Call of Duty: Black Ops II (PS3) Multiplayer Review

Competitive Multiplayer


Gameplay
Controller-wise, Black Ops II sets the industry standard for shooters due to how smooth, intuitive and precise the controls are. Unlike many games in the same genre, input lag seems to be completely non-existent, at least for the copy I played. Now, moving on to the fun stuff. A great gameplay feature that returns from Black Ops is the ability to dolphin-dive, which is visually pleasing because it looks cool when someone else does it and also provides the player a means of getting low quickly in order to avoid enemy fire. Another fun use for diving is combining it with Theatre mode to do cool montages using dive kills or to make your own short little action movie which wouldn't be complete without a slow-motion dive!

Bringing it back to actual competitive gameplay though, Black Ops II comes across as a very casual shooter, a game that almost anyone can pick up and play without prior experience. In my opinion, this simplicity and ability to appeal to such a wide audience serves as the game's biggest strength and its biggest weakness. The beauty of the Call of Duty series is that anyone can play the game regardless of their skill level. It is something that you can just pop in at the end of a hard day at work to relieve some stress because it doesn't require you to think, just to play. Unfortunately, the fact that you don't really need to think also represents the game's biggest weakness as gameplay becomes deeply monotonous in the sense that it becomes a competition of speed and reflexes rather than a battle of wits. You don't have to think tactically if you want to win in Black Ops II, you just need to be able to play at the highest sensitivity, react quickly to any movement and fire indiscriminately at the enemy before he/she can fire at you. And therein lies the rub, there is little room for tactics or strategy in Black Ops II. While other games do not necessarily require you to be very good to succeed, Black Ops II is a whole different ballpark where teamwork rarely matters and where the strength of the individual players on a team matter more than unit cohesion. Don't get me wrong, you can play as a team and do quite well but ultimately, it's the quick-drawing and fast-firing players that will succeed.

While dexterity and great reflexes tend to be the prime determinants of success in Black Ops II, it does not mean that there is no room for teamwork or tactical gameplay. To the contrary, there are many opportunities where unit cohesion or a strategic mind can give you an edge over enemy opponents. For example, in objective-based game modes, teams that can communicate and work together well will almost always have an edge over a team composed of lone-wolf players. However, the likelihood of ending up on a team where everyone is willing to work together rather than just playing like it's every man for himself ranges from very low to nil. The only real way to find a good enough team that you can work well with is to form your own team from friends or being a part of a clan. Then again, this is no real guarantee because of the various issues with party matchmaking which usually sees one or two members removed from your party and put into the other team. Similarly, one can play tactically by constantly moving, flanking the enemy and taking the less beaten path to outmanoeuvre the enemy but most plans you attempt to execute get thrown right out the window the moment you engage in a firefight with a player with faster reflexes and a better weapon.

To clarify, I'm not saying that the game is bad because it focuses on the individual more than the team, rather, I'm trying to elucidate the idea that this makes gameplay extremely narrow and repetitive where every match and every firefight boils down to two things, how fast you can move the right analog stick and how fast you can pull the trigger. Black Ops II's focus on the individual is not necessarily a bad thing though, seeing as it does provide players the opportunity to play the game how they like through the various customisation options present in the game. The one thing that I've always loved about the Call of Duty series is the ludicrously deep level of customisation available since Modern Warfare. In the past, this customisation system was given the unimaginative names of Create-a-Class and Create-a-Class 2.0. Treyarch has now changed the name of this system to the similarly dreary Pick Ten. Don't let the completely boring and uninspired name fool you though, the Pick Ten system can be barrels of fun, for someone who enjoys customising weapons and equipment to give it that personal touch. This new system works by giving each custom class a maximum of ten allocation points whereby each element costs one allocation point. An element, in this case, can refer to primary weapons, secondary weapons, attachments, perks, grenades and Wildcards. I know what you're thinking, "What the heck is a Wildcard?" Well, let me explain. A Wildcard is an element that allows the player to further modify other elements allowing an extra attachment for the primary weapon or allowing a primary weapon to be used in the secondary weapon slot or allowing an additional perk from one of the three perk tiers. The catch is that usually, you'll have to forgo at least two allocation points you could have used in order to play the Wildcard and attach the extra element (based on whichever Wildcard you chose) to the class.

