 It's the year 2012. You wake up to a tenant class where you can't focus on any of the work assigned that day. On the way home, you rest your head on the cold glass window of the car or school bus to then power up the thing you were looking forward to most that day. Maybe it was a PS3, Xbox 360. It doesn't matter. Either way, you run upstairs to your room and throw away whatever stress, homework, or bad thoughts you brought home with you that day. As you grab a disc that's stained with dirty fingerprints because you were too impatient to ever grab it from the top, and then proceed to clean the disc with a t-shirt that's probably just as dirty as the damn disc. And then you watch a cutscene until you approach a menu that reads Call of Duty Black Ops 2. Start a party chat with two friends you know from school, alongside four other people that you've never met in real life, but can still call friends. You all go into a private lobby where you run free for all snipers to reenact that montage video you saw at school the same very day. And you repeat this day after day after day until you lose track of time and realize you're an adult full of nostalgia. Call of Duty is a series that has risen to be more than just a game, like Minecraft, Halo, or any other franchise I played in my youth. It's become forever tied to me. It was a part of my upbringing. It has shaped me to be the person I am today, like so many of you watching this. You might have started with COD4, NW2, Black Ops 2, or even a later title, but it doesn't really matter where you started. What matters most is what you made of that time. And boy, did I make the most of Black Ops 2. If you had a 35-year-old man and you tied him to a chair full of explosives, and the only way to save you both was for him to name two Call of Duty games, he would most likely say Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty Black Ops 2. I know in some random dot of the globe there's the minority who jump for joy when you say Call of Duty Ghost or Vanguard, if I could Springfield maybe. But when you hear Black Ops 2, you think of zombies. The campaign with multiple choices are the shitty troll munchies intro. So congratulations on raising a retarded young man. As well as the copy-paste intro templates from every other goddamn YouTuber at the time. A lot has happened in culture since the release of Call of Duty Black Ops 2. The Queen croaked, we went through a global pandemic, I exist, and Kanye West went to war with the skinny-tatted SNL man. Life changes drastically in 10 years. You see the title? You get it? Saying Black Ops 2 was a good game isn't a controversial take or even a special one. You could find hundreds of video essays where grown men get teary-eyed by getting called slurs in the golden years of 2012. When the game came out I was 10 and while I do miss grown men getting off their 9-5 jobs then yell at a 10-year-old to die of cancer, the angle I have for this video is to play off its anniversary. The game is 10 years old. Actually I lied, the game is turning 10 years old but it looks nice in the title and I'm not waiting till it's official birthday because there's other games that are also turning 10 this year that I want to talk about. Also it's my video and I make the rules. Happy fucking birthday Call of Duty. Here's your Dairy Queen ice cream cake. Black Ops 2 is a universally enjoyed game and it'd be really easy for me to blindly praise it in this video for brownie points. Not to stroke my ego but I've had some hot takes where I was originally the minority critiquing something that I was really enjoyed and was to be proven right over time. Like for real, these two videos aged so well, especially this one. What I'm trying to say is I'm not blinded by brand loyalty and that times can be actually overly pessimistic. But in the case of Black Ops 2 it really makes me interested on how I want to tackle this video. All I have to say is how the game is perfect and you would most likely trust whatever I say due to the game's reputation or your own fun nostalgia. I'm even a victim of this. Before making this video I knew that it wouldn't be that hard to tackle the topic because I've worked a mouth over the years. Black Ops 2 is great, Cod Ghost was not, and Cod got worse and worse over the years. This isn't to discredit the game's validity. I haven't even began to talk about the game yet but it does really make me fascinated about the power of nostalgia. Call of Duty is a really good marker to track the change of opinions toward video games because of how mainstream the series is. In the modern landscape of gaming we all fall victim to relieving criticism of older media that was once controversial due to the landscape getting way worse. When Modern Warfare 3 first launched it originally had mixed reviews. But in the year 2022 after playing games like Vanguard, Cold War, even Modern Warfare 2019 you could go back to play Modern Warfare 3 and completely dismiss all previous stances by accident due to the dramatic shift of quality over time. This happens a ton with other franchises. Halo Reach was once said to be the worst Halo game ever on its release and since then Halo 4 took its place, then 5 took its place, and now Infinite sits as the worst Halo game currently. This is the most obnoxious thing I've ever experienced in my life. I also find the same dilemma being present in the former. There's a lot of games that have great reputations and are extremely difficult to replay and might be a slight bit overrated. A big offender of this are Bethesda games. Fallout 4 and 76 are worse than New Vegas and 3, but replaying New Vegas 3 or even Skyrim in the year 2022 is exhausting. Fallout New Vegas stands out from the rest because of its lightning and a bottle premise so its validity is justified, even though the game is extremely dated. But in the case of Fallout 3, it's also really dated and doesn't have that same lightning and a bottle magic that New Vegas has making it quite limp. But if you ask the common person who played it when it first came out, they could possibly praise the game very highly when they haven't even replayed it from start to finish within the last