Exclusive Black Ops 2 Review

**Cannibal_sponge** Thu Nov 22, 2012 5:36 am

The Call of Duty series is a very sensitive topic, because it seems everyone is either an avid follower of the series, or they dislike it and the community. In my opinion the Modern Warfare games are very similar but I don't mind them, even if they do seem like additions to each other to the first modern warfare.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is the latest game in the COD franchise, and this review will not mention the fact that they did not change their engine in between Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2, because i feel like too many people complain about that as it is.

This Treyarch game, feels like it is split into 3 different parts, those parts being, Multiplayer, Campaign and Zombies.

These 3 parts of the game are very separate from each other, and you can plainly see a more effort went into some than others. The multiplayer in the games is set up very much the same as the previous games, which is nice if you have played before and welcome the familiar set up. The zombies, like BO1 and Call of Duty: World at War zombies is a wave for wave zombie survival, although before it felt more like a mini game, but this time around it is a much larger part of the game as a whole. This is probably due to success of the zombies in the previous games.

The Campaign of Black Ops 2 was, confusing to say the least, it was a combination of things that made me feel this way, one being the random flash backs and strange ties to the first game. Another thing about the story and the campaign is that some parts of the game lacked energy, and it seems that the developers made the main character shout and scream when they needed to build intensity, this felt like they couldn't come up with a more constructive way of building the atmosphere.

The Zombies in this new game is much more polished, it is also easy to tell that a lot of effort went into the map design of this new zombies mode. The thing that really spiked my interest about the zombies this time around was the bus in the map Tranzit, this vehicle is barricade-able, which is one of my favourite features of it. After entering the bus it will start to drive around the map and give you protection from "the smoky areas" , which house small deadly zombie-like creatures. These smoke zombies are another really interesting feature, they are small zombies that will attach to your head, but they can only be found in areas between main hubs. This bus is unlike anything they have introduced to the zombie mode before, on any of the Call of Duty games. Another very interesting and commendable addition to the zombies mode, is the new feature that allows you to craft useful objects, such as riot shields and turrets, out of normal objects such as car doors and mannequins.

The way the zombies acted in general is similar to the old games, and not much has been changed with them and their mechanics other than their textures, or at least as far as I can tell. But thing is they don't need to change the zombies themselves other than maybe the addition of more variations of zombies, and hopefully with the addition of the "Head hugging" smoke zombies, means they are starting to make more zombie types.

The multiplayer is the largest part of all of the COD games from Modern Warfare 1, onwards. I am going to be honest, I thought that it would just be new maps and guns, like whenever they release a new COD, but I was suprised when I discovered there was a couple of things they have changed and updated.

People online always complain about campers and how frustrating they are, well Treyarch and Activision listened and they introduced a mechanic that shows an enemy on the radar whenever they stay in the one place for more than 10 seconds, which discourages people from camping. I can tell this will please many people in the community, and was a very good addition to implement into the game.

Black Ops 2 introduced a new scoring system, which is the point score instead of kill scores, this encourages the players to work more a as a team and less as a single unit trying to kill players, which I saw a lot of in the past Call of Duty's.

The Assault rifles, SMG's and LMG's are all very nicely balanced, and they seem to work rather well, however I cannot say the same for the sniper rifles and shotguns. The Sniper rifles have always been a bit over-powered. In this game there are 2 different snipers that shoot as fast regular pistol, and they are 2 hit kills. You can think whatever you want about that, but the reality of it is, that, that is a very overpowered weapon.

I have had many players tell me (and I agree) that a lot of the weapons don't feel, very new, they just look different, and this is to be expected, but it is still disappointing.

Overall this is one of the best COD games, with the zombies and all, but it still felt a lot like they didn't put enough effort into the single player, and they only changed things in the multiplayer that really needed to be, so this game is gets 8 out of 10.

~Cannibal_sponge (Jacob Johnston)

Email: jakejohnston@live.com.au

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