The king of the console shooters returns and gets a modern day revamp with style.
Sorry to those who prefer the huge landscapes of Battlefield but at my heart and core, when it comes to multiplayer online shooters, I’m a Call of Duty guy every time and the second instalment of the Black Ops branch was by far my favourite so far. It was a great game and had me playing it for hours trying to hit the perfect streak and complete those incredibly tough but rewarding Zombie levels.
Now Treyarch and Activision have cosied up with one another again to bring out their latest offering to the market (just in time for the Christmas noobs to appear) and have a more futuristic approach. Perhaps the strange success of Advanced Warfare has pushed them in the direction of this style but I would like to perhaps think they wanted to try and keep the storyline slightly original for the single player campaign and have a wide range of weapons to select from for the multiplayers.
The heralded FPS returns with a new bounty of guns, gadgets and high octane action.
Plunging into the campaign it is automatically clear that they have made many modifications to the way that the game itself is played. There is a small area to physically move around in before you even select the mission you want to play. This gives you the option to customize your weapons loadout and some of your tactical abilities before you even step foot on the battlefield. These abilities and weapons will be available to unlock as you rank up during the story mode and also with your multiplayer tag for online play as well. So it still keeps a familiar setup when it comes to getting yourself prepped for war which will appease fans and also entertain the die-hard fanatics with a nice little twist.
The story is based on the principle once again of mankind getting ahead of itself in a race to incorporate AI (or artificial intelligence) into machines on the battlefield. Of course as with any blockbuster that has machines involved (The Matrix, I-Robot and Terminator to name but a few) the machines learn that it is not their only purpose to serve but to protect man from itself and go rogue. Throw in a mix of terrorists and the usual foreign (or should I say anti-American regime) armies and you’ve got yourself a hit.
The first mission of the campaign starts off extremely quickly with you using some enemy weapons to take down a terrorist plane and then try to extract an Egyptian minster from captivity, all without proper approval and of course the wonderful phrase that always gets muttered around “Black Ops” in general, “If you die, we have never heard of you”. The graphics were gorgeous and the motion is extremely smooth thanks to it being able to run at nearly 60 FPS (or frames per second) so this really is going to feel a lot more frantic and action based than the previous incarnations.
Moving on to the multiplayer, as you can expect the servers are already full of people who have been playing since the game was released and are incredibly high rank but the people, like me, who joined a little later are still able to pull off some impressive stunts. This is a nice change of pace as most of the COD franchise has one or two guns that are totally over powered and favoured by the top players to ruthlessly gun you down without a moment’s hesitation. The kill streaks have also been gauged well and I particularly like the Annihilator pistol with its spot on accuracy and one hit kill capabilities, it reminds me a bit of a golden gun from Goldeneye.
But the main mode that everyone will be playing until the sun goes down and then comes back up again will be Zombies. Black Ops 2 had one of the most impressive Zombie modes I’ve ever played and it has been a firm fan favourite thanks to a loosely held together story line and a hoard of oncoming crazy undead fiends.
In conclusion if you already like Call of Duty then this game will surely deliver the same high octane gaming you’ve come to know and love from this studio, but for all the new guys out there with a brand new next gen console I certainly recommend this as the one to pick over Ghosts and Advanced Warfare.
Pros: Solid multiplayer, zombies mode is awesome, graphically its very pretty and the soundtrack is a solid fit
Cons: It’s a repetitive series now but you know the old servers will empty and force this upon you, DLC is coming so prep your wallet for add ons now
Author: Andrew, Weybridge store
