User blog:Laagone/Opinions on Black Ops 2

On this last repetitive date we'll most likely ever see, I feel like wrapping up my opinions on the Call of Duty: Black Ops II|latest installment in the series with this review. Remember that this is a review, so some parts are subject to being opinionated. Not much to say, let's get to it.

Campaign
Traditionally, for being the "main" mode of any game ever despite multiplayer being normally more popular, I'll start with the singleplayer.

In short, this campaign is no doubt one of the best ones I've ever played. The main reason for this is the plot, but the challenges and other stuff that came with Career Record surely changed from many other general campaigns in this category (*cough*).

Starting with the story, the first thing I like to note is how well made and different antagonist Raul Menendez is. Instead of "I'm evil and I do bad stuff", his motives are actually quite fascinating, which is taking revenge for his family, most notably sister (and his eye), no matter how long it takes. Besides that, just how he does that evil stuff isn't your normal "I'm a terrorist and I blow USA's major cities up", but instead hacking every drone USA has, using them to corrupt China and USA and then detonating them, essentially crippling USA's military. When it comes to personal things, shooting one's legs to shit and leaving him to suffer for mental pains, or having their dad killed as a kid is new.

What also takes me how they almost directly continued Black Ops ' campaign with the '80s section with fitting weaponry and stuff. While it only plays roughly one third of the whole story, it still plays a little nostalgia and it's nice to play a bit of the "this is not the digital age" style. The sandbox-style of the game didn't have much role in this part, though, as the only parts where you can affiliate is shooting/not shooting Kravchenko, which in my experience didn't directly affect the story at all, other than Woods and Mason talking about it, and killing/injuring Mason which only affects the ending. Both unlock trophies though, on a side note.

Then we come to the future section see what i did there  of the game, which was honestly better than I expected. The weaponry in my opinion is great, and it held a lot. The characters weren't anything special though, but still pretty good. What annoys me is how, as is the normal formula, Americans save everything (or at least are the heroes) and are the most loyal ones. Menendez is Nicaraguan, he's bad. Salazar is Nicaraguan, he's a traitor. Farid is Middle-Eastern (don't know where specifically), he kills Harper, albeit in the pressure of not blowing his cover which later proves useless. The CIA Nerd is English, and he "legs it" back to England after not being able to crack the celerium. The missions are nice, and Strike Force were, while I at first didn't really understand them and ended up completing only FOB Spectre, interesting. The sandbox takes a bit larger role than in the '80s section, but to be honest, it pretty much just determines who dies and who doesn't. And whether Obama sinks or not, but that practically only means who survive. However, it's still nice and refreshing to see new innovations. At least it didn't fail horribly.

The challenges, customizable loadout and other new campaign 'not in-game' features are really nice. I honestly love to be able to take my own weapons and equipment instead of being forced to go with UMP45 ACOG and G18 which are terrible. The only problem I have with this is how being able to select Storm PSR makes Veteran ridiculously easy. I can imagine this is the main reason why Black Ops II Master is only Bronze, and honestly, getting only two Silvers and one Bronze for beating the game on the highest difficulty is not cool, regardless of how easy it is. Getting all the 160 challenges was a pain though, mainly because you had to start the mission from the beginning, and if you failed a timed one (that motherfucking "Obtain retina scan in less than 60 seconds") you had to restart from the beginning because you had no other way to restart from a checkpoint other than dying, and seeing as checkpoints are common, it wasn't effective. Even more annoying was having to complete challenges where you had only one chance and it was located in the end of the mission (one example being "Eliminate enemy vehicles (x8) with the SOC-T" in Fallen Angel). Regardless, they were a very good addition and added lots of replayability to a story I doubt I'd be playing over and over again. That's the courtesy of Portal 2.

Overall, campaign is in my opinion the best part of the game, and deserves 9.5/10.

Multiplayer
I can't really express a simple opinion on the multiplayer. I see it as good and a lot better than I expected, but then again, I didn't really anticipate it that much. The gun and perk balance is pretty good, and it definitely holds a lot more to play for unlike its predecessor. And unlike in its predecessor, the gun diversity is pretty much on par with the Modern Warfare series, and is one of the best I've seen. Almost every weapon has its own role instead of being gunned down by others and the stats are quite different for each, some being better at others even in their own category in some situations and worse in others, yet being balanced overall. SMGs are a bit of a nuisance and are considered superior to assault rifles, light machine guns and sometimes sniper rifles and shotguns. As I see it, it's because of the maps; should the maps be a bit more focused on longer sightlines instead of tight corridors and corners, SMGs' range capabilities would put them at a disadvantage. Turbine is a good example of this kind of map, which is one of the reasons I do good at it every time. Alas, people vote against it for that reason.

(WARNING: The following paragraph consists of the writer's own semi-relevant opinions.) I find myself liking a lot of weapons, but particularly assault rifles. In them, my favorites would be MTAR, Type 25 and M27. AN-94 would be as well were it unlocked earlier so I had more time to use it instead of that one 55-Prestige "rank". I plan on using my next perma-unlock on it however. I also like Remington 870 (BFBC2 baby), DSR 50 and MP7. And 3/5 of the time FHJ-18 AA is my secondary, mostly depending on the situation. I've yet to get Gold on it, because it took me forever to find an enemy A.G.R., and I still lack only one player-controller scorestreak.

It's a definite improvement over Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer, which I admit myself loving, and has yet to fail me. There are a few balance issues, but the constant title updates that Treyarch gives will probably fix them. Overall, the multiplayer is enjoyable, and I give it 8.7/10.

Zombies
To be honest, Zombies was a let-down. It didn't deliver as much as I hoped overall, although TranZit was better than I originally thought. Though truth be told, I didn't as much understand its concept pre-release.

In my opinion, Zombies has stayed too similar. If you think about it, the zombies have the same health and behavior, you start with the same weapon with same ammo, the point system has hardly changed, wall weapons are similar and Mystery Box's role is almost completely unchanged (the only change I notice is how in Black Ops and Black Ops II it no longer gives you wall weapons along the box-exclusive ones), all since Nacht der Untoten. I honestly thought they would have made it drastically different in Black Ops II with only the basic idea of surviving hordes of zombies staying. While I'm against saying a game is bad because it's too similar to others and may have grown a reputation for it at some parts, I'm only disappointed at Zombies in this game, and don't think it's bad. In fact, I do enjoy playing it, though I probably would a lot more if it was different. In addition, the fact that crawlers die when you've either gone enough distance from them or hold them alive long enough is flat-out a bad addition. It prevents you from preparing well enough for the next round, just think if you're in Diner and the box spawns on Town and you have no ammo. You have a slow zombie on you who can barely reach you, and you're not allowed to get enough distance from it to get a new weapon. And the Tower of Babble is now a lot more difficult to complete as well.

Overall, I don't think Zombies nailed it here. While it's still enjoyable, I'd rather play multiplayer, or probably even not play at all. I give 7/10.

Overall
Black Ops II is an enjoyable game and well worth the money. It's definitely one of the best games of this decade, and I'm gonna enjoy the game in the future. With that said, the game gets 9.2/10. --MLGisNot4Me talk 15:02, December 12, 2012 (UTC)