back to article Black Ops II to take gamers to open worlds... and destroy them

While confirmation that Call of Duty will return this year with Black Ops II is far from surprising, the fact that developer Treyarch's sequel will be set in the future with a non-linear storyline might refresh the franchise. Revealed this week, Black Ops II is based in the year 2025 and kits players out with hi-tech weapons …

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  1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    SMARTR AI Moves

    Thanks for the Intel, Caleb.

    1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Re: SMARTR AI Moves

      Worried about the competition?

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: SMARTR AI Moves

        To worry is for all opposition, BAG. Competition would Hone and Reinforce/Temper Joint Apps and Ops with Real and Virtual Choices of Consequence.

    2. Ben 42
      Alien

      Re: SMARTR AI Moves

      That's a little creepy. I know a guy named Caleb who worked on the first Black Ops.

  2. Lee Dowling Silver badge

    - "non-linear storyline"

    - new types of vehicles

    - "branching plots"

    - "open-world gameplay"

    - "cleverer AI"

    - "enemies that spawn and react differently according to the attitude a player takes"

    - "greater re-playability"

    I'm betting that it also offers a fully destructible environment, improved physics, more realistic visuals, more accurately-rendered water, and all the other gumph that EVERY FPS (and even other genre) game has claimed to offer for the last two decades.

    Seriously. If every game that had ever claimed those things was actually telling the truth, the cumulative improvements would mean we'd all be sitting in the Matrix by now.

    I'm guessing that the AI still won't suss that I'm sitting in the building that they just saw me run into, waiting to shoot them as they walk through the door one at a time over the pile of their own dead bodies from previous attempts to do just that.

    1. Ragarath
      Holmes

      "Seriously. If every game that had ever claimed those things was actually telling the truth, the cumulative improvements would mean we'd all be sitting in the Matrix by now."

      Ho do you know you are not?

      1. Lee Dowling Silver badge
        Happy

        Whenever I take a pill, nothing happens.

        And there are 7,000,000 "Neo's" online (and isn't he supposed to be "The One"?). And not one of them could use nmap, let alone hack into anything.

        Besides that, no intelligent computer would ever design a world with Boris Johnson as quite a good London Mayor. That would be too crazy, and nobody would ever believe their programming, and they'd "lose entire crops". It'd be like John Major having an affair or something...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What kind of...

    ...battle tank has (what appears to be) its main weapon off-centre, recessed and fixed?

    French?

    1. Silverburn
      Facepalm

      Re: What kind of...

      ...and are we still using tanks in 2025? I thought they were becoming increasingly irrelevant even today.

      Note to self: try to remember it's just a game, not reality. Poetic licence is allowed.

    2. ScottAS2
      Coat

      Re: What kind of...

      *ahem* The M3 Lee/Grant.

    3. Voland's right hand Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: What kind of...

      No, Swedish actually: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stridsvagn_103

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  5. schotness

    Or will it be ?

    The same old, very tired, & now very crappy, game engine, with a new future mod ?

  6. tmTM

    Zombies?

    There better be.

    Here's hoping the single player storyline lasts longer than the usual 5 minutes.

    1. Spearchucker Jones

      Re: Zombies?

      Agreed. And it'd better be like Shi No Numa on Map Pack 2 of World At War, and not that crazy moon shit we saw in Black Ops (although Danny Trejo in Call of the Dead was pretty cool).

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Multiplayer

    Is why the vast majority of buyers go to the COD franchise. After MW3 there is only one thing BLOPS2 needs to do well, sort out the LAG! If they do that, nothing else will matter.

  8. Ironclad
    FAIL

    Bah !

    Deleted my copy of MW3 at the weekend. Got fed up of all the haxors in multi-player.

    With no proper dedicated servers, no votekick option and no sign of the promised Elite option, PC players are shafted with the CoD series.

    Will avoid fervently.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Far Cry 2 already did it

    Please note: This is not a sneer nor an attempt to compare these 2 games with each other. Because that is simply impossible; the only similarity I can think of is that both are FPS games.

    The reason I mention FC2 though is because it has baffled and amazed me how they managed to implement all of the mentioned points above (non linear and fairly intelligent AI) almost /4/ years ago.

    So reading how even bigger names such as CoD are adapting this system can't help me mentioning how games such as FC2 really set a standard. Not bad for a budget game IMO :-) (and I love the flamethrower in that game ;-)).

  10. Scott 19
    FAIL

    Yer Right

    Pull the other one it's just advertising hype, 'non-linear storyline' or mission selects as I still call them. Could be confused is it going to be like GTA sand box enviroment where you can cap a cabbie and nick his wheels?

    The only reason I will buy this is because most of my clan that was on MW3 on-line went back to Black-Ops because the on-line game was far superiour.

    Fail at the PR hype not the game.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The cycle continues.

    Next COD game is announced

    COD fans get excited

    COD fans preorder game

    Game released

    COD fans promise they'll never by another COD game again

    Goto 1

  12. CmdrX3
    Thumb Down

    Shove it right up your proverbial!!!!

    After the last unplayable clusterfuck they released, Treyarch you can [Insert comment title here]. Two copies of BO1 for PC I bought, and for months neither worked correctly to the point I gave up trying. Whether the lag and disconnection issues where eventually sorted I have no clue as I gave up trying and waiting for it to be fixed and it has remained unplayed ever since. I swore then that I would never buy another CoD release again. I didn't buy MW3, and I certainly won't be buying BO2, even more so as Treyarch are again involved in it.

    1. Richard Wharram

      Re: Shove it right up your proverbial!!!!

      Wholeheartedly agree. I pre-ordered Black Ops on Steam (promised to unlock at midnight but didn't until 8am, after the Tesco and Sainsbos lot had been playing for hours.)

      The game barely worked on my Core2 Duo with quite new nVidia gfx (can't remember what now) even though MW2 ran at 100fps+ on the same rig. Asking on the boards just resulted in a load of pricks telling me I should have a proper quad-core 8gig machine or stop whinging. The graphics engine was coded by idiots who wouldn't admit they had done anything wrong.

      Also, I disagree for the most part about the need for dedicated servers (yes, I am an old Q1 and UT player, bear with me.) In MW2 nobody kicked you for jumping or hiding or using smoke or using a 'lame' weapon or a 'lame' perk, or just for killing the admin.

      Bag 'o' shite.

  13. Jediben
    Holmes

    Nostradamus predicts...

    Actually he doesn't but I will:

    Being a Black Ops game, there will be either a flashback or virtual reality representation mission involving the infiltration of a three storey compound within a Middle Eastern country where the protaganist will be deployed to capture or kill a high-value target known to have been evading US forces for ten years. Via a super stealthy ninja helicopter insertion of course.

    This will naturally bear only 'coincidental' resemblance to real people or events.

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