Call of Duty: Black Ops II, XBox 360

I wasn't originally planning on getting this game. The intial trailers and such made it seem almost too futuristic (if that's possible) and it turned me off. I realized later that that sentiment was probably due to a couple former games that looked futuristic and cool and ended up being flops for me (Like Lost Planet IIRC). Anyway, I was a huge fan of the Original Black Ops so I was very skeptical of how this would turn out. After playing it at a friends house I quickly realized how similar it was (gameplay wise) to the first and how much fun it was! I ended up purchasing it after trying it out and started out with Multiplayer just fighting Bots and getting a feel for the weapons. The game mode and equipment available were both awesome. Some very imaginative new technologies put into play in the game make it fresh and fun to play despite the familiar run and gun feel. I moved onto the Campaign and although a little over the top and cliche it is incredibly fun and definitely keeps you invested. The game alternates from flashbacks of the good old days with Mason and Woods in Afghanistan, etc.with the vietnam era weaponry, to the new locations with the futuristic weaponry. The developers did a great job switching between characters and game modes maintaining great pacing and keeping you interested the entire time. There are also new missions in game called "Strike Force" missions I believe. You have the opportunity to command different troop classes on the ground from a satelite type overwatch and you can take control of the units at any time during the game play and fight it out on the ground first person shooter style. These type of missions, honestly, were robust enough they could be made into an entire standalone game. They were incredibly fun and difficult at the same time which was nice. There were a few different missions, the most difficult for me being a "defend the castle" type mission controlling several different classes of units defending several different key locations on a base. Of the missions I have played so far like this (3) there have also been an assault type mission and even an assassination type mission (fighting through defenses in the streets to get to a high value target). The online multiplayer seems very seemless at this point. There are a few new game modes that are really great, the first of which being a game mode online that you play with other human controlled players along with AI controlled Bots all mixed in together. For instance the game might allow for 16 people total in the level (not sure), the teams would be 4 humans, 4 bots vs 4 humans and 4 bots. I only played a few games of that but my friend told me that it is a good way to warm up to the game and get some points. The kill steaks btw are now point streaks which present some interesting positives and negatives. In the last game it was easy for me to keep track of how many kills I needed vs. how many I was currently at to get to a certain streak. Now, after having played a few games online it is difficult for me to tell how close I am to getting certain point streaks. There is a meter on the side showing your progress but I would really need to sit and pay attention to tell what values I was looking at, how many kills that would take, what other ways can I get points. That being said, in the last game kills you earned with kills streak "perks" did not count towards further streak (if I remember correctly) but in this game they do help your point streak total. However, if a kill is worth 100 points regularly, a kill with a point streak weapon will only be worth 25-50 which is a good way of doing it I think. All in all, this game is fantastic. I wasn't sure if I would like it before having played it but after trying it out I realized how great it was and knew I had to have it. It is a ton of fun and has multiple ways that you can interact with others and play the game together. If you are on the fence about getting it, I would say that you will not be disappointed. (Sorry for the long review!)

