view. Of all the shiny new gameplay mechanics the developer threw into the mix, this one feels like it’s had the least attention paid to it. For one, they are optional – but purists will ultimately want to master all four Strike Force missions to experience one of the game’s happier endings – and secondly, the AI
is nothing shy of moronic.
Your troops barely engage with the enemy, instead electing to take up positions at defensive points on the map and refusing to move of their own accord. And because of that the strategic element is immediately rendered redundant for gamers with very little patience (isn’t that almost all of us?), forcing you to make the leap into the combat boots of a trooper and play through the entire mission
in FPS mode, much like the rest of the best videogames of all time. These Strike Force missions are not a complete disaster, they are just a little more complex to master than we had initially expected, thanks in no small part to the head-scratching command structure mapped to the SixAxis controller. If Treyarch is absolutely insistent on returning to these sidebar missions in a future instalment, we expect them to be subjected to a fairly meaty design overhaul.
While the changes to the single-player campaign are undoubtedly the most significant the series has seen to date, the multiplayer component of Black Ops II does get its fair share of gameplay tweaks. At the top of that list is the new Pick 10 system, which completely alters the way you kit out your
character before leaping into a match. For a series that had already perfected the weapons loadout with each of its subsequent iterations, it’s quite the ballsy move for Treyarch. Gone are the days of fixed weapon sets and combat classes, and in its place rests a new system that allows you to cook up any number of weaponry combinations before venturing out into the battlefield.
For example, you can launch into a map wielding just a primary weapon but with a myriad of attachments. Or you could forgo that secondary grenade in favour of tacking on another of one of the game’s many perks. The choice is all entirely yours. It works and works incredibly well, so long as you stick within the game’s ten-item parameter. Each weapon also has its own levelling system, meaning that every time you’ve completed certain objectives using it you’ll be handed a nifty upgrade, which you’ll immediately want to take for a test drive on the next map. It truly is a breath of fresh air, and we half expect Infinity Ward to take notice and alter its own multiplayer loadouts come the inevitable arrival of 2013’s Modern Warfare 4.
The second most significant alteration to Black Ops II’s multiplayer mode is the nixing of the Killstreak, which has been replaced by the more flexible and player-friendly Scorestreaks. By killing enemies, completing objectives and capturing various points on the map you’re rewarded with points, which in turn can be used to unlock one of your three equipped Scorestreaks. These range from the usual UAVS to some of the niftier weapons like the Drones or the annoyingly devastating Lightning
Strike Scorestreak bonus. Of course, the catch is that if you’re killed you’re immediately stripped of all Scorestreak points, so you’ll have to be much smarter about how you approach the maps in battle if you want to make the most of these perks.
As for the maps, there are 14 in total (15 if you snagged the bonus pre-order Nuketown 2025 map), all of which pay homage at one point or another to the Black Ops II’s twelve multiplayer modes, including series stalwarts Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Demolition and the new guy, Hardpoint. While there are plenty of highlights on offer including Overflow and Plaza, the
worst offender by a long stretch is Hijacked, which throws you and your teammates onto a cramped yacht with hardly any room to manoeuvre. The end result is usually a maniacal shootout that gets very frustrating, very fast. Speaking of hardships, everyone knows how maddening it can be starting out in Call Of Duty’s multiplayer modes.
To tackle this problem, Treyarch has introduced the idea of Combat Training, which is essentially a series of specially crafted takes on Team Deathmatch and the game’s objective-based modes. In each
mode you can level up from one through to ten, battling both human opponents and computer-controlled bots. Once you’ve reached that all-important level ten you’re immediately cut off and thrust into Black Ops II’s Core and Hardcore modes. You can still team up with friends to hunt down
and take out reams of bots, but you won’t get any experience points for this mindless AI slaughter. Of all the additions to Black Ops II’s multiplayer modes, this will certainly be one of the most welcomed ones for gamers arriving late to the party.
All of this brings us to Zombies, which originally started life out as a sort of goofy mini-game and knowing nod to Valve’s shuffling shooter, Left 4 Dead before evolving into its own campaign here in Black Ops II. Right now there is just one large solo map on offer, which is broken down into smaller sub maps when traversed in TranZit mode. Each of these mini maps – a farm, bus depot and town
– are all connected by a single rickety bus and its robotic driver (in a knowing nod to Total Recall ’s Johnny Cabs) that trundles through each area on a continuous loop.
When playing TranZit you can choose to work as a team with other players by staying on the bus and battling hordes of the undead, or jump off at a stop and explore each area in a bid to uncover its secrets and unlock numerous upgrades. It certainly pays to explore because by scouring the environment with a keen eye, you’ll pick up all sorts of post apocalyptic tat that can be welded together at blueprints stations to craft everything from shields to portable generators and loopylooking zombie decoys.
Upgrades aren’t just tacked onto your character, the bus itself can also be retrofitted with everything from a hatch that grants quick access to the roof, or even a snowplough for tearing through any walkers that might get in the way of your apocalyptic party ride. Be warned though, staying off the bus for too long means you’ll get left behind and forced to survive either as a group or alone until
it swings around again. If you’re fortunate enough to find yourself stranded with a buddy or two, it can be a blast trying to make it to the next round, but if you’re alone the chances of survival are slim to none – especially if you’re foolish enough to wander off the beaten track. The downside to this rather enjoyable mode is that Treyarch fails to clearly relay any sort of information to you at the outset, forcing you into a series of deaths and restarts before you eventually figure out what it is you need to be doing to win the damn thing.
The original and bombastic Survival mode makes a welcome return, confining you to one of the three mini maps in an all-out battle to make it through as many rounds as possible. It can be a lot of fun but a little tight in spots where sections of the mini maps tend to cramp up because of ill-conceived level
design. The last and most disappointing of the available Zombies modes is Grief, a four on four mode that charges you with competing against each other until only one person is left standing. The catch is that you can’t freely slaughter the opposing team members, but instead have to use the environment, slabs of meat and shambling waves of zombies to lure them into traps and choke points. On paper
it sounds fun, but when played it just turns into an incredibly messy affair when players scramble to revive a downed man or you find yourself in an infuriating skirmish to secure a weapons cache.
Regardless of what you make of the new expanded Zombies mode, it doesn’t detract from the fact that Black Ops II is essentially three games on a single Blu-ray disc, each one of its multiple modes offering up a different kind of experience depending on what it is that you’re after when you pick up a game like this. Black Ops II is a hugely ambitious effort on Treyarch’s behalf, and one that should
certainly be saluted for its bravery. Sure, there are some design snafus like the over complicatedness of the Strike Force missions or the hazy objective directions in TranZit, but this is undeniably a more complete best videogames of all time package than its 2010 predecessor.
Black Ops II is certainly not the shooter we have been expecting since its announcement; instead it’s a step in the right direction for a series that could have very easily have gotten away with playing it safe at the height of its success. Naturally, when you peel back the layers and take a closer look at it, this is still unmistakably a Call Of Duty experience, but Treyarch has done far more than what was
expected of it. Of course, if you’ve purposefully made a point of avoiding Call Of Duty up until now you’re probably unlikely to be swayed by this latest entry, or our constant sense of surprise at just how much of a risk Activision allowed Treyarch to take with its cash cow. Now all we can do is just sit back and watch how Infinity Ward chooses to respond to having the gauntlet well and truly thrown
down. The floor is yours, Modern Warfare. Sebastian Williamson
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