Black Ops 2 Zombies sucks.

This article's for any anyone who held out to see the reviews before buying the game. If you agree with this article, leave a comment acknowledging it. It generates Google priority which means this gets more publicity. Hell, maybe Treyarch'll read this shit... they need to get their heads out their asses. Seriously.

Thankfully, I'm not the one who bought BO2; my friend did, and I tried to tell the guy not to do it, but he'd already pre-ordered and we'd spent the last four hours on BO1's Kino Der Toten before grabbing it from GameStop and loading it up.

We love CoD Zombies. We still play the old WaW maps sometimes, seeing how far we've gone from Nacht Der Untoten to Der Riese. That, and maybe Kino Der Toten, were the last worthwhile maps in the opinions of everyone in our Zombie clique.

That won't be changing with BO2.

They did a few things right with Zombies this time. You can start on certain waves from 1 to 20, set the difficulty, toggle Hellhounds, and there's three different game modes: Survival, Grief and Tranzit. Unfortunately... these don't redeem what went wrong.

I'd provide more meaningful pictures in this article, if Zombies actually offered anything new.

BO2's Zombies hasn't evolved. At all. We're looking at new guns, of course, but we should've been excited by the new Perks. If it's any indication, we lost complete interest in Zombies before we ever figured out what they did. 30 minutes after booting the game we'd already opened and explored everything all three maps had to offer. It's funny, because our average game on Nacht Der Untoten lasts about that long. In one game of what used to be the simplest Zombie map, we dumbfucked around on three maps we'd never played before looking desperately for doors, switches or special in-game triggers to open the map up. That's less 'stuff' to do than on Nacht Der Untoten alone - which didn't even have Perks or Pack-a-Punch, for fuck's sake. We didn't even 'finish' the matches - either we let them kill us, or outright quit. The fucking maps are micro-size. We checked all the doors - three times each - and tried various things like progressing to a certain wave, passing a Hellhounds round, PaP'ing a gun, and rolling the Random Box enough times to see if it teleported to an unexplored section of the map. So far the most places the box can arrive at in the largest available map is... three, if I remember. One of the maps had literally ONE door you opened, and that was it, you were done exploring. There must not've been more than five windows the zombies could enter the map through.

The worst part is, these maps have all these potential areas to allow a player to go. There are so many unused doors throughout two of the maps, and yet not more than one or two can be opened. Every one of you that ended up here from Googling "black ops 2 zombies sucks" as a result of your own disgust of the game mode must surely have run up to many of these doors thinking, "This has to open! There's no way the map's this small."

But wait, what's this? Holy shit, they added a new...! No... wait, nevermind. It's the same Zombies, just different weapons befitting the game. That's it. No Killstreaks. No vehicles. No huge, open maps with upgradeable barricades, no new contraptions, no new zombie types (besides these flaming zombies which explode like the Hellhounds), no new function to upgrading weapons, nor multi-upgradability, nor Mule Kick, even.

They brought back the Ray Gun and Monkey Bombs, but the rest of the guns you can get are just... eh. Nothing special that makes you really want to play, the way the Wunderwaffe, Flamethrower, Thundergun, Winter's Howl, Scavenger, and V-R11 did. BO2's selections might as well be re-skins of the weapons available on BO1, minus a few. I felt like the actual number you could get was substantially smaller than previous games. Sniper rifles and the RPG are as useless as always. You'd think they'd've made them special somehow, for once...

The one weapon I PaP'd was the full-auto shotgun. The upgraded firing effects for guns is the same as always, except I didn't see any changes to the gun's design, like the engravings. Perhaps they were discrete in the map's darkness, but they were always obvious in BO1 and WaW.

There's a new announcer for pickup bonuses, with an annoying voice. But I can deal with it. It's annoying though, because it's hard to hear what he's saying, but the messages that used to appear on-screen to indicate what pickup you grabbed aren't present anymore. The Tranzit character you play as sounds like a budget voice actor with cheesy lines, and doesn't inspire the same humorous confidence Dempsey and his crew used to. Speaking of which, where'd Dempsey, Nikolai and the rest go?

Some of these maps - or maybe all four, I don't remember - have flames and molten terrain everywhere which torch your character if you walk over them. It looks like Hell broke open in this particular part of town - or is it a house? The maps are so small, I can't tell. All I know is, while I enjoy the prolific black mixed with Hellish flames giving a demonic aura to the maps, the only Hell I see is the hopes Treyarch knew we'd have for BO2's Zombies, and what they gave us as a result.

