Call of Duty: Black Ops II is a first-person shooter video game,
developed by Treyarch and published by Activision (Square Enix for
Japan). It was released on November 13, 2012 for PlayStation 3, Xbox
360, and Microsoft Windows and on
November 18, 2012 in North America, November 30, 2012 in Europe and
Australia. Square-Enix released the game for the Japanese market
on November 22, 2012 for a subbed version. A Japanese voice-dubbed
version will be released separately on December 22, 2012, like how they
did with Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 done in this fashion. for Wii U.[4][5][6] Black Ops II is the ninth game in the Call of Duty franchise of video games and a sequel to the 2010 game Call of Duty: Black Ops. The game was launched at 16,000 stores worldwide at midnight on November 13, 2012.
Black Ops II is the first game in the Call of Duty franchise to feature
future warfare technology and the first to present branching storylines
driven by player choice. It also offers a 3D display option. A
corresponding game, Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified, was released
simultaneously on the PlayStation Vita. Within 24 hours of going on
sale, the game grossed over $500 million, beating 2011's Modern Warfare 3
to become the biggest entertainment launch of all time.. It went on to
sell 7.5 million copies in November 2012, making it the highest grossing
game of the month.
The game is the first in the series to feature significant elements of nonlinear gameplay, most notable multiple endings.
Characters and setting
The single-player campaign features two connected storylines, with the
first set from 1986 to 1989 during the final years of the first Cold
War, and the other set in 2025 during a new Cold War. The protagonist of
Black Ops, Alex Mason returns as the protagonist in the Cold War
section, and chronicles rise to infamy of the game's primary antagonist,
Raul Menendez, a Nicaraguan narco-terrorist and the leader of "Cordis
Die", a populist movement celebrated as the champion of victims of
economic inequality.
The 2025 section of the game features Alex Mason's son David as the
protagonist during a new Cold War between China and the United States.
In this era, war is defined by robotics, cyberwarfare, unmanned
vehicles, and other futuristic technology.
Plot
In the year 2025, a Special Forces unit led by David Mason with his
partner, Harper, arrive at "The Vault", a secret location that is home
to the aged Frank Woods, who they believe has information on the
whereabouts of Raul Menendez. Woods admits that Menendez visited him,
and gives Mason a locket that Menendez had left behind. Woods narrates
all of the 1980s missions to David Mason.
In 1986, Alex Mason has retired from active duty and is living in Alaska with the seven year-old David. Their already strained relationship is put to the test
when Mason is approached by Jason Hudson, seeking to recruit him for a
mission in Angola. Woods' unit has been taken captive while aiding
rebels in the country's civil war, and their actions have been disavowed
by the CIA. Hudson enlists Mason for a covert mission to rescue Woods
and any survivors from his unit, with the help of the Jonas Savimbi, the
leader of the UNITA forces, at war with the MPLA. They discover Woods
is the only survivor. They discover Menendez at a radio among a
contingent of Cubans while attempting sneak into a village in MPLA
territory to contact friendly forces, but are discovered by the enemy,
allowing Menendez to flee. Savimbi returns by helicopter to rescue
Woods, Mason, and Hudson. Woods later reveals to David Mason that that
Menendez was responsible for his captivity.
In light of the events in Angola, Mason and Hudson begin tracking
Menendez, who has set himself up as one of the primary arms suppliers
for conflicts in Africa and Latin America. Later that year, the CIA
tracked down and authorizes a strike against Menendez who was running
guns in Afghanistan where the war between the Soviets and the Mujahideen
took place for his private army. At this point, the story begins to
explore Menendez's motivations and his vendetta against the West. After
he and his sister were accidentally burned in the fire-bombing of a
warehouse as part of an insurance scam, the Menendez family turned to
drug trafficking and built up power and influence throughout Nicaragua.
Their actions did not go unnoticed, and the CIA sanctioned the
assassination of his father. Now knowing that Menendez considers the
conflict to be personal and that he will not back down, the CIA lean on
Panamanian president Manuel Noriega to support a raid on Menendez's home
in Panama. Menendez suffers further tragedy when an enraged Woods
inadvertently kills his sister with a grenade during the raid. Menendez
himself manages to escape due to secret assistance from Noriega.
Menendez plans to retaliate against those he holds responsible for his
sister's death. During the 1989 invasion of Panama, he kidnaps Jason
Hudson and David Mason, using them as bait for a trap. He then uses
Hudson to mislead Woods, manipulating him into shooting Mason instead of
himself. Depending on the player's actions in Afghanistan, it is
implied that Menendez had used moles within the CIA. If the player
disobeys Hudson's instructions to shoot Alex Mason in the head and
instead shoots him in the leg, he will survive and reappear in the
game's ending. In the ensuing chaos, Menendez kills Hudson and cripples
Woods. Unsatisfied with his revenge, Menendez allows Woods and David to
live, promising to return to complete his revenge when the time is
right.
Three decades later, Menendez re-emerges as the leader of Cordis Die, a
massive populist movement with over a billion followers. He stages a
cyberattack that cripples the Chinese Stock Exchange; in response, the
Chinese ban the export of rare earth elements, fermenting the start of a
new Cold War between the Chinese-led Strategic Defense Coalition (SDC)
and the U.S.-led JSOC. Taking advantage of this stand-off, Menendez
attempts to bring the two powers to a full-blown war by inciting
conflicts between the two, secretly aiding SDC leader Chairman
Tian-Zhao, who worked with Mason and Woods during their operation in
Afghanistan in 1986. Using the intelligence provided by Woods, David,
now a Navy SEAL code-named Section, leads JSOC forces in the renewed
search for Menendez.
