Cod Blops 2

[motormaniac]

Now, before you criticize me for liking this, I haven't bought it just yet. I was wondering you guys' opinions who did get and if I should get it or not. I'm actually leaning towards not because from what I've seen it looks REALLY boring.

[Invunarble]

Prestiging your weaponry online? What the fuck is this?

That's literally all I can say about this game.

[J4Numbers]

You will have your review when we have a new podcast out.
All I'm going to say is that I really don't think it's a World War game anymore.

[Mattybcd]

I always liked the Call of duty games mainly for the sniping, and editing for montages etc... I think the game was good, especially the zombies. Multiplayer isnt the best, i dont think its a good idea that they incorperated weapon prestiging into the game, but i mainly play zombies.

[aflycon]

I played this game for the first time last night, and I have to say that it is indisputably the worst game I have ever had the displeasure of playing. It's no secret that the gearheads at Activision and Treyarch have lost any shred of originality, and that mechanics, graphics, weaponry, characters, and any other conceivable element from each game is simply rebranded and recycled into the next. However, this particular game makes a stellar example of just how terribly lazy the dev team was this time around.

The game has been dumbed down for it's (apparently recently-discovered) nine-year-old target demographic. The best example of this is that gun recoil is no longer present - your gun does not move when you shoot it. This alone would have been enough for me to put the game down, but I forced myself to continue.

Cutscenes are incredibly bland, and random "fucks," "shits," and "goddamns" are thrown in as flavor text to make them seem more "mature" and "gritty." After a cutscene that was almost impossible to make sense of, the game begins with the player character watching a friend of his being burned alive and trying to free him. From here, you proceed to a stereotypical savannah-style battlefield to wipe out the apparently harmless indigenous population of whichever shithole country you've attacked (Nicaragua?) in whatever cliche, overused time period this game takes place in (this appears to vary from 1960 to 2025, with this particular instance being earlier). A man dressed in Cuban military regalia who looks suspiciously like pre-NWA Ice Cube gives you instructions, and from this point on you jump through time and space as at least four different characters, doing your country proud by taking down enemies such as: Harmless civilians; the family members of military targets; your own teammates; and, most importantly, poorly-scripted QTEs.

Graphics are sub-par, controls are unresponsive, and dialogue is god-awful. The Zombies mode has been simplified further from its terrible reappearance in the first Black Ops (let me go on record by saying I loved World at War and the Nazi Zombies game mode), but a bizarre puzzle aspect has been added for players who are older than ten years old and capable of figuring it out. Instead of simply having to turn on the power as in earlier maps, players must find different pieces of a power switch, put them together, and then turn the power on. There are also several new ways to open doors using these parts, and even more parts can be used to do other useless shit around the stifling, poorly-designed levels (complete with lava pools that kill almost instantly and, as expected, foot-high ledges that are impossible to scale). Headshots as a method of instant kill seem to have been dropped from this mode - they just don't work, regardless of your choice of weapon. From the Python to the Olympia to the damn ballistic knives, hitting a zombie in the head does abso-fucking-lutely nothing; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it made them stronger. Zombies have the ability to sprint faster than the player character (one of several terrible voice actors), and when lit on fire they randomly explode. There is no way to avoid clipping into the environment, and you are bound to lose the game at least several times because of this.

I haven't played the multiplayer yet. I don't want to.

This game sucks. There is no beating around the bush - it is fucking terrible.

[Invunarble]

After reading that, I really am quite convinced that Black Ops II is the worst possible game to ever exist on this planet. Even worse then Big Rigs, which had nearly made me lose all hope for humanity after reading how sloppy and disgusting the game was.

So, congrats afly. "You're winner".

[Sti_Jo_Lew]

I swear afly, you've forced yourself to hate every aspect of the game. I have no clue how you think they reused all the same assets in this, while I haven't seen a single graphics asset that was in BO1. ONE family member gets killed in the story, which is caused by Woods wanting to take revenge on a man who tortured him, but his grenade killing his sister who he didn't know was there. And do you REALLY expect Treyarch to change the entire feel of the CoD franchise, losing their established fanbase? Not to mention, they've had only two years to create the game. Every Halo game feels pretty much the same, but noone ever talks shit about that.

