COD Black Ops 2 Discussion Thread

LOL, am I serious? Yes. But you misquoted me. I never said "endearing moments." I said "endearing and memorable characters." It's a fact. Many people find Gaz, Soap, Ghost and of course Captain Price, memorable and endearing. There was a big to do over whether or not Ghost was Gaz (and people really dug the skull face knit mask). Capt Price is a mainstay from the WWII iteration of the game that was fun for a lot of people. The story lines, while like an 80's action movie, is enjoyed by most. And not just the prepubescent boys you're referring to. The game series demographic skews heavily in teen to 40's male demographic. They love it enough to make them super best sellers year in, year out.

Which is why it's funny to me to see people make nonsensical conspiracy theories about why the reviewers ratings for the games are so high. The reviewers, if you read the reviews, understand the demographic that they cater to. These are wildly popular games that deliver what the majority of people want.

If they were so terrible, two things would happen; the reviewers would rate them lower and the sales for each subsequent iteration would steadily decline. The opposite is what is occurring.

Those who dislike the series are like people who listen exclusively to Jazz and/or Classical music. They tend to be quite down on pop music. Viewing pop artists as talentless hacks. Which in many cases, is true. But so what? Pop music is popular for a reason. It's palatable, fun, catchy and very easy to digest. Like the COD series.

Here's a funny thing about pop music... after a while, some of it is considered, "classic."

Anyway, you know the simple rule. Don't like it, don't buy it. I don't like them enough to pay the retail, early adopter price. When they get to below $20, I think it's about right for what these games deliver. Closer to $10 and I have ZERO buyers remorse.

 

My issue is not that they rated MOH lower than CoD. It's that the continue to slam games for being overly scripted rail shooters and then rate CoD games 9+ out of 10.

 

Comon. I liked their British/Scottish accents as much as anyone... but I mean Pulp Fiction had memorable characters, Half-life had memorable characters. Even Halo had memorable characters - we knew about them, their backgrounds, and there were certain traits about them that made them instantly identifiable. This is completely absent in the CoD series. I don't get what made Ghost cool (he was clearly NOT Gaz, I believe this was later confirmed by a comic series). We knew nothing about him - just that he was British and wore a mask with a skull on it. How does that make him a memorable character?

I don't get your analogy to pop music. Its a ridiculously broad term. Lots of 'popular' artists achieved universal following very early in their careers and sustained it - think of Michael Jackson. I thought you were referring to the sort of bubblegum music, which I think is an appropriate comparison to Call of Duty. Despite their games achieving similar 'universal' acclaim people stop playing them and hence chase after the new release the next year (this is why the market exists for them - if all their games were so good, people would still be playing MW3 or w/ever). I bought MW3 for PC, and the scene died like 2 months following release.

The only character that was somewhat memorable (I agree) is Price - and only because we had been following him for so freaking long. Even then we know nothing really about him. Thinking back the only thing I really remember about him is that he likes to smoke cigars which is such a cliche'd soldier trait. However, it makes little sense how Price is still running and gunning in his late 60's/70's (and is still only a Captain)

I just dislike how IW/Treyarch have adopted this mentality to churn out games. And its clearly having a big effect on the quality of other military shooters (and other game genres!) being made as other developers ape call of duty because thats what the reviewers and ultimately the $$$ follow - and this is what concerns me, as the series has had a huge impact on other developers (think BF3 and what we know about its successor BF4).

 

I don't believe reviewers are "paid off" to give COD high reviews, but I do believe they aren't being objective when they score MOH a 4 and COD a 9. Their main profits are from ad revenue, and the more viewers they have on their websites, the more profitable they are. They purposely hype COD games because it's good for their business, and they're too afraid to give an honest, objective review that would send the fanboys into a blind rage against their websites.

Maybe BLOPS2 is a better game than Warfighter, but it sure as hell isn't twice as good. The main objective difference between them is their graphics engines, and MOH beats COD outright in that category. They both play extremely similarly, they both have similar multiplayer setups, and they both cater to the same demographics, but MOH gets called "derivative," while COD is praised for raising the bar.

