Call of Duty: Black Ops 2: A familiar yet new game.

     Well it's another year and another Call of Duty game has been released. Let's face it. The Call of Duty franchise's yearly release has become a staple and much anticipated event in the gaming world. The series has always been a popular title but as soon as Modern Warfare hit stores the series became a monster of a franchise. Every game rakes in billions of dollars and has millions of fans across the world. This year the creative people over at Treyarch have once again brought us back to the world of Black Ops with the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Thankfully with much dedication from the developers, Black Ops 2 is both a familiar and completely new experience.

     The story of Black Ops 2 naturally takes place after the first game. Throughout the story you'll go between two different timelines and characters. In the year 2025 you play as David Mason who is the son of the Black Ops main character Alex Mason. In the mid to late 1980's you'll play as Alex Mason and Frank Woods. In both time periods you are faced with the task of stopping the villain known as Raul Menendez and his terrorist group Cordis Die. Personally I have always liked the campaigns in Call of Duty games, and to me the campaign in Black Ops 2 is one of the best. The main reason for that is you have many moments that allow you to choose a different path that will either help or hurt the story. For example there are moments where you will have to choose whether or not to shoot an enemy or other situations where you find yourself really considering the consequences.

     A new addition to the campaign comes in the form of strike force missions. This is another new feature to the Call of Duty franchise and it is done very well and is a great addition. The strike force missions are scattered throughout the campaign and act as objective based missions to change the outcome of the story. Some strike force missions have you defending certain points. Others will have you destroying enemy outposts. The cool thing about the strike force missions is that you can take control of multiple units of soldiers. You'll be able to get a bird's eye view of the battlefield, give commands to your squads, then choose which squad and specific soldier you want to drop down and take control of. It takes a couple times to get the hang of it but once you do it flows smoothly and is a great addition.  

     The real meat and potatoes of the game is the multiplayer. Whether you like the series or not, Call of Duty has become the standard on what first person shooters should be like as far as online mutliplayer goes. Thankfully rather than just keeping the same format that has made the multiplayer a massive success, the developers have tweaked some things, added new features, and still managed to keep the core awesomeness of the multiplayer in tact.

     The familiar ranking system, game modes, unlocking weapons, attachments, and perks is all here. Each time you rank up you earn a token to spend on unlocking more things. However a big new feature is the class "Pick 10" system. Basically how this works is each class you create has a total of 10 points. These points are basically totaled by the amount of weapons, attachments, and perks you select for your class. Then there are wildcards that you unlock that allow you to add extra items. What makes this so great is it adds a lot more customization. You can get rid of certain weapons to make room for additional items. For example, you can ditch your tactical grenades and add a second perk to tier one, two, or three. You can add a third attachment to you weapons and have two primary weapons at once. There's a lot more customization here and I love it.

     The multiplayer in Call of Duty games is fast paced and unforgiving if you're not familiar with it. Thankfully you can play against bots from levels 1-10 in combat training mode. Even after you reach level 10 you can still play in combat training but you'll only earn half the experience points. Another amazing change to multiplayer is that when you prestige you don't loose all your stats, unlocks, and weapon experience you've worked so long on. You'll work towards the next level of prestige and earn special tokens. I love this because I never wanted to prestige because of having to start all over again. Zombie mode is back and a few modes have been added to freshen those hordes of corpses up. The new grief mode puts teams up against each other to see who can survive the longest. It's another addition to multiplayer that makes the game even more enjoyable.

     Graphically the game doesn't look hugely better than Modern Warfare 3, but that's not a bad thing. I thought the character and weapon models looked slightly more detailed in Black Ops 2 though. The game still brings great visuals, lighting effects, voice actors, and superb sound design in both the weapons and the soundtrack. The graphics don't even take a hit when playing online which is always a plus.

     It would be easy for the Call of Duty series to become stale and follow the same routine. After all, they pump out a new game every year! However, thanks to the hard working developers at Treyarch, they've crafted an excellent campaign and enough new features to the game as a whole to make it feel completely fresh and yet familiar. While Call of Duty may not be the style of game for everyone, you should still try it out. I for one think it's the best game in the series and has set even more standards to what makes a great first person shooter in terms of multiplayer and single player. Well, I'm off to go customize the loadouts for my classes again.

Final Verdict: 10/10

Written by: Alter Ego 83