About two month ago I bought the just release game “Black Ops II”, the latest release in “The Call for Duty” series. I heard great things about it, so I wanted to try it.
But sadly for some reason the game didn’t run on my computer (gave all kind of weird errors). My computer is way above the minimum requirements, so that was not the problem. I really have to say that the support of Activision (the company behind the game) sucks. They handled my support requests really poorly.
Anyway, about two weeks ago an update for my graphics card and for the game itself were released. So I really cannot day which update solved my problems (most likely both updates did). I could play the game and I have to admit, I liked it.
I knew that Marissa, Marion’s niece who also loves to play computer ganes, wanted to play online with a group of people she knew well. I thought that “Black Ops II” was the opportunity for that. But more about that later. Let’s first have a look at “Black Ops II” itself.
“Black Ops 2” takes us to the year 2025 and gives us a preview of future warfare where drones and computer-controlled weapon-systems are an important part of the fighting forces. But humans are still essential to make the difference.
The games has 3 ways to pay the game. The first is the solo game. Here you are David Manson, who leads the US Special Forces. The story, including flash backs to the past, tells about the attempts of Manson to stop Raul Menendez, who plans an cyber attack on the US. The story is fun to play with many unexpected plots. The storyline of Call of Duty: Black Ops II has several endings, depending on which conditions the player fulfills over the course of the game.
The second way is “Zombies” where you simply said have to fight zombies. Kill them before you they kill you.
The third way is of course online multi-player, which support all well known options as Death Match, Team Death Match, Capture the Flag, Domination and so on and on.
Is “Black Ops II” a violent game? Yes, I have to say it is. I would not recommend for young children to play it (it is rated for an age of 18+). After all there is lot of killing going around in the game.
But is it too violent? No, I don’t think so. I rate it on the same level as games as Unreal Tournament.
And no, I don’t think computer games have a (bad) influence op people. If that would be the case, more of 50% of the Facebook users would be now a farmer :P.
But as said, I liked Marissa’s idea of doing something with people we know well in an online game and thought “Black Ops II” would be grat for that. Many people who play games as “Black Ops II” take this very serious and are very competitive, calling names and such when someone makes a mistake. That is something Marissa doesn’t like and I understand that completely.
So we already arranged a group of people that know each other and wanted to join in (they had to buy the game of course and that was all done last week).
Yesterday evening I created a private game where our group logged into. Very typical was that Peter and I logged in under our own names, but the ladies had chosen to use nicknames. So we had there DeathAngel (Marissa), BlackMamba (Jennifer), Dirty Marion (after “Dirty Harry”) and “Die Hard Sanne” (no explanation needed there). They must have been plotting about this…
Because we had a private game, we knew no one else then one of our group could enter our game and that is exactly what we wanted. All of us used headset, so we could talk with each other while playing. That already gave some good laughs. First we did some practicing so everyone knew how to move and how to handle the weapons.
First we played a game of Death Match, which basically means kill everyone else. Who makes the most kills wins. My first kill was Peter. It should be right away clear who is the boss 🙂 We played several rounds of Death Match. The experienced players died just as much the others, mostly loud laughing. Most wonderful move I saw was Jennifer throwing a grenade… and it bounced on a wall back to her 🙂
Sanne learned quickly how to move around. I saw her all the time jump on walls and through (broken) windows or was crawling over the ground. Very good. Only her bad luck on the picture was that I saw her jump on the wall. Easy prey!!!
After this we played some of the team based games like Capture The Flag and Domination. The team based games brings another aspect to the game… friendly fire (MARION!!!!). When Marion moved to the other team, I had my revenge for all the times she was firing at me (luckily it is not deadly in “Black Ops II”)…
We had a great evening with lots of laughter. It is great fun to play these kind of games with people you know personally. It is not about “killing each other”. It is about doing things together and have a lot to laugh about.
I think (we didn’t count really) had best death/kill ratio, followed by Marissa and me. But I am pretty sure Jenifer, Sanne and Marion will practice a lot. We will do this more often. In “Black Ops II” or any other game alike…
It was indeed great fun. I have laughed so much. What I liked was how you could move around and sneak up to others. And of course I loved the sniper gun.
One of the reasons why we had such a good time is indeed because there is no true competition between all of us.
We have to do this more often. This game or another, I will be there.
Yes, I had a great time. I could so something like this every weekend. No jerks and bukkies… awesome 🙂