Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Is Nearly Here, So Bookmark This Post and Stay Caught Up

This isn't everything we know about Call of Duty Black Ops 2 but it's a nice collection (with video) so you can get a good fix on what's most important all in one convenient place. Watch these trailers and you'll be excited all over again.The Beginning

Our first look at what Call of Duty Black Ops 2 was going to be about and the vision Treyarch was bringing us was expected yet surprising at the same time. The 1960s setting for the original Black Ops game was the first successful game to address the Cold War era and so the fact that Black Ops 2 is touching the future and the past somehow is mindblowing. Since then we've seen that the 2025-era in Black Ops 2 will be heavily influencing the multiplayer component; so we might want to refer to this game as Call of Duty Future Ops instead.

The Bad Guy

The enemies in this Call of Duty game are some bad dudes who have somehow usurped control of America's high tech weaponry. Since it's the future, of course, the weapons are now cool flying quadrotor autocannons and walking dog-tanks.You can't just let anybody run around controlling those. The bad guys trailer took us a bit deeper into the plot and from the destruction of Los Angeles to the on-rails vehicle missions, there's plenty to do in Black Ops 2.

Multiplayer - What Really Matters

I'm that guy who doesn't play Call of Duty's single player game until way after it comes out. I'm not good enough to let all of those hardcore players get a headstart on me in the multiplayer games so on Day 1 I like to be right there with them. Getting shot in the face and eating grenades the first week of a game's availability is somehow better than having all that happen to me a month later. Go figure. This is the first time we see new gadgets and weapons like the Guardian turret. We found out later that this turret is devastating when used properly. A disciplined team will be able to control a map with those things and will force the opponent to always have an anti-Guardian loadout available. It's that important.

Multiplayer - Real Gameplay

We had a chance to get some hours in on Black Ops 2's multiplayer games ourselves and the Pick 10 system is a huge evolution for this franchise. The flexibility we'll have now in customizing our loadouts will make the unlocking process far more exciting and personal. I was a fan of what the first Black Ops game did in having us spend in-game currency to get the weapons we wanted --and only the one we wanted. With Pick 10 now we'll have ways to deploy only the weapons, attachments and perks we want to the exclusion of everything else. Your playstyle can be supported by a custom loadout that does exactly what you want and nothing else. If you're a rush type player who's into capping flags, you don't have to waste your time with perks that don't support that style. You can forego secondary weapons completely and make sure your guy is fast, stealthy and can run forever if you work the Pick 10 system correctly. This level of customization is an example something great that I didn't even know I wanted in the next Call of Duty game. And I'm not even touching on the theater or brand new scorestreak system.

Zombies

Zombies has grown into a powerful piece of the Call of Duty puzzle and the inclusion of a full-fledged story mode that supports four player cooperative play should make zombie fans happy. Personally, I saw the inclusion of Zombies in the last Black Ops game as a distraction from the skills I needed to develop in multiplayer. Getting good at shooting waves of soulless enemies can be fun but I'm already diluting my CoD time with the campaign mode's A.I. battles. If I've got a couple of hours to play, I want it to be spent unlocking cool stuff for my Pick 10 tinkering obsession. Now, if they're going to give me zombie Ronald Reagan and/or zombie Qaddafi --there is supposed to be an early 1980s segment to Black Ops 2-- then I might give Zombies a second look.