Saturday, 10 June 2023

DLC #164 - Call of Duty : Black Ops 2 - Revolution Map Pack

The Call of Duty games were a massive hit during their era, and for me, this was mainly because of the Multiplayer.

Truth be told, it's the reason I also stopped buying them after Black Ops 2, and whilst Zombies was a freshener the series needed, the DLC trophies quickly became the onion topping on a vanilla ice cream.

At this point, they're hard work for multiple reasons. Black Ops 2 is now almost 11 years old and sits 2 generations behind the current era. Half the battle is just finding people who either need the trophies too, or are just at least willing to help out others.

The Easter Egg concept carried over from Black Ops 1 is an interesting one, but doesn't stand the test of time very well. It doesn't help that the developers, in some instances, made these Easter Eggs almost impossible for smaller parties and solo players. This first DLC is a good example of that.

Revolution sees the release of the Die Rise Zombies map, a Skyscraper building spread over multiple floors, which leads to alot of tight, close quarters gameplay. In comparison to previous Zombies mode maps, as well as some of the ideas presented with other DLC packs in Black Ops 2, it's actually a fairly basic map with little in the way of unqiue level mechanics and standout features. I think that's the nice way of suggesting it's just a little bit dull.

The DLC also adds the "Turned" game mode, which gets a little bit of focus from the trophy list too. This game mode for 4 players see 1 person assume the role of the human, and the 3 others spawn in as zombies. The human has to fight the zombies off, whilst the zombies have to kill the human, and in doing so, will take their turn as the human player. Whoever racks up the most points within a specified time limit is the winner. It's a fun little party-esque mode, with fast and frenetic gameplay, but certainly lacks depth and feels like a little bit of a tack-on.

The pack also adds 10 new trophies, which follow the standard format carried over from Black Ops 1. The new Die Rise map gets 7 dedicated trophies, and the Turned game mode gets the remaining 3.

The "High Maintenance" trophy, awarded for being the architect of their instruction, is the Easter Egg reward for this particular map. It's not a challenging Easter Egg at all. In fact, I think it's one of the simplest out of any I've attempted across both Black Ops 1 and 2, containing as little as 7 steps and, in my case at least, completed within just 5 rounds of zombies.

The only thing worth noting about it is the fact that it does require 4 players to complete, and there isn't a compromise on that. One of the steps within the Easter Egg process requires all 4 players to simultaneously step onto a panel, so the requirement for a full party is mandatory to progression on this.

Otherwise, this can be done within less than an hour, and even the other trophies for additional tasks aren't really that challenging. Unlike the Easter Egg, these can all be done solo too.

The 3 Turned trophies do have the potential to cause some issues, especially the "Polyarmory" trophy, awarded for getting a kill with each primary weapon in a Public Match. You scale through a list of weapons each time you obtain a kill, very much like Gun Game, and the final weapon is a pistol, which requires about 13 bullets to kill a zombie. This is far too many to do easily in such a fast paced mode where possession of the human character changes very frequently, but I somehow had this trophy already prior to finishing off the pack, so I can't really testify to it's true difficulty.

Just like Die Rise, you also need to have 4 players to start a game of Turned, which is also going to provide challenges at this stage in the game's life cycle. There aren't many people playing this anymore, and of that select group, they certainly aren't playing Turned.

Maximum party requirements aside, it's not a bad opener to Black Ops 2. These packs definitely get more challenging, that's for sure, but it's least a starting point to build on.

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