While I do love the ludicrously deep level of customisation afforded by the Pick Ten system, there is this sense that it is ultimately pointless because the gunplay is so balanced-out that whatever you do to modify your weapon feels like it has little effect other than aesthetics and minimal contribution to recoil, hipfire accuracy or other such elements. Let me clarify, I'm not complaining about the gunplay itself. It's fantastic and extremely well-implemented, probably a lot better than the previous games. The problem I have is with the guns themselves and the things that Pick Ten let's you do to them. Every gun feels almost the same without attachments and when you do add attachments or pick perks that affect them, then the effects on them are roughly the same. Other than the way the guns look and sound, they feel a lot like the same gun. This is good in one sense as there aren't very obvious overpowered weapons or overpowered combinations that you see every "pro" running with but at the same time, it detracts from the sense of freedom and creativity that has become intertwined with the Call of Duty series.

Speaking of things that have become so ingrained with Call of Duty, killstreaks return in Black Ops II in the slightly revamped form of scorestreaks. Instead of rewarding awesome offensive and defensive capabilities through maintaining an extremely long murder spree, the system now revolves around players earning awards by achieving a certain amount of points through actions that provide you with a score such as kills, assists and capturing objectives while that player is alive. When a player dies, the score is reset and players have to start from scratch. Most of the scorestreaks are generally insignificant as they are killstreaks that return from previous games (e.g. RC-XD, UAV, Counter-UAV, Care Package, K9 unit and EMP) or are futurised versions of previously featured killstreaks (e.g. the Lightning Strike replacing the Air Strike, the Hellstorm replacing the Predator, the Orbital VSAT replacing the SR-71 Blackbird, the Escort Drone replacing the AH-6 Overwatch, the Lodestar replacing the AC-130 and the VTOL Warship replacing Chopper Gunner). There are a few new and interesting rewards that incorporate existing and in-development technology such as the Guardian (loosely based on the Active Denial System), the Dragonfire (a militarised take on commercial quadrotors), the A.G.R (an autonomous unmanned ground combat vehicle) and Swarm (a pack of hunter-killer drones probably based off autonomous drone technology currently being developed).  Personally, I like the scorestreak system a lot more than the killstreak system because I'm not an uber-1337 MLG player who is able to sustain 25-kill killstreaks. Aside from benefiting my general lack of skill, the scorestreak is also a great step forward for the series because it rewards players that play the objective as well as rewarding those excellent players that are able to cut down the enemy team with ease.

In terms of game modes, we're given the classic buffet of first-person shooter staples including a hearty serving of deathmatches (i.e. Team Deathmatch, Free-for-All), a smorgasbord of objective-based gameplay (i.e. Kill Confirmed, Domination, Demolition, Capture the Flag, Headquarters, Search and Destroy) and a delightful dessert menu in the form of returning Wager Matches (Gun Game, Sticks and Stones, One in the Chamber, Sharpshooter) albeit with XP rewarded instead of the now-scrapped CoD points. Combat Training also returns with a slightly larger range of gameplay options in the form of Bootcamp (mixed teams of players and bots taking on each other), Objective (only unlocked at level 10, basically the same as bootcamp except with objectives) and Bot Stomp (much like the original Combat Training from Black Ops except without any rewards). The only new game mode, if you can call it that, is Hardpoint which is basically just a moving version of King of the Hill.

