The Call of Duty series has definitely taken a series of interesting turns throughout its existence. From its initial release as a World War 2 first person shooter that followed the likes of Medal Of Honor, all the way up to its current futuristic warfare style. Black Ops II was the first Call of Duty to really take a leap into the idea of futuristic warfare and very obviously not the final installment in the series to do so, given the release of Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III. Black Ops II may not be the most recent Call of Duty, but it may be the most creative.
Upon its release, there were many new additions to the game that gave it a whole new feel when compared to the previous game, Black Ops, while still sharing some beloved traits. From the new variants of the Zombies mode, to the insanely enveloping story-line, new weaponry, and even to the multiplayer map options offered. Blacks Ops II really set the bar high for the series, and reflects well on Treyarch. At nearly four years old, the game is still one worth picking up to play if you haven’t yet.
Zombies has been a staple in the Call of Duty world since its debut on Call of Duty: World At War, which, as of current, is the last installment of the game to take place during World War 2. Humbly beginning as a mini game unlocked after completing the story mode on any difficulty, and then becoming a story-line all in its own. Black Ops 2 took the zombie game to a whole new level by introducing three new modes outside of the traditional wave based survival. Firstly, tranzit. Tranzit was the first thing about Black Ops 2 that retained my love for zombies, it added a transportation system in the form of a public bus. On top of that, the map is larger than most of the zombies maps previously had been and contains hidden easter eggs throughout the map.
Like the ode to Nacht Der Untoten (the first CoD Zombies map ever) from World at War hidden out in the corn fields after the Farm section of the map. Secondly, the Grief mode was a fun way to add competition to the survival mode by splitting the lobby into teams with the last team standing as the winner. Admittedly, I don’t frequently play the grief mode, but I cannot deny its engenuity. Lastly as far as the Zombies portion goes, Turned. Turned allows players to become the zombies for once and fight it out against a team of people. Relatively similar to Left 4 Dead 2‘s online.
I could go on and on about the Zombies portion of Black Ops II, but let’s move on to the other factors that make Black Ops II stand out. Again, it was the first game in the Call if Duty franchise to jump into the future, which has become a redundant theme with the last two games. However, Black Ops II did it right and it did first. Very perfectly, Black Ops II went back to the story-line of Black Ops and even has Campaign missions that take place in the 1980s, where you play as the previous heroes, Mason and Woods, while Mason’s son David is the protagonist of Black Ops II‘s modern 2025 story-line.
I know games have gone back and forth from time periods with flashbacks before, but Call of Duty has never made it work so smoothly until Black Ops II. New updated weapons and even a really annoying mission mode where you take command of bases to fend off enemies that seem to be damn near impossible to beat. That may be my only actual complaint about Black Ops II, the difficulty of those particular missions. Even that wasn’t s big enough of a deal to make me dislike the game.