Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012) (PC) (Treyarch)
4Since I've just recently finished the reasonably slow-paced and tactical first-person shooter Halo 4 (definitely one of the best games of 2012 as far as I'm concerned), it has been more than a little difficult to readjust to the time-honored but still rather strange Call of Duty formula of endless shooting galleries and ruthlessly fast-paced action. Nevertheless, Black Ops 2 is somewhat progressive for a CoD title since it introduces an interesting layer of player agency for the main campaign as well as a frenetic if slightly awkward RTS-esque type of side missions. The story and characters still belong firmly in the "needlessly convoluted hard-to-follow nonsense" category and as might be expected there are a lot heavily scripted sequences as well, but it's nice to see Treyarch change things up a bit despite not actually being forced to do so (lest we forget, the oft-mentioned CoD fatigue is a phenomena mostly limited to the hardcore/game critic crowd).