Presentation
Apparently, the game runs in the magical 60 frames per second that graphics whiz-kids consider to be the pinnacle of graphical effects. Personally, I don't really see any difference between a game with 60 frames per second and a game with 30 frames per second. Black Ops II is definitely more colourful than its predecessors, in the sense that it has a blend of colours rather than just 50 shades of brown. Like I mentioned in the single-player section of the review, there's a lot of shoddy copy-paste looking jobs in terms of textures but it ultimately does look pretty good. On a side note, I cannot comprehend how the developers can forget to animate/render rounds in fresh magazines (to be fair, they do animate/render rounds into SOME magazines but very few of the magazines are actually loaded). It makes me look like I'm shooting a gun with no ammunition and that makes me feel stupid. Considering that the multiplayer factions represent uber-badass special forces commandos, it makes them look even more stupid for not loading ammunition into their magazines.

The sound is a little hit and miss with the score carried over from the campaign being a highpoint and everything else being a low point. Guns sound generic and bullets striking different surfaces give off the same sound regardless of the material of the surfaces you've fired on. The weapons don't sound like they should at all, in fact, they sound a lot quieter than their real-life counterparts (except the fictional weapons, of course, since they have no real-life counterparts).

Zombies


Without a doubt, my favourite part of any Treyarch-made Call of Duty game (at least from World at War onwards) will have to be Zombies. From its humble beginnings as a fun little distraction where you and/or three other players defended a building from unlimited waves of Nazi Zombies, the Zombies game mode has become a full-fledged part of the series that has travelled far and wide (even to the Moon!) as well as adding a fantastic backstory that players can learn about if they pay attention and find all the easter eggs Treyarch have hidden in the maps.

Gameplay
As with the campaign and competitive multiplayer aspects of Black Ops II, the controls are fantastically well designed and generally brilliantly thought-out. In terms of controls, there's no difference that I can think of from previous games. On the subject of actual gameplay though, many things have changed since the earliest version of Zombies from World at War. For one, as well as the basic Survival game mode present in all maps since Nacht der Untoten, the game contains two new modes called TranZit and Grief. TranZit is in many ways similar to Survival albeit with the added ability for players to travel between different parts of the map known as Green Run. Players can travel between locations either on foot (not recommended due to demon babies and the general zombie population) or by bus (recommended but be sure to bring lots of ammunition and planks to beat off the attacking zombies and fixing whatever holes that the zombies climb through). Grief is a nifty new game mode where two teams of players (CDC and CIA) are vying for victory but are unable to directly hurt each other. To win, at least one member of a team must survive while the other team is decimated by the veritable horde of zombies both teams must face. While teams cannot hurt each other, they can "grief" the other team by tossing grenades to down them or throwing a special power-up (like Boomer Bile from Left 4 Dead 2) that attracts zombies.

When it comes down to battling the hordes of the undead, there's not much different from previous incarnations of the series. You shoot zombies (aiming at the head to cause maximum damage), board up windows, get better weapons and perks, run around to find the mystery box and generally survive. Also, you get a lot of red on you. Not sure if you can go to the Winchester, but you definitely spend a lot of time getting red on you. The series continues the narrative in the background in lieu of an overt storyline. If you want to learn more about the story, you have to really dig deep, pay attention to the dialogue and discover the easter eggs. Unfortunately, there are a lot of easter eggs. I haven't found any of them personally but I have been told by others and through watching YouTube videos with them. TranZit mixes things up in letting you move around between various locations and providing even more doors/obstacles that you can waste your hard-earned money/experience points on! The fantastic thing about TranZit is that it alleviates (to a certain extent) the boredom that sets in from getting to ridiculously high rounds and running around the same area to kite zombies then kill them. By providing players the ability to change locations, the game forces them to develop new tactics and approach the situation in a different way to stay alive, providing far more hours of gameplay. Grief is an interesting new approach to Zombies and competitive multiplayer in general providing an outlet for players' mischief, allowing them to carry out some creative and imaginative forms of mayhem since they cannot actually hurt enemy players. To be honest, I've only played three or four games of Grief and I've had quite a lot of fun but I suspect the game can be quite frustrating when playing it often, especially since the map becomes a grenade fest around any player that gets downed.

