Call of Duty: Black Ops II:
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 and December 20, 2012 in Japan for Wii U. The game was launched at 16,000 stores worldwide 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.
Main Plot:
The single-player campaign features two connected storylines, with one set in the 1970s through 1980s and the other in 2025. The protagonist of Black Ops, Alex Mason(first appear in Call of Duty: Black Ops) 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 champions of victims of economic inequality.
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| Alex Mason |
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| Raul Menendez |
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, cyber warfare, unmanned vehicles, and other futuristic technology. In the year 2025, a Special Forces unit led by David Mason 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 had visited him, and gives Mason a locket that Menendez had left behind.
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 Angolan forces. They discover Menendez is responsible for Woods' captivity and attempt to confront him, only for Menendez to give away their position to incoming enemy forces, allowing him to flee.
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| Jason Hudson |
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| Frank Woods |
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. Locating him in Afghanistan, the CIA authorizes a strike against him. 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 Woods inadvertently kills his sister 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, using them as bait for a trap. He then uses Hudson to mislead Woods, manipulating him into shooting Mason instead of himself. Menendez then executes 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 cyber-attack 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 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.
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| David |
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 cyber-attack 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. However, Menendez's capture was a ruse for Menendez to hack into the U.S. military's computer infrastructure on-board the aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Obama, seizing control of the United States' entire drone fleet. Salazar is revealed to be Menendez's mole within JSOC, and facilitates Menendez's attack before Section and JSOC forces repel the attack. The aftermath relocates Section to Los Angeles, where he 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, and apprehending or killing Menendez. Depending on the actions taken by the player, the final outcome of the game's ending is influenced, 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 an alliance. Section himself does not participate in these missions directly, though he can command the forces remotely from a command center.
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 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.
