Black Ops II may very well be the biggest embarrassment to the franchise, with terrible visuals and re-used gameplay.
VISUALS: Easily the worst in any Call of Duty, period. The character models and animations are the exact same as previous entries, but the environments just look horrid. Textures are bad, trees and plants look incredibly stiff and don't even move, and explosions are just laughable. During the first couple missions, the game looked like it had a resolution of 240p. I'm not kidding you, the clarity was so bad I thought something was wrong with my TV.
GAMEPLAY: The same exact recycled gameplay I've been playing since 2007. Nothing has changed. NOTHING. Oh, they added a few new optional missions that act similarly to an RTS game. I thought these missions were halfway decent and a nice change of pace to the absolutely boring and horrendous campaign, but they were totally out of place.
The multiplayer on the other hand is where the game gets even worse. It's just too complicated. Too socially connected, trying to get in your face, trying to get more money from you with constant ads of new DLC and microtransactions. What happened to the simplicity and greatness of Modern Warfare, World at War, even MW2? The multiplayer is, as usual, fast-paced, tight, unbalanced, broken, and littered with whiny 12-year olds who spout garbage and gibberish faster than a schizophrenic zombie wired on Mountain Dew. The game introduces new concepts like "unlock tokens" and "wildcards" that are supposed to let you customize your classes to an extreme extent. Now, I'm not gonna lie, the customization is very flexible and its great. I can pay 1 unlock token to buy a wildcard that allows me to have 4 perks instead of 3. Cool. But the gameplay is too broken overall, that these nifty little features are barely redeeming qualities.
Oh, Zombies is back, the saving grace of the Black Ops trilogy (WAW, BO1, BO2). While I personally don't find it as fun as the old maps such as Nacht der Untoten, Kino der Toten, etc. it still is a blast to play if you have 3 friends to play with.
AUDIO: The guns still sound like airsoft guns (maybe worse), the explosions still sound laughable and weak, and the soundtrack is nothing to remember. Voiceacting is decent.
VERDICT:
Buy this game if you enjoy:
- Call of Duty
Play time:
Campaign- 4-5 hours depending on difficulty
Online multiplayer/zombies- Countless hours, if you're patient enough...
Call of Duty: Black Ops II took the franchise to a new low. I fear the disastrous gameplay of the series may be irreversible at this point. Perhaps we will see an improvement when Call of Duty: Ghosts releases this fall for next-gen consoles.