At the end of our review of Modern Warfare 3 we completed our praise of the game by suggesting that the series had reached a logical conclusion, and that any subsequent Call Of Duty game would have to be a revolution and not merely a refinement. In many ways a revolution is exactly what Black Ops II is, but innovation is a dangerous thing and it never comes without cost…
It’s the single-player campaign that is the focus for most of the changes, with a more emotive and personal story than usual. It’s absurdly melodramatic at times (we can’t wait till YouTube gets a hold of the level where you play as chief villain Menendez) but some of the quieter moments are surprisingly effective. Most of the main characters from Black Ops return, either in flashback in the ‘80s or in the primary setting of 2025 – and sometimes both.
The plot itself is pure James Bond, and not Daniel Craig either but Roger Moore style bad-guy-with-a-secret-base-under-ancient-ruins stuff. Somehow the game gets away with this tonal confusion, in part because the wackier stuff often ends up being the most novel in terms of gameplay.
Unusually the game features a branching storyline where choices you make result in one of multiple different endings. Some choices are as simple and obvious as whether you kill or capture an enemy, while others are more subtle and their importance goes unrealised until much later.
The system is far more nuanced than we initially gave it credit for but it seems to have taken developer Treyarch’s eye off the ball when it comes to the level design, which lacks the constant stream of iconic set pieces the series is usually known for.
Modern Warfare 3 had arguably the weakest campaign of the modern titles but it still had its standouts, such as the stage with the incoming sandstorm. In Black Ops II the closest thing is probably the attack on L.A. that you’ve no doubt seen in all the trailers (and which happens far later in the game than you might imagine).
The other is the aforementioned Roger Moore style level, which starts off with you clambering around a mountain range with high tech climbing gloves and swinging your partner around like a conker on a string. You then take to the air in a flying suit and land to have a fight with enemies with invisibility suits and reprogrammable robots. (Oddly this level is the only one where you get a go with the invisibility suit and even the bad guys only use it for one other brief moment – and it isn’t in the multiplayer either.)
Anyone worried that the gadgets and weapons in the 2025 setting would seem too silly or unbalance the gameplay should be assured they work very well in context. Many of the drones and robots (including miniature AT-ATs with Transformers style names) can be manually directed using your wrist computer, and fighting with and against them requires an interesting new line of tactics.
But you can almost sense Treyarch’s nervousness in introducing such elements, and they often feel sorely underused. Many of the gadgets and ideas, such as the invisibility suits, only appear once or twice and are never mentioned again.
The flashback levels in the ‘80s are perhaps an even bigger disappointment, as they aren’t nearly as evocative of the era as Black Ops’ recreation of the ‘60s. And we’re not just saying that because there are no new romantic tunes on the soundtracks (there is some dubstep in one of the 2025 levels, which surely means the club you attend is actually having a retro night).
The most interesting ‘80s level is a brief but novel open world section set in Afghanistan. This comes across like a mix of Zelda and Rambo III, as you roam around on a horse blowing up Russian tanks and running over foot soldiers. It is perhaps a hint of the future direction of the series – and a much more interesting one than the disappointing new Strikeforce levels.
One of the key new features of the game, Strikeforce levels are purely optional and work a little like real-time strategy games, except where you can take control of any of the units directly. But the strategic scope proves extremely limited. The computer-controlled units can take an age to defeat just a couple of enemies, whereas if you take control and do it yourself the firefight is often over in seconds.
There are only six of the Strikeforce missions in total, depending on your route through the game’s story, and they vary so much in terms of objectives and the units available that it’s impossible to evolve any kind of consistent tactics. Ultimately they end up feeling like little more than palette-cleansing mini-games and although that’s fine in itself we’d hoped for more.
All of the new campaign mode ideas are interesting, but apart from the story-branching none of them are wholly successful. By contrast the changes to the multiplayer are far more subtle, with few new game modes beyond multi-team variants (where you can have more than just two teams competing) and a version of King of the Hill called Hardpoint, where the area you’re supposed to be defending keeps moving.
Black Ops II uses an extension of Modern Warfare 3’s point streaks reward system, where it’s not just kills that count toward earning in-game rewards. The class-based strike packages do not return though, so you can’t choose the support type and still keep your streaks when you die.
The game is better at rewarding you for other activities though, particularly in terms of guarding an objective – or taking out someone else that is. The multiplayer is set exclusively in 2025, so that means the score streak rewards can make good use of the gadgetry, with the familiar recon drones and care packages giving way to auto-targeting missiles, and helicopter and tank drones that you can control directly.
The more ordinary weapons are also well balanced and fears that the game would be filled with ray guns and other sci-fi silliness are unfounded. Instead the new gadgets such as the millimeter scanner (essentially a limited range x-ray vision) and a target identifier (that paints enemies with big red diamonds in your HUD) make the new loadout customisation even more worthwhile.
The quality of the new maps is superb, with our favourites including a level set on a wrecked aircraft carrier (the USS Barack Obama no less) that’s great for Domination, an excellent one in a bullet train railway station (complete with moving trains and dangerously tempting sniper positions), a cleverly compact level on a hijacked yacht, and a particularly large map called Aftermath that’s far too dangerous to explore alone.
Although the themes of the maps are often less than original the designs themselves are uniformly excellent. The commitment to a super smooth 60 frames per second means that in terms of infantry combat Call Of Duty is still unsurpassed. And yet unlike the story mode many of the changes to the multiplayer are so minor that many will go unnoticed or, like the new eSports features that let you comment on live games or post them to YouTube, will only be appreciated by more hardcore players.
Zombies mode sits somewhere between the other two in terms of innovation, with a new open world structure that sees you touring an apocalyptic Earth on a dilapidated bus. Although there’s still a standard survival mode to play if you’re feeling old school the new Tranzit option features a game world many times larger than the usual maps.
Creating defences and equipment out of scavenged parts, and uncovering hidden side quests, expands the scope of the co-operative gameplay considerably. It does take an awful long time to get going though, and we constantly wished there was a way to skip ahead a few waves until the action got more intense.
This is especially true of the new Grief mode, which pits two teams of humans against each other in an attempt to see who lasts the longest. It take an eternity to get going though, and even when the zombies do turn up in numbers shooting your opponents to slow them down, rather than kill them, isn’t very satisfying.
Even Tranzit is still only played in one sitting and ironically despite this being the biggest Zombies mode by far it feels more than ever that it should be properly expanded into its own game. As it stands now the action is still very one note and by now lacking in novelty.
Overall Black Ops II is the most ambitious and innovative Call Of Duty for years, but it’s also the most inconsistent. But that may well be the short term price for trying to do things differently.
In Short: A brave attempt to shake up the Call Of Duty formula, but although all the new ideas are interesting not all of them fully realised.
Pros: Still the best infantry-based multiplayer in gaming, and with some excellent new maps and weapons. Innovative campaign mode, with some very successful story branching. Greatly expanded Zombies mode.
Cons :Many of the new story mode ideas seem underdeveloped, particularly Strikeforce. Multiplayer has changed little and Zombies mode is often poorly paced.
Score: 8/10
Formats: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC
Price: £54.99
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Treyarch
Release Date: 13th November 2013
Age Rating: 18
Video: Check out Call Of Duty: Black Ops II trailer
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