By Jake Dobbs

Staff Writer

The newest Call of Duty is out.

“Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is the ninth installment of the very popular Call of Duty video game series. The date is 2025, that alone making it completely different from the rest of the games, being set in the future. But besides that the new developer Treyarch has made is so different from the rest of the Call of Duty games that it’s hard to believe that it is from the same series.
Let’s start off with the campaign. Unlike the previous Call of Duty campaigns, Black Ops 2’s campaign mode is much less linear, meaning you do one thing after another and if you fail you restart from the last checkpoint. If you fail a mission the story goes in one direction, if you pass it a different one. Your actions actually dictate how the story goes, allowing for multiple endings.
Another interesting thing about the story line is that it’s broken into two separate storylines, one in 2025 and the other at the end of the Cold War in the late 1980’s. In the 1980’s story line you play as Alex Mason and as his son David Mason in 2025. It’s interesting that you can play across two different time zones, and that your actions dictate how that story unravels.

Multiplayer has also been heavily changed, and probably for the better. Overall the gameplay seems to be more fluid. Treyarch edited out some of the cheap aspects from previous Call of Duty games. For example the perk ghost allowed players to be invisible to enemy radar, even with a UAV active. Now it only hide the player if he is moving, so the player can’t just camp in one spot, making the game fairer and more enjoyable to play.

They also heavily changed the “Create a Class system” in many ways, allowing you to make a class tailored to your specific demands. They have added a weight system of sorts. Everything weighs one point, whether it is a gun, attachment, even a perk, and you can have a total of 10 weight perks. It adds another degree of customization no other Call of Duty game was able to offer. If you never use lethal grandees you can unequip it and use the extra storage point for something else, like another gun attachment.

There is more than just one new aspect to custom classes. Treyarch has added something completely new, it’s called wild card. They are similar to perks, you equip them to you class and they allow you to do things like have two tier one perks, have two primary weapons, or have a second tactical device instead of a lethal grenade. They add yet another never before seen aspect to the custom classes to have the ability for even more customization.

Yet another way Treyarch has differentiated Black Ops 2 multiplayer from the other Call of Duty games is removing the proverbial kill streak. Yes, say goodbye to the kill streak, and hello to the score streak. They’re basically the same as a killstreak, but instead of getting kills to earn them all you need to do is rack up enough points without dying. Instead of the UAV being three kills to earn it, you need to obtain 300 points by any means: kills, kill assists, etc. It makes it possible for the guy who can barely get a few kills per game the ability to earn streak rewards, making the game a little more balanced.

But what many people are most excited about is the resurrection of the zombies mode, but it’s not the same beast anymore. Treyarch has made it just a zombie game mode, no longer Nazi zombies. The basics are the same, it’s a wave based zombie game in which every wave the zombies get harder. You even still start with the classic m1911 pistol, but there are some major changes. For instance you can now have four players using the same console during the offline mode, and eight online.

And now there is finally more than just one zombie mode. There is the classic zombie mode that everyone knows and a new competitive mode called grief. There are two teams, a max of four on each and your goal is to kill off the other team. Seems easy, but there’s a snag, you can’t shoot them. The only way to kill them is by using the zombies themselves.

There is also a campaign mode now in zombies. The map Tranzit features a bus and that bus takes you to different locations where you fight off seemingly endless hordes of zombies. There are also new things that you can build from parts scattered around the map. For example a shield that blocks enemy attacks and is a one-hit kill. All these additions to the zombie mode makes for a new, refreshing zombie mode almost guaranteed to please any player who tries it.

Overall, Black Ops 2 brings many changes to the Call of Duty series. Treyarch has made a refreshingly new Call of Duty game that makes a great addition to the series, and will most likely influence the next Call of Duty games to come.