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Thursday 15 November 2012

Call of Duty: Black Ops II Review


Call of Duty: Black Ops II is a first-person shooter video game, developed by Treyarch and published by Activision. It was released on November 13, 2012 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows and on November 18, 2012 in North America, November 30, 2012 in Europe, and December 20, 2012 in Japan for Wii U. 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 feature future warfare technology and the first to present branching storylines driven by player choice. It also offers a 3D display option. A corresponding game, Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified, will be released simultaneously on the PlayStation Vita.

Characters and setting

The single-player campaign features two connected storylines, with one set in the 1970s through 1980s and the other in 2025. The protagonist ofBlack Ops, Alex Mason returns as the protagonist in the Cold War section, and chronicles 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 ofeconomic inequality.
The 2025 section of the game features Alex Mason's son David as the protagonist during 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.

Plot

In the year 2025, a Special Forces unit led by David Mason arrive at "The Vault", a secret location that is home to the aged Frank Woods, who they believe has information on the whereabouts of Raul Menendez. Woods admits that Menendez had visited him, and gives Mason a locket that Menendez had left behind.
In 1986, Alex Mason has retired from active duty and is living in Alaska with the seven year-old David. Their already-strained relationship is put to the test when Mason is approached by Jason Hudson, seeking to recruit him for a mission in Angola. Woods' unit has been taken captive while aiding rebels in the country's civil war, and their actions have been disavowed by the CIA. Hudson enlists Mason for a covert mission to rescue Woods and any survivors from his unit, with the help of the Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan forces. They discover Menendez is responsible for Woods' captivity and attempt to confront him, only for Menendez to give away their position to incoming enemy forces, allowing him to flee.
In light of the events in Angola, Mason and Hudson begin tracking Menendez, who has set himself up as one of the primary arms suppliers for conflicts in Africa and Latin America. Locating him in Afghanistan, the CIA authorises a strike against him. At this point, the story begins to explore Menendez's motivations and his vendetta against the West. After he and his sister were accidentally burned in the fire-bombing of a warehouse as part of an insurance scam, the Menendez family turned to drug trafficking and built up power and influence throughout Nicaragua. Their actions did not go unnoticed, and the CIA sanctioned the assassination of his father. Now knowing that Menendez considers the conflict to be personal and that he will not back down, the CIA lean on Panamanian president Manuel Noriega to support a raid on Menendez's home in Panama. Menendez suffers further tragedy when Woods inadvertently kills his sister during the raid.
Gameplay

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. On September 26, 2012, the Zombies reveal trailer was released as well as three new game modes confirmed: Tranzit is a game mode that is a combination of multiple maps in one game and the way to travel around it is to ride on a bus, Survival is the original mode from Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops where you survive as long as possible, and finally the mode Grief which is 4 players vs 4 players vs zombies. Although a Zombies campaign is confirmed it is still unknown if Campaign is the Tranzit mode or if Campaign and Tranzit are completely different modes.






Minimum System Requirements
Requirements
Microsoft Windows
Operating systemWindows Vista (Service Pack 2) or Windows 7; (Windows XP not supported)
CPUIntel Core2 Duo E8200 2.66 GHz or AMD Phenom X3 8750 2.4 GHz
Memory2GB for 32-bit OS or 4GB for 64-bit OS
Hard drive space16GB
Graphics hardwareNvidia GeForce 8800GT 512 MB or ATI Radeon HD 3870 512 MB

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