Let me start off by saying that I don't think this game is perfect however I do think that it is amazing. People who gave this game a low score gave it a low score because they're sick of Call of Duty not because it's a bad game. I saw reviews for this game go up just a few minutes after it's midnight release before anyone could have possibly played it enough to give it a score based on it's actual quality, there were trolls who are sick of Call of Duty and/or are jumping on the "I hate Call of Duty" bandwagon and were just waiting to hate this game, a word of advice for you, if you're sick of Call of Duty don't play it, don't buy it, don't talk about it. Realistically if Call of Duty 4 had never come out and Activision didn't start releasing yearly installments of COD then people would look at this game as not only being one of the most polished titles in existence but also a revolution in the first person shooter genre. Fist off the campaign has ridiculously high production values and is very fun if you shake the stigma that's it's not alright to still like Call of Duty. The Player choice is a really cool part of the game and the strike force missions are a really cool RTS style addition that helps break up and diversify the missions. The story by David S. Goyer is very well written and it's a fun campaign throughout. Again I believe that if you can separate yourself from the stigma that Still liking Call of Duty makes you stupid then the campaign alone is worth the price of admission and has plenty of replay value, but that's one of the great things about Call of Duty it's not JUST the campaign. You also get a VERY polished multiplayer (no matter what any troll says) AND a Zombies mode that could stand on it's own as an XBOX live/PSN arcade game and probably sell millions of copies. Black ops 2 is like having three highly polished games in one and I am very happy to have it and am enjoying it very much. The fact that there are people out there that are even smart enough to program this stuff is astounding. I am a Software developer and let me tell you, making a game like this takes genius developers. It's easy for a gamer who knows nothing about how games are made to scrutinize a game to death because it's the cool thing to do on the internet right now (which is sad) but if you knew what kind of talent was necessary to create these big AAA games then you would probably be a little more humble and appreciate them a little bit more. To reiterate, if you're sick of Call of Duty, stop talking about it and stop wasting your time writing crummy reviews about it, it's sad that that is how you're spending your time. Find a game that you enjoy and let the millions of people who bought this game enjoy this one.

I am new to the Xbox 360 and this was one of three titles I purchased with my new machine (the other two being the first installment of Black Ops and the other being DiRT3). The graphics and depth blow the original Black Ops out of the water. I'm not terribly fond of the near-future setting of the game but it does allow for the introduction of new technologies and weapons that enhance the gameplay and make it that much more fun. One thing I noticed the multiplayer was lacking though was an assortment of 70s/80s era weapons as a carry-over from the campaign missions. If you get to use an AK-47 or a Dragonov in the single player game why aren't they available for use in mulitplayer? My only other complaint is the almost exclusive use of number-letter designations for all the guns. For weapons that havent been invented yet it makes it very difficult to recognize them by name. Everyone knows what an MP5 or Colt M4 are because they actually exist. When you do the same thing with fake weapons it just makes it hard to identify them in the game. I usually tell my friends that I play with that my favorite sniper rifle is "the one all the way to the left on the list of sniper rifles" because I havent memorized its alphanumeric designation. I also would have liked it better if the weapons upgrades counted for all similar weapons instead of having to level up for each specific weapon. If I spend hours getting the scope I want for my sniper rifle why can't that item be available for another sniper rifle as well? I dont really want to go through hours of playing just to upgrade my gun to the same level. With those small issues aside, the online play is great. Much more scope than was seen in the original BO. I have only played through a few single player missions on the easy setting and they're okay, but I'm not terribly invested in the characters or the storyline. I have played the zombie maps once online with friends and they are fun, although again I'm not really into it. Somehow fighting Nazi Zombies in the first one just felt better than killing regular zombies that aren't Nazis. Also, what's the deal with every fourth zombie wearing either pajamas or hospital johnnies? Just kinda weird... The bottom line though is that if you enjoy playing FPS games online this one is a definite go! I dont really have anything to compare it to (comparing it only to the first BO isn't exactly fair) but it it definitely fun and lends itself to quite a bit of exploration online.

This is strictly a review of the online multiplayer experience. There are a crap ton of negative reviews about this game and I don't really know why. The developers decided to change some things (for the better) and people are freaking out about it. The pick ten loadout system is exactly the change this game needed. The system provides the player with the ability to choose a loadout that is optimized to their own gameplay style. I would like to address some of the negative things that are being written about the game. Poor graphics - The graphics are as good or better than MW3, and the gameplay is actually smoother. Lag - If you have played any of the previous COD's than you know that the first week these games are released the servers are always overloaded which causes lag. MW2, BOPS, and MW3 all had terrible lag the first couple of weeks. After the game has been out a few weeks the issue will fix itself. Poor spawning - Once again all of the previous COD's have had spawn issues. It is really difficult to spawn 12 different people in places they will be happy with every time. Get over it, its part of the game. Now for some of the things I really like about the game. The pick ten system is awesome as I already stated. The guns are way more customizable than in any of the previous installments. There are a ton of attachments to choose from. Another change the developers made that makes a ton of sense is the fact that the perks only affect your character while the attachments affect your gun. For example - rather than having quick draw as a perk, instead, you have a quick draw grip as an attachment option for your weapon. All in all, the game is a ton of fun and I would highly recommend it. Don't just give up on the game, give it some time. Just because you suck it up the first couple of rounds doesn't mean the game sucks; you just need to give it some time, learn the maps and loadout system, and you will come to love it.