Like I said, I'm sure the case can be made that Black Ops 2 is a better game, but not by the ridiculously massive margin that their Metacritic scores show. It's total hypocrisy and pandering toward the larger fanbase to trash MOH and give COD a 9.

 

There's been several cases of reviews being paid to review things (in this case games) better... google around MaximumPC hi

 

When are reviewers of anything ever truly objective? They all have their own personal biases. Be it music reviewers, book reviewers, movie, games, etc. Nature of the beast.

MOH's decline and attitudes towards it go back to the first WWII COD and how it was better in many regards than the WWII MOH games. Fast forward to the present, and MOH's main failure is touting itself to be more realistic and "authentic" while ending up as just another action movie style FP shooter. They truly did fail to deliver what they promise or at least suggest with their marketing materials. Does that make it half as good as COD:BO2? Nope. But failing twice to deliver what they tout as being more authentic and realistic does deserve a bit of a slap down. Even so, I enjoyed the 1st one and I'm likely to enjoy the second.

And on sending fanboys into a blind rage, well yes, disparaging the game would do that. But if so many people like the COD series making them among the most bought games in history, they must be doing something right. Whatever that is. So really, what do critics have to gain by lambasting the series for lambasting sake? Who's to say an objective assessment necessarily means that the game must be "trashed?"

Perhaps the makers of MOH need to step up their game a bit and figure out exactly what makes the COD so wildly popular and cater to it all the while adding a "pro" difficulty level for players looking for a bit more "realism." Or some such. But yes, it shouldn't be rated as half as good in spite of its failure to deliver on what was promised.

 

The main complaints against I saw against MOH in the reviews were that it was derivative and failed to add anything new to the genre, not that it failed to deliver on its promise of authenticity. Actually, I do remember reviewers saying it didn't deliver the emotional story of loss and sacrifice that the devs had promised, but it's a little different. My point is this: if they both have similar mechanics, similar gameplay, similar multiplayer, similar settings, etc, how is one of them derivative and the other one evolutionary? I know that MOH jumped the modern setting bandwagon after COD4, but that doesn't mean it should be bashed for not adding enough to the genre while COD makes pretty much the same game every other year. And while I agree that no review can be totally objective and personal opinion plays a large part in the review process, it still doesn't make sense for one series to be acclaimed while the other (better looking ) series gets slammed across the board.

And I agree with your point that MOH failed to deliver a realistic shooter, I find both BF3 and MOH to feel a lot more grounded in their approach to set-pieces and story. There are no 600 foot snowmobile jumps, nearly-invincible uber soldiers with heavy armor plating, or as much "hollywood style" action in MOH as there is in COD. It's been a long time since I've played a COD, so my examples could be better lol.

 

Yes, they are not saying it in so many words but their disappointment stems from what would be expected with the Devs of MOH consulting real world operators and their tactics.

It makes sense when MOH is touted as being one thing, yet being another and not living up to what it's touted as. But agreed that it shouldn't result in a rating that is half as good.

LOL, nope COD is still the same. But I think that's what the people dig. I get a kick out of it when I'm looking for some mindless fun and cheap thrills and laughs. I still like the intro to the first COD MW best... "Our so called leaders, prostituted us to the West..." and "50 thousand people used to live here, now it's a ghost town."

As for Black Ops1, the cut scenes when Mason is in the interrogation room made me LOL a number of times. The whole disguised deep voice thing, a throwback to the 70's and 80's, was a hoot. And the one scene when Mason meets up with Woods in Vietnam and the CIA agent introduces himself. The way Woods looks quickly at the CIA agent and then dead faces Mason said it all. Reminds me of when I was in Haiti 2 summer's ago and a UN rep showed up in our mission to advise us of the "issues" with the Cholera outbreak. We all dead faced each other as we just buried 3 people that morning.

 

People people, calm down, they both suck.

 

Everything sucks. But every now and again, you have to skim off the cream of the crap and have a blast.

 

Still, a turd is a turd .

 

Though, some turds are quite useful and beneficial. Take guano for instance...

