The good
Considering the millions of dollars of development budget thrown at Call of Duty each year, the end product is bound to look a bit special. But Black Ops 2 is a particularly stunning game. The visuals are almost peerless on home consoles, with detailed characters, complex and realistic environments and a surprisingly smooth frame rate. Facial animation is also unnervingly impressive – not quite as uncanny as it was in LA Noire, but damn close.
Once you get over the eye candy, what you’re left with is a game that’s equally strong for solo soldiers or in multiplayer. Single-player mode retains the brevity of previous instalments – you can finish it in a day if you’re dedicated enough – but the addition of branching pathways and alternate endings means you could finish it several times over without seeing everything. The engaging storyline – which skips skillfully from the 1980s to 2025 – keeps you interested during repeat playthroughs, and the addition of cool futuristic weapons makes this feel fresh against its series stablemates.
Of course, most seasoned Call of Duty veterans will immediately head for the online mode, which is a solid advancement of what has gone before. The all-new ‘Pick 10’ mode is a novel way of dealing with the age-old character class question; instead of forcing you to pick a class and therefore a set load-out, you can select 10 different items to customise your avatar, and ultimately your combat experience.
Once again, Treyarch has worked wonders with the multiplayer map designs, with really varied layout and scenery. None of the levels feature any unstoppable ambush points, yet they’re logical enough to commit to memory after a few hours’ play. Sadly, neither Activision nor Treyarch can conjure up any solution for the hordes of irritating, potty-mouthed teenagers you encounter online. But that’s just part-and-parcel of multiplayer shooters these days.
The bad
Despite its futuristic backdrop, kinetic script and amazing polish, Black Ops 2 is still quite a conventional shooter at heart. The core principles remain in place; you move from one part of the map to the other and trigger set-pieces at various points. It’s painfully clear that you’re not engaged in a multi-faceted conflict which encompasses thousands of soldiers – simply speaking, you’re the only person on the battlefield that matters. The game flows through you and only moves forward when you hit predetermined points on the map or achieve a certain objective; stand in one place and everything grinds to a standstill. To be fair, it’s an issue which impacts pretty much every FPS that alludes to create a cinematic experience, but it seems particularly apparent here.
Indeed, during the single-player portion of the game the need to constantly hit scripted points quickly becomes tiresome – especially when the game’s own structure begins to break down as you play. In an early mission you’re tasked with avoiding the attention of some guards by skulking through some tall grass, following an AI-controlled ally as closely as possible. The first time we attempted the mission, our friendly buddy walked us right up to a waiting enemy soldier, who was presumably in the wrong place during the scripted sequence. He sounded the alarm and we had to restart – annoying, to say the least.
There are similar examples in the game which almost border on being trial and error; you do exactly as you’re told but fail the first few times, forcing you to cook up another solution to get around the poor signposting. It really gets in the way of the storyline.
While the multiplayer mode is almost beyond rebuke, the frankly needless Zombie mode has completely outstayed its welcome. Introduced a few years back, it has become a hallmark of the Call of Duty franchise, despite the fact that the joke has worn thin and it’s now little more than window-dressing. It’s time for Activison – and the industry as a whole – to shelve its obsession with adding the undead to games which blatantly don’t need them.
The bottom line
For all of its faults, Black Ops 2 remains a solid piece of entertainment. The clever time-switching single-player mode feels surprisingly fresh and new when compared to the overwrought terrorist-bashing of the Modern Warfare sub-series. It also lets the developers have a bit of fun with all the crazy new weapons they’ve dreamt up. The multiplayer mode is robust and entertaining, and devoted fans will love it.
We’re sure that Call of Duty’s reign at the top will come to an end some day, but when the entries are as refined and bombastic as this, it’s hard to see it happening anytime soon. It’s unquestionably dumb and lacks subtlety, but Black Ops 2 delivers.