I will first start out that I was going to give a 4 but I am changing to a 5 to somewhat counter for the trolls who dont even own or even played the game.....As You Can See Up Above... I Have Purchased And Played This Game.... Games have become stale for me in general. At first I thought It was my age, mid thirties; and with so much gaming under my belt I just figured I was just burned out along with the end of a console generation. I'd get a new game I was somewhat excited about but no matter how bad or good it was, I just couldn't finish it most of the time and few could hold my attention, except a select handful(Borderlands 2, AC3, Halo 4, BF3)..okay enough ramble.... Huge spaces, with tons of actors on stage of the war theater. Larger than life weather conditions. It is lush, "meaty", screaming with unleashed ultimate creativity. I just couldn't believe that lighting and textures can look so natural and appealing. new guns are so handy and useful while the old ones are lovely still. Campaign is still fast and frantic now allowing custom loadouts and a not so linear story. You also compete for high score in campaign as well. Controls Are crisp and smooth and as always the top notch campaign story you have come to know from The Series. Enough twists and turns to keep anyone entertained. Sounds are greatly impressive from BlackOps 1.. Multiplayer---- Only few games in and considering the amount of people playing. Not ONE laggy game.. wish could say that about MW3... As someone who was not a fan of MW3, BO2 does a lot of things right. Pick 10 leveling in multiplayer has made playing to prestige worth doing and allows a more customized experience online. will add more to this after a day or two... ---------- You cant lose with this purchase. I was on the fence on getting this after being burned with MW3. I remember I had the most fun with Black ops, than I did with any shooter of it's kind. I figured, I'd give this a shot and I am very glad I did.

Campaign: Still the same type of campaign you would expect from a call of duty title. Action packed and fairly quick to play through. However in Black ops II you have the ability to customize your loadout before the mission begins which I found to be an amazing change of pace. Also the new Strike force missions with the RTS-esque elements add some variety as well (Strike force on veteran difficulty will be the most frustrating experience of black ops 2 guaranteed). One final thing is that the campaign now tracks the choices you have made throughout the story and allows you to get 3 separate endings which is nice! Zombies: Simply put awesome! (Although the lack of pack a punch and perks on some maps while others have it can be irritating) Multiplayer: The bread and butter of the call of duty franchise. The new pick 10 system really makes the multiplayer experience seem much more fresh. The remodeled perk and attachment system as well so you won't always have to run the same perk setup every game as in MW3 just to do well. Weapons feel much more balanced and each has its strengths and weaknesses. No one weapon is an absolute standout ( like the ACR in MW3) although there are some that are the overall favorites. Maps feel great! In MW3 I felt like the maps ALWAYS had 3 wide open bottleneck positions that would never allow you to move around the map for flanking, etc. Black ops 2 has BEAUTIFUL map design with plenty of areas to maneuver and escape trouble. *Ghost is now no longer a perk that hides you permanently, must be moving around/sprinting! This seriously helped the multiplayer SIGNIFICANTLY in the no longer will you run around while a UAV is up and get killed by campers. Much faster paced gameplay! Overall: Excellent game! I have been playing since the original and I must say I thought the franchise was digging a hole they wouldn't be able to climb out of (Infinity ward might be headed there) but this game is phenomenal! Great fun!

