Hello there! Today I want to take a look at Call of Duty, but not to rip into it, oh no, today I want to praise it. More clearly, I want to talk about Treyarch's efforts with the series with what is usually dubbed the Black Ops saga. More to the point, I want to take a look at the peak of that saga, which is Black Ops II.
On the surface, all Call of Duty games are the same: regenerating health, streamlined, punchy shooting, macho protagonists fighting big bad extremists. Thing is, the Black Ops games, at least up to Black Ops II, always had a deeper level. World at War was overly brutal, showing that war never was that awesome, Black Ops 1 handled mind altering and control and Black Ops II deals with the aftermath of the first one and gives the player something unbelievable in this series: agency. Yes, Black Ops II has a plot which can be influenced by player actions. Even minor things like the face of a comrade can be affected during an escape sequence: if his face is hit by fire, he will have facial scarring for the rest of the game. I know this is an unimportant detail, but it adds up with the rest of the stuff.
The game has a few main choices, which influence the outcome of certain events and the end of the game. Good examples of these are the main character losing his father and losing an agent infiltrated in Menendez's (the big bad) organisation. Some of these choices do not even have a good outcome, you must in most sacrifice something to gain something else in return. Speaking of Menendez: this guy has very good reasons to do what he does and his character even gets quite some context because you get to play as him on a few occasions. The game being called Black Ops, you can infer that what he does is related to the concept and that is the end of me hinting at stuff, because, although the game is kinda old at this point, it is actually pretty interesting and it also has replay value.
So, I kinda talked about the campaign, but most people bought this game because it is a Treyarch Call of Duty, which means: zombies. If the story is actually interesting and quite deeper than expected, the zombies mode's ambition can be summed up with a map name: Tranzit. This map is huge and covered in a thick fog. You get around from location to location by getting on a bus driven by a robot, a bus which you can upgrade with defensive and offensive parts, like a ram for example. Also, the map features small easter eggs, like the ruins of the first zombies map from World at War, and also the trademark absurdly intricate puzzle which requires you to go around the entire map, craft stuff and carry items around to their correct locations, all this while surviving the onslaught. If you miss the bus, you will either have to wait it at the current location, or you could brave the fog, which is hides little gremlins called denizens, which latch onto your face and try to claw it off.
All in all, Treyarch really outdid themselves with this entry in the franchise, stuffing lots of content into it and weaving a pretty intriguing story with a villain you love to hate, but also understand the motivations of. I recommend you play through it at least once and give Tranzit a try, if possible. I just wish, with all the remasters and remakes this series is getting, that Black Ops II, and the first one to complete the story, would get a chance to shine again.
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