I'm really torn on what to think about this game. I honestly don't think I could place it on a scale of good or bad because it waffles between the two so damn much. On the one hand, it's a dumb action movie that glorifies war; on the other hand, it's a dumb action movie that glorifies war. All we can know for certain is that it's an action movie, alright. Take that as you will, because I didn't know how.

I'd say it's best to start with the story, but given its fondness for jumping all over the timeline, this may not be such a good idea. This isn't confusing or hard to follow, mind you, but it does make the story difficult to explain at first. Eventually, though, a clear, summarizable story emerges: the US military has severely pissed off Raul Menendez, Jesus Christ of YouTube (as in "Jesus Christ, are they serious about this YouTube popularity plot point?"), and it is now up to them to put a stop to his terrorist plans. Say, what did they do to piss him off? Call his sister a whore and burn them both alive, among other things. Now this may sound somewhat petty, but that's only because I suck at explaining things. In reality, the game does an amazing job of making you empathize with what he's suffered, at least when it wants them to. Sure, he's been doing some shady shit for the entire story, but at least in the beginning, he's doing it for his sister. And then to see that completely wrenched away from him and go absolutely insane with rage.....and then see things get worse from there.....It may not be a lot in terms of focus, but in terms of raw execution, it's certainly more than enough to make him a good, fleshed out villain.

This might even be a very poignant criticism of the ravages of war if Black Ops 2 had any interest in those words. Instead, war is portrayed as all kinds of badass and glorious and all around awesome. Our story begins with a Vietnam war vet reminiscing about his escapades at least somewhat casually, moves into you valiantly riding atop horseback into battle against Saladin's knights, and ends with....to be fair, it does tone it down a bit by the end, but the general message remains. It's just hard to take this message seriously when you get to personally see the most horrible parts of war. One of the first levels starts with you watching a man fucking burn to death before the general you're cooperating with drags you off to participate in all the glory that war brings. I'd say that about sums up the levels of self-awareness present if this wasn't a first person game. I know that sounds like a petty complaint to make, but it really did make the experience that much more harder to deal with emotionally. It's one thing to see somebody far off on the battlefield die because the character I was controlling shot them; it's another to see the life ebb out of their eyes because I personally blew their brains out. It's incredibly uncomfortable, and I don't think that's what the game was going for.

Then again, I probably shouldn't be thinking while playing Call of Duty. This game doesn't exactly mix well with heavy critical thinking, and I don't mean that in a condescending, dickish way. The game's all about the explosions and spectacle and generally just moving from set piece to set piece. In this regard, it sort of knows what it's doing. I mean, at least it gets the pacing right. No matter where you are in the story, there's going to be some tense action sequence there to grab your attention. Maybe it's running through a burning mansion or maybe it's dragging your buddy to safety as his head clips through the grass or maybe it's whatever the fuck this is.

Wait, I think I spotted the main problem with the cinematics in that last sentence: they don't effectively prevent me from questioning what's going on. Granted, the example I used is nit-picky as hell, but there are more jarring incidents sprinkled throughout the adventure, like when the camera switches from your personal view to a zoom-in on the bad guy with no fade or transition of any kind. Or when the game doesn't let me play through some moments that would be cool to play through, but lets me play through mundane shit for no other reason than to acknowledge that I exist. Or when the subtitles call a guy "CIA nerd". Each example shakes me out of the moment, makes me aware that I'm playing a game, and ultimately prevents the game from working its magic. If its magic is to be worked, you're gonna have to put some effort into shutting off your brain and simply accepting the various cinematic set pieces the game throws at you.

The same goes for the interactive set pieces: great variety coupled with mediocre execution. Again, the amount of variety at play works in the game's favor, since it keeps things consistently exciting. However, consistency isn't a word I'd apply to the game mechanics on display. Shooting aside, you only play through a lot of cool moments for a couple minutes, tops, most likely in the hopes that you won't notice that each one has its own significant problem. The airplane sequence near the end, for instance, plays like a very strict rail shooter that only begrudgingly lets you steer. This is going to result in you drunkenly careening into the exact number of buildings needed to warrant a court martial. A similar problem occurs with the horse sequence I mentioned before, sans buildings and (sadly) flying.

But I felt this the hardest with the Strike Force feature, mainly because it's such a cool part of the game in theory. Imagine a first person shooter that lets you switch to a tactical view to command different squads and stuff in real time. Now go play Sanctum because that game probably delivers better on that concept than Strike Force does. I never did get the hang of controlling all those squads, and while I'm willing to take the blame for some of that (I didn't spend a ton of time with it), I can't imagine the inability to split up squads or command individual units would help its case. Or maybe it would've been better served as a short downloadable PC title instead of a diversion in a much larger game.

