f13.net

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h18E7pTw7dY

Set in 2025, the campaign has you swapping between Cold War era 1980s to continue the story from Black Ops, and to 2025 where China is super pissed about being hacked so they're keeping all the rare earth minerals, and some dude takes control of the US drone fleet and instigates a US/China war.

From the interviews that are popping up online, it seems like the setting is relatively interesting, but Treyarch actually wants to do some different stuff with the single-player campaign, having a branching storyline and some RTS-lite missions where you can hop in and out of individual units in an attempt to take objectives. Nothing groundbreaking, but it might be interesting to mix up the railroad single player campaigns that the past few CoD games have been doing.

No word on multiplayer outside of the fact it will take place in the 2025 era, but I know I'm the only one who cares about multiplayer here. AND THAT IS OKAY.

I'm down with the MP as long as it's not a shit show like just every PC version since WaW. Other than that, I'm loving that they're going all futuristic (and hopefully just a little cyberpunk).

With Counter Strike: GO on the horizon its going to be tough to justify this one.   I did buy Black Ops and thought it was a pretty fun if not terribly deep twitch shooter, but this time around I suspect I'll have a better option.

Looks like lots of flying drones around

So, having run out of Andy McNabb/Tom Clancy/etc. potboilers to plagerise, they've decided to just rip off MGS4 instead?

I actually quite liked Blops in both SP and MP. It was a lot better than W@W or MW2/3.

Simond - you're right. The whole near-future thing is clearly a ripoff of MGS4 which is set in the same vaguely-plausible generic near-future war story that no other game before or since has ever used.  :oh_i_see:

Not enough nanomachines for it to be an MGS4 ripoff. Also not enough PMC hate.

I "love" these semi-futuristic games. The weapon/drone/etc designs shown so far are pretty hilarious.

Ummmm, BF 2142?

I should have written it in green.

 :grin:

Grizzled old black ops soldier narrating how the "modern" (future) battlefield has become heavily networked with remote-controlled mecha, smart guns and enhanced reality soldiers. Then a terrorist group hacks the controlling systems & protocols, turning them all against their masters.

Quick, which game am I talking about?

The Terminator
 :oh_i_see:

Between this and Modern Warfare 3, they must feel pretty confident about the lawsuit.

Well, IW were gutted through various means, so unless West & Zampella personally own all modern & future CoD titles personally, I doubt whoever is left in the management role at IW will be taking Activision to court over it...

This is more what I was thinking of. (http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/05/07/infinity-ward-activision-black-ops-ii.aspx) They have to have hashed out something between the studios... right?

Yes, I understand what you were talking about. What I am saying is that Activision has cleared all of the "troublemakers" out of IW, and that what's left of the studio is just an entirely-owned-by-Activision shell of it's former self and not likely to say boo to a fucking goose.

Multiplayer Reveal Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dre21lBu2zU

Looks like it's going back to the branch of multiplayer from Black Ops, complete with diving to prone. Should be some relatively neat toys, though, like the portable microwave reflector and the drone stuff. But yeah - it's more Call of Duty. If that's your thing.

I am just hoping and praying that their PC code is better this time around, and according to their PC guy (https://twitter.com/pcdev), it is.

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/14/3239603/call-of-duty-black-ops-2-multiplayer-custom-classes-perks-scorestreaks

Further details on multiplayer stuff.

- you're not locked to 1 primary 1 secondary 3 perks anymore, if you never use your secondary you can give it up for an extra perk, for example, or have 3 primary weapon attachments, and other examples in a "pick 10" system

- no more kill streaks, everything is a point streak

- no more gun-related perks, anything that affects gun performance is a gun attachment

- built-in livestreaming and shoutcasting support

- multi team support, for up to six teams (2v2v2v2v2v2 for example or 4v4v4)

Sounds interesting. I wonder what a point streak is, though..

The built in streaming and shoutcasting thing is really neat.  I've been hoping to see this supported more and more in games.

It's basically a smarter-tracked killstreak. You still get points for kills, but you also get points for capturing objectives.