The main criticism I have for Zombies is that there's no tutorial or explanation regarding the new mechanics of the game. Seasoned Zombies players who've gone through the various DLC maps probably know their way around but I've always really only played vanilla Zombies and only understand the mechanics of Survival. I'm sure there are other players like me who were initially confused in TranZit by the bus and why it wouldn't work. In addition to that, the new crafting system is confusing as well and has no real explanation regarding how it works. Arguably, it's to make the game more challenging since providing a blueprint probably kills the point but I missed the crafting table entirely when I first played through a match and only found about it through a friend I was playing with. Keeping on with that criticism is the problem of finding parts, I for one have no clue whatsoever what parts can be used to make what. Admittedly, one could go on the internet to find this out but I like playing games without additional help in order to provide more of a challenge, which means I'll be bumbling around like a moron trying to figure things out while trying to navigate around a zombie apocalypse. As well as that, Survival once again suffers from the same problem of getting extremely boring and repetitive in the later rounds as you kite zombies and lead a rotting flesh train while periodically shooting at them to stay alive. The characters for Black Ops II Zombies also don't strike a chord with me and I'm not a particularly big fan of their voice work. I'd much rather play as Tank, Nikolai, Takeo or Richtofen and listen to their fantastically voiced dialogue recorded by industry legends Steven Blum, Fred Tatasciore, Tom Kane and Nolan North respectively.

Presentation
Much like the other two components of the game, Zombies looks good enough but is showing the signs of age coming with using a fairly old engine that's only been given minor updates and upgrades over the years. The colour scheme is dark and foreboding, adding to a nice foreboding atmosphere. In addition to that, the sound design is brilliant, using a combination of eerie sounds and creepy music to make even the most stoic gamer squirm a little bit in his/her seat.

Conclusion
Black Ops II offers a robust selection of multiplayer that should keep most standard variations of gamers entertained for a long time. However, some players may feel that the game is all too familiar and get a dreary sense of "been there, done that" which can detract from overall enjoyment of the game.

Pros:
Classic fast-paced Call of Duty gameplay.
Pick Ten allows for insane class customisation.
Fantastic controls.
Scorestreaks now reward you for playing the objective instead of being a mass murderer.
Incredible weapon balancing.
Zombies is bigger and better than ever.

Cons:
A majority of textures, weapons and sounds copy-pasted from previous games.
Gameplay can become stale incredibly fast.
No teamwork, too much emphasis on one-man army style gameplay.
Tactics? What tactics?
The IW engine showing its age.
No innovation despite ridiculous marketing campaign calling the game revolutionary.
Community is still mostly whiny tweens complaining about lag and yelling obscenities.

Multiplayer Score = 38/50

Total Score = 73/100

Call of Duty: Black Ops II Campaign Review (PS3)

"You can't kill me!"

Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012) is the highly anticipated sequel to Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) and ninth overall game in the Call of Duty series following Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011). The quote I used to open this review may be recognised as a memorable quote from Sergeant Frank Woods, a main character from both Black Ops and Black Ops II but I really intended it as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the juggernaut that is Call of Duty. Yes, once again, my review is late but as with Warfighter, I wanted to put the game through its paces. Plus, with the new features of nonlinearity and multiple endings, I had to go through multiple play-throughs to be able to write a comprehensive and factual review. 

SPOILER WARNING: There will be spoilers ahead.

Campaign

Story

Black Ops II takes place in two distinct time frames, one set between 1986 to 1989 in the dying days of the first Cold War, and the other set during a new Cold War taking place in 2025. The game follows David "Section" Mason during the 2025 timeframe and occasionally time jumps to the 1980s where you primarily play as his father, Alex Mason. Apart from their familial relations, the two timeframes are connected by a Nicaraguan narco-terrorist named Raul Menendez, first encountered by Papa Mason and later serving as the antagonist to Mason 2.0. The 1980s portion of the game charts his rise to power while providing the backdrop for his actions and motivations in taking down the United States and China as well as his obsession with making Section and Woods suffer. Fast forward to 2025 and Menendez is the head of Cordis Die, a worldwide political movement seemingly inspired by the Occupy movement (and completely unaware that they are just pawns for a completely different objective, much like the Occupy movement).

