Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Video Game Review (About In Description)
0This is not the shooter you expected.
Editor's Note: The following review is based off of the Xbox 360 version of Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and has been updated after playing the similarly featured PC and PS3 versions. We still plan to review the Wii U version, but did not receive them prior to launch and should have a review up shortly that highlights how it's different.
What if Call of Duty was different?
This appears to be the defining question informing the direction of developer Treyarch’s latest, Call of Duty: Black Ops II. While large portions of the design conform to the tenets established by prior iterations of the franchise, the unparalleled wealth of gameplay options and brilliant twists on the formula have shaped Black Ops II into the most ambitious and exciting Call of Duty ever made. It occasionally feels like the team might have strayed into territory they’re not quite masters of, but significant tweaks to the multiplayer loadout system, as well as the realization of player agency in the campaign, make this far more than “just another Call of Duty.” This is an evolution.
You Can Shape It, but This Story Isn’t About the Hero
The campaign narrative jumps between various characters’ perspectives and also in time. The Cold War-era missions follows characters such as Alex Mason and Sgt. Frank Woods from the first Black Ops, while the 2025 missions follow Alex’s son, David. All of these soldiers’ fates are intertwined with the villain, Raul Menendez, and his organization Cordis Die. Menendez is the sort of villain you just can’t seem to kill and, consequently, who knows how to hold a grudge. Thing is, he’s not your typical, “I’m evil cause I do bad things,” bad guy. Menendez is a tragic character, a product of imperialist nations’ meddling during the Cold War and a survivor of some truly traumatic experiences.
The story successfully casts Menendez in a light where I’m still not sure how I feel about him. At times I wanted him dead, while at others I felt like he had a right to want revenge. Hell, I even vacillate between agreeing with his end goals. Like the film Inglourious Basterds, Black Ops II becomes less about you and the “good” guys, and more about the motivations and perspective of the villain. The very fact that I’m still thinking about how the story played out -- something unprecedented in a Call of Duty campaign -- is a testament to the strength of the writing.
A great narrative already makes Black Ops II stand out in the pantheon of Call of Duty campaigns, but where it really sets itself apart is the addition of player choice and consequence. Moments and devices that would otherwise seem irrelevant -- like whether you find all of the intel in a level or choose to shoot someone -- can come back to haunt you, hurt you or help you. Failing objectives might result in new or more challenging missions rather than a restart screen. It’s a brilliant riff on the traditional Call of Duty campaign design, and, combined with the additional cutscenes that flesh out the story, creates a narrative worth replaying just to see the wildly different moments and endings. Most importantly, choice makes you apart of what you play; it’s not just a story, it’s your story. I may not have found the ending of my first playthrough satisfying because terrible things happened, but I appreciated that it was a direct byproduct of my actions.
The effects of your choices are often evidenced in the new Strike Force missions, shorter objectives which give you control over a group of soldiers and various drones. Sometimes these objectives are a result of your decisions and performance, and they tend to have tangible effects on the outcome of your story. These tasks are worth playing because of their crucial role in the creation of your story, but the limited command controls make them less exciting. You can order your troops around the map from a strategic overhead view or via the usual first-person control, though neither is as tactical as intended. You can’t rally soldiers on your position, and your AI allies will rush to die. Each objective essentially comes down to ordering my troops to move from point to point as a huge group while I single-handedly save the mission by taking direct control and fight a horde of foes. The importance of Strike Force’s outcome adds tension and stress to the action, but the ineffective input and inept allies create an unnecessary challenge that compromises its potential success.
Shooting is as fun and precise as ever, and alongside the abundance of gigantic explosions, vehicle missions and intense firefights, it feels like the closest thing most of us will ever get to starring in an action film. In that sense, Black Ops II is the classic Call of Duty formula at its best, with an important, defining difference: The emphasis on drone warfare, the exotic-but-grounded weaponry and the attention to detail in the believably high-tech signage and architecture makes Blacks Op II