Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 - Page 7

I suppose I can understand them holding back a little bit, but at this point, I'm dying for just a morsel of information on it.

This screen has basically been confirmed real - so you can at least see the killstreak system will be radically different.

There's your morsel.

Nothing concrete, just my speculation from the trailer and pics...so there's hope that Quadrotor could be a higher KS reward than RC/XD.

Black Ops 2 News ‏@BlackOpsIINews

All futuristic gear featured in Black Ops II will be based on technology in development today.

Accept for the assault rifle they show all over the trailer that stopped development 10 years ago.

Nobody said the entire game is ALL futuristic gear.

Sure as hell hope it isn't. This is black ops. Not modern warfare. Man I hope they don't screw this up.

So, does anyone think 3arc will be showing some MP action at E3?? Long shot I guess as activision most likely doesn't want to step on mw3's toes quite yet and considering they have their OWN event (xp) to parade it out.

I'm just dying for details on this game... I'm trying not to get my hopes up again after the mw3 debacle but it's hard not too! Lol! I mean, the situation is quite different as IW was a team splintering apart and then patched together with other teams-- I suppose when you look at it that way it's amazing mw3 was playable at all! (Really, mw3 wasn't bad if you were looking for more modern warfare, namely: more killstreaks, more explosives, more quickscoping, more gadgets and more chaos.) By contrast, 3arc seems to be a team that gets stronger with each release! Sure their games rely heavily on assets that IW has already produced... But at this point BOTH developers are guilty of that! I really feel like black ops was a game they wanted to make and with black ops 2 it feels like they're coming into their own. You watch the interviews and you read the tweets and there's a confidence there that wasn't there before. 3arc was always the 'other' cod developer but now I think they have the chance to become THE cod developer.

Yeah...I have high hopes too. IW/sledgehammer just fixed mw2. Treyarch has the potential to reinvent blops and/or cod. I don't think it'll be drastic, but there will probably be more new ideas in there than in mw3. The problem is that new ideas are untested, and don't always work out as intended. It'll probably turn out great, I just hope they don't go overboard and fix things that werent broken.

Really cool editorial over at ign about some of the opinions of ign's staff in response to some hands on time with the black ops 2 campaign. Initial response is very positive! There was a comment being made that-- outside of cod4-- this was the biggest thematic change in the series thus far and most of the staff really seemed to welcome it as needed change. Good read.

I particularly agree with the one editors opinion that's all the explosions and set pieces are blurring together for me and the result is I just don't care. We'll see but the way mw3 made me forget about it's characters was staggering. Hopefully black ops 2 makes a better run at providing some narrative to all those explosions!

I dunno...I thought blops had a weak campaign by cod standards. MW is definitely everything blowing up and going to hell, with the thinnest of justifications for why you are where you are. But it's big dumb fun and no one even comes close to doing it as well as they do. Blops tried too hard to have a "real" story, had terrible acting and was outrageously anticlimactic. I wasnt even sure who I was playing as in some missions. The whole fight club thing and so many of its story trappings like the prisoners cheering out the steps in the plan to escape...all just SO corny.

I dunno why they feel the need to placate the critics when they're the biggest game in the world. Especially jaded games journalists who are practically professionally obligated to scorn cod for its simplicity. The campaign is already arguably the least important piece of the puzzle. They should just stick to what they're good at and make a ridiculous thrill ride. I know that's not mutually exclusive with a good story, and the occasional non-linear sequence not a big deal...but I just hope they don't take it too far.

COD is the Transformer of the gaming world... long as **** blows up, people will come.

Last I heard. Black Ops had the best Single Player Campaign out of all the COD series to date...

I really dug the original MW but BLOPS had probably my second favorite COD SP story.

thats like saying blops is the smartest kid riding the short bus.

Unfortunately sad but true lol!

I guess the majority of COD fans ride the short bus... Or maybe that explains why COD is so successful to begin with

Gotta disagree with you here. Blops' campaign was good by CoD standards. MW2's campaign was horrible. Worst ever. Mw3 was an improvement but it was still generic and pretty boring overall. At least Blops tried to do something, and they had some interesting set pieces.

MW2 is my favorite.

MW3 was superior on a technical level, and the story was easier to follow...but it just wasn't as fun or memorable as MW2. Defending from the roof of a taco bell, tanks tearing up the suburbs, taking back the white house, nukes going off, all the action movie references. There were no limits. That level of crazy is fun in small doses, and cod campaigns are as small as they get.

The main thing I recall from blops are those awful "what do the numbers mean?!?" interrogation sequences. Also that ridiculous boat sequence set to classic rock. I'm still not sure how self aware they were being about how played out that was.

Still more exciting than your average linear shooter, but I'd rather they have no story than a bad one. They definitely tried harder than mw2...I'll give you that.

I don't think people play these games for the campaign anyways. My friends haven't played the 1st player yet, they just dove in to the multiplayer. MW3 campaign was some mindless fun I gotta admit. With BF3 I didn't even bother playing its campaign since all the reviews trashed it.

Well, I still expect a worthy single player experience out of my CoD-- especially as they're asking me to fork over 60 bucks each year and haven't made a significant improvement to the multiplayer since cod4 (modifications, yes; improvements, no).

Speaking of CoD4, that game had a fantastic campaign! The game actually has a narrative and uses it's set pieces to build tension and draw the player in to the plot instead of just giving them a pretty explosion to stare at. The big 'moment' of the game was undoubtably the nuke going off which not only strengthened your resolve as it kills YOU as a player (despite all the heroics you perform before the blast) but also let you know within the framework of the story what you were up against! One of my most memorable experiences in ANY video game will always be the the final act of CoD4: right as you're infiltrating the Russian nuclear facility and, surprise, a war head launches right before your eyes and the radio chatter heats up and it's ON. The race to the finish in that game is one the most tense and exhilarating moments in gaming-- and the climax, oh man. It's not like CoD will ever be known for It's strong character development but the last minutes of the lives of each of your squad members had weight. I remember thinking to myself: this can't be the way it ends.