decade. But are going off of Nostalgia. Nostalgia is a powerful tool because it's 100% subjective. With my adult brain, I could rip a part Fallout 4 for multiple reasons and admit that it's an extremely flawed project, but back in my mind, there'll always be that memory of me getting the game for Christmas in 2015 and playing it throughout my entire winter break in my living room. Making a video like this is extremely scary. Black Ops 2 is very personal to me and potentially popping that Nostalgia bubble by examining it with hindsight can be a gamble. But fuck it wee ball, here's Black Ops 2 10 years later. If you liked this video, please share it on Twitter, Reddit, or any other landscape that's available to spread it around. Subscribe as well, it helps, please. In the modern climate of Gen Z humor, shouting big chungus and playing Breaking Bad memes can be funny to some. This was made by the official Buffalo Bills account, but there was a time period where that wasn't always the case. The best way to put a kid in the ER back in the day was to spam the hit marker sound effect a million times while you've made Doritos, Mountain Dew, and the infamous MLG logo spin in circles for 10 minutes. Before the times the eyes showed speed or streamers that cared a tiny bit about their appearance, there are only pale nerds who recorded their 720p 50 kill matches while going outside once a week to pick up their shipment of G Fuel. To then get into a midlife crisis where the only solution was to spam grant the photo tattoos while getting a decent haircut. In 2012, you didn't have many options of what content to make in the gaming sphere. You either had grown men screaming at amnesia and slenderman, or Minecraft creators making music video parodies. Black Ops 2 was the most played game in the world in 2012, and was universally enjoyed making a gold mine for content creators. Like I said, you had the nerds dropping gameplay going beast mode from their mom's basement. Woody's gamer tag was playing the role of Master Oogway for the youth. The Van Oskruz making fun content, trolling videos, zombie videos, trick shotting, and actual fun esports ran rampant. MW2 was the start for digital creation on COD, but Black Ops 2 is where everyone began to make their big break and get some fucking dough. Content wasn't exhausting like it is now, and didn't change how the game played every other week. As of right now, Call of Duty content is no longer centered around being fun anymore, but instead centered around being overly competitive for business opportunities. His nose looks like a fucked up carrot. First of all, it's a beak, fag shit. Instead of seeing videos by KYR Speedy having a good time and talking of lobbies, you are now instead spammed by boring, sweaty, try hard, battle royale creators like this girl, who's most likely cheating. I'm not trying to come off like an insult, I click control v and they're fucking everywhere, but this person is the newest creator to blow up off their ego toward warzone clips. Everyone today wants to be a streamer, so you have an oversaturation of neckbeards who get bloodshot red sweating in any game they play, so they can get an audience or get recruited to an organization. And the sphere gets so saturated that it begins to bleed into casual lobbies within most games. Now every little asshole is running a meta of the most broken gun of the week while slight cancelling and treating every match in a fucking tournament, hoping they can make a digital career out of their clips. Call of Duty has always had their sweats, I know that, but they aren't nearly as generic and desperate as the modern way. Seeing somebody dick an entire team with an intervention or ballista was respectable, and if he had cool sniping montages it wouldn't be that surprising to see a phase in your gamertag. Nowadays you just need to play Fortnite or Valorant and you'll probably get in. The pro aspect of Call of Duty was always separate from the mainstream, and even now it's not the pro aspect of Call of Duty bleeding, it's just the clip culture and wanting to put a show on every time you're live because it has objectively made people's careers. But in all honesty the hell's getting praised for being a professional cod player in the year 2022. The downfall of video games started when kids complained about people being good at the game. I remember when I was a kid and saw a prestige master in cod, I didn't tell him to take a shower or go outside, I sent that motherfucker a friend request. I've came to the conclusion that when it comes to content creation around Black Ops 2, it's not my nostalgia clotting my judgement at all. Someone getting a squad wipe in Warzone just doesn't compete with open voice chat lobbies in 2012 culture. YouTube was tiny in scale in comparison to today, and Twitch was almost non-existent. While Minecraft was on the come out for creators like Beijing Canadian, Stampy Longhead and Captain Sparkles, the community for Call of Duty was thriving just as much. Before the Vanoss crew and other creators began to explode off of GTA and Garry's Mod content, they revolutionized YouTube by just having fun in Black Ops 2. These videos were not just products at their time either, each video had millions on top of millions of views and began to impact culture. You could go to school and say an inside joke from a video you watched the day before and someone would most likely understand the reference. Before this content was either highlight clips or commentary let's plays. But creators like Vanoss and KYR Speedy were making full on edited projects that you could still feel the ripple effect of to this day. Creators like Swagger Souls, Fitz, Tommy and Jay Schlag get props for adding captions and funny editing to their videos. But when you go down the line of inspiration, it all goes back to someone, getting inspired by someone who got inspired by these videos who are most likely also inspired by someone. The ripple effect goes unnoticed and is often underappreciated, but like I said, you could still feel its effect to this day and some of your most enjoyed content creators. But the reason these videos are good boils down to