 

But it's still a piece of turd. Pee can also be beneficial, but in the end it's still pee.
So far I'm liking which direction this thread has taken.

 

Speaking of pee, a group of enterprising young African girls invented a generator that can run on pee. Pee power! African teens create urine-fueled generator | Crave - CNET

So much for pee still being just pee. Now it's a fuel source. In the end, pee may be the true meaning of life. 42 liters worth of it at a minimum.

All a matter of perspective....

 

I see what you've did there.

 

True, but it does exemplify the sad state of the honesty, and integrity of these reviewers/journalists. It seems to me they are not writing in the interest of their readers, must be for someone else. What is really weird is that most games have a range of reception. For example, Witcher 2 was well liked by some, but then others smashed it calling it too hard, too much of a chore and not fun etc. But here, we can see it's nearly across the board, and to me, that's just really bizarre. You have gamers who play the game saying the SP is great, exhilerating the best driving/shooting scene ever in a game, and the MP solving many issues of BF3 etc... And then you have reviewers calling it garbage. And it's not just mainstream, we got even TotalBiscuit doing it, and he generally likes every game, as long as the developers join him for an interview or early alpha access.

Just saying, I'm very disappointed by this and it's seems to be getting harder finding a source that can be trusted to actually do a good review, rather than just promotional fud.

Agreed, it is funny and glad you had a laugh. But clearly can see my the emphasis wasn't about dissecting Blop Crap 2 and calling it ridiculous and then giving it a rating of 4/10 like the dishonest reviewers have.

Not because I disagree with their opinion. If they gave Blop Crud 2 and MOH both terrible reviews for being too linear, too scripted and not innovating enough, fine by me. As we know, this did not happen, one game was deemed to be nearly perfect and another was trashed.

But this is what we do know. Reviewers when reviewing BF3 had some complaints about hit detection, the web browser battlelog. Then gamers complained about the blue tint. EA releases MOH that fixes the hit detection, integrated battlelog in game and removed the blue tint. This game gets a 4/10. OK...

Reviewers over the years have the same complaints about COD. Graphics crud, PC support crud, not innovative, more of the same crap, too scripted, too linear, etc etc. But they always say MP is still fun and exhilierating so therefore it gets a 9/10. Whatever. So Activision year after year ignores the complaints, ignores the constructive criticisms, release the same crap over and over, and even make excuses why they continue to use an engine nearly unchanged since 2005, and get nearly a perfect score? IMO any other critic, reviewer of anything else would score the next generation if it made the same mistakes, even harsher. A car that continuously has sub-par safety, maybe getting an average score first round, second time? Hope not, probably get punished for making the same mistake.

That's what I'm disappointed about here. These are both games. I really don't care if you thought MOH was supposed to be like a sim, even though all the trailers for the game and it's targeted demographic suggested it would be a modern shooter arcade fun, not let's learn to be special forces and witness see what it's like and feel to cut someone's jugular and hear him scream, and gurgle and experience PTSD while holding our squad mate's leg to try and keep from bleeding out from femoral artery.

As for credibility, yeah I do think they lost it. They are writing to us gamers, to help us judge what game to play and decide whether we would like it. It doesn't seem to me they did their job, or wrote in our best interest. Someone else's interest. Would be a shame if everyone behaved that way. Even food critics are held to a standard.

 

Best FPS single player I have played has to be BC2. The characters were great, the story made sense, and it just flowed well. COD campaigns just aren't very fun for me. They seem boring and repeat the same thing every year. And I have played through every campaign since COD4,

 

I'd be happy if they sold the COD games without SP at a discounted rate. I don't think I've played past the first 3 minutes on any of them, but played tons of hours of MP. Didn't like MW3 MP though. BO2 is fun so far, but I'll see. I like BO because I had 1 server I played on mostly and maybe 2 others that were all great. BO2 is already feeling like XBOX...loud mouth kids doing things just to annoy people...foul language and racial slurs from the internet tough guys.

