As you may have noticed, we have a bit of a tendency to review older and/or niche titles, primarily due to the fact that we buy what we want to play, when we want to play it, and then create content from there. I've been running a little short on games that can hold my interest as of late, so one of my friends lent me his copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
I've haven't been a huge fan of the formulaic, grindy multiplayer originally introduced in the original Modern Warfare, and a lot of the campaigns have just fallen flat in recent years. However, I had heard good things about BlOps 2's campaign, and a lot of good things about the zombies mode, so I figured I'd give it a shot, though I've only played some of the campaign so far.
The first thing I noticed with the campaign is that it's an intricately woven tale, taking place simultaneously in the past and the future. Having never played the original BlOps, I'm sure there's a lot of callbacks and references I'm missing, but it's been doing a pretty solid job of keeping my interest thus far, and giving me all the need-to-know information.
Also of note is the ability to customize your equipment loadout before each mission, something sorely missing from a considerable percentage of the numerous modern military shooters on the market. However, I feel it could be handled better in the future than it was here, allowing the anachronisms of using future weapons in past battles, and vice versa. More importantly is the way you go about unlocking equipment for use in other missions, with each operation having several completeable challenges, with some number of them required in specific missions to unlock equipment, which made it feel a little too much like the multiplayer to me.
Outside of that, it's a lot of the standard fare expected of the franchise. The future missions bring some interesting new elements to the table, but it feels to me like a case of too little, too late, and the game still checkpoints far too often, giving me the feeling that it's babysitting me, rather than me playing it. There are times of noticeable slowdown, often during said checkpoints, and a few cheap deaths to be had.
Overall, if you're a fan of the series or the genre, and haven't picked it up yet, I'd recommend picking it up, but, if you're like me, and just want to see the story through to the end because you heard it was good, skip it, rent it, or borrow it.
I've haven't been a huge fan of the formulaic, grindy multiplayer originally introduced in the original Modern Warfare, and a lot of the campaigns have just fallen flat in recent years. However, I had heard good things about BlOps 2's campaign, and a lot of good things about the zombies mode, so I figured I'd give it a shot, though I've only played some of the campaign so far.
The first thing I noticed with the campaign is that it's an intricately woven tale, taking place simultaneously in the past and the future. Having never played the original BlOps, I'm sure there's a lot of callbacks and references I'm missing, but it's been doing a pretty solid job of keeping my interest thus far, and giving me all the need-to-know information.
Also of note is the ability to customize your equipment loadout before each mission, something sorely missing from a considerable percentage of the numerous modern military shooters on the market. However, I feel it could be handled better in the future than it was here, allowing the anachronisms of using future weapons in past battles, and vice versa. More importantly is the way you go about unlocking equipment for use in other missions, with each operation having several completeable challenges, with some number of them required in specific missions to unlock equipment, which made it feel a little too much like the multiplayer to me.
Outside of that, it's a lot of the standard fare expected of the franchise. The future missions bring some interesting new elements to the table, but it feels to me like a case of too little, too late, and the game still checkpoints far too often, giving me the feeling that it's babysitting me, rather than me playing it. There are times of noticeable slowdown, often during said checkpoints, and a few cheap deaths to be had.
Overall, if you're a fan of the series or the genre, and haven't picked it up yet, I'd recommend picking it up, but, if you're like me, and just want to see the story through to the end because you heard it was good, skip it, rent it, or borrow it.
No comments:
Post a Comment