I am so tired of everyone jumping on the anti-CoD bandwagon and throwing all objectivity and logic out the window.

[J4Numbers]

Who said anything about bandwagoning, people have their own opinions Sti.
And let me take a few things and hold them to the light, CoD has been going for nigh on, erm, many years now, and they released CoD 1, 2 and 3, they were all good games and such, but then they brought out CoD 4, which was their shining light and their high-point in all of this, CoD 5 was decent too, bringing in the new element of Zombies which many people enjoyed and promptly played the heck out of it.

Then we reached CoD 6 (MW2) and things got a bit touch and go, the story lacking somewhat as they started pounding on the multiplayer to make it better and smoother all around (I still hate the idea of downloadable map packs being for general use in the lobby though), CoD 7 and the first installment of Black (Inception) Ops were very good for the gimmicks, however the story just got far too contrived and introspective for me in the end.

CoD 8, again, not that much different from CoD 6, so much so that I can't even recall it properly as I sit here typing, something about Cuba? Anyway. That game was Meh.

Then they bring out CoD 9, hello camoflage suits and Quick Time Events that add nothing to the game, goodbye carefully thought out plots and a sense that the player is in one time, cut up instead between flashbacks and the future. If you replayed Call of Duty 4 and compared it directly to the current installment, you would be able to tell the difference in terms of graphics, maybe, but you would also be able to tell the difference in the amount of enjoyment that you had playing it and how well you could follow the storyline.

Then you compare the multiplayer aspects between the two and it turns out that they are Exactly. The. Damn. Same. Yes, you have some new maps and yes you have new weapons, but that is just a paint-swap and should be treated as such. And I'll repeat what I said in the podcast, what they've added to this game is what they've detracted from the other games by imposing the limits that they have, I don't know about anyone else, but I thought that the perk system in MW 2 was perfectly fine thank-you-very-much, and now they've gone and limited it.

Alright, I guess it's to stop people going completely OverPowered and murdering the flying bejesus out of people, but did they really need to? A good game would be able to offer the same perks but at a price to the player which does not just feel like, 'Oh, you ran out of slots... too bad.'

Finally, we come to the zombies, which I must point out to everyone, is a GIMMICK, and should be treated as such, as an add-on. If Treyarch brought out a standalone Zombies game, that would be fine and dandy, but no, they stick it onto this game and tar it with how bad it was. Not that it needed tarring any more of course, theres only so much that you can poke a dying dog Activision and Treyarch, maybe it would be kinder if you just got a pistol and ended its misery right there.

~ExtraNumbers

[Invunarble]

Quite honestly, I suspect that probably the core reason the Call of Duty series has had such a degraded reputation is due to the group of people (who are stereotypically loud, obnoxious 8 year olds) that tend to associate themselves with the game. Judging from past behaviour of Treyarch and Infinity Ward's devs in terms of game releases, I honestly doubt the series will variate much from what it is now: A bland, shallow storyline spread out over a six hour timeframe, a tacky gimmick of a game mode that has only been stuck to the game due to popularity, and a sanity-degrading multiplayer mode which really does just consist of repeating the same thing over and over with occasional bits of icing put on the cake during each new release.

While I do give credit to Treyarch for attempting to add additional features of some significance to each new release (As opposed to Infward, there's really not much difference between MW2 and MW3), they really cannot hope to retain their current stereotypical targeted audience group (which are the loud, obnoxious 8 year olds mentioned above) should they decide to put a major emphasis on redefining their game.

So long as Treyarch, Activison, and Infward decide that they WANT to to keep this audience group that they initially established with the release of MW1 and WaW, there's really not much hope for drastic change in terms of game elements. This is where I sort of understand afly's criticism about BlOps II's repetitivity; it isn't bound to change, and really is only appealing to the same, consistent age group that all Call of Duty games since MW1 have been targeted at.

My point is, while new releases may have certain features (As Sti pointed out) that may entice consumers to think there will be far more variation compared to previous games, they will still continue to be based on the same core gameplay aspects that attract the interest of the same, lowly-viewed age group, and as long as they are still based on these aspects, there really isn't much room for more significant gameplay changes in the future that may attract the interests of a larger audience then just the same, stereotypical 7 year olds.

