Review!

(This guest post was written by our very own Mike Dwyer!)

I had pre-ordered Black Ops II so I arrived home with it on the first day it was available. My original plan had been to play through the campaign mode so I could acclimate to the controls (I had played Black Ops I on the Wii and moving back to the traditional controller was a bit challenging). The first Two levels were gorgeous and fun in all of the right ways, with a compelling cut-scene story that I enjoyed watching. But some little voice in the back of my head kept telling me that there were 12 year-olds out there leveling up while I was doing the campaign. So on to the multi-player experience..

Treyarch was smart in that they retained the same basic platform for their online environment. Of all the multi player games I have tried in the last few years this one makes the most sense so there was no reason to try to reinvent the wheel. The player dashboard has options to update your player profile with custom emblems and other vanity items, try out new scorestreaks and create classes for your characters. For those unfamiliar the classes offer complete customization. You can create several different ‘loadouts’ that can be selected at the start of the game or during. As you earn more and more unlock tokens you can unlock weapons, attachments and skills for your player. The trick here is maintaining the proper balance in your loadouts. Some attachments will give you a clear advantage with no real negatives but others require a trade-off. Better sights for long range work might mean limited peripheral vision. An extended magazine gives you more bullets but means you can’t attach other things. I try to have different loadouts for different maps. The tighter maps mean you need guns that draw and shoot fast. The larger maps mean you can go with heavier guns with longer range.

The brilliance of the multiplayer environment is what I would call the positive re-enforcement approach. Treyarch gives frequent rewards for skilled play and they don’t even make you wait until the end of a match to give it to you. In the middle of a deathmatch you might shoot an enemy and see an immediate pop-up that tells you that you have leveled up. You know this means more perks, guns, etc and it immediately appeals to your ego. You begin to love the positive affirmation. At the end of each match you find out what new items are available and you immediately feel the urge to start tweaking your class. The smart thing here is that with close to 50 weapons available unlocking all of these perks can take months. That keeps you coming back for more. I am currently at level 39 and I still have many more items to unlock.

The maps available for online play are beautiful. The League’s own Erik Kain has noted they have far less hiding places than in Black Ops I. You feel exposed most of the time and kills from behind are common. The map called Hijacked is the similar to Nuketown from Black Ops I. It’s a small map and it encourages frequent interaction and lots of kills. My favorite though is the Carrier map. This is a large aircraft carrier that has been heavily damaged in some kind of battle. You run around on the deck using wrecked planes and helicopters for cover. The immersive experience is fantastic.

New Scorestreaks give you the ability to rain down death on your foes when you get multiple kills in a row, with four being the minimum number to earn one. Those become available immediately for use in that match one time. Some, like the RX-CD, a remote control car which you can control and blow up enemies with, are brought over from Black Ops I. Others like a small hand-held drone plane are new.

My only real complaint so far is the inability to permanently mute other players. The way it works now is that you have to mute them just before each match. If you forget you are likely to hear vulgar babble from teenagers for the next 10 minutes. After the first weekend there was a message that over 20 million hours had been played online so far. That is simply staggering. This is the future of gaming. I can’t wait until Black Ops III hits the shelves in a few years.