Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Call of Duty: Black Ops II is an upcoming first-person shooter video game, developed by Treyarch and published by Activision (Square Enix for Japan), to be released on November 13, 2012 for Wii U, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. Black Ops II is the ninth game in the Call of Duty franchise of video games and a sequel to the 2010 game Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Black Ops II is the first game in the Call of Duty franchise to have a futuristic setting and feature future warfare technology. It also presents branching storylines driven by player choice for the first time in the franchise's history. A corresponding game, Call of Duty: Black Ops – Declassified, will be released simultaneously on the PlayStation Vita.

Characters and Setting

The single-player campaign will feature two connected storylines, one set in the 1970s through 1980s and the other in 2025. The protagonist of Black Ops, Alex Mason returns as the protagonist in the Cold War section, where he will be fighting in proxy wars for the United States in the Cold War. Known locations for this section of the game include multiple sites in Central America, Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion and Angola. This section of the game will also see the rise to infamy of the game's primary antagonist, Raul Menendez, a Nicaraguan narco-terrorist and the leader of "Cordis Die", a populist movement celebrated as the champions of victims of economic inequality.Mason's friend and colleague Frank Woods will also return, and narrate the story into the 2025 section of the game.

The 2025 section of the game features Alex Mason's son David as a protagonist. When a cyberattack cripples the Chinese Stock Exchange, China bans the export of rare earth elements, which in turn leads to a new Cold War between China and the United States. In this era, war is defined by robotics, cyberwarfare, unmanned vehicles and other futuristic technology. Taking advantage of this stand-off, Menendez attempts to bring the two powers to a full-blown war by inciting conflicts between the two. Known locations for this section of the game include Los Angeles, Singapore and Socotra, Yemen.

It has been hinted at that the side-plot of Viktor Reznov and his relationship with Alex Mason, which began in Black Ops, will be continued in Black Ops II.

Strike Force missions

Black Ops II will be the first Call of Duty video game to feature branching storylines, in which the player's choice affects both the current mission and in turn, the overall course of the story. Known as "Strike Force missions", these branching storylines will appear during the 2025 storyline and will feature permanent death. The success or failure of these missions can have ramifications for the wider campaign storyline. Choosing one of the missions locks out the others unless the player begins a fresh campaign.

Strike Force missions allow the player to control a number of different war assets, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, jet fighters and robots. If the player dies in a Strike Force mission, the campaign continues recording that loss, as opposed to letting the player load a previously saved checkpoint. The player's progress in the Strike Force missions may go on to change even the plans of the story's antagonist, Raul Menendez. By the end of the game, the player may have changed the results of the new Cold War, and the player will be shown what could have gone differently.

Zombies

Treyarch has confirmed that the Zombies mode will return for Black Ops II with its own campaign. Its predecessors were Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops. This is the third time for the Zombies mode to appear in a Call of Duty game, and the first time to have its own campaign along with the main story. Treyarch has also confirmed that Zombies will implement the multiplayer engine, allowing for a deeper community experience along with new game modes. It has also been confirmed that the Zombies mode will support 8 player co-op, unlike Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops, which only supported 4 player online co-op. Treyarch announced in August 2012 that Nuketown would be remade as a zombie map for those buying Hardened or Care Package Edition of Black Ops 2.

Minimum System Requirements

	Requirements
Microsoft Windows
Operating system	Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) or Windows 7; (Windows XP not supported)
CPU	Intel Core2 Duo E8200 2.66 GHz or AMD Phenom X3 8750 2.4 GHz
Memory	2GB for 32-bit OS or 4GB for 64-bit OS
Graphics hardware	Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512 MB or ATI Radeon HD 3870 512 MB