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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2012
I've played every Call of Duty ever made, pretty extensively I might add, and in addition I've put in over +50 hours to date into Black Ops 2 to give it as fair a review as possible.
Make no mistake, Black Ops 2 is just about the same as the previous iterations of Call of Duty with a futuristic paintjob. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, Call of Duty has gotten a lot of things right, but you can't help but feel "been there, done that" for much of the experience.
SINGLEPLAYER:
The campaign is what you've come to expect, killing hundreds of respawning enemies with a pretty dismal D movie action flick script and a villain who refuses to ever die. The introduction of choices and consequences add some intrigue, and the strike missions can be amusing, but I can't say that it was very memorable. I didn't bother beating it again after one playthrough, which took roughly 6 hours on Veteran difficulty.
MULTIPLAYER:
The weapons and killstreaks are basically the same as they have been in previous Call of Duties. Many of the older weapons are available (An-94, 870 MCS, MTAR) whereas the newer fictional weapons are just remakes of older guns like the M8A1 which is an updated M16 or the KAP-40 pistol which is a remake of the G18. Many of the familiar killstreaks are still here as well, the usual suspects of UAVs, Care packages, sentry guns, RC XDs are still here along with a few new faces like the AGR and Dragonfire drones.
One of my biggest complaints of Black Ops 2, as of 11/27/12, is how poor the weapon balance is in the game. Call of Duty has always been very SMG and Hip-fire friendly, but the amount of prevalence of both in Black Ops is really disheartening.
Hipfiring with an SMG is the way to go in Black Ops 2 if you want to dominate, and I feel I can say this with a an overall combat record KD ratio of +2.0 (I don't say this to brag, I state this so people don't assume I'm bad at the game and that's why I'm complaining). People who take Assault Rifles are punished and will almost always lose a 1v1 engagement in close to mid range against an SMG user. Shotguns have awful range, and without attachments will literally not reach a target further than a few feet away.
The game actually encourages hipfiring in my opinion, which almost always guarantees a kill against a close range target. The nature of weapon recoil in Black Ops 2 is very random and makes it difficult to properly ADS against a moving target, hence why most people avoid this and hipfire which will almost always net a kill if it is within the general vicinity of an enemy. The poor weapon balance will often force you into an SMG class if you want to perform well and punishes players for experimenting.
But this is only a miniscule problem to the elephant in the room of Black Ops 2, Treyarch have abandoned the perfectly functioning server browser of Black Ops 1 and World at War and have replaced it with, you guessed it, matchmaking. The matchmaking is identitical to the one implemented in Modern Warfare 2-3 with the difference being that rather than player hosted it's on Treyarch servers.
With matchmaking you can't choose your own settings, you're forced into games with whateverTreyarch decides. For example Team Deathmatch (my favorite mode personally) is limited to 6v6 and a 75 kill limit, meaning that many times when I got high level streaks like Warthog or Lodestar (which require +10 kills in a row) the game ended 15 seconds afterwards.
Another problem with matchmaking is that I have friends who don't live nearby me, and as a result when we queue as a party we get into a server that is not perfect latency for any of us. We're forced to play with 2-3 bars when playing together (yes, they've also removed latency numbers and replaced them with bars so you never actually know what your ping is).
And of course the worst problem is that no one can ban the racists, the flamers (thank god for the mute botton), and of course the cheaters and the hackers. Yes the cheaters and hackers that plagued MW2 and MW3 are back in full force, I'm talking about people who aim at you behind walls when you have Ghost/Cold blooded and players who go 40-2 headshotting everyone with an LSAT. I would especially not recommend League play to anyone, a mode which Treyarch introduced to be "competitive" but it is already filled with obvious aimbotters and wallhackers. It's not so bad so far in normal mode, but it's getting progressively worse and the game has only been out a few weeks. VAC and the report system are extremely ineffective at getting rid of cheaters, as anyone who has played MW2 and 3 can tell you (I have over 200 hours logged on Modern Warfare 2 and had to quit because of the prevalence of cheaters).
SUMMARY:
Keep in mind that despite all these flaws, Black Ops 2 is a fun game. I wouldn't have logged over 50 hours if I didn't think so. It's basic formula is very addictive and the controls and gameplay are very smooth. The pick 10 class creation system is cool and the scorestreak system is the best in the series in my opinion. But truth be told I doubt I will be playing much longer, and I will definitely NOT be buying any of their DLC thanks to the issues I've listed above.
Black Ops 2 is a decent game, but it's not a great game. I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone, and would suggest that you either A) Wait for the price to drop B) Buy it on Xbox 360 or PS3 C) Avoid it all together. You won't be missing out on much.
