Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
Author – Andrew Kuhn –
MythicalMoondog
* Spoiler Alerts *
What can I say about you? I could say that you gave me hope. I could say that when I heard about you and
the features you were bringing to the series that I thought “Maybe it’s finally
happening; maybe this is the start of something new, inspiring, and a stepping
stone for further change!” But I was
wrong. The changes that they made with
this installment were only very slightly more significant than the changes made
previously. And my realization of this
has basically crushed the last remaining hope I have that this series will ever
change for the better. My mind screams
to me “GIVE IT A ZERO! GIVE IT A F!*$ING
ZERO! IT DESERVES NOTHING MORE! IT’S NOT A GAME, IT’S PORTAL TO THE CIRCLES
OF HELL WHERE SIN CAN COME AND CORRUPT THE HUMAN SOUL!” But I must try to be fair and rate it as the
object so many people view it as, a video game.
So, putting my own wrath aside, let’s get down to it.
The changes made to this game,
however small, were better than the changes throughout the previous Call of
Duty’s (previous meaning from CoD 4 to MW3).
One of these changes was the storyline.
You go through the story fighting in two different timelines mostly as
Alex Mason in the late 1980’s and David Mason in 2025. As Alex Mason you begin on a rescue mission
to find your old squad mate, Frank Woods.
After rescuing him and on your way to evacuate you sort of just “run
into” Raul Menendez and after a scuffle, and Menendez losing an eye, you both
escape. Later you figure out Menendez
was the one holding Woods and so you go after him. Through blind rage Woods kills Menendez’s
sister, and later Menendez murders Alex Mason to get revenge. Now David Mason wants revenge in 2025 and so
he is pursuing Menendez. So much of the
storyline is driven by vengeance, and also the fact that for revenge Menendez
wants to start a war between China and America.
Otherwise it wouldn’t really make sense that they would have military
operatives chasing down this guy. But
since they make this story more personal, it gives a way to add more emotion to
the conflict. And through certain
missions and cut scenes the game exposes much more of the enemy Menendez and
his motivations, allowing the player to understand his character and create a
more true hatred for him rather than previous antagonists. Previous CoD’s had you fighting some “generic
terrorist B”, “angry Russian A”, or “overused Nazi C” because they were trying
to create war or you were already in a war with them. Yes, Menendez is also trying to create war,
but he has done more than that. Along
with Menendez other characters in the story are also better defined than
previous games including Frank Woods, David Mason, and Mike Harper.
One of the features that game me
hope that this game would be a doorway to change is a system of decision making
that they introduced in the game. At
different parts in the story your character would be given some sort of
decision to make. This decision could
either present itself as “push A to do X or push B to do Y,” or it could be
less defined and leave it up to the player to make the decision, or to even
figure whether there is a decision to be made.
Certain parts leave it completely up to the player to decide what to do,
without telling the player what the choices are. I think this is actually a really good
idea. In many other games where decision
making has a roll, almost all decisions are presented to the player clearly and
ask what the player wants to do, and it will usually be relatively clear what
is the morally right thing to do and what is the morally wrong thing to
do. This allows a player to easily take
their time and choose their path. They
may say to themselves “Well this is my good play through, so I’ll choose the
good choice. I’ll choose the evil choice
on my next play through.” This doesn’t
really have the player make a decision at all based on what they actually
think; it’s more just like how can they play the game to see what they want to
see, to get the final outcome that they want.
Black Ops 2 did it in a way that the morality lines are gray and the
player will likely act on their true nature and subconscious thoughts rather
than choosing something they may not truly believe in. Treyarch had a good idea, but it wasn’t
executed flawlessly. There were only a
handful of decision forks throughout the game, and not all of those had a
significant effect on the final outcome.
And, depending on the intelligence of the player, some of the decision
forks weren’t hidden well enough, and a player could still see the choices and
simplify it to “do A for outcome X or do B for outcome Y.”
Another slight change in this game
is the fact that half of this game taking place in the future also gives some
room for creativity with some of the weapons and equipment you will be using. Treyarch didn’t have to restrict themselves
to the overused M16’s MP5’s and Barrett’s that are seen in so many modern
shooters. They were able to use some
weapons that were never seen before, which added some tasteful new experiences
to the game. One of my favorite new toys
was a sniper that is only usable in the campaign. Late in the game an advanced sniper becomes
available to you for use. This sniper
has an extremely advanced scope allowing you to see enemies through any amount
of cover. And with a system to charge
your bullet, you could penetrate countless walls to instantly kill your enemy
no matter where you hit them. This along
with other new toys helped make the experience slightly different.
