Gameplay
The gameplay is probably some of my favorite so far in the Call of Duty franchise. While I find most first person shooters to be somewhat repetitive and they all seem to be the same, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 manages to stand up above the rest. Both storylines have unique quirks about them that make the interesting and kept me playing. Both storylines use modern day weaponry, but they are utilized in very different ways which makes it exciting. In the Alex Mason storyline, you use Molotov cocktails, mortar shells which you bang against your hand and throw, and using melee weapons like machetes and axes. You even get to play as Menendez for a brief bit, who seems to go into a “Hulk like” rage whenever his sister is in danger. You use machete and machine gun to run down enemy after enemy shrugging off bullets as if they are air soft pellets.
David Mason’s story is a bit more modern and you get to use some newer and cooler technology. You and your partner swing across mountains using Nano gloves, you glide through the sky using a wing suit, and you get to use weapons which mark enemies so that they are easily distinguished. Also, most of the weaponry is more advanced. There are EMP grenades, cloaking devices, melee weapons that paralyze (or kill) enemies with a shock, and you even get to fire rockets from the back of horseback. Okay, the last one isn’t the greatest display of use of futuristic technology, but it is still one of the coolest parts about the game!
One new addition to the game is something known as strike force missions. In the new strike force missions, you are set in control of an entire team of units. Before each strike force mission you will be briefed on what the mission is and how it is supposed to play out. The strike force missions are the only ones that brief you on what the objectives are. All of the other missions in the game seem to just drop you in with some story and let you wing it. After a brief tutorial on how to control your squad and take control of specific units, you are dropped into your first strike force mission. Unlike regular missions, these are permanent. If you fail a strike force mission, you do not get to replay it; your success or failure will change the outcome of the storyline and its characters and can lead to many branching different paths and endings. Each mission is also only available for a short amount of time, I have yet to choose not to participate in one, but I am assuming if you do it counts as if you had failed that mission. In addition to the unique mission aspect, there are very many cool toys to play with in strike force missions. You get to take control of UAV’s, jets, and a couple of different robotic unmanned ground vehicles.