Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Black Ops II is the ninth installment in the Call of Duty saga, following a similar format to the previous games but with an added futuristic element, first released November 2012.

The campaign runs two storylines that interconnect, first set between 1986 and 1989, the second set in 2025 during a second Cold War. The plot is very complicated and I don’t think I quite understand yet, so I’ll leave that to the Wikipedia page and just focus on the actual review.

So, as I’ve already said, the storyline is pretty complicated. You play various people, at various times, who all interconnect in various ways but sometimes you’re not really sure who you’re playing. Sometimes you’re even the bad guys, which gets really confusing when you have to start shooting people. It can begin to come together as you reach the last few sequences, but this doesn’t help the feeling of disjointedness as you play through.

Surprisingly, this is more or less the only thing I can think of that I didn’t like about the campaign. It’s a decent length (took me around 10 hours I believe, which is longer than a lot of modern FPS campaigns), is engaging, funny in places, pretty horrific in places, has cool new weapons as well as old favourites, the list goes on.

Of course I’m slightly biased, I enjoyed the other CoD games and as long as the storyline is interesting you can’t go much wrong. If you don’t like realistic FPS games then you’re not gonna like Black Ops II, there’s no two ways about it. The best thing about Black Ops, and why I like it more than Battlefield, is because of the characters themselves. You really feel a connection not only with David Mason (the person the story revolves around mainly) but also his right hand man Harper (voiced by Merle from Walking Dead) and even the bad guy has a back story that can make you question your own actions. This means that the campaign isn’t just a series of “here’s a gun, go shoot bad guys” but you have to actively make decisions about what your next move will be, decide how to storm areas or take down a heavily fortified platoon. On the flip side, one or two missions do just give you a helicopter and machine gun and let you mow down everyone who gets in your way.

There are a couple of scenes which are pretty grim, up close torture scenes, people being set alight etc. If anything, these scenes serve to make the action even more real, including them makes you more engrossed in the characters rather than keeping you at a distance. This is what makes CoD work, at the end, when the final credits roll, I was annoyed that I wouldn’t be playing with these characters anymore, they are fleshed out to such a degree that they are almost real people.

Speaking of the final credits, don’t skip past them, there are further scenes interspersed. They change depending on your final choice in the campaign, but there’s one in particular that is just weird. It’s so completely removed from the story line that it takes a second to work out what the hell is going on. I won’t spoil it, but brace yourselves.

Okay, so thumbs up for the campaign.t’s grand. Maybe even more enjoyable than Halo 4, though Mason gets knocked out nearly as much as Master Chief does.

There’s also the multiplayer, so you can pit your abilities against 15 year olds across the world. Okay, so they’re not all 15, but if you play on it be expected to be called a fag at least ten times a game. It’s pretty decent, the new loadouts are at the usual standard, and there are some new fun game types which I enjoy more than the standard team deathmatch.

The final game type you can enjoy is called Zombies – you play a character attempting to stay alive during a zombie apocalypse. You win points by killing, which you can turn in for new guns or for perks such as JuggerNog which gives you armour. This is brilliant if there’s a group of you, you have to work out a strategy once you get past level 10 or else you’ll all just get slaughtered, you have to think about your ammo reserves, which perks will benefit you the most etc.

So if you enjoy a good FPS, check this out. It’s fun, it’s engaging, it’s among the best campaigns I’ve played in a while.

Life Choices or Career Choices?

I’ve just been watching a video that a friend linked on Facebook; it is a man talking about how, when students come to him and ask what they should do with their lives, he tells them to do what they would do if money was no object. Apparently most express a wish to be a writer, or a painter, or something similar where income isn’t exactly guaranteed. To me, this seems like the least helpful piece of advice a University leaver could possibly be given.

If there is one thing in this life you need, it’s money. Yes it’s depressing and I could be accused of devaluing life – all those people, relationships, experiences that I’m essentially saying aren’t as important as money, but think about it. If you have no money you have no food, and all the love and experiences in the world won’t put a meal in your stomach.

We all have some sort of dream, and unfortunately not a lot of us will realise those dreams. You could argue that putting your entire being into reaching that goal means that you’re more likely to achieve it, but let’s take being a professional writer as an example.

My dream, my aspiration, whatever you want to call, it is to write. I have been writing since I was about 8, and I maintain numerous blogs, reviews and so on to keep my writing alive. I have some stuff published in books, but it’s not exactly at the same level as JK Rowling. If I’d taken the approach recommended by the man in the video, I would have come out of Uni and written, all day every day. This sounds absolutely amazing, there’s this fantastic image in my head of an isolated house in the middle of a wood, maybe with a quiet lake with the sun shimmering down. I lounge around with stacks of paper covered in my tiny scrawled writing, creating the masterpieces that will awe and inspire the world.

But you know what? It wasn’t going to happen when I left Uni. I had a grand total of zero money, two degrees, and no job. I was unemployed for around nine months and I spent the majority of that time writing – both my own projects and some freelance projects for businesses. And it was immensely miserable. Without money I had no choice but to stay at home, I barely made rent on job seekers, and my partner had to pay for everything else, I was completely dependent. This isn’t a ‘woe is me’ moment, this is a moment of me doing what I absolutely love doing and hating every day of waking up and not having any money. Maybe this is shallow, but I’ll come to terms with that. You know what happens when you have no money? You can’t make rent, you can’t buy food, you can’t go out, no phone, no presents for birthdays/Christmas, you can’t pay water or gas bills. It’s so easy to forget about all of those expenses, until you have no money.

Then I got my current job, and everything is better as a direct consequence of having an income. Rent isn’t a problem, I can buy everything I want and more, I can visit people and places without struggle, I’m not a dependent but instead an equal. No one will ever convince me that money can’t bring happiness, money opens every door imaginable and yes you may still be alone but that’s probably more to do with you as a person than actual happiness.

Don’t get me wrong, you can be happy and comfortable – if you earn enough to cover all the important things, you can live a very happy and nice life. But the man on the video encouraged people to ignore money entirely, and this isn’t a healthy decision. The amount of people who actually become a successful enough writer or painter to live on just that income is negligible.

In my opinion, work as hard as you have to in order to live the lifestyle you want to. If you want just enough to get by, then do so. If you want a mansion and classic cars, then work your arse off to get there. And do what you love, your passion, in every free minute that you have. Never rely on your passion to get you an income, nurture it and push it as much as you can in every free moment.  If it works out, then fantastic, well done, take that opportunity and make it your life. But if it doesn’t, and this is the truth, have more to fall back on than just failed dreams.