To sum it all up, Black Ops 2 is a very good game with some disappointments. Overall, the maps are well designed and you get a good variety of sniper maps and close up to medium fire maps. Seems like the lag compensation problem is still there but not as bad as before. As many of you know, lag compensation is an algorithmic solution to the host having an advantage in a game due to zero WAN latency of that host. Lag compensation is introduced to add latency to the host player to elimniate that advantage. Unfortunately, a host gets too much of a disadvantage and will lose a close up firefight with a good player. As I understand it, peer to peer hosts (player Xbox 360's) are used because Activision does not use dedicated host servers. Instead, individual XBOX hosts are selected before each game based on a ping selection criteria. Now you will often see "server down" errors. This is not a host server but instead a name server going down or losing its connection. I too have seen some really bad lag problems. That is players find that they are not moving smoothly through the map during a game. I have heard and I am convinced there are two issues here. First, the name servers are maxing out at times causing issues. Second, many of these high speed routers are having buffer issues due to too much data being passed through high speed connections. This causes a momentary freeze or lag because of backed up data in the router memory. Activision needs to improve their name servers stability and the router industry needs to find a fix for the buffer issue. Both are in the works. I have noticed something in Black Ops 2 that disturbs me. There are a lot of players using a lag switch now. Mostly "runners" that use a balistic knife. What is lag switch? Well, this is where a player uses a device that momentarily stops or substantially slows down his data upload to the host device while keeping a continuous download of data flowing back to his or her device. The result is the lagging player will disappear or move at faster than normal speed while the non lagging player will be trying to kill someone moving faster than normal or disappering before their eyes... only to show up behind them for the kill! When you go into a room to kill a player and all of a sudden this happens, probably a lag switch is being used. I also believe if a player gets host and is using a lag switch, when he uses it during the game, the host will soon "migrate" due to all of the players lagging. Now to the zombies. What a disappointment. Rather than expound on the success of the previous Black Ops zombies, they change the game flow. Maps are small. Zombies harder to kill. They introduce this concept where you ride a bus to various levels and you must find items to move you through the maps. If you die, you start over (as before) but you still have to ride this bus and go through all of the chatter of the "bus driver" bot over again. Rather than getting to the action quickly, you waste lots of time. It's boring. I gave up on it. Treyarch, please patch this nonsense. It's horrible. One quick comment on Nuketown 2025... whey does it keep coming an going? Sometimes it's there. Sometimes not. Once last thing (back to lag compensation), Treyarch continues to claim that this is not a problem. It is. They continue to claim that using the "kill cam" or theater mode vs. in game real-time footage is not "forensic" proof of lag issues. Yes it is. When I am playing a game as host, and I see in my view that I drill 10 bullets into an opponent (get 10 hit markers) and he doesn't die, yet that opponent kills me with one shot... I go to the kill cam and find the "system" shows me not shooting ANY bullets and getting shot like a noob.... sorry, the perspective is out of sync. That is a problem when I see something different than the aribiter alorgrithm sees. Fix it. Overall, recommended to those who like first person shooters and war games. ---------------------- Here is an update on 3/22/2013. The game continues to evolve with patches. Most troublesome is the net code that handles the latency issues that I have described above. The game is almost unplayable. A shooter needs to do one thing well... when you shoot someone, they die. Simple as that. Too often, I have been faced with unloading an entire magazine into my opponent (from behind) only for that opponent to turn around and shoot me. When I look at the replay, what I thought I was seeing is not what happens. Instead, the replay shows I was shooting elsewhere and not at my opponent. This is not good. What that means is players are really not seeing the same thing. What you see is NOT what you get. If you research this online, you find this is a universal complaint about Black Ops 2. Another issue is there is way too much cheating in this game. Lag switches (described earlier) are common in almost every game now. Not fun. This could not happen if Treyarch used dedicated servers. Here is the bottom line, this is my last COD game. I love shooters, but it's not fun to play. When you know you beat another player (by what you saw) only to be killed by that player, you don't feel like it was fair. You feel cheated. What a disappointment. ----------------------------------- Update. Its August of 2013 and Black Ops has come out with new maps and many new patches. Wow, the game has morphed and is now quite playable. Treyarch has done a great job of solving many of the latency issues as well as dealing with the goofballs out there using lag switches. The game is far more enjoyable and the new Zombie maps are excellent. Zombie's are more fun than ever. Yes, there are still issues but they have worked hard to make the game satisfying. I am now changing my rating to a 4. Thank you.