CoD4 wasn't just a great shooter it was a great GAME. Personally, I don't have a problem holding ANY developer that slaps the CoD title on their product to that same lofty standard.

Just as an aside: I actually enjoyed the campaign of MW2. While certainly not as nuanced as CoD4 it at least made an attempt to uphold the theme of the first modern warfare and it definitely has it's moments: fighting in an abandoned US suburb, the assault on the capital, the surprise in the gulag and who can forget the betrayal that actually made me say aloud "oh, you're dead mother ****er!" lol! But overall it fails to deliver as cohesive a story as the first game and has several glaring plot holes like: who was the dead guy in the panic room at the crash site? What was the purpose of the abandoned fallout shelter with the presidential seal? And how in the hell did captain Price survive the end of CoD4!? Ultimately an enjoyable sequel that falls short of it's predecessors greatness.

Mw3, on the other hand. Campaign was complete ****. The pacing of the previous games is thrown right out the window. You just skip from one big action set piece to the next with no sense of what you're doing or why you're there. There is no weight to the story at all. Character development is laughably terrible for a series that is mostly recognized for not having much of any character development! Why did we need another character with a connection to the villain's past? Was that really necessary? Wasn't Price's and Soap's desire to end him motivation enough for the plot? Why are we introduced to a whole new squad of rangers when the group from the last game was already (somewhat) established and ready to take the fight to the Russians? And what the hell was up with that ridiculous ending? Jug suits? Really??

I don't know. I wasn't a huge fan of the black ops story but I give them credit at least for trying something different. Yes the ending was bat **** insane but the little plot twist was fun even though it was so telegraphed. I liked the cold war setting and it was fun having ice cube along for the ride!

Agree 100% with Sage, if I drop $60 on a game and it has SP & multi, I'm getting my money out of it. BF3 had a decent enough story no better or worse than any COD. MW3 was far too epic but was cool in ways.

CODs were always little pieces of a whole not the whole. Take the first three games, they occurred in WW2 and had skirmishes. MW3 was the world war. That kind of killed MW3 for me. BLOPS 2 should create a feel like all the CODs through W@W where your in the world war and not so much Michael Bay please. Tone things down to plausible.

Cod4 was great for its time, and had some amazing and original for the time sequences like the sniper stealth mission or the AC-130 mission...but it had no variety whatsoever. It was either done to death middle eastern city or bland eastern european town. Sprinkle in some generic industrial and military environment here or there. The only really interesting environment was Chernobyl. In the end the story was hardly more than a generic save the world just in the nick of time. The characters and story were equally forgettable as any other cod. I mean, are there Gaz fans out there I don't know about?

I havent finished a COD SP campaign and never plan too. I buy the game for one reason.

Noobs.

I'm a Gaz/Ghost fan!

Well, bd, that IS what I liked about mw2 (besides the thankful lack of endless monster spawners) is the variety of environments-- but you EXPECT that in a sequel. And I agree that mw2 was good, I love mw2, but it's clear to me that the team that made those first two games is LONG gone. Mw3 is like a one of those movie sequels where all the major actors are present but the writer and director have long since moved on to new projects. It's more fan fiction then direct sequel.

Mw3 is looking to the past trying to recreate what CoD was. 3arc seems to be taking black ops and looking to the future (pun intended) to see what CoD can be! Everyone on this forum hates change and I can understand that to a certain degree-- but to me, CoD is dangerously close to jumping the shark. Besides this crew more and more of the peeps on my friends list are turning away from CoD because they're burned out or frustrated or just plain bored. Sure CoD is an 800lbs gorilla and sure it sells millions but just like guitar hero it can go from fame to shame awfully quickly!

In other news, I'm super eager to see what respawn can come up with.

I dunno how substantially different MW3 would have been had the original team made it. It was a pretty direct continuation of the tone and direction they set for MW2. Its not like they were going to downscale to a small regional conflict. It was always going to be as grandiose and ridiculous as it turned out. Anything less would have been a derailment. Even if you don't agree that it was a good direction for the series to take, its kind of hard to argue that they didn't succeed with flying colors in what they set out to do. Not everyone has to be on board with the idea, but they deserve respect for pulling it off nonetheless.

Thats ultimately my problem with blops. They didn't really succeed at what they tried to do. They kinda whiffed it. I mean if anything is getting perilously close to jumping the shark, its the zombies thing, like having kennedy and castro spit out ridiculous one liners, or proudly showing off buffy the vampire slayer in their DLC. But even so, it won't be their downfall, because story has never really mattered to cod. As long as they keep the MP tight, and I'm sure they will....they'll be fine.

I'm also eager to see what respawn has in store. Its a poorly kept secret its a sci-fi shooter, so I'm guessing some kind of crazy mash up that looks like Halo and plays like cod. That could be awesome, but seriously.....this needs to not come out in november too. September or February and I'm all in.

How exactly were middle eastern cities done to the death when COD4 came out?

Battlefield 2.

So one game that was released for the PC years ago is done to death? The M16 has been done to death lol

There were plenty more, that's the main one that comes to mind. Cod4 was great cause of it's quality...the setting was still nothing new, even if it was uncharted territory for the series at the time.

Russians parachuting into suburbia and assaulting an occupied white house OTOH...that still stands alone.