Partly written by David S. Goyer of The Dark Knight fame, Black Ops II tells a fairly compelling story regarding families and revenge that spans across two Cold Wars. However the campaign does suffer at several points due to some questionable plot points and an over-reliance on action movie clichés. The main gripe I had with the story was with the inattention to continuity. While the last Black Ops hinted that Mason, Hudson and Weaver were being hunted by the CIA for going rogue, Black Ops II shows Mason and Hudson happily working with the same organisation that tried to kill them. In addition to that, there is no mention of Weaver or whatever happened to him. Furthermore, within the continuity of the game itself without considering other games within the universe, there is also a distinct lack of explanation of where Alex Mason has been for thirty years if players chose not to kill him in a particular mission. While it does make sense to withhold the fact that he survived that encounter for a stronger effect during the reveal, the writers should have at least explained during that scene or in another post-credits scene what he had been doing up to that moment. Nor is there a clear explanation as to how Mason, Woods and Zhao survive their time in the Afghan desert following their betrayal. 

Overall, the plot rests on shaky propositions at various points in the game but that can be forgiven since most books, movies and games require an extremely specific series of events for the plot to progress. However, there are a few points that I wanted to raise as they kept nagging at me as I played through the game. 

First of all, there was no explanation as to how Menendez built up such a sizeable fortune to be able to afford secret manufacturing facilities, the ability to purchase schematics for what should be classified military material and managing to build up an army that can basically take on the Chinese and Americans without any sign of exhaustion. I know that for convenience sake, the writers just made Menendez a billionaire/trillionaire but it'd be nice if they provided some explanation to his wealth. Furthermore, at no point does the game actually explain how the Celerium device works. Is it a supercomputer capable of hacking military networks? Is it a hard drive that contains a virus capable of infecting the system? The closest we get to an explanation is the scientician that claims that is has more processing power than the combined power of the US military network. Then again, at various points of the game, it is referenced as the Celerium worm. How does a worm have processing power? Are they the same thing or are they different components? I must say, I'm terribly confused about the whole thing. 

Third of all, there's the issue of Chloe "Karma" Lynch being the only person in a world of approximately 7 billion people (a rough estimation of the global population in 2025) that knows how to stop the Celerium device/worm. Sure, it's to make the situation more tense and place an emphasis on the possibility of multiple endings based on the player's decisions and actions throughout the game, but still, it's a little far-fetched. I'm probably being pedantic with this query but what was with Mullah Rahmaan, the leader of the Mujahideen forces, being secretly allied with Menendez? It does help to make Menendez seem more influential but realistically, an Afghan freedom fighter like Mullah Rahmaan would probably not ally with a communist sympathiser like Menendez considering the communists put Afghanistan in that whole mess to begin with. Lastly, I'd like to point out that the protagonists of the game have got to be the worst operatives in the history of special operations. If they don't get their cover blown by walking into traps, they run into situations gun blazing when they could easily sidestep the enemy or take them out slowly and methodically. Then, there's the glaring example of Woods and Mason, two highly trained and highly experienced operators, handing their prisoner a pistol (with magazine removed to taunt him) without doing a brass check to see if there was one more round in the chamber. Needless to say, it comes back to bite them in the arse, rightly so in fact. 

