Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, the latest from Treyarch in the Call of Duty Series, offers a compelling single player story and a great multiplayer experience, featuring cooperative game play against zombies, and its versus game play with multiple customization options, challenges, and unlockables.
Story
The single player story is one of the best Call of Duty campaigns I have ever played, featuring multiple endings and story arcs, where your choices at key points in the game will determine the future of the story and of course, it's ending. The characters presented offer a great narrative in back stories, leading from the Vietnam war era, up to the present day, where it all comes to a head. I did not have a hard time understanding the story, because the characters and cutscenes presented keeps you up to date with the events going on. The single player campaign offers multiple difficulties to choose from and is highly replayable, especially for those wanting to see and unlock all the endings. Also included is the Strike Force Mode, which is also canon with the single player story and is different from the rest of the campaign, see below for more information.
Gameplay
The gameplay in the singleplayer campaign is standard first person shooter fair, featuring a change of "loadouts" for each mission, and offers a great control scheme and can be changed in the options menu if the default isn't comfortable for you. You have access to grenades, non lethal grenades like smoke grenades, emp and other types. This game also offers multiple weapons to choose from, even high tech variants and attachments, altering the way the gun behaves, such as better reload speeds, fire rates, damage and so forth. You even have access to special weapons, such as crossbows, ballistic knives, rocket launchers, combat axes, and others that offer unique combat choices.
Strike Force Mode
Strike Force Mode is an operation mode within the single player campaign, which is a bit different from the rest of the game. In Strike Force Mode, you instead command a strike force similar to that of an real time strategy game, commanding infantry squads, and mechs to achieve certain objectives within a time limit and a limit on how many troops you have for that mission. Tactical view is where the Real time strategy mode comes into play, allowing you to move troops and mechs about and seeing where enemies and emplacements are about, as well as your mission directives. I found Strike Force Mode to be a fun and unique game play mode, especially for a game like Call of Duty.
Multiplayer (versus and Co-op)
Multiplayer for Black Ops 2 offers you the cooperative mode, which is their zombies mode, and the famous versus mode. I found both to be entertaining, even with some of their faults.
Zombies Mode
Zombies mode is the cooperative gameplay, which features a horde-like wave by wave scenario with a transit system to visit the 4 maps currently available. Survive wave by wave, using parts found to create special parts that will open locked doors and power on devices. Vending machines will give you access to power ups, which will give you a big boost, especially for when the zombies arrive in greater numbers and powerful variants. You can earn points by killing zombies, barricading windows/doorways, and helping others. These points will be used to purchase more weapons, powerups, and upgrades, to which there is a nice variety of these to choose from and find. Using the bus that arrives from time to time, offers you a chance to leave the current map and head towards to next, all the while defending yourself from zombies trying to get inside the moving bus. I found Zombies mode to be intense and satisfying, and a great choice for people wanting a cooperative experience.
Versus Mode
Versus Mode is a mode featuring multiple game types to choose from, such as Team Deathmatch, Demolition, capture the flag, and other various modes. As you play and combat other players on the field, you will gain XP for kills, objective completions, assists, and support assists, such as UAVs for example. As you gain kills with weapons, you will unlock decals, and attachments. The decals make the weapon look different from it's original design, with different camos and other colors, while attachments will make the weapon behave better or differently, depending on your tastes. Leveling up you will unlock access to more weapons and items, as well as "Unlock Tokens". Unlock Tokens can be used to unlock anything you have access to your current level, as well as scorestreaks. Scorestreaks are special assists given to players who gain the amount needed to summon them, such as UAVs, Stealth Choppers, A-10 Warthogs, and other support. You can select up to 3 of them, and the more powerful scorestreaks require more points, but well worth the effect.
You have access to your own emblems as well, which you can unlock decals by accomplishing the different challenges presented for each, which have lead to some interesting and well designed emblem designs by the Call of Duty community. Also alongside this is the calling cards, which are unlocked by completing various challenges as well, to which there is many to collect and unlock.
The versus does have it issues with lag at times, which is dependent on whom the host selected is, which might be very good or very bad depending. The maps given at launch feature either narrow corridors or wide open areas, leading to different strategies and preferred setups for each, with more map packs being released soon.
Overall
Overall, I found the single player and Multiplayer modes to be very fun and engaging, each in their own way. Despite the lag issues and a few others presented in versus multiplayer, I found it to be overall a worthwhile engagement and fun to play, and the Strike Force mode offers a unique twist to the Call of Duty series with it's real time strategy elements. A must buy for First Person shooter fans and competitive multiplayer fans
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