I'm not liking these maps. Is there something I missed? Tranzit mode? To be equitable, we didn't get too deep into that, so I can't provide a fair verdict there, but first impressions watching YouTube videos has me thinking it's a slightly less dull version of playing the individual maps, what with hopping on and off the bus to kill zombies while rolling through the four maps the game offers, the fourth one seeming to be even smaller than the other three if I recall. If there were any more beyond that, the video didn't last long enough to show it.

(Update 11-22-12: I was finally given a chance to give Tranzit an in-depth look. It's indeed larger than simply three maps, as some comments have pointed out, and there are some interesting mechanics to the gameplay which are similar to L4D and Dead Rising, such as Jockey zombies and places you can store weapons, as well as build new items from what you find while exploring. I also found the old Nacht Der Untoten map. That said, it began to bore after awhile due to the gameplay's revolution around the bus, which, if you were left behind, would take some ten minutes to complete its route coming back to you. In some cases it was difficult to find a way on the bus, depending on where you were when the bus stopped. It's an interesting concept, but needs work. A lot of it.)

Let's honestly think about this; what did BO1's Zombies do that left a mark on Zombies as a whole? Der Riese was the last true step up when you consider everything that didn't happen in BO1. Sure, a new perk here and there - but did they stay? Do we still have the PhD Flopper in BO2? No, I'm afraid not. Perks as a whole are nothing new; I hoped for a new gameplay element like finding survivors, but so far... (*throws hands up*)... it's the same damn thing, just smaller maps! The exact opposite of what I'm sure we all wanted! What the fuck was Treyarch thinking?

Since someone's bound to say it, I'll propose some things I'm confident Treyarch should've been able to add which would've turned this whole thing 180 for me. They made leaps from one map to the next in WaW; I see no reason these features can't become available two-by-two in future maps if they actually, you know, tried for once.

                                                                                                                                        

1. Give the upgraded guns special effects. It'd be cool if, you know, the RPG could spray nukes like shotgun pellets, to make it worth the 5,000 points plus the 950 for getting it out of the box. Same goes for any other weapon that merely gets a damage boost, faster reload, etc.

2. Multi-upgradability. Upgrade once, then once again after that for 10,000 points - and again after, if Treyarch has the time/budget and drive to bother with it. Something to make you really think twice about sticking to the gun you have for levels 25+, because right now (and as it's always been) you get to the mid-20's and the best upgrades you can get start to seem pretty weak. The second upgrade could inspire a differently-colored engraving and some new additional effects to whatever the gun picked up with the first upgrade. Ray Gun could, say, fire yellow fluorescent bolts instead, and RPG/SMAW/LAW rockets become tracking missiles with huge explosions throwing zombies across the room, dead or alive.

3. 7,500 points gets you a Bandolier off the wall to hold more ammo between Max Ammos. Make tactical grenades and Claymores/Betties available off the walls as well, of course. And tactical grenades. And also Claymores. And... I mentioned this already, didn't I?

4. Killstreaks! For fuck's sake, why haven't they made this feature available? I can't be the first one to mention this. 500 for a UAV/scanner radar, 1,000 for an airstrike, 1,500 for a support chopper, 2,000 for a gunship or AC-130 deal (but leaves your body vulnerable), 2,000 for a Sentry Gun which lasts until destroyed (and an unlimited number available to the player), 2,500 for a whole kennel of dogs to kill and distract the zombies, 3,000 for a riot shield squad of five to be dropped off which survive until killed, 7,500 for a deployable tank which takes a shit ton of damage before being destroyed, like the ones on WaW. Treyarch, get your fucking game face on, what is this.

5. Upgradable barricades. Past a certain level, most players I know don't bother repairing barricades anymore. Too slow, doesn't hold off the zombies long enough, and the point rewards become substantially less-useful as you gain waves. Let's say level 1's the classic wood panels rewarding 10 points per repair and taking one good pull to rip off. Level 2 doubles the number of boards for 1,500 points. Level 3 upgrades all those boards to scrap metal, rewarding 20 points per repair, taking two pulls to rip off a 'board', and costing 2,000 to upgrade. Level 4 gives iron boards rewarding 30 per repair and taking three pulls to rip off, costing 5,000. Level 5 grants steel, level 6 gives titanium, and you make up the numeric figures from there. Carpenter can also reward, say, 100 more points with each level. That's 800 points if you go with my six-level system. Between that and repair rewards, I'd say that's more than enough incentive to buy barricade upgrades.

6. Higher-level melee weapons. You start with the Bowie Knife for 3,000, that gets you by until round 15, so it's time to buy a sickle. That sickle gets you another 10 waves; now it's time to buy a scythe. 10 waves later, you get something like Cloud's Buster Sword, or maybe a futuristic energy sword deal to compliment BO2's futuristic placement. I'll draw the line there, but more's always better.

