It’s a cycle that many of us are familiar with, and one that has been relatively the same for several years. A new game releases in November and the DLC season begins in January, with a new map pack releasing every couple of months with a delay in the cycle for Playstation and PC. July 3rd was the day when the most recent Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 DLC was released on Xbox 360, and it provided some great pre-Independence Day liberation from boredom that is sure to last throughout the rest of the summer.
Lets first take a look at the multiplayer maps that arrived in this last DLC. Four maps were includedL three completely new ones and one map that is a re-skinning of a map that appeared in the first Black Ops game. Uplink, a re-skinned version of Summit, was one of the most popular maps on the first game. Uplink has become my second favorite map in the pack. All the lines of the sight, climbable areas, nooks and crannies feel so familiar, but look starkly different on the surface. In the Uprising DLC Treyarch re-skinned “Firing Range” and included it in the pack as “Studio”. Whereas with that set of two maps I still prefer the original “skin” of the map even though the remake is great, with Summit and Uplink I actually prefer the look and feel of Uplink more than I do with Summit.
Rush, a paintball facility, takes the first place position for me. The layout and way the map plays reminds of a Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare style map with face paced action, but decent spawns (in comparison to some other maps in the game and this DLC). Hardpoint really allows the excellence in design to shine through as you hop around the map through the inflatable indoor arena, the crate and tire filled center of the map, a second level wooden bunker hallway, and more.
“This map strikes the perfect balance every player is looking for…”
While there are always ways to counter someone in a position on the map, you do not feel as if there are too many or too overpowered ways to be flanked. This map strikes the perfect balance every player is looking for and the only unfortunate thing about this map is that is was not included in the original launch set of maps, so it will not be playable in the more tactically oriented “League Play”.
Next up is the map Cove. Set on a small Island in the Indian Ocean, I can see how this may be or become a players least favorite map in the pack. The map features a sort of circular shape with water being a death barrier all around the edge. The center of the map will lead to almost certain death with the “B” domination flag being centered near the intersection of 4 main paths, with an overlook that allows anyone there to lay sights on someone at the flag. Lots of action happens around the edge of the map and running away from a gunfight in one direction often leads to a surprise death from the other.
” [Cove] is a solid place to play and features a refreshing locale and color palette…”
I think most game modes work relatively well but the map is suited more to slayer-based game modes, however, I feel most objective game modes work without major frustration except for Domination which continually frustrates me. Even still, this map is a solid place to play and features a refreshing locale and color palette that is infrequent in Call of Duty, and I rarely find myself voting against it when I’m in the Core Playlist.
“[I] get flanked from new places every match”
The last multiplayer map in the DLC pack is Detour. While it is my least favorite, many may prefer it over Cove. The map is set on a war-torn bridge with holes, flaying support beams, scattered cars, and odd ramps leading to and from a lower “level” of the map beneath the paved road of the bridge. The only real reason I put this map in last is for the simple reason that I seem to die in the most ridiculous ways and get flanked from new places every match. Holes in the center of the map have led to several deaths when I’m caught in a gunfight running to or from the “B” Domination flag.
There is no safe place on this map and yet I find that people seem to camp the most on this map aside from sniper spots on Uplink. It makes no sense and may be a mystery that only I am experiencing, but for these reasons I put it last.
All this being said, let me make this very clear: this is, in my opinion, the best DLC pack to grace the Call of Duty series since the one DLC pack that was released for COD4 from a multiplayer perspective. None of the maps frustrate me to the level that maps such as Hydro, Magma, and many launch maps like Drone or Aftermath do. I rarely find myself voting against these maps in the Core playlist unless a map such as Slums, Studio, Raid, or Standoff comes up. I’d wager that Treyarch, if they indeed have multiplayer maps in the fourth DLC, will have a hard time topping Vengeance from a multiplayer aspect and that if you buy only one COD DLC this season, it should be Vengeance.
“…I see Buried as a candidate to become my favorite Zombies experience this game”
The new Zombies map is what I have the least experience with and so I won’t give a thorough review, however I will say that so far I have enjoyed it. The part of the map that is sectioned off for grief mode seems ridiculously large compared to the other ones in the game and I think it should have been smaller. However, in the Buried mode itself I think everything works well. Mob of the Dead was fantastic and still is one of my favorite Zombies experiences, but Buried returns to a slightly more simple version of Zombies. However it still does a good job of incorporating features like the ability to construct things and trigger important and cool sequences, two things that have been more deeply explored in Black Ops 2. For this reason I see Buried as a candidate to become my favorite Zombies experience this game.
When you take everything together as a package, it adds up to an impressive DLC release.
While I don’t think Treyarch’s patch and tweak support has been as good or responsive to the community as it was with the first Black Ops game, Treyarch is still doing a lot of things right. By this time last year I had been burned out for quite a while with Modern Warfare 3 and couldn’t possibly have written a review of the most recent DLC. Treyarch has done a good job of providing community focused content and as such has kept me thoroughly entertained with the game.
While there have been less people playing BO2 than MW3, the drop off of players over time has been much less because the people who stuck around after the first two months have been happy enough with their experience to continue enjoying the game, and Treyarch has taken another great step in keeping these fans happy.
Published: Jul 8, 2013 02:48 pm