 

Just saying when you design a game that rewards for being a troll, kill steals, lone wolf style to get kill streak rewards, you're not going to attract gamers who want to play as a team, and be mature enough to communicate without being a jerk. It's a game for immature kids to brag, I prestiged, you didn't, I have blah blah class skills, and I've gotten MOAB this many times. Ooo, look at me, you all suck. Pfft.

 

Wow, some of you are, IMHO, way over analyzing. It's just a video game...

 

Thread is TL;DR, but I really like this game, especially when compared to MW3.

 

Campaign wise, both MW/BO is very close.

But Treyarch's effort to graphics and multiplayer is better.

 

This discussion has just become a trying to trash COD. Its not that its the same thing its just them giving what their fans want each year adding little systems to the game and different maps to make the game feel fresh again. Sure there are tons of annoying little kids on their just mute them problem solved. You have to realize its a business they want to make money and they make a lot with COD why not run with it as much as you can and make as much as you can. Most of the fans don't care too much about sp anyways its just a small part of cod. Yes there are way more better campaign games. However i would like to see them put more effort into their maps though or even give the fans old maps from the old games to transfer over because it does get boring playing 4 mp maps on a mp game and then have to pay to get a few more all the time. Some of the old maps in the older games are awesome and so well setup they would be awesome to play again to freshen up the multiplayer

 

LOL. Critics held to a standard? Which standard would that be?

Anyway, looks like the critics are correct in their assessments in that according to your first sentence above, they are indeed recommending a game people will like. Sales of this series has been steadily climbing and setting records with each iteration. Obviously the devs of this series must be doing something right.

So ultimately it comes down to you simply disagreeing with the critics. Fair enough. I often disagree with them myself. But I'm not going to come up with a conspiracy theory or call them out on lacking some sort of credibility in an attempt to justify my disagreement. I simply caulk it up to having different tastes than the mainstream from time to time.

 

Il admit i have hated every Call of Duty game since after CoD4: Modern Warfare but i choose to give CoD: Black Ops 2 the benefit of the doubt, same as with MoH: Warfighter.

Singleplayer is decent but not amazing, partly because its hard to follow.
Do like the "Modern" modern settings on some of the levels and i do appreciate the new RTSish extra missions.

Zombies is what you would expect, it plays very similar to that of Killing Floor but the meat of the game is its multiplayer.
So far i have encountered very few kiddies, as players behave and GG after the round is done.
Not much network lag as well since i matchmake with the closest players.

The new scorestreaks as well as the weapons in the game so far are well balanced and i have yet to find a OP combo.
Personally i use a silenced Five Seven pistol with some perks, it can even do some long range kills if i go to iron sights.

 

I think nowadays people just expect too much from every new thing that comes out. What more can they really add that's not already there? I don't exactly like the fact that they're releasing a new COD every year, but if it works and they're making more and more money from it, why would they stop?

 

Lol at the people arguing over games they haven't even played, have you guys considered that it might be a good idea to play a game to get an opinion about it rather than just blindly following what other people say about it

 

i was on the fence with this game at first until tonight. nuketown 2025 is awesome and im at last getting the highest score in a few games.

 

No useful information here it seems...

 

well im really turned off by how the aim down the sights doesnt automatically toggle off..

 

Under Settings > Controls you can set bind regular ADS to the mouse button instead of Toggle ADS.

 

Thinking of buying it but don't really know how good the multiplayer is. What do you guys think of the multiplayer? Any dedicated server yet?

 

Well, to be fair, if the games were free you would have a point - a leg to stand on as it were. But since they are not free, hulawafu's point is that it's the reviewer's job to give you their opinion as to whether or not a game is worth buying in the first place. That point is valid.

Drilling down his argument further, he finds it disingenuous for the collective review of the game (COD:BO2) relative to its direct competitor (MOH:warfighter) is unfairly skewed towards COD:BO2 even though both games provide a familiar and similar gaming experience. That's a valid observation.

His reasoning as to why that is the case remains unsubstantiated and is highly speculative.

