Where to start with this game?
Ah yes the question everyone has been asking me : Is the game a carbon copy of previous Call Of Duty games such as Black Ops or Modern Warfare 3? Well a carbon copy no, but a copy yes. As in every Call Of Duty game released every year, there are minor tweaks but in the end it's always the same thing. Well black Ops 2 stands out of the lot by taking chances by stepping in a new direction with all the aspects from the game.The game is seperated in three game modes : Multiplayer campaign and zombies. Let's start with:
THE CAMPAIGN
Call Of Duty Black Ops 2 takes us in a near futuristic warfare set in 2025 and let's us control David Mason, the son of Alex Mason from, the main protagonist from Black Ops 1. In the first mission of the game, you play as Alex Mason in the 1980's. Wait did I just say 1980 or 2025? Oh yes, I forgot to tell you that about one third of the game lets you play as Alex Mason during the cold war and there even is one that let's you play as Frank Woods, Alex's best friend in the war. Anyway, the scenario in the game is one of the best in the series, set a little bit after the Black Ops 1 campaign ended. The story is divided in three parts : The cold war part, The 2025 part and the strike force missions. The strike force missions are a little bit different from the others as there is no real progression during these missions. All you have to do is defend or attack various objectives but here is the twist :You start those missions with 4 teams and you can actually control your allies during those missions. You can jump in the overview mode by holding select and order 1 team or all four of them at the same time to go to a certain location or attack an ennemy.
.jpg "Strike force overview.")
While it certainly is a nice idea on paper, it doesn't really work out that well in the actual game. You cannot order your allies to take cover or do anything specific besides attack and move, which made them almost useless because when I was playing those missions, all I could hear was "Friendly down" or "Teammate on the ground" "We lost an ally". Well you get the idea, your allies are freakin useless unless you take control of them personnally. BUT I have nothing bad to say about these "side missions" since they are a breath of fresh air from the main campaign. The only downside about these missions is that if you fail them, the story goes on, but the curve of the story will be changed ( if you call this a downside) , which brings me to my other point : In Black Ops 2 campaign, different actions you take will affect the path of the story. For example, if you execute [spoiler] during his interrogation before he finishes talking, you won't know what hapenned in [spoiler]. In one mission, I badly injured my ally, who then followed me through the rest of the game with a horribly burnt face.Even though it does not have any major effect in the campaign like you won't be able to play a mission or kill someone, it's a really fresh and innovative idea that they implemented and they really did a good job at it. My next point is that the game is not as linear as its predecessors. Yes its still from A to B but this time you can decide to go through the mountain instead of going on top, or flank the dug in ennemy's house instead of going full on assault. It's not a major improvement but it's a lot better than walking down ONE street for the entire level. One level gave me the freedom to go horseriding while shooting ennemies in a desert, but Treyarch realized that a desert is not just one straight path, so I found myself being able to horse ride where I wanted to and was really surprised by it, while the level in the jungle gave me lot's of liberty of how I wanted to take down my ennemies (from above with a sniper rifle or by flanking with a shotgun, or maybe attacking with an lmg).
Another nice touch they made to the game was the story telling. It was so emotionally engaging that I sometimes felt bad I had to pick up the controller and keep playing as I just wanted to know so bad what happened to Alex or Woods. The story keeps juggling between the cold war and the near future which was a really good idea, even though the cold war levels, except for the story, are the weakest, since there is no real innovations in these levels. The 2025 missions, on the other hand, were full of new gadgets, like an x-ray sniper that can shoot through heavy material,
a tiny robot spider you use to obtain a retina dna code, an awesome quad-coptor (a small controllable flying robot with an lmg on it), a claw (a big ass robot with machine gun and rocket launcher), an immersive jet flying sequence and so on. The list goes on and on, so you better go find out by yourself.Another great thing they implemented in the game was the mission briefing, where you could customize your loadout before doing a mission, At first, you only have access to a few weapons, but the more you advance in the game, the more perks, attachments,weapons and camos you unlock and you can even unlock special weapons (heavy mg, grenade launchers) by completing challenges in the missions. <<Yeah but what about the graphics?>> Well I will never judge or downgrade a game for it's graphics, it only adds bonus points to the game if they are good. In the case of Black Ops 2, it added a LOT of points, since I often found myself looking at a tree or a rock, admiring it's details. Even though it's the same graphic engine since the last 6 call of duty games, I can say without a doubt it's the best looking one so far.
