“Call of Duty never changes!”

It’s a complaint that we hear every year, as the annual release in the monolithic franchise drops into the holiday season like clockwork. In most cases, it’s a fair criticism. Outside of the original Modern Warfare and Black Ops, Activision hasn’t taken a lot of risks with its headlining series, which has resulted in some serious stagnation. We gave Modern Warfare 3 a 5 out of 10, and that’s a score with which I happen to agree.

But this year is different. Treyarch tried new things with Call of Duty: Black Ops II, for better and worse.

Black Ops II picks up the story of the first game in the near-future setting of 2025. The frame narrative involves established character Frank Woods flashing back to Cold War era operations in between each contemporary mission as the two timelines tell the story of Raul Menendez, a terrorist with an unhealthy obsession with his own sister. As Alex Mason in the past and his son David Mason in the future, it is your job to keep Menendez from exacting revenge on the United States, as he plans to hijack our own defense network and turn it against us.

The game’s premise is rife with potential. Its themes of technophobia, first-world guilt, and vengeance pulse with relevance in today’s social and political climate. The antagonist even uses YouTube to spoon-feed his ideas to the masses. While it takes elements from other works and infuses them with topics that likely won’t age well–fear of China, casual homophobia–the result is surprisingly bold. The biggest flaw of the storytelling is that the game doesn’t seem to trust the audience to follow along, and therefore falls into the trap of telling when it could show.

Luckily, what it does show is impressive. Call of Duty is well known for its set-piece moments, and Black Ops II delivers on that legacy. While nothing quite matches the greatness that is “Ghillies in the Mist,” I’ll always remember the horseback sequence and one particular section that I won’t spoil here. Of course, there are still anemic stealth bits, pointless quick time events, and uncomfortable instances of excessive brutality, but those are part and parcel for the genre. At worst, this game handles these tropes more competently than its competition.

But you’re not here to learn about that. You want to know what Black Ops II brings to the table that no other Call of Duty has before. The first and best feature is the branching storyline. It will take multiple play-throughs to parse out the exact mechanisms, but it is clear that the choices you make during the game will affect the outcome of the plot. Each mission has multiple different results–whether characters survive or critical mission intel is gathered–and these factors will affect your ending. This lends the game considerable replayability, as well as a greater feeling of control, instead of the old sensation of being led down a linear corridor.

Indeed, Black Ops II goes out of its way to feel less linear. From a purely structural standpoint, it is still linear, but you don’t get that claustrophobic hallway feeling that inferior modern shooters often impart. The best comparison that I can make is by way of Final Fantasy. Black Ops II is like old-school FF–it hides its inherent linearity by giving you large areas to explore and side content to play with outside of the main quest. Conversely, a FPS like Medal of Honor: Warfighter is like Final Fantasy XIII, in that it doesn’t even bother disguising the railroad tracks.

Unfortunately, the experimental extra content is also the biggest stain on the experience. During the course of the campaign, you will unlock side-quests of sorts deemed “Strike Force Missions.” The diversions are not necessary to complete the game, but they do appear to have an effect on your ending, and they will become unavailable if they are not completed in a timely fashion. This wouldn’t be so bad if they were fun, but they simply are not. The best way to describe Strike Force is also with a game analogy: Brutal Legend. Instead of being immersed in the action, SF tasks you with floating above your troops in half-baked real-time strategy style. I could write a whole other review on the way these sections kill the story’s pacing and fail on a basic A.I. level, but the simple fact is that these missions just aren’t fun.

That’s the chance you take when you add brand new features to titles that already have an established formula. Unpolished features stick out inelegantly from the rest of the well-oiled machine, and leave themselves open to ridicule. It’s a shame too, since it’s arguably the most audacious addition to the Call of Duty formula, and Treyarch should really be rewarded for trying something new. I just couldn’t find anything nice to say about the Strike Force missions.

On the other hand, the studio should be commended for the great tweaks they have made to other long-standing features. The old “Zombie Mode” is back as “Survival,” but there is also a brand new way to fight the undead, dubbed “Tranzit.” This take on the formula gives the players access to a larger world, with a bus that continually circles the large map. So instead of fortifying and defending on area for as long as you can, players are encouraged to stay on the move. It’s a great twist on a guilty pleasure, while not straying from the silly fun that has made the zombie modes so addicting in previous installments. I highly recommend you give Black Ops II‘s co-op a chance, even if you’re tired of the undead.

I also have to say that I was surprised by the sustained level of quality shown by the game’s competitive multiplayer suite. The big selling point this time around is “Pick 10,” a new system by which perks are allocated on a point system, instead of slotted by type. This prevents players from gravitating towards the one “best” load-out, while encouraging experimentation. It will take some time to see if the community takes to it, but it’s certainly not a bad change. At worst, it’s merely different.

Black Ops II has also integrated a significant e-sports component. Once again, these are features that will live and die with the community, but it’s great to see them in the software. This includes native streaming capabilities and “League Play,” which I imagine will be full of people way too good to bother with me. If the branching storyline and silly zombie modes are an olive branch to the more casual player, the social functionality of the game is an adrenaline shot to the heart of the hardcore fan-base. I hope they appreciate it and continue to support quality releases like this over creatively weak titles like Modern Warfare 3.

All is not well online though. I did experience a relatively moderate amount of lag in my time, and it is my understanding that the PS3 servers went down completely at one point. In fact, technical problems pervade much of the experience, whether it be glitches in the campaign or an overall underwhelming graphical fidelity. Call of Duty has long since been surpassed in terms of technology by bigger and better engines, but there are quite a few noticeable instances where visual deficiencies harm the overall presentation. Like, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier before it, the game features scenes of people being burned alive which are almost comedic, rather than grisly, due to their unconvincing textures. I also have to mention I bug I ran into which made horses blink in and out of existence before slowly spinning 90 degrees on an unseen X-axis.

We asked for more innovation out of Call of Duty and we got it. Not all of it is good, mind you, but they tried. A surprisingly compelling villain and world-class multiplayer help smooth over the rough patches though, making Black Ops II the best first-person shooter of the year so far. Now it’s up to Far Cry 3 to vie for that honor. Good luck, Ubisoft.

A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes and played to completion in about 6 hours, with an additional 8 hours spent with the multiplayer. The game was played on Xbox 360, but is also available for PS3, PC, and Wii U.