![]() A few neat gadgets and surprising gameplay moments satisfy the novelty quotient, but you still get the lingering feeling that you've done this all before. The campaign ebbs and flows as you move through a variety of diverse, detailed environments using an array of powerful weaponry to dispatch your foes, occasionally hopping into a jet or on to a horse for a short jaunt, or manning a missile turret to tame a swarm of hostile drones. Of course, familiar as it may be, that pacing is still great. Having to consider the bigger picture is a nice change of pace for a series that has mostly involved just shooting what's in front of you, and these missions are a welcome shot in the arm for the familiar campaign pacing. Your AI allies are only good at slightly hindering your enemies, so you end up doing the heavy lifting yourself, often while tracking activity on multiple fronts and hopping around to deal with advancing enemies. Though you can set targets for the team under your command, strike missions are still all about you gunning down foes. Defending installations against enemy assault, escorting a convoy, and rescuing a hostage are some of the endeavors you might undertake. ![]() These stages put you in a squad of soldiers and drones, and then let you choose which asset to control at any given time. You can also see some variance in the available strike missions, which are a new type of campaign level. There's more than one way to explode a boat. There are also mission-specific challenges that give you ancillary goals to complete while you do so, further increasing the replay incentive. Once you've seen the story through, there's a handy rewind feature that lets you play earlier levels in order to see how different paths play out. A few of these moments are sure to give you pause, adding some welcome weight to the proceedings. The main course of the campaign remains constant, but these decisions do affect the fate of some key characters. The conditions of each choice vary and there are only a few of them, but even when you aren't responding to a prompt, you might be making a choice in a dramatic moment that will have consequences later. Press one button to kill a target, the other to let him live. Things get even more intense when you are asked to make a choice. This parallel character development is deftly handled, infusing your missions with undercurrents of curiosity and urgency. In the 2025 missions, you desperately try to avert his catastrophic master plan. During the Cold War missions, you follow Menendez's origin story and rise to power. The narrative reflections of the elderly Frank Woods (a protagonist from Black Ops) weave these two timelines together, but the character that truly drives the story is the villain, Raul Menendez. You jump between two time periods: the present, which is the year 2025, and the past, which spans about a decade during the Cold War. It features the lead characters from the original Call of Duty: Black Ops, and though it references events from the past, a clear narrative thread emerges that is easy to follow. Later cutscenes don't flinch from depicting gory violence, though of all the unpleasant sights you see throughout the story, the playful (and not at all gory) post-credits video might be the most appalling.įortunately, the campaign boasts an engaging story and a lot of entertaining action. Two early scenes linger on people burning alive, and while one ends up contributing to character development, the other is just gratuitous. Sure, it’s a clear copy of the PUBG formula, but the Call of Duty touches add fresh life to the enormous 100-player survival experience.Īll told, it’s a different kind of Call of Duty package than we’ve ever seen before, but that’s ultimately a good thing: it’s the best one in years, and one that will happily keep us playing until next year’s Call of Duty… and maybe beyond, depending on Activision’s next pivot.The ride starts off a bit rough as Black Ops II makes good on its pre-campaign warning of graphic content. But it’s the new Blackout battle royale mode that really stands out. And Zombies mode is bigger and more immersive than ever, if you’re still into the co-op mode. The traditional competitive modes feel a little more approachable than before, with manual healing and other tweaks bringing some welcome change to the formula. ![]() Instead, Treyarch’s latest focuses on improving and enhancing the familiar multiplayer core of the franchise while adding in a vast, new experience. True, Black Ops 4 doesn’t have the cinematic, narrative-driven tale to anchor the package, but it’s been years since the last truly memorable one of those. Eliminating the single-player campaign from the Call of Duty experience is such a huge, fundamental change to what we know and expect from the series.
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