 

So I managed to steal my friend's console copy for a day and play through SP and some zombies. SP was okay (remember I am comparing to similar shooters, not the best SP games like Crysis/Half-life etc). Lasted me ~5 hours or so and it kept me engaged most of that. I LOVED the first mission set in the future in Burma. They had this Daft-Punk style track going in the background and the environment felt very DeusEx/Syndicate-y. Unfortunately the cool things they implemented, like the Mission Impossible style grip gloves and built in glider suit was NEVER used again in the campaign. Even then, I winced at how unbelievably scripted the sequences were. I landed slightly to the left of the original landing point and the game immediately ended saying I didn't land in the correct area. Even when navigating the environment I would frequently hit invisible walls that would impede progress (in attempts to flank the enemy) - very frustrating.

Treyarch tried to implement what I felt was ultimately the illusion of choice - specific points of gameplay that would impact story etc. Having completed them, I have little encouragement to really go back and try another 'choice -' it simply wasn't engaging enough. The ability to pick weapons/perks before a mission is cool, but hardly revolutionary.

The story itself was very convoluted. I actually watched all the cutscenes, but it made little sense. The grand politics that play out was laughably outrageous and stupid.

Strike Force missions - you get to play about 4 or 5 of these. The control scheme is clumsy to use and worst of all your AI team-mates are the worse soldiers in the world. Often they don't end up in the right place and get slaughtered easily, forcing you to take control of one of them and go gung-ho in an attempt to salvage the mission.

You really don't feel being in the "future" much... you get to put on an invisibility suit once but they don't implement any real mechanics behind it. All the weapons are similarly uninspiring and work no different to what you'd expect. There was a Halo-style fletchette gun (think needler) as well as this stupid sniper rifle that you could hold a button to vary penetration depth. Yeah, that didn't make sense to me either.

Overall, its OK, but I wouldn't recommend a full price purchase. Unfortunately Cod games never go on special easily so you might be waiting for the next one to come out (LOL) before this one drops its price. If you love CoD multiplayer and all it entails, it might be worth getting. Zombies and split screen on console is ALWAYS fun. SP is mindless and unfortunately not as good as it should be.

My 2c

 

im playing nuketown 2025 all the time now and loving it. im getting top score of almost every other game on this map but when i play any of the others im getting my well and truly killed with a crap score each time.
im still using the original guns you first get when you start the game and ive hardly used any unlocks,think ive got about 25 to use. i will save the upgrades for when i go back to normal maps.

 

Oh my gawd, how dare they! Still haven't played TW2 (waiting for it to hit the "rock bottom ), but TW1 was the best RPG I have played in a long time, IMO no modern Bioware RPG comes even close.

Here you go, it's Russian though. MOH:W got 63 from them, while Black Crap 2 scored only 60.

 

ive got both and i prefer blops2

 

I can't even get the bug ridden heap of steaming dung to work properly. This is by far the most unoptimised badly programmed game yet. I can only play zombies and even then I get the connection error because their are root all
dedicated servers because treyarch are too busy spending the 500 million on new cars and yatchs and marketing and not releasing a proper game just a heap of crap.

 

OMG! the knobheads have only removed nuketown 2025 from the games menu. there is uproar on the steam forum.

think that will bring a smile to the faces of the haters on here.

 

No dedicated server.

15 minutes of waiting to connect to a server if it does work.

Must... Not... Flip... Table...

 

really, strange as i never had a problem with sever connection. not played since before crimbo. will have a go tonight.
and for the first time ever out of the cod franchise my nat was on moderate while all the other games have always been on strict.

 

Nope, still on strict here. /:

 

Still too expensive.

 

Buy a disc copy like I did

$50 and it came with Nuketown 2025

 

Still way too expensive! On average, I believe my games cost $5-7.

 

/:

That's not possible

 

I know, it's amazing right? Only buy when you see 75%, Steam bundles, Humble Bundles and lookout for cheap cd keys. I'll wait until I can pickup Blops 2 for $15. It's not worth anymore.

 

In case of COD - yes.

 

Just curious, how many of you paid $50 for a bunch of maps?

 

no chance. ive always bought the dlc's but no more. hardly playing the game now. ive played all the games but have to admit when a new crysis is released i play that much more. me off to crysis 3 beta now, bye