Everything is fluid and there is a LOT of action happening in your screen at the same time, without ever seeing a drop in frame rates. You heard right constant 60 fps.
People change in 45 years
So, to conclude my single player experience of Call Of Duty Black Ops 2, I would say I was extremely pleased with what the game had to offer, fearing it would probably be just another copy of the previous cod games, but there was a LOT of new stuff in it. The bad side, however, is like every other call of duty games, too short, but I would rather have 7 hours of quality gameplay than 20 of boring stuff to do.
Call Of Duty Black Ops 2 campaign mode gets an almost perfect 9 out of 10
THE MULTIPLAYER
Of course, what would Call Of Duty franchise be today without it's wonderful multiplayer?
Call Of duty is known for it's fast paced arcade like mayhem multiplayer, and it won't be any different in Black Ops 2. What has changed in Black Ops 2? Not enough to make you buy the game if you want groundbreaking changes, but enough if you want an upgraded version of Black Ops 1 and Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3. Being developped by treyarch, the game was meant to please the gaming community and fulfill the promises Modern Warfare 3 failed to deliver, since Treyarch lent a strong ear to the community with this one.So, what is new? For starters, the killstreak system has been upgraded to a scorestreak system, which means that you can gain access to your scorestreak rewards by doing more than simply filling your ennemies with lead. Everything you do that helps your team win the game gives you points, which means : capturing flags, collecting ennemy fallen dogtags, getting kill assists, planting/defusing bombs, taking out ennemy streak rewards, destroying ennemy gadgets and so on. But fear not, this does not mean you can stack up points 3 times faster because it was implemented to make the game balanced and I think this is what I like the most about this game: Everything is fair!!! Ennemy big ass air support can easily be taken down with the help of just one buddy, while the smaller ones can simply be gunned down by small arms fire. There is no godlike weapon or a combination of perks that make you invincible.
No matter where you are in the map, there is always a way for the ennemy to get around you and flank you. It takes more skills to succeed in this game since the scorestreak rewards are not as devastating as they were in previous COD Modern Warfare games. No more laying back and letting your chopper get points for you, since the points you get by killing ennemies with your streak rewards are just a fraction of the points you get by gunning them down. Another thing they revamped is the create-class system.
Every class you make has a maximum of 10 points for you to use, and everytime you add something (perk,attachments,guns) it costs one point. If you want to, you can just go on with a knife with 6 perks activated (there is a limit on perks though, then again to make it more fair) or blast your way with an insanely upgraded lmg. I have put around 40 hours in this game so far and never have I encountered an overpowered class, everything is so well balanced. The perks can no longer be upgraded to pro perks but it isn't really noticable since they have all been balanced so you can make a good stealth or assault class without needing them. The scorestreaks rewards are more or less the same from the previous games, with the exception of some. The agr lets you deploy an automated robot with rocket launchers and minigun which automatically seek people, or you can just control it yourself. The quadraptor is a flying drone with a mounted lmg, the hunter killer is a suicidal flying drone that explodes on one ennemy when thrown in the air plus a couple of new excting streaks, but most of them are old streaks redesigned like the advanced uav, which now is orbital uav, or the pavelow, which now is a stealth chopper that cannot be shot down if I remember correctly. The maps are very well designed and more oriented towards close quarters combat. One thing I noticed on these maps is that there are much more vertical fights that in any previous cod games, since you can climb on almost any climbable surface, which leads to more accesible areas in each map, which means more bang for your buck. The game modes, however, have not changed at all, except for multi team, which is a 3 teams team deathmatch game mode but with only 9 players max, which is too little, and harpoint, which is just like headquarters except with respawn. Sticks and stones, one in the chamber, gun game and sharpshooter make their return, but with nothing new to promote them.
