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After nine iterations, it would be fair to say that the Call of Duty series is getting a little long in the tooth. Given its age, it’s a miracle that it continues to sell so well, though its reinvention from World War 2 to a contemporary setting certainly helped extend its lifespan. Black Ops 2 moves the franchise to a near future 2025, which allows for a whole range of sci-fi gizmos and some refreshing new environments to familiarise yourself with before jumping into the series’ staple multiplayer modes.
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE
A brief survey of colleagues, family and friends revealed a distinct lack of interest in the Single Player campaign; in fact, most people we spoke to said they probably wouldn’t even play that section of the game. It was instead the competitive multiplayer they were most keen to get stuck into. Black Ops 2 makes three, largely-successful changes to the well-worn formula which should make it feel refreshingly different to series veterans.
The first is yet another shake-up of the signature support options, previously known as kill streaks. Now known as score streaks, rewards such as recon drones and airstrikes can be earned by performing pretty much any action in a multiplayer game – killing opponents, assisting kills, capturing flags and the like. These points have moved away from the simplicity of past efforts – where one point equals one kill or capture – putting more emphasis on actions that will benefit your teammates.
Tech toys and some decent level design keep the multiplayer juggernaut rolling
You now get 200 points for capturing an enemy position in the Domination game type, but only 100 points for a normal kill. You get 25 bonus points for killing those attacking or defending flags, but a whopping 200 points for a kill while actually capturing a flag. The resulting bonuses quickly stack up and reward team players with cool toys.
GOING STREAKING
The near-futuristic setting has allowed the developers to go to town with support options, with notable additions including the Guardian, a portable microwave emitter that locks off areas by slowing, stunning and eventually frying anyone determined enough to run through its beam. There’s also a rather nimble quadrotor airborne drone fitted with a mounted machine gun. Familiar options have been beefed up too, such as the sentry gun, which is far tougher than before.
To retaliate, players can carry EMP grenades and hacking tools that let them remotely control support devices and switch their allegiance. This is all part of the huge array of equipment that forms Black Ops 2’s arsenal, which you have to choose from using the new Pick Ten point system.
This sight allows you to spot enemies behind cover
Each character class has ten points to spend on guns, attachments, grenades and perks. You can spend them as you wish, choosing to forego grenades or a secondary weapon and instead have two attachments on your primary gun. There are rules, such as only having one perk per category, but these can be bent using Wild Cards.
The Pick Ten system is hugely flexible, letting us equip one character class with a basic pistol but multiple perks, so we can sprint across maps and earn support points more quickly. Another is concentrated purely on shooting down, hacking and EMPing enemy support options, and a third eschews a secondary weapon and grenades to concentrate on the best possible SMG setup.
Before Treyarch rebalanced weapons in the first patch, SMGs had the edge over other weapon types – partly due to their excellent rate of file and low recoil, but mostly because the multiplayer maps favour close-quarters combat over long-distance sniping. These design decisions help further concentrate players’ minds on hectic objective gameplay, particularly the new Hardpoint game type. In it, teams contest a regularly-moving King-of-the-Hill style objective with unlimited respawns, resulting in intense firefights.
It’s still the same classic Call of Duty multiplayer underneath, and anyone bored of twitch shooters is unlikely to be taken with it. However, anyone still happy to shoot others online will find this new incarnation has plenty going for it, and it feels different enough to previous entries in the series to be well worth a shot.
DEAD SECOND
Treyarch’s ever-popular cooperative Zombie mode – previously seen in World at War and the original Black Ops – makes a return in Black Ops 2. Whereas previous editions saw players fighting off increasingly tough waves of zombie attackers, earning points and buying better weapons and power-ups, the new version adds an ad-hoc story mode. Here, an AI-controlled bus links multiple locations in a fifties-style ‘town of the future’.
Zombies are hackneyed, but the new mode is actually the most adventurous piece of game design in Black Ops 2
Players can build special items by combining parts in the various locations. It’s certainly more engaging and for a game that’s usually so transparent and straightforward, but the mode is still surprisingly raw. There’s no tutorial and no backstory – it just throws you in and let you get on with it, ending up feeling like an indie-game curveball thrown into the midst of an otherwise predictable line-up.
THE THIRD PLACE
Speaking of the predictable, we eventually arrive at the single player game. The developers have tried to shake up the formula, but even branching paths and strategy-influenced Strike Force missions couldn’t overcome our general ennui with this element of the series. For starters, the game’s plot isn’t entirely self-contained, and unless you have good recall of the events of previous games you’ll be wondering who is who and why they are all so pissed off about everything.
Shooting stuff, in corridors, but now with drones
The plot cuts between the near future and the 1980s, which at least ties the speculative future events into (somewhat) factual cold war history. It also means you cut between the super high-tech gadget driven combat – complete with predator-style camouflage and drone assistance – and more gritty AK47s in Afghanistan.
Individual missions retain their corridor shooter design, and the endless spawning enemies are still present in places, so gung-ho assaults are practically encouraged over careful area clearance. The Strike Force missions help mix things up, but the controls are pretty confusing and we’d rather have seen more complex missions from a purely first-person view than this ungainly hybrid.
Controllable drones mix things up a bit, but the larger ones feel ungainly and overly scripted in their appearnaces – unlike say the vehicles in Halo 4
All that said, it can still be highly enjoyable stuff, much like a brainless Hollywood blockbuster. Some of the near-future settings are excellent, we particularly liked the floating pleasure island and the nightclub shootout.
It’s not entirely linear, as the missions have different outcomes depending on your actions, which then affect the flow of the overall plot and its conclusion. Plus you can reconfigure your loadout for each mission, much like the multiplayer game. Still, it’s not enough to lift the single-player segment above previous efforts though, and despite the extra endings we weren’t tempted to give it a second playthrough.
SUMMARY EXECUTION
Given its age, it’s actually quite impressive that the Call of Duty series continues to provide what the fans want without running completely dry. With little competition, you’d be foolish to bet against a successful transition to next-generation consoles in 12 months’ time. Before that though, there’s plenty of multiplayer thrills to be had here, and if you like online FPS games it’s still incredibly slick, bolstered by a more objective-centric style of play. However, if you’re only buying it for the single-player element, then we’d certainly check out Dishonored, Borderlands 2 or Halo 4 (on Xbox 360 only) first.
| Details | |
|---|---|
| Price | £35 |
| Details | www.callofduty.com |
| Rating | **** |