This review is for the multiplayer only. I have not earnestly played the story in the COD games since modern warfare two, which also was my 1st COD game. I also don't play zombies. That being said this is the best multiplayer experience yet. The pick 10 system is awesome. It is fun coming up with all kinds of class combinations. They have taken a lot of the sting of prestiging. Now when you prestige you keep all the camo you previously unlocked on your guns. I always thought it was stupid doing all the work to get gold on your guns just to have it taken away and having to doing all over again when you prestige. And ont only do they not take your camo away, they also do not take away the attachments that you unlocked for the guns either. They allow you to prestige each gun individually up to two times, the 1st time you get your clan tag displayed and the 2nd time you get your emblem displayed also. Also when you prestige you get an item unlock every time, in addition to that you also get to choose between a custom class, refunding all your unlock tokens used that prestige and resetting your level to 1. I only see usefulness in the 1st option. But it is still better than mw3 which gave you a unlock token each prestige, but you had to choose between using it for an unlock or custom class. In addition to prestiging not being the end of the world now, they also have a new mode called league play. This mode attempts to match you up with people on your skill level so you have those totally lopsided games. You should win about 50% of your matches once it places you correctly. The beauty of this mode in addition to the above is everything is unlocked for you to use as you see fit, further leveling the playing field for you and the competition. They even allowed the points you get for matches in this mode still increase your level in regular public matches, again making prestiging more palatable. I don't think you get as many , but you still get some. I don't think you get credit toward your gun levels though. You get a good number of maps, I believe it is 14 maps + nuketown 2025. All the maps are also available for the normals stylists, I almost said all playlists but I don't like using absolutes when I am not sure. This is significant because ther is another shooter that came out this year but only had 10 maps that shipped with it and of the 10 only 5 are available in the playlist that I like to at in. Lets just say they got old quickly. I am still finding new and different ways to tackle the maps and it is great. As for the perks themselves I like what they have done. There are no more pro version of the perks. You no longer have to play modes you don't like, such as ctf, to get unlimited sprint ala black ops. Big big plus in my book. Also none of the perks affect how the guns shoot, no more stopping power. The perks themselves I feel are overall weaker. Ther are a couple standouts like engineering and scavenger, but overall they are weaker. There is no unlimited sprint, only for a longer duration. ghost only shields you while you are moving, so not good for campers anymore. This is in my opinion a good thing though. It is hard to make an truly overpowered class now. You will always be lacking somewhere. To make a truly stealth class now you have to use 5 of your 10 things on just the perks. 1 for blind eye, ghost, cold blooded and dead silence. Plus you have to spend a point for perk 1 greed because ghost and blind eye are in the same level. Then you have to get a gun a put a silencer on it, you are down to 3 things left to pick any you still have a 2nd and maybe 3rd attachment(if you get primary gunfighter) to pick and a 2ndary weapon, and your lethal and tactical grenades. Something g is going to get left behind. It has good integration with COD Elite. You cand make up classes and upload them so they are ready for you when you log back on the game. There is a livestream ability that is also cool to keep you in the game even when you are away from the game. See how other people play and learn new strategies. All of that and that is only a 1/3 of the game. There is still a campaign and zombies. Well worth the money, even if you only want it for multiplayer.