Sometimes, probably more often than I like to admit, I look at the games industry and wonder who is pulling the strings.  Developers like 38 Studios/Big Huge Games produce something as massive, detailed and incredible as Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (which I still haven’t reviewed as I’m still playing it) and then promptly disappear in a ball of flames while developers like Treyarch churn out a tired old mess on an annual basis and somehow sell millions of copies and keep going.

Yes, that’s right, before I even get into the details, Black Ops 2 is a tired old mess.  It really is.  So bad, in fact, when I gathered a load of my gaming friends up for a LAN session during the Black Ops 2 free weekend on Steam... it took only minutes for everyone to get bored and move on to something else. 

Payday: The Heist lasted longer than that (in fact it still makes an occasional visit) and even Breach (the Counter-Strike-a-like with cover mechanics and destructible scenery that you’ve probably never heard of) lasted longer.  In fact, in all the years we’ve been getting together, I can’t remember another game we’ve been so universally apathetic about.

How on earth does this garbage sell so well?! Within the first five days of release, sales were allegedly in excess of $600 million.  I have no idea...

So, given that background, where do I start with the review?

Well, if you’ve played any of the Call of Duty series since Modern Warfare you know what to expect. Despite using the same old engine that’s been tweaked for yet another release, it doesn’t look too bad, and the addition of the Strike Force missions (a FPS/RTS hybrid) and a branching story with alternative endings in the single player campaign is a nice touch.  Sadly it is all let down by the basic mechanics of the game engine.  They still haven’t managed to get away from the triggered waves of enemies.  So bad is it, in fact, that on several occasions I missed a trigger point by trying to flank enemies and found myself stuck waiting for an AI friendly to move or another scripted event to happen.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the friendly AI is so utterly incompetent that the Strike Force missions are only really possible if you ignore the RTS element and do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) yourself.  This isn’t helped by the fact that you can only attempt each mission a set number of times... which, after watching your soldiers blindly walk out from a building you’ve told them to stay in, facing away from the enemy and getting shot in the back for the tenth time, turns out to be quite a blessing.  It’s unfortunate as the Strike Force missions actually showed some potential.

The futuristic setting is reasonably sound and provide the developers with some artistic license with the weaponry and toys which are fun to play with for a while.  As the story progresses, you’ll switch between the current (futuristic) setting and the 80s, catching up with some familiar faces from the original Black Ops.  Of course, if you haven’t played the original, you may find some of the story content a little confusing, although I don’t necessarily see this as a negative point.

As you’d expect, there’s a lot of box ticking going on so expect an on-rails section, some controversial content and a sniper mission at the very least.  Of course, the single player portion of any of the recent Call of Duty titles is only ever really a sideshow to what they consider to be the main event... multiplayer.

As I’ve already mentioned, I wasn’t impressed.  The new score streaks help nudge players towards more team-based activities rather than just bolstering their kill to death ratio, and some of the new toys help alleviate the boredom for a short spell... but it’s really not enough.  The new zombie modes are a welcome change, but it's not enough to really save the game. With so many multiplayer first-person shooters out there at the moment (including some highly polished AAA titles), I’d like to say that they really need to step up their game to maintain any relevance.  Sadly I suspect that they will simply just churn out more map packs and reiterations of the same tired engine.  I can only hope that with the next gen consoles on the way, they prove me wrong and take the opportunity to show what they are really capable of.

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~ Naiboss