Hope this helps if you're on the fence about Black Ops 2.
Make no mistake, Black Ops 2 is just about the same as the previous iterations of Call of Duty with a futuristic paintjob. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, Call of Duty has gotten a lot of things right, but you can't help but feel "been there, done that" for much of the experience.
SINGLEPLAYER:
The campaign is what you've come to expect, killing hundreds of respawning enemies with a pretty dismal D movie action flick script and a villain who refuses to ever die. The introduction of choices and consequences add some intrigue, and the strike missions can be amusing, but I can't say that it was very memorable. I didn't bother beating it again after one playthrough, which took roughly 6 hours on Veteran difficulty.
MULTIPLAYER:
The weapons and killstreaks are basically the same as they have been in previous Call of Duties. Many of the older weapons are available (An-94, 870 MCS, MTAR) whereas the newer fictional weapons are just remakes of older guns like the M8A1 which is an updated M16 or the KAP-40 pistol which is a remake of the G18. Many of the familiar killstreaks are still here as well, the usual suspects of UAVs, Care packages, sentry guns, RC XDs are still here along with a few new faces like the AGR and Dragonfire drones.
One of my biggest complaints of Black Ops 2, as of 11/27/12, is how poor the weapon balance is in the game. Call of Duty has always been very SMG and Hip-fire friendly, but the amount of prevalence of both in Black Ops is really disheartening.
Hipfiring with an SMG is the way to go in Black Ops 2 if you want to dominate, and I feel I can say this with a an overall combat record KD ratio of +2.0 (I don't say this to brag, I state this so people don't assume I'm bad at the game and that's why I'm complaining). People who take Assault Rifles are punished and will almost always lose a 1v1 engagement in close to mid range against an SMG user. Shotguns have awful range, and without attachments will literally not reach a target further than a few feet away.
The game actually encourages hipfiring in my opinion, which almost always guarantees a kill against a close range target. The nature of weapon recoil in Black Ops 2 is very random and makes it difficult to properly ADS against a moving target, hence why most people avoid this and hipfire which will almost always net a kill if it is within the general vicinity of an enemy. The poor weapon balance will often force you into an SMG class if you want to perform well and punishes players for experimenting.
But this is only a miniscule problem to the elephant in the room of Black Ops 2, Treyarch have abandoned the perfectly functioning server browser of Black Ops 1 and World at War and have replaced it with, you guessed it, matchmaking. The matchmaking is identitical to the one implemented in Modern Warfare 2-3 with the difference being that rather than player hosted it's on Treyarch servers.
With matchmaking you can't choose your own settings, you're forced into games with whateverTreyarch decides. For example Team Deathmatch (my favorite mode personally) is limited to 6v6 and a 75 kill limit, meaning that many times when I got high level streaks like Warthog or Lodestar (which require +10 kills in a row) the game ended 15 seconds afterwards.
Another problem with matchmaking is that I have friends who don't live nearby me, and as a result when we queue as a party we get into a server that is not perfect latency for any of us. We're forced to play with 2-3 bars when playing together (yes, they've also removed latency numbers and replaced them with bars so you never actually know what your ping is).
And of course the worst problem is that no one can ban the racists, the flamers (thank god for the mute botton), and of course the cheaters and the hackers. Yes the cheaters and hackers that plagued MW2 and MW3 are back in full force, I'm talking about people who aim at you behind walls when you have Ghost/Cold blooded and players who go 40-2 headshotting everyone with an LSAT. I would especially not recommend League play to anyone, a mode which Treyarch introduced to be "competitive" but it is already filled with obvious aimbotters and wallhackers. It's not so bad so far in normal mode, but it's getting progressively worse and the game has only been out a few weeks. VAC and the report system are extremely ineffective at getting rid of cheaters, as anyone who has played MW2 and 3 can tell you (I have over 200 hours logged on Modern Warfare 2 and had to quit because of the prevalence of cheaters).
SUMMARY:
Keep in mind that despite all these flaws, Black Ops 2 is a fun game. I wouldn't have logged over 50 hours if I didn't think so. It's basic formula is very addictive and the controls and gameplay are very smooth. The pick 10 class creation system is cool and the scorestreak system is the best in the series in my opinion. But truth be told I doubt I will be playing much longer, and I will definitely NOT be buying any of their DLC thanks to the issues I've listed above.
Black Ops 2 is a decent game, but it's not a great game. I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone, and would suggest that you either A) Wait for the price to drop B) Buy it on Xbox 360 or PS3 C) Avoid it all together. You won't be missing out on much.
Hope this helps if you're on the fence about Black Ops 2.