[Lord_Mountbatten]

I'd like to add that calling any big release title the worst game ever is hyperbole. They are big releases for a reason, even if you dislike those reasons. As games the series functions very well. As games that set a standard for the rest of the industry however, you can see why the vitriol exists.

I would love to see how these comments would've changed if the series had never hit that standard-setting popularity.

[motormaniac]

I thought my little thread died a while back. Oh well. I didn't even get the game because of what I've heard about it, so I don't have much input. But I have played a decent amount of zombies, which really disappointed me. The maps are tiny. So. freaking. tiny. I know there's the transit thing but unless you want those wierd ass things jumping on your head and tea-bagging the shit out of you, you stay in the areas. And the whole after apocalypse theme was not very well executed in my opinion. The only thing they do is put lava everywhere and make it to where you can't see two feet in front of you. The little bit of multiplayer I did play is the same as any other COD release. You shoot people, level up, and start over. So in my opinion, bad game. Not the worst game ever like some people say, but preeetty bad.

[aflycon]

I haven't seen a single graphics asset that was in BO1.

I get that the game environments and obviously individual textures and meshes are "new," but the quality of the graphics is what I'm concerned with; it certainly isn't good. Off the top of my head, here are a few other A-list games which came out before Black Ops II with superior graphics (chronologically, backwards): Sleeping Dogs, Skyrim, and GTA: Episodes from Liberty City (which was released almost two years prior to Black Ops II).

The art style of the game hasn't changed, either. This is more understandable though, considering that consistency is probably what they're striving for (not that they're really striving for anything).

ONE family member gets killed in the story

In my opinion, that was a tasteless addition to the story. Making Woods seem "remorseful" and "sorry" for killing that girl doesn't make him seem any more dynamic or rounded than he did before, considering that he fits into the same stereotype that all the other characters do - a stoic military veteran who doesn't give a shit about anything. This is especially true considering that ten-year-old kids don't truly understand the abhorrence of war, and how it should affect those who experience it.

And do you REALLY expect Treyarch to change the entire feel of the CoD franchise, losing their established fanbase?

No, I don't expect anything from Treyarch. I would hope for an "A-list" game to have a meaningful and sensible storyline, graphics that meet the current industry standard, and features that are actually functional. That is what I would expect from Treyarch, but I don't. I suppose that would be changing the feel of the franchise, though - at least the franchise since World at War.

Not to mention, they've had only two years to create the game. Every Halo game feels pretty much the same, but noone ever talks shit about that.

If I remember correctly, Treyarch absorbed most of the team who left Infinity Ward in 2010 (approximately doubling their staff). That many developers working should be able to make a quality game. Rockstar had a similar timeframe for Red Dead Redemption, and ended up working twelve-hour days and flying in employees from other parts of the world to finish the game on time - and it's been voted one of the best ever.

I don't have any comment about Halo - I'm not particularly a fan for any reason other than nostalgia.

I would love to see how these comments would've changed if the series had never hit that standard-setting popularity.

Had it not reached such popularity, maybe Treyarch, Infinity Ward, and especially Activision would not be so motivated by the guaranteed revenue but motivated to make a quality game. Ten-year-old kids ask for a shoot-'em-up, and they give it to them. But had they acquired an older, more mature fanbase, maybe these games would be better.

---

EDIT: Just found this while doing some research on Infinity Ward:

Robert Bowling, "Creative Strategist" at Infinity Ward, left the company in March 2012 citing disagreements between himself and the bigwigs at Infinity Ward. He claimed that he has "to work on games that [he's] passionate about, and this time [his] passion just led [him] in a different direction."

He also seems to believe that the Infinity Ward games have turned into cash cows, stating in an interview with Machinima that he wishes they could work like they used to - putting out games and updates that are truly enjoyable or helpful:

"I feel like we are in a fucking era where everyone is so focused on subscriber numbers and all that stuff that we need to get back to what I feel like we did so much better in the old days of just plain good will, like stuff like the LAN patch, yeah it is lower priority but let’s get it out the fucking door. Let’s just do it."

[motormaniac]

snip

Your use of adjectives pleases me. And makes me think this game sucks even more than I had originally thought.

[LS13]

I like how their creative strategist has the same view as me in that they are milking the games for money