Speaking of much larger games, why haven't I mentioned the main gameplay systems in this blog? Because at some point in this discussion, the shooting simply becomes irrelevant. I'm not enjoying the game because the mechanics of shooting a person feel particularly compelling, but because of all the situations built around them. Though that's not to say the shooting is bad. Enemies die when shot, hiding for a bit allows your body to digest the bullets littering your unarmored arms (how else regenerative health is explained, I don't know), and the many guns you're provided each feel different enough to justify their existence. However, I think it says a lot about Black Ops 2 that even though each mission gave me the opportunity to choose my initial arsenal, I barely used said feature. I come to these games for a low-brow action movie that could potentially double as a US Army advertisement. The shooting elements are merely in service of that.

Review Synopsis

• Does Black Ops realize that most people are uncomfortable killing other people?
• Maybe that's the price to pay for all the explosions and chaos.
• Oh, and shooting and stuff or whatever.

Yes, this is essentially the same as my last blog's video, but it's the intro song that really stands out.

Oh yes I fucking did. How could I pass up such an amazing opportunity for riffing material, especially when it gives me a rare opportunity only one person I know of has taken? I speak, of course, about being fair toward the game. You see, most of you would probably watch one of the millions of YouTube Poops of this game, write it off as trash, and call it a day. But I wanted to dig deeper, and dug deep I did, and lying in Wand of Gamelon is a genuinely good game. It's just buried under mountains of poor game design that are absolutely impossible to ignore.

And it's not like the story's there to hold the extra weight, either. (Why anybody even remotely thought that is beyond my understanding.) It all begins with King No I'm Not Typing That taking one of his country's most valued treasures into battle with him, only to get captured for such rampant idiocy. Link tries to save him, but somehow, gets trapped in a mirror doing so. Now it's up to Zelda to....help people with their menial problems. That's the weird thing about the story: there really isn't any. You tend to stumble into the more plot important moments, and they don't have any connection to what you're doing. The gameplay has you fetching eggs for some lonely girl to get a flute that I don't remember once using, while the cutscenes depict.....well, pretty much that, but sometimes, Impa decides to move the plot forward because I guess it has to. It's all really surreal and would make for some decent riffing material if not for the game surrounding it.

Speaking of riffing material, I know what you really want to read about: that awful animation. What can I even say that you don't already know? Half the characters are utterly lacking in detail, while the other half are horribly grotesque monsters. They less resemble actual people and more resemble spider webs a witch has cursed to speak. And that's not even getting into the over-animation problems. Hell, Yumimi Mix has better animation than this dreck, and that was a game I glowingly recommended as being "like you're playing a manga while twelve year old girls yell shit in your ears." The actual game is better, though, with pumped up 90s music and some rather detailed level backgrounds.

Too detailed, perhaps. Or maybe not detailed enough. All I know is that detail plays some role in the navigation issues. A lot of the backgrounds can't settle between a super-imposed 2D world or a multi-layered 3D one, so they waffle between both. Needless to say, this is confusing as hell, especially when the game is so insistent on the one path it created that it will kill you for trying to take other paths that make just as much sense. Mapping jump to the up button doesn't help matters, nor does thinking the Xbox 360 has a good D-pad in the first place, like I did. But the worst part about this is that the ingredients for a cool Metroidvania-esque action adventure game are lost underneath all this shit. The beginning of the game kinda dumps you onto a directionless overworld and expects you to figure things out for yourself. Surprisingly, this works in the game's favor. You get some cool power-ups to mess around with, like an invincibility cloak and a glitchy lantern, and there's something to be said for adjusting to the flow of quests. There's a sense of accomplishment and progress as you watch all the pieces perfectly fall into place in your quest to rescue the King. Yes, it's a sense of accomplishment that's significantly marred by technical flaws, but it's a sense of accomplishment nonetheless.

I mean, that's more than I can say about the combat. I don't have anything at all nice to say about it. There is absolutely no mercy invincibility in this game, so if you want even a hope of surviving, you're gonna need a decent ranged attack. Unfortunately, for a significant portion of the game, you're stuck with a dinky little butter knife of a sword and very expensive bombs. It takes even longer for ranged attacks to mean anything, and never for Zelda to learn how to handle enemies coming at her on a soft incline. Combine this all together, and you end up with a frustrating experience lacking in progress because you're fighting against the mechanics instead of what the game has laid out for you. Yet for whatever reason, the developers thought it a good idea to make this a grind-heavy game. Joy.

Speaking of joy, that word has no place in describing what I'd generously call the boss battles. Here's how each one goes down: they personally introduce themselves through some exceedingly stupid cinematic (like this one, for instance), you whack them once with the item du jour, and they collapse into a puddle of sadness and despair. Repeat until you get a completely mellow ending. Now what was that I said about potentially liking the game, again? Kinda hard to do that when you have unfair combat, unintuitive level graphics, and those cutscenes. The only thing more off-putting than this game is the knowledge that I'm gonna have to cover Faces of Evil, too.

Review Synopsis

• You know how The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack has some scary artwork? Well, this game looks bad.
• Conceptually, I'm all behind a Metroid-style game set in the Zelda universe.
• In practice, I'm not up for shady level design and thoroughly unenjoyable combat.