Okay, now let’s discuss
multiplayer. This is where things get bad. This is the reason that I describe this game
as a root of evil earlier. It is almost
the exact same as any other of the recent CoD multiplayers since CoD 4. If you don’t know what this multiplayer is
like then I envy you and I implore you to stay away from it. It will only erode your soul and cause your
belief in humanity to be good and caring to disappear. Basically in CoD multiplayer you have an
array of game types to choose from including team death match, capture the
flag, domination, and so on. You are
also given a choice of a few “hardcore” variations of some of these game types
where the gameplay is more realistic overall.
From playing you will obtain new guns and perks so that you can
customize load outs to fit how you play and what game type you are playing. During a game as you accumulate points you
can call in a wide array of support to help you and/or your team to defeat the
enemy. This is different from previous
CoD’s where you obtained kill streaks, now they are called score streaks. But, like in every CoD, there are certain
load outs that are far superior to the mass configurations. It begins that a small amount of people
discover these load outs, and then through their use others copy it and it
spreads. The question comes up to every
person of whether they want to do anything in their power to win in
multiplayer, to forget about anybody else’s pleasure from playing this game and
destroy them so that the player can gain some sort of virtual glory. And a large amount of players say yes. They not only use the best load outs, but
they continue to trade their honor for power and play like cowards. They avoid the team objective to avoid
attention, they hide in the shadows and around corners and instead of taking a
risk for the betterment of their team they wait until an enemy comes along and
kills them before they have a chance to react.
They greedily hunt for all the kills they can and run from any danger
like an animal doing everything it can to survive instead of a human playing a
game for its and other participants’ enjoyment.
Why? I don’t know. I can only guess to obtain some sense of
purpose, power, or worth. But that worth
is only imaginative, it has no value, and maybe someday those people will
realize that.
With that being said let’s move on
to something better. Zombies is another
multiplayer type that Black Ops 2, along with most previous Treyarch
installments, offers to players. This is
largely a cooperative multiplayer rather than competitive. Here four players fight together to fight off
hordes of zombies in different maps where over time the number and strength of
the zombies increases. Zombies also
offers sub-game types where two teams fight to survive the longest in Grief,
players can play as zombies to hunt a single human target and survive the
longest as the human in Turned, and there are also choices to play in sections
of an overall larger map or to play with a very small amount of guns available
to the player. You can see that Treyarch
does put quite a lot of effort in the Zombies maps. There are so many different easter eggs and
items to build from pieces scattered throughout the map it is very difficult to
do everything in one match. The fun that
this offers and the many different strategies to choose from make this much
more enjoyable to play rather than competitive multiplayer, especially if you
are playing with some friends to re-kill your undead enemies.
I don’t really think there is much
more to say, nothing else really stands out as good or bad. The graphics of the game are good. They’re not awesome, probably won’t amaze you
with any visual effects, but they aren’t bad, the details are fine and
all. The sound is also satisfactory,
some sound files are reused from old games, but that happens a lot. Voice acting, gun sounds, and the like all
sound fine and work well, but it was nothing that excited me much. The campaign’s replay value isn’t great, even
with the new choice system. Hell, I only
played it once and I usually love to see every little bit a game has to offer,
and this campaign was only about eight hours long. Multiplayer is where the replay value comes
from. If you do like the competitive
multiplayer you could spend days playing it, I personally play more Zombies
with friends instead of normal multiplayer.
I just really wish that Treyarch or Infinity Ward would try to change
this game around more, but since it sells I guess they have to reason to. It seems they are only there to make money,
rather than to make a game.
Pros: Zombies, better character
development and definitions, more meaningful story, good replay value from
multiplayer, tried new features like decision system in campaign and score
streaks in multiplayer
Cons: Same competitive multiplayer
that spreads corruption, short campaign, storyline and character development
still need work, new features mostly fail to make any significant changes, same
damn game that has been rereleased since late 2007
If you like Call of Duty and surprisingly
still reading this, then you probably hate me.
My advice to you is to get it; it’s basically the same thing so you’ll
probably like it. To those who don’t
like the previous ones I say the opposite, stay away, the changes aren’t enough
to make it better. If you’ve never
played the series I still say stay away, there are much better games out there
to spend your money on.
This is probably going to be one of
the worst ratings I give to a game, but here it is. Here is my personal rating of Call of Duty:
Black Ops 2:
Campaign: 6.5
Competitive Multiplayer:
2.5 (‘CUZ F!*$ THAT!)
Zombies: 9.0
Overall: 6.0
