Played BLOPS 2 yet?

I've just had a read of this rather over the top excessively positive review @ ign:

THIS IS NOT THE SHOOTER YOU EXPECTED

Nice title. Except, to be honest, it really is the shooter you expected. Almost exactly...

The campaign narrative jumps between various characters’ perspectives and also in time
A bit like last time.

The story successfully casts Menendez in a light where I’m still not sure how I feel about him. At times I wanted him dead
A bit like last time (the protagonist is always a bit of a dick really. I liked the guy with the 'tache though)

Ok I'm being negative. Actually, BLOPS (or as I like to affectionately call it, PLOPS) 2 does bring some interesting new stuff to the table. It has pseudo choice making sections, where pressing A or B (so to speak, not literally) will affect your path through the game a bit. That might make it more fun to play through the single player campaign a few more times than you normally would (i.e. once).

Customising your loadout before a mission is nice too. Although actually I predict this will take away variety for many people as they'll simply use their favourite gun all the time (wasn't it annoying when you started one mission with a tricked out m4, and the next with a crappy mp5?)

Shooting is as fun and precise as ever, and alongside the abundance of gigantic explosions, vehicle missions and intense firefights, it feels like the closest thing most of us will ever get to starring in an action film. In that sense, Black Ops II is the classic Call of Duty formula at its best, with an important, defining difference: The emphasis on drone warfare, the exotic-but-grounded weaponry and the attention to detail in the believably high-tech signage and architecture makes Blacks Op II feel strikingly plausible even when it strays into non-historical settings.

The multiplayer is, as ever and of course, a blast. There's some new ideas there (Hardpoint) and some of the weird ones from MW3 (Kill Confirmed). The new "Nuketown 2025" mission has been hyped a lot. I started off hating Nuketown in BLOPS 1 but I grew to love it, and it seems to be the most famous map now. So a lot is expected of the future version and actually it seems to deliver.

The weirdest addition is screencasting - you can broadcast your game or save clips to youtube. I guess we can look forward to hundreds of thousands of new "OMGOMGOMG LOL GRENADE AT SPAWN" videos for the next few months. They call it "codcasting", by the way. You know, like "podcasting". Do you see? Ugh.

The "Zombies" mode has been talked about a lot. I really don't understand why zombies are such a big deal right now, some people actually seem to be preparing for some kind of real life zombie holocaust. If that's you, BLOPS 2 now provides you with some excellent training missions for that fateful day. Actually it's really fun, and quite a lot better than the (already quite fun) zombie missions in BLOPS 1.

All in all it's a great game. You didn't expect it to be a total dud, that was never going to happen. If you like Call of Duty you will like BLOPS 2, it's COD at its biggest brashest and, dare I say, at its best.

If you hate COD, you'll hate this too. But you're probably far too busy asking your facebook friends to be your neighbour in SimCity Social to even notice it's been released.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii U (like anyone has one of those) and PC.
The best prices are, as always, at amazon:

People with more money than sense might want to check out the "hardened editions" on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

• Call of Duty: Black Ops II game
• Collectible steelbook
• Limited edition challenge coins
• Nuketown Zombies and Nuketown 2025 bonus in-game content
• Access to the Double XP Weekend, from November 16-18
• Exclusive PlayStation 3 system multiplayer theme and zombies theme
• Official soundtrack by Jack Wall with theme by Trent Reznor
• Exclusive weapon camo and player card backgrounds