This time of year, I typically do some sort of Call of Duty article on the blog, and with teaser trailers already surfacing for 2013's holiday release it seemed fitting to look back and examine my experience with Black Ops 2. I chose not to do a review when the game released, and I'm not going to do an in depth comparison with any past COD titles like I did for Modern Warfare 3 here. Instead, I will look at the best and the worst of my experiences with Blops 2. The highs and the lows if you will.
In no way do I consider myself a hard core Call of Duty Fan, or a COD "fanboy" for lack of a better word. Instead, I like to say that COD is often my go to game due to the fact that it is so accessible to such a wide range of players. There have been nights where I have mulled over my gaming choices for several minutes only to settle on a few quick rounds of Blops 2 multiplayer due to the fact that I don't have to coordinate any parties with known teammates, or deal with complex strategies in order to enjoy myself. COD's largest appeal for me is that it makes it so easy to jump into a game that I barely ever think about it beforehand, and I don't mind playing with unknowns.
It's not exactly mindless fun, but it takes less preparation than say Battlefield 3 would. When I play a game like Battlefield, I commit to a plan before even putting the disk into my console. I know what weapons I want to rank up, and I know what game modes I want to play. If it doesn't go well, the whole thing is a wash. Such is not the case with Call of Duty. I can mix and mince my play styles and class setups however I want, and I usually end up with a mostly positive experience every time. Sometimes Battlefield offers more satisfaction, and a good night playing DayZ on my PC with my friends can provide me with battle stories for weeks, but no game fills that middle ground better than COD.
These days, I find myself rotating between MW3 and Blops 2 on a somewhat regular basis for a few different reasons. I'm not going to go into length to compare the two games, but things really took an upswing for MW3 once they ironed out some of the spawn and lag issues just before the launch of Blops 2. The game became playable very quickly, and I saw my game improve immediately as a result. Blops 2 on the other hand has a LOT of ground to make up in this department.
Incremental patches have resolved some of the weapon balancing issues that the game originally suffered from, but different game modes still present issues with random spawn generation and perceived lag continues to plague the PS3 version that I own. The recent patch on 4/30/13 seems to have made things somewhat better, but I can't tell if it's just in my head or not yet.
I will most likely touch on some more of the bad later, but let's move on to some of the good for now. My favorite thing about Blops 2 continues to be the "Pick Ten" class building system. The concepts employed in this inventory system aren't revolutionary, but they are easily the best thing to happen to a COD game in a good long while. The fact that there are only 10 available slots helps to limit the amount of exploitation that opportunistic gamers resort to while striking a good balance of power versus utility.
I had always felt that MW3's class system was too bloated with complicated perk and attachment combinations to be efficient. With "Pick Ten", I immediately know the limits of what can and can't be combined. Furthermore, the in-game interface is visually simple enough to be used easily. I haven't used the online menu system to track stats and customize classes yet, but I'm sure the same could be said of the interface found there.
That being said, some of my most enjoyable moments with the game come from when I am simply running around like an idiot, trying out new weapon and perk combinations. In many ways, I take my performance too seriously with this game, which is frustrating, but the most fun is to be had when I simply let go an enjoy the ridiculousness of it all. My favorite part of the grind is when you reach the next prestige rank and are forced to use preset classes. In those moments, I can throw myself into matches with such abandon that I don't really care what my K/D is, as long as I get some points to rank up later on.
Then, there's the unnecessary rage. COD has always been effective at soliciting over the top frustration from me from time to time. I've had my share of "WTF?!?!?!?!?!" moments, and I almost always blame the game for whatever hardship I may be facing. It's usually the standard, "How did that guy hit me?" or "There's no way that should have happened?" response. Most of the time, these occurences can be attributed to my own error, but sometimes the game seems legitimately unbalanced even without lag.
As I mentioned above, there are still some glaring issues with lag in Blops 2, but some of the one on one decisioning seems built into the game itself. Don't get me wrong, I know when I'm playing poorly on a good connection, but at times it seems like I have dominant matches that will be followed up by abysmal ones with the same group of players in the lobby. Perhaps its the way that COD represents server ping in the stats menu, but it seems like most player's connections seem to be misrepresented.
On that note, I still like the fact that console versions of this game give you the ability to search for the best possible server connections in lobby. Whether or not the search restrictions are as discriminate as advertised is debateable, but the choice is interesting. Some times I can tell the difference in my match quality. Other times, I wonder why I bothered switching to "best connection" at all.
Now let's talk about downloadable content. There aren't too many games that I go "all in" on for DLC, but I chose to buy the season pass for $50 on Playstation Network for this one. My biggest motivation for this was that I really loved the map updates for the original Blops, and I liked the idea that they had rehashed some of the maps from Treyarch's previous COD titles. I didn't bother downloading any of the paid content for Modern Warfare 3, and now that I actually enjoy the multiplayer for that game, I'm kind of kicking myself for not doing so. I wouldn't go back this late in the cycle to buy them now, however.
So far, Blops 2's DLC is somewhat of a mixed bag for me. Of the four new multiplayer maps, I really only enjoy three of them, and I find the other to be frustratingly cheap as it is riddled with convenient camping spots and choke points. I don't play zombies, so the rest of the content is really wasted on me, but even if I only get three good maps out of four, I'm ok with it. None of the maps come close to the variety and quality of those found in Modern Warfare 2, but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen again...in any game...ever. Also, I may be looking back on that game with the rosey colored notalgia specs due to the fact that multiplayer was ruined by hackers long ago, but I can't really say.
It seems like developers are so caught up with geography with map design lately, that they forget about the fact that the most enjoyable maps allow players to branch out, and try different play styles. Most of Blops 2's maps are relatively small, with an emphasis on including an equal amount of indoor and outdoor areas for each arena. There aren't as many long sight lines as there were in Blops maps for long range gunplay, and Treyarch seems to have taken one from Infinity Ward by including verticality in their map design. The only trouble is that snipers in this game aren't usually pearched in second floor windows. Instead, they are busy trying to hard scope you from ten feet away in the crowded corridors where the SMG lovers go to play.
Black Ops 2 takes some getting used to. In fact, out of all of the CODs out there, it took me the longest to adjust to how things work in Blops 2. The mechanics are the same, but things don't really gel the way they did in past games. That doesn't make Blops 2 worse than its predecessors, but it does make me wonder why they haven't ironed things out more after six months on store shelves. I'm sure there will be improvements as the game matures, and those who don't want to shell out the cash for annual installments of COD will be satisfied until Treyarch announces their next title, but it is also entirely possible that connection issues will continue to plague this game indefinitely.
With Call of Duty: Ghosts on the horizon, COD fans will eagerly eat up any news about the next best thing to come this holiday season. Then, when next gen consoles launch, they will flood the web with hungry cries for bigger and better things. Hopefully COD will be able to keep up and innovate more. Treyarch is on the right track, but even they need to ratchet things up a bit for their next installment to keep me interested. Until then, I'll keep my copy spinning, and keep getting pwned by the lag.
~Krimmit