7. Find survivors locked in random areas of the map. Never know which closet or room you'll open with a survivor behind it. Depending on the wave you find them, he/she may start with a Colt, MP5, AK47 or RPK. Survivors follow you around and won't stray too far; naturally you can't expect them to live long but if you guard them well they can last quite a while. You could outfit them with certain guns by trading your current gun with the one they have. Any points they make is split among all participating players... something like that. If you wanted to save a crawler and didn't want survivor Jeremy Whatever-his-fucking-name-is to kill it, there should be a control for that.

8. New zombies. How about cumbersome, powerful, tough Juggernaut zombies? Kill one of these and get 100 points multiplied by the wave you killed it on, i.e., 3,000 on wave 30, on top of whatever bank you made shooting it, which increases substantially wave-by-wave. This makes the expensive upgrades more reasonably-affordable.

9. A shit ton of guns. Just bring back everything from WaW and BO1, including those that for whatever reason didn't make the cut for Zombies. Treyarch still has the files for the guns and everything, right? Okay, they're the champions of copy-and-paste, so how about using that for something their clientele wouldn't mind? I sure as hell wouldn't mind finding a motherfucking old-fashioned MG42 in the random box, and a sexy PPSh-41, and maybe a DG2 which gets an erection up to DG4 with my multi-upgradability suggestion, all three bound together with Mule Kick's return. Samantha, I love you more than this demonic Russian fuck that doesn't give us shit from the random box, and narrating the pickups and box teleport. Swear to Christ, if there's anything Treyarch actually does that isn't copy-and-paste, it's something they want to fuck up very bad. I mean, there's just no excuse...

10. More perks - and all of them together, not just an extra one or two. I want the PhD Flopper back. I want some infinite-sprint shit, and I want something that lets me equip more than eight perks, 'cause with what I'm after, we're all gonna need it.

11. Purchasing super-weapons off the walls in special, secret, difficult and high-level areas of the map. Wanna secure the Ray Gun with a guarantee Samantha can't even offer? Spend over 7,000 points getting to some corner of the map (after you've spent the other 4,000 going the route to turn the power on), run through this one door that needs the power to be opened for 2,500, and bam, Ray Gun on the wall for 7,000. Want an MG42? Go open up another corner of the map, take this elevator to the fourth floor (no other way up there), take the zipline to a special area of the third floor, flip a switch, BAM, here's a room with the MG42 for 5,000. Want the DG2? Well I'm not gonna list the steps, but you're gonna need a little Bill Gates on your side to purchase that shit. With monthly payments. So I mean... Treyarch... fuckin'... get creative, men. Really.

12. Use the annoying fiery cracks and molten terrain to some creative effect, perhaps as a barrier between two halves of a map. Maybe you need Juggernog, or some other type of protection to survive a long walk through this molten terrain to reach a new area of the map. Without it, the distance would kill you. Simple, fun gameplay obstacle. Perhaps it could be some type of flame-retardant Perks-a-Cola drink, or suit you buy off a wall, which also protects from the explosions caused by killing immolating Hellhounds and zombies. If you actually added some new zombies that spewed flames as a means of attack, this could also protect from that. I'm just throwing ideas out there... I mean, it's not hard to program something this simple, I'm sure. Or are you that incompetent, Treyarch?

13. A mind-blowingly huge Zombie map. Just one. Just a single one of these. And the good thing about a map this large is, you can easily tuck everything I listed above right into it. I'll gladly drop $30 on a map with all that.

14. Map variety. We like variegated flowery bushes with colorful colors of colored flowers of all colors. After all these years, flipping between Kino Der Toten and Der Riese gets a little old, so whatever you do from here on out, make sure there's at least some variety to your maps, Trey. I mean, if you at least don't bother with idea #13, this is the alternative. Really, contemplate that next time you're on the shitter coming up with Black Ops 3.

                                                                                                                                        

I have a hard time seeing your average player modding zombie maps to include things I've listed above, yet a professional studio like Treyarch somehow can't make something on-par with this, instead opting to make three maps which, when combined, is still smaller than the average single map. I understand the need to include a Multiplayer and Campaign, but after seeing what DICE was capable of with Battlefield, I feel like saying, "No excuses."

I read what was apparently an interview with a Treyarch rep about the Zombies mode. The focus they had in mind with BO2's Zombies was skill, as was implied. Is that why the maps are so small? Could it be that game companies these days are becoming too concerned with the skill aspect and forgetting these are just games? Why aren't they fun anymore?

Maybe it's just me, ready to find a new hobby.