Shortly after gathering intelligence from Woods, Section and JSOC
infiltrates Myanmar investigating a spike in activity in the region.
There, Section's team encounters a computer engineer under Menendez's employment, warning them of a cyberattack with a Celerium device, a quantum computer
capable of hacking any computer system. Section's team is later
deployed in Pakistan, attempting to gather intelligence on Menendez's
plots. During the infiltration, Menendez discloses the name of a target,
"Karma" in the Cayman Islands. Section and SEAL operatives Harper and Salazar later infiltrate the Cayman Islands,
finding out that "Karma" is a woman named Chloe Lynch, a former
employee of Menendez's shell corporation, Tacitus. Lynch was the main
developer of the Celerium device, and as a means of wrapping up loose
ends, Menendez had deployed mercenaries for her abduction.
JSOC later has a lead on Menendez in Yemen, where JSOC asset Farid infiltrates Menendez's cell to help Section
facilitate the leader's capture. The player, as Farid has a choice
during the mission. Menendez, suspecting Farid's disloyalty, orders him
to shoot the captured Harper. If the player chooses not to shoot Harper,
and instead attempts to shoot Menendez, he fails, but Harper survives
and is rescued. If the player chooses to shoot Harper, Farid survives,
and Harper is not present in any conversations or missions thereafter.
Menendez is successfully captured, but this was a ruse for Menendez to
hack into the U.S. military's computer infrastructure on the aircraft
carrier the U.S.S. Obama, seizing control the the United States' entire
drone fleet. Salazar is revealed to be Menendez's mole within JSOC, and
facilitates Menendez's attack—Menendez escapes with Salazar's aid, and
when Menendez breaks in to the bridge of the Obama, Salazar shoots the
soldiers guarding Admiral Briggs, with Lynch's survival dependent on
Farid's survival in the previous mission. The player, playing as
Menendez, has the choice of either killing or wounding Admiral Briggs.
If the player only wounds Briggs, and during the course of the campaign,
the JSOC and SDC enter an alliance, then the player is later informed
that the SDC sent hundreds of drones to defend the Obama, and
consequently Briggs was able to save the ship and its crew. Menendez
uses the drones to stage an attack on Los Angeles during a meeting of
G20 leaders, hoping to kill them and cause catastrophic damage to the
global economy. Mason escorts the President of the United States to
safety amidst the drone attacks.
JSOC eventually finds the source of the transmissions responsible for
the hacking to Haiti, where Section leads JSOC forces into recapturing
the facility in the final mission, and apprehending or killing Menendez.
There are different endings depending on the actions the player takes
throughout the campaign, such as whether or not the United States and
China are able to enter an alliance with each other, as well as
determining the fates of certain individuals in the game.
During the main campaign, the player may choose to participate in
optional Strike Missions. The Strike Missions involve JSOC attempting to
curb the SDC's global influence by preventing them from forcing
neighboring countries into the alliance. Section himself does not
participate in these missions directly, though he can command the forces
remotely from a command center. If the missions are completed
successfully, the SDC is weakened enough to ally with JSOC, and assists
the player later in the campaign, for example, in sending its own drones
to rescue the U.S.S. Obama.
Gameplay
Strike Force missions
Black Ops II is the first Call of Duty video game to
feature branching storylines, in which the player's choice affects both
the current mission and in turn, the overall course of the story. Known
as "Strike Force missions", these branching storylines appear during
the 2025 storyline and feature permanent death. The success or failure
of these missions can have ramifications for the wider campaign
storyline. Choosing one of the missions locks out the others unless the
player begins a fresh campaign.
Strike Force missions allow the player to control a number of different
war assets, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, jet fighters and robots.
If the player dies in a Strike Force mission, the campaign continues
recording that loss, as opposed to letting the player load a previously
saved checkpoint. The player's progress in the Strike Force missions
may go on to change even the plans of the story's antagonist, Raul
Menendez. By
the end of the game, the player may have changed the results of the new
Cold War, and the player is shown what could have gone differently.
Zombies
Treyarch has confirmed that the Zombies mode will return for Black Ops II with its own campaign. Its predecessors were Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops. This is the third time for the Zombies mode to appear in a Call of Duty
game, and the first time to have its own campaign along with the main
story. Treyarch has also confirmed that Zombies will implement the
multiplayer engine, allowing for a deeper community experience along
with new game modes. It has also been confirmed that the Zombies mode
will support 8 player co-op, unlike Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops,
which only supported 4 player online co-op. Treyarch announced in
August 2012 that Nuketown would be remade as a zombie map for those
buying Hardened or Care Package Edition of Black Ops 2. On September 26,
2012, the Zombies reveal trailer was released as well as three new
game modes confirmed: Tranzit is a game mode that is a combination of
multiple maps in one game and the way to travel around it is to ride on a
bus, Survival is the original mode from Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops where you survive as long as possible, and finally the mode Grief which is 4 players vs 4 players vs zombies.
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