If disbelief is suspended however, Black Ops II gives a fairly compelling story, possibly the best in the series so far (which isn't saying much though). The characters, although representing the stereotypical action hero badasses on the American side and representing the typical maniacal villain that has serious issues with dealing with grief, are very well fleshed-out and represent a major step forward for Call of Duty. The voice acting, however, is more of a hit and miss. To be applauded are Kamar de los Reyes as Raul Menendez and James C. Burns as Frank Woods who totally deserve recognition for their brilliant work in bringing their characters to life. Rich McDonald, Michael Rooker and Tony Todd were neither excellent nor terrible as they brought fairly standard performances as Commander David Mason, Mike Harper and Admiral Tommy Briggs respectively. On the other hand, Sam Worthington as Alex Mason and Michael Keaton as Jason Hudson gave substandard performances for actors of their calibre. Worthington sounded like he honestly couldn't be bothered about the whole thing and didn't even try to disguise his broad Australian accent for what is by all accounts an American character. The change in voice actor from Ed Harris to Michael Keaton was a step-down in my opinion since Hudson sounded and acted a lot younger than he was in the previous game. Furthermore, in moments of intense emotional narrative, Keaton came across as over-acting or under-acting, failing to deliver the subtlety or strength required in the particular situation. 

Gameplay

Despite my general loathing of the Call of Duty series from Modern Warfare 2 onwards, I'd be hard-pressed to deny that the gameplay has always been fantastic. All the games in the series feel like an interactive action movie, reminiscent of most of Michael Bay's works. Black Ops II is no different with its excessive explosions, frantic firefights and series-standard setpieces. As usual, the controls are tight and intuitive, letting gamers jump straight into the battle with no need for tutorials or reading the manual. Most other elements of the gameplay are also reminiscent of previous Call of Duty games, with the guns sounding just a little too similar to each other, copy and paste jobs of a lot of weapons and scenery, recoil being virtually non-existent and the same basic variety of missions. There are some new takes on old elements like the inclusion of drones as a replacement of airstrikes, artillery and tanks which do add to the fun of the game. 

However, there are some new features in the form of a load-out screen, branching storylines and the brand-spanking new Strikeforce mode. Now, I'm going to be honest, I love load-out screens. Especially when I'm allowed to customise my weapons before going on a mission. It makes me feel more like an individual, in that I can create my own version of a weapon and play the game my way. While Black Ops II does allow you to customise your weapons and perks, unfortunately, the gameplay forces you to engage enemies head-on, which sort of kills the point of giving you the choice of a stealth-optimised load-out. Arguably, there are some missions that feature stealth but these are few and far in between and really, there's no freedom for players to get through a mission on their terms. On the topic of freedom, a welcome change to the series is the introduction of branching storylines which does make the game feel less like a corridor duck shoot and really give the player a sense that whatever they do has an impact on the game. Unfortunately though, the freedom the game gives you only comes along once in a while and only major points in the game have a tangible effect on the outcome of the game. The writers and developers did write and program in minor events that can be changed but these have no real effect other than maybe a trophy/achievement or two. While I do welcome the inclusion of branching storylines as a means of providing a sense of freedom and choice to the gamer, the effect is diluted by the fact that the rest of the game plays out almost exactly the same. In my opinion, a better way to incorporate choice into a game would be a holistic approach where every little thing creates a ripple effect that changes the environment as you go along. For reference, I'm talking about a system implementing freedom and choice similar to the one used by Deus Ex: Human Revolution. 

On the other side of the spectrum, Strikeforce mode is a very unwelcome addition to the series due to how shockingly bad the controls and friendly AI are. On the harder difficulties, I literally could not beat  the missions without jumping in and taking over one of the soldiers or drones as they would stand around and get shot instead of doing anything useful when ordering them to cover an area or capture an objective. Couple that with the fact that the controls when in the Overwatch screen (RTS) are really counter-intuitive and barely covered in the tutorial section, Strikeforce mode comes across as a needlessly tacked on feature so the marketing department could claim that the game is innovative. Yes, Treyarch should be applauded for their decision to branch the series out and add a new element of gameplay but when it's implemented as terribly as Strikeforce mode is, they should have left it out or taken the time out to fix it.

