Call of Duty: Black Ops II – review
PC, PS3, Xbox 360; £39.99; 18+; Activision
Black Ops II isn't a lazy annual update – it deserves credit for trying to play around with gaming's most winning formula, yet this engine is showing its age.
The annual Call of Duty has become a little like watching the funfair return to town. The same rides, the same shifty-faced men guarding the entrances, with only the peeling paint and deja vu separating one year from the next.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II – review
Even in their tower of dollars, Activision can sense the ennui, and so developer Treyarch's Black Ops II is also something of a Mission Impossible – aiming to deliver meaningful innovation, to use the marketing line, within the same old structure.
They get an A for effort. Black Ops II has a familiar campaign that has nevertheless been jazzed up with the incorporation of (optional) squad-based strategy missions and a plotline that branches according to a few key decisions. Most of the time is still spent shooting foreigners in corridors, but even here, there are changes – COD's most well-known crutch, the endlessly respawning enemies that stop when you cross an invisible line, have been junked entirely.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II – review
COD blops horses
Talking about the narrative in these games always feels a little like a thankless task, and Black Ops II doesn't deviate from that. It makes an early attempt to humanise big baddy Menedez, showing how his sister was disfigured by American bombs, but after this he turns out a standard bloodthirsty maniac. This incident is part of a bizarre and disturbing thread running through Black Ops II's narrative; you see one child being burned and disfigured, then another being psychologically tortured (the main character, in fact). Perhaps this shows a certain desensitisation among the game's audience; or its developers. Probably both.
- COD blops horses
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