By Sam Coles:
The Call of Duty series is a franchise I love and I tend to
get a lot of negative comments when I say that and get called “a casual gamer”.
I’m not I play all sorts of games from hardcore RPG’s to first person shooters,
I take the COD series for what it is a fun and dumb shooter with entertaining
campaigns and multiplayer you can jump in and out quickly with friends or
alone. Black Ops II is easily one of the best games in the series and was the
last game to be developed specifically for the Xbox 360 and PS3 as Ghosts was a
cross generation game. Five years down the line and the game still proves to be
popular due to the fact that Microsoft added it to the Xbox One library via the
backwards compatibility program. Should you pick it up today? In short yes.
Call of Duty Black Ops II is split in two timelines 2025
where you play as David Mason and 1986 where you play as his father Alex Mason.
These timelines are linked as the events of 1980’s show what happened to the
main villain Raul Menendez and why he hates the Mason family and the United
States so much. Menendez was a small time gun runner dealing guns to an African
militia where Mason has a run in with him where he ends up shooting him in the
eye where he then swears revenge on him. The story is fantastic and for the
first and only time had a branching narrative where there were different
endings to the campaign these can range from good to bad depending on your
actions.
Not a lot has changed from the other Call of Duty games when
it comes to gameplay you simply point at something pull the trigger and shoot.
As it is set in the not too distant future you would think there would be some
sci-fi gadgetry, well no the technology is fairly grounded the future timeline
is used so they can get away with the politics more than anything. You have
control of drones and predator missiles the standard modern warfare weaponry so
there are no space lasers like there in Black Ops III or Infinite Warfare.
Multiplayer was a huge step in this game compared to the
original game as it tweaked a lot of the issues in terms of the balancing, net
code and features. The net code was fixed and there was less lag compared to
the abysmal connection of the original Black Ops and World at War. There were
new game modes including Hardpoint which was similar to Domination but with one
capture point that shifts around the map. Party games once again return from
the original such as Sticks and Stones, One in the Chamber and my favourite Gun
Game.
Visually the game looks great with fantastic animations from
the character models and good visual feedback when you shoot someone with blood
flying everywhere. The game runs at a buttery smooth 60 frames per second
although it can drop during the busier sections and in multiplayer matches when
it gets chaotic. Considering this is a five year old game it is amazing how
good this game looks still.
Black Ops II has to be one of the best Call of Duty games on
the Xbox 360 and PS3 and people are still talking about it today and playing it
today. If you missed it the first time pick it up and if you’re an Xbox One
owner you can play it via the backwards compatibility program.
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