Overall, Call Of Duty Black Ops 2 multiplayer is not what you could call a different step in fps genre, or a groundbreaking multiplayer with a lot of innovations, but it does what Treyarch does best: Make a game based on what people asked for, with lots of small tweaks and innovations that make it such balanced and make it feel like a step in the right direction for the franchise. Multiplayer gets a very good 8.5 out of 10
ZOMBIES!!!
The nazi zombie mode is what made Treyarch famous about it's Call Of Duty games. Nazi zombie mode made it's first appearance in Call Of Duty World At War, the second Call Of Duty game released by Treyarch and it was a last minute idea that they decided to put in the game at the last moment. Smart move,because it instantly became almost as popular as the multiplayer mode, which was really hard to beat. There was a lot of anticipation for this mode from the cod community and Treyarch successfully delivered an awesome zombie mode,once again! Well, kind of... The zombie mode is divided in 3 modes: Survival, grief and tranzit. Tranzit is truly a new zombie mode with tons and tons and...tons? of stuff to do. In this mode, you are teamed up with 3 more players and try to survive against infinite hords of zombies.
Here's the twist: You are no longer stuck in one location, since you can travel to 5 different locations in this mode. There is a bar, a farm, a town, a power room and a bus stop (well not just a diner but that's how I name the location). These locations themselves aren't really big but put them all together and you get one super map. You can travel to these locations on a bus, which keeps circling around these locations until you are dead or on foot (which is not reommended unless you have juggernog). Another interesting idea they put in zombies is that you can find parts and assemble items with them, like a turbine, that generates power, or a riot shield, a ladder to climb on top of the bus or many powerful and useful weapons. There really is a great variety of things you can find and build, and this guarantees a different gaming experience everytime you hit play.
There is a bank where you can store your money and take it back any time you want, even if you leave the game and come back later, which is a really nice addition because if you know you don't have the time to finish your game, put your money in the bank and start another game later with a nice 30000$ bonus. They also added new zombies,weapons and perk machines. So with all the goodies they added to zombie mode, why do I say it's kinda good? Because that's it. There is nothing else to the zombie mode yet, just this big map. The survival mode are classic modes where you and 3 buddies team up to survive in... the town,the bus stop or the farm from tranzit mode. Like I said earlier, these maps are really small and don't really give anything new. They especially don't match the amazing survival maps from Call Of Duty World At War or Call Of Duty Black Ops. One of these maps even have the pack-a-punch machine unlocked and ready to roll from round 1! The other mode I was talking about earlier is grief. What is it? Well get this: It's the exact same thing as survival, but with 8 players. Here's the twist (if you can call this a twist) You are split in two teams and you must make sure the other team dies, however you cannot shoot them. The only way to kill them is knife their partners when they are trying to revive one of their fallen teammates (which will push them just far enough to interrupt their reviving cyle) or throw a piece of meat at them that attracts zombies which is obtained like any other power-ups. That's it, no secret room or secret item to unlock, no easter eggs to find, nothing. And to make things even worse, you play this mode in the survival maps, not even in the tranzit map. Now that this has been said, I must say that I'm a big fan of nazi zombies and I am not bashing on the game mode here, I just trying to say that they completly let down anything else that tranzit. Tranzit is an awesome zombie mode and is probably a lot better than any previous zombie map pack Treyarch has released yet, but that's all there is to the "zombie" part of the game. One big awesome and fun map filled with awesome new ideas while the other modes have just been rushed out. It is a real letdown because a lot of people bought Black Ops 2 for nazi zombies and I dont think they were expecting only one great map/mode.
Oh and I almost forgot (and this one is of personnal opinion) the developpers thought it would be funny to put cracks of fire in the floor. It hurts and there is fire pretty much everywhere in this game and it's a real pain in the ass.By doing so,they connected the map "moon" from Black Ops to this one, but it's just really annoying.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Call Of Duty Black Ops 2 is a sure hit, there is no doubt about it. The game doesn't diverge too much from it's predecessors, but it takes enough steps in new directions to give it a look and even though not all these steps shine brightly, you can't blame Treyarch for trying new things and putting a breath of fresh air in the serie, since all the negative reviews about previous call of duty games were because the game looked too much like the previous one. Now I think we all agree though their next big step is changing their graphic engine :).
Final score : 85%
No comments:
Post a Comment