Before we start, I just want you all to know one thing: I’m
not your typical Call of Duty fan. After Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, I kind
of lost the hype of the franchise on a personal level. But after today’s
meeting with the infamous David Vonderhaar, Call of Duty Black Ops II’s lead
designer, a lot of stuff changed my mind completely.
For the Black Ops II’s team, it was really important for them to
challenge all of the fundamental assumptions and core gameplay systems in the
game, bringing Treyarch first ever sequel. But just because it’s a sequel,
doesn’t mean that they are going to simply refresh everything, and recycle, in order to bring a nice fresh new multiplayer.
The Class menu has been totally overhauled, with a new grid
layout, bringing a clean visual representation of everything that you have in
your class and all its categories.
Everything is visual, now pushing you to browse through the
weapons, as you scroll left or right, or pick the category you scroll up or
down. There’s so many option that class build needs to be a perfect browsing
interface, as if we are going shopping.
This elaborate system works on the concept of pick 10: every
loadout you build has ten slots for ten different elements, including the main
weapon, secondary, attachment and etc. But the difference between this and
conventional Call of Duty class building is that it is not limited to a certain
pattern, and you can choose to not carry any grenades at all and put more perks
for example.
Wildcards are also a new addition in the game, as the name
implies, it breaks the rules of the pick 10 class building system. For example,
the limit of having attachment on a primary weapon is two, which will cost you
three of the Pick 10 Class slots. With a wildcard, you can increase the attachment
number by four! Imagine an AN-94 with a red scope, grenade launcher, laser
sight and bipod. Crazy huh?
Attachments such as laser sight are actually showable now in
the field, meaning you can see your opponent’s weapon as it is. Lets say
someone is playing well against you, and is shooting with hip fire, you will
know and see that this opponent is using a laser sight so you can now visualize
the game better.
Score streaks are the new kill streaks in black ops 2. But
it’s not a mere change of title, as the score streak can give you up to 21 new
awards and will give you Call of Duty points in the game, instead of XP. Lets
say in capture the flag, when u run and grab the flag u get 100 flag grab score,
250 points for a flag carry kill, and another 150 when you reach your own flag.
All these points fill up your meters and lets u know which awards you get, as every
score streak has a score requirement and there’s not mutual exclusivity,
meaning, if you reach to the last scorestreak award, you can still use the one
underneath it.
Black Ops II is also going back to its roots for a maximum
level of 55 rank and 10 levels of prestige, but its very important to make a
distinction between score and experience, as the latter are part of medals you’ll
see pop up in the center of your screen when you do something cool like head
shots, aftermath kills and etc… The more you climb the ladder, and the more
content there will be to unlock, with over 100 pieces of content in creative
class but only 55 levels, so if you actually want to unlock everything in Black
Ops II multiplayer you will have an incentive to prestige because things don’t wont make you rest.
For the first time black ops supports multi team formats,
COD is always known to be a two team game, or every man for himself, but with
multi team deathmatch you can have a 4v4v4,
3v3v3v3, 2v2v2v2v2, or any combination that fits . If you want you could
have 6 factions at a time in a single game! It’s not about red and blue anymore,
as these are actually character models, with different faces, animation and
gears, fully rendered, giving you a very intense match.
Now the biggest news about Call of Duty Black Ops II is the
full implementation of e-Sports inside the game. Yes, my friend, you won’t need
a capturing card, a mixer for the casters, or even a private network, because
all this is found in the game.
The score panel is in picture-in-picture mode; where a
caster can check how many kills you got and how many kills your friends and
enemy have as well, being able to switch to a better part of the action. Think
about the possibility of being able to cast your friend’s game from your home,
with even showing picture-in-picture video of yourself with optional USB
cameras.
Intrigued about all this, and jumping in my place, I asked Vonderhaar
if all he said about e-sport being built inside the game? From streaming, to
casting and without the need for extra features, I couldn’t believe it at all.
Why no one thought about it before in the console industry? But how will stream?
Is it linked to famously known Twitch.TV? Well my friend, we’ll know more about
it in the following weeks, as we get closer to the launch of Call of Duty:
Black Ops II.
Ozimandus has been reviewing games and gadgets since 2003. He's not afraid of speaking his mind, and loves to share his love of everything geeky.