Keeping on the topic of bad things in the game, the enemy AI in Black Ops II is ridiculously simplistic with enemy combatants standing out in the open or strafing rather than finding cover. Ratcheting the difficulty up does little to alleviate the simplicity of the AI as the harder difficulties only feature the same AI albeit with much better aim. At one point in the game, I saw one of the Yemeni security forces shooting at and killing his teammate who I was attempting to melee. While it was hilarious at the time, it is symptomatic of the poor artificial intelligence programmed into the game. Friendly AI is slightly better in that they actually attempt to take cover but they spend most of their time missing targets, leaving you the burden of killing hundreds of unimportant and trivial henchmen in your quest to bring down Raul Menendez. Then, there's the vehicles sections which I thought were poorly thought-out, poorly handled and ultimately a gimmick. The horse-riding section wasn't too shabby but the lack of clear borders meant I kept running out of the battlefield and dying, the driving section in Pakistan was such a confusing mess that I didn't even know where I was going and how I actually finished the mission and finally, the flying section was almost impossible because the controls were so heavy that running into buildings became a normal occurrence and the borders were once again undefined, leading to a lot of unnecessary death apparently caused by leaving the combat zone.

Graphics

Um, yeah, graphics. They're nice, I guess? Lots of big and important sites tell me that Black Ops II runs at 60 frames per second and apparently that's very good. Honestly though, I don't get the current obsession that gamers have with graphics. What difference does it make if it were running at 48 frames per second or 30 frames per second? Sure, the rendering won't be as smooth and the visuals might be less defined but what makes a game isn't just the graphics, it's a combination of narrative, plot, gameplay etc. That said though, Black Ops II does look quite good, my only complaint being that it feels very been there, done that because of a lot of re-used textures and designs literally copy-pasted from the previous Black Ops. According to a quick internet-search, it's because they've been using updated versions of basically the same engine since Call of Duty 2. That's some mighty poor effort. Yes, using the same engine has let them master the game and gain that awe-inspiring 60 fps, but as a muti-billion dollar franchise, don't you think some of that money could be used to really innovate and maybe build a new engine? Or at least conduct massive update and improvement program?

Another thing that did irk me, graphics-wise was the horse animation in the Afghanistan mission where my horse would, on occasion, disappear into the ground or be magically floating a few centimetres from the ground. It's probably because the horse was clipped to a certain height and the developers forgot to compensate for the rugged terrain. I mean, it's a guaranteed billion-dollar game, take some time out to fix the little things. Continuing with little things, in the very first mission, when I have Woods leaning on me, I realised when I started shaking my right analog stick a lot, that Woods didn't actually have a body, he was just a torso and a head. Look, I know this is pedanticism, but couldn't the guys at Treyarch invest just that little bit of time just to build a full body. I mean sure, it's extra work but  if you're going to copy-paste stuff in, maybe put in some effort elsewhere. 

Although I am no fan of the electronic music genre, I do quite like the Black Ops II soundtrack because it is just such a good score as well as being incredibly well-suited to the setting and gameplay. Jack Wall demonstrates his musical genius as usual and Trent Reznor does a stellar job composing the main theme as well. The excellent blend of fast-paced action and emotionality reflected in the score really accentuate the experience of playing the game and I recommend people who don't even want to play the game to give it a listen.

Conclusion:

Black Ops II is Call of Duty at its absolute best and worst. While it takes steps to innovate and invigorate the stale gameplay through numerous good and bad additions, it is ultimately the same action-movie thrillride we've all come to expect. A case of one step forward and two steps back. 

Pros:

Interesting plot.

Branching storylines.

Fantastic voice-acting by James C. Burns and Kamar de los Reyes.

Excellent gameplay.

Brilliant music.

An attempt to improve the series.

Cons:

Many plotholes caused by incompetent protagonists.

Lacklustre voice-acting by everyone else.

Strikeforce mode.

Boring old cliches and action-movie stalwarts.

Lack of effort by the developers exemplified by the copy and paste of way too many things from weapons to textures.

Terrible AI.

Campaign Score = 35/50