Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Review

Its been a week now and the critics all agree that Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is the definitive shooter for this generation of COD addicts. Not only that, they all claim that the title breaks away from the ongoing curse that has made its predecessors share the same look and feel. But where have we heard that before? If you want to know the truth here is Flawed Games’ own take on the latest COD game.

Review Written by green_earth

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is the latest edition of the tried and tested COD modern military shooter series. Like its predecessors, the game offers a single-player campaign and various multi-player modes. But its all been improved beyond expectation since the last outing. Black Ops 2 runs on the same game engine as its immediate predecessors, so it features similar nice-looking graphics as before. Same thing which can be said of the in-game audio, like voice acting and sound fx.

The single-player game revolves around several missions, which place you into different (fictional) historical scenarios, ranging from the Soviet-Afghan war to the near future. The theme of the story is basically the tried and tested “save the world and kill the bad guy”-shtick. A nice little addition to the story-telling this time around, is that the story can branch depending on key choices you have made in the game. Sadly, however, the feature is not that well implemented.

Black Ops 2′s single-player campaign plays similarly to its predecessors. As before, it is essentially a heavily scripted shooting gallery. Exploration is not encouraged, the levels are mostly linear, and you are whisked from one cinematic or quick time event to the next. The friendly AI is dumb as bread. It won’t be able to assist you much, if at all. The enemy AI is slightly more competent in this regard, but it’s basically just an aimbot of which you can change the accuracy through the difficulty settings.

The game’s single-player campaign did get a few gameplay additions that its predecessor didn’t have. Namely “Strike Force” missions and greater weapon customization. The latter is always good to have and does improve slightly on the standard COD formula. Strike Force missions are missions in which you get to order units around in an RTS manner via a top-down battle view, telling them to attack or defend positions or even control units directly in first person mode. However, due to the before-mentioned problems of the friendly AI this often ends up with you doing everything yourself. Summed up, the single-player gameplay is basically the equivalent of an interactive Rambo or Michael Bay movie – dumb and straight-forward.

Now, the multi-player on the other hand is leaps and bounds better than the single-player. It’s similar to previous COD mp entries, offering military weapon loadouts, perks and powers to try out against enemies on a range of maps and modes, ranging from capture the flag to zombie survival. The maps that you can play on can be nice and often offer good flanking possibilities, which can encourage movement and teamplay. Killstreaks have been converted to scorestreaks. This means that you can unlock powers by playing a supportive role, instead of needing to rely on just kills – something which can further increase team play. The new class creation system allows for more customization options than previous COD games, allowing you to create a character setup which can be better optimized to your individual strengths and weaknesses.

Zombies returns but with added changes and twists that have become their own new modes. Tranzit mode has the same idea with Survival but expands across a bus route where travel is now essential to combating the undead horde. Grief mode puts two teams of survivors against each other (4 vs 4) while they fend of the undead. The humans can’t attack each other (they could even work together) but only one team can escape. The only way is to divert the horde at the the other team to slow them down or even kill them off, increasing the chance for that team to reach the finish. Its well thought out. Besides these modes, players are also given the option of creating their very own custom Zombie mode where they can choose the weapons, rounds they star at and more.

Overall, the multi-player aspect of COD:BO 2 is still great fun with a few gameplay changes here and there. Essentially it’s the saving grace for the game. The single-player is not that enjoyable and it would be hard to give it more than a 6/10. The multi-player on the other hand deserves a 9/10 for its great fun factor.

SCORE: 4/5

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