one simple fact, these videos were just friends having fun, having fun playing a game they loved while making careers out of it. It was a spark that ended up setting these people up for life financially, revolutionizing a format that is still used to this day while entertaining millions and it was done in Black Ops 2. And that's just this style of content. Like I said, you still have the zombie creators in the come up, trolling videos, and other pieces of content all done in Black Ops 2. This content was more impactful and memorable than any small streamer getting a quad kill in Rebirth Island ever will be. So it's not just nostalgia and being stuck in the past, content was just better. This is probably the most important part of the video. The zombies in the campaign are enjoyed by some, but when you talk about Black Ops 2, almost everybody reflects on the multiplayer aspect. And that's justified. The campaign is only a couple hours long, so it could have gone one way or the other, right after you played it. And the only way to really get into zombies is by being committed to its easter eggs or lore. And that could be a hassle unless you are a fucking nerd like me, who watch Mr. Ruffle Waffle videos trying to learn how to get inside the robot on origins. But the multiplayer in Black Ops 2 was casual and easy to pick up and drop no matter what time period you played it in. You can play after school, after work, after the gym, none of you are doing that. Or on the weekends, and it will always be the same as when you left it. And even now in the modern day it's still really fun. I replayed the multiplayer quite a bit to once again see if it was just nostalgia making me feel this way, but I just got so into it again that it finally clicked with me on why this game is so adored and revered to this day. Call of Duty multiplayer has been on the decline for a while now, and if you enjoy it still drop your weapons and hear me out. I liked Modern Warfare 2019 when it released, and I played Cold War a bit, but those games are proper examples of nostalgia cope. Modern Warfare peaked when quarantine happened, and with the whole world either being inside or being extremely racist, everyone just played Call of Duty or games in general really. I did a rest wipe in 2020. Why did I choose to play such toxic games during lockdown? And quarantine I was able to just play wars on all day with my friends to the point where I got so bored and lonely that I made this YouTube channel where I continued to be bored and lonely. When you examine Modern Warfare without quarantine nostalgia you could spot out the flaws easily. On release every base map sucked total ass. The progression system was tied to the battle pass so I was no longer able to sell my soul to the black market for a master procedure. The camo challenge is also a blue deck. Some guns were totally broken, banana, fun MW2 way where everything was unbalanced and chaotic, but instead broken to where they became meta weapons that everybody copy and pasted. And after a while the game got to a staple point, but that was because the only enjoyable maps were shoehouse and remakes from older games. And even then the play styles and spawns were fucking obnoxious to put up with. It's not getting any better either, the MW2 beta just wrapped in. When that game comes out I'll be hanging from the sailing within the first week. A lot of the same criticisms of Modern Warfare also applied to Cold War, the standout maps from previous games as well. But as a base game, Cold War was half-baked due to it being crunched in a 6 month period and hit a deadline. While every other developer was delaying their games due to Covid, Chark was getting whipped like a slave to release a card game so they could avoid Activision killing the developers family members. While CD Projekt credit was drinking margaritas in the Bahamas since they were in the towel 6 months before release. But it's okay though, they made an anime so it all worked out in the end. For these two, you had previous Call of Duty's that were also fucking up what made the previous games good while injecting greed. Like why is there still no map voting in the new MW2? And before you asked I'm not gonna rip into the vanguard because I really cannot be bothered to play that game. Even then I played it so little but you'd have to take a shotgun to my fucking knees before you get me to play it ever again. But what made Block Ops 2 so fun was just how simple it was. You didn't have skill-based matchmaking that punished you for getting more than 4 kills, you were able to just run around and shooting whatever gun you wanted while also running at the same speed as everybody else. To get an advantage in the recent games you had to damn near do a street fighter combo. Also the sniping was improved from Black Ops 1, so you were able to quick scope your heart out and compile a montage to get only 10 views. Shotguns are simple, SMGs were great for running gun, and assault rifles, the AN-94, that's all you need to know. Trust me, I would know because I'm American. The gunplay is really solid even 10 years later and that's owed to Black Ops 2's greatest innovation. That would be copied for the following years to come after its release and that was the Pick 10 system. I know that sounds like a jack-in-the-box special, and most of you might not know what the Pick 10 system is because let's be honest a 10 year old wasn't going crazy about the new Pick 10 system, they just wanted to shoot a fucking gun. In MW2 and Black Ops 1 you were only able to have one attachment on your weapons, and in MW3 you're able to have two if you had a perk. But the Pick 10 system in Black Ops 2 was designed to allow more customization for your loadout. What's up world? If you wanted to play with a loadout that was perk focused, you could. If you wanted a bunch of grenades and shock chargers to be annoying little rat, you could do that. If you wanted to deck out your weapons with three attachments to unleash your inner NRA, you could as well. Donald Trump, if you can hear us, please, Donald Trump, please save me. Please save me Donald Trump, please. What is he fucking Jesus? The Pick 10