the bblog

cod blops 2

So like any other good drone, I've been watching the E3 presentations, which also means I saw the pretty bland gameplay demo for Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2.

If you watch that trailer, which you shouldn't, you'll get the basic gist, which is that it's 2025, the Army is 50% drones, but surprise surprise, the Russians or someone hacks them, and now you gotta shoot them with bullets. Despite the premise, the gameplay demo showed the player shooting a lot of foreigners with various gadgets. So, a typical Modern Warfare game, like the last five COD games.

This actually a neat premise, kinda like the EMP level from MW2, which they're bungling pretty badly. Here's what it should be like:

First level: Typical hand-holding level. You still have all your fancy gadgets, and are on a mission in Columbia or something, killing the natives. Game makes a bunch of imperialism and "gosh with all this modern weaponry we have, it's like we're on easy mode!" jokes.

Second level: Oh no, we've been hacked! Bad news, Mason: the new guns don't work either. We'll have to use these WW2 museum pieces... the same guns from Call Of Duty 1!

Third level: Old West guns!

Fouth level: The robot factory! You've got to make it to the control room to shut down the production line, or else you'll be hit by endless waves of combat robots coming right off the conveyor belt.

(Explaining the joke: this is how combat works in every CoD game, endlessly respawning enemies that constantly come at you until you hit a checkpoint.)

Fifth level: We're out of ammo... we'll have to use swords! Sudden genre shift!

Sixth level: The hackers are hosting C3 inside a WoW-clone! Mason, take this level 60 warrior we bought off a Chinese gold farmer, and go kill them. Another sudden genre shift!

Seventh level: I don't know. The last five games have ended with killing the viewpoint character, and I don't know how to one-up that.