Linear shooting with lots of automatic weapons.
The idea of war continues with Call Of Duty. Artwork from Google Images
“War, war never changes.”
When Ron Perlman said this in the Fallout 3 intro, he was really onto something. War really doesn’t change in Call of Duty. The only thing that ever happens is running around and shooting other people. Some people enjoy Call of Duty style games, composed entirely of linear shooting. I, however, was looking for a game with decent game play and a good story. I really could not have picked a worse place to look for a story than this game.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II takes place in 2025 because apparently game developers have run out of wars to base games on, so they made one up. In this future, RC and AirHogs are major military tech developers and unmanned drones and vehicles are very common throughout the game. When it comes to military technology, Cuba blows America out of the water since they have suits that turn soldiers invisible (the invisible unit is just a floating gun, nothing weird about that though). President Barrack Obama gets an aircraft carrier named after him, which is somewhat strange because usually presidents are dead for a while before they get a ship named after them. This future is a dark time for humanity; dubstep still exists and is used in dance clubs.
The game play through the campaign was mediocre at best; all that is accomplished was running around to different areas and shooting people. At one point, the player leads a cavalry charge against a small convoy of armored vehicles, because if one is brave enough, horses can easily beat tanks. Some characters from Call of Duty: Black Ops are reintroduced, and missions that are played with them involved some pretty lame plot twists. Watching these poor excuses for plot twists throughout the game was about as enjoyable as fitting my entire fist into one nostril. Even though the campaign had a branching story, the amount of endings was disappointingly few.
Throughout the game’s campaign there are side missions called “Strike Force Missions.” These levels were the only aspects in the game that I genuinely liked. Strike Force missions were fun to me because it wasn’t just mindless shooting; there were tactics involved and the players had to pay attention to what was happening around them. The only other part of the game I became somewhat excited to play was when I saw a forklift. I was wondering if I could drive it as part of the game. Hades, however, decided there would be no forklift driving and the forklift was swallowed up by the earth along with my hopes for this game.
After filling 17 bathtubs with my tears, I returned, resolute to finish the campaign. Throughout the game the antagonist constantly escapes, and watching him constantly escape was even more painful than disemboweling myself with my bare hands. I do realize that few people play Call of Duty games for the campaign, and this game seemed to be made with that in mind.
After finishing up the campaign, I was going to try out zombies, which was my favorite part of Black Ops. In the zombies mode of the game, a number of players try to survive as many rounds as they can while being attacked by waves of zombies. The game becomes more difficult following each round and the player must unlock new areas of the map and take other measures to ensure survival, such as purchasing new weapons or perks. I was curious as to whether the game would be able to buy itself back with how fun zombies was.
It didn’t.
I could have gotten more bang for my buck if I had bought a brick and used it to bludgeon myself to death. Two new modes of zombies were added. One is called “Grief,” where there are two teams that can work with or against each other to survive. The other mode added, called “Tranzit,” has the players going around a map on a bus while fighting zombies. The first maps available with no added downloadable content are very small and seem to be designed to keep the player from lasting very long. Maps such as “Moon,” “Shangri-La,” and “Der Reis,” found in this game’s predecessors were ideal maps because of their size and the availability of perk drinks and weapons. The maps found in Black Ops II were not like this.
Upgrades were something that weren’t really incorporated into this game. Generally, when a new game comes out, it will have new models, a new engine, or the creators will attempt to make a breakthrough with some aspect of the game. None of these things happened. The only aspects of the game that could be considered upgraded are the new kill-streak rewards and the fact that nearly every gun is automatic; there is even a burst fire shotgun. Now, even less skill is required; just point the weapon in the general direction of the enemy and shoot. The gun models were copied and pasted from older games, with the only difference being that they looked shinier. The width of character models for enemies was disappointingly small; there were about two or three for each team. At points, the coding for this game seemed like a blind frenzied chimp wrote it. As I was going through one level, a small air drone was shot down near me and crashed to the ground. After hitting the ground the destroyed drone began spinning around for an unusually long time. One enemy even engaged in a butchered version of the Hokey-Pokey upon being shot. Although these problems were pretty minor and somewhat humorous, they disappointed me, since I had expected improvements.
Although I did not enjoy this game, I am sure that other people can and will because they may enjoy linear shooting with little to no story. I personally see the Call of Duty series as a cash cow and do not like many of their games. The game play is pretty simple, consisting almost entirely of linear shooting. Not being a Call of Duty fan probably gave me a slight inclination to think this game is bad and my criticisms of it are fairly vitriolic, but I guess for a Call of Duty game, it was okay. If the player is a Call of Duty fan, then I’m fairly sure that he or she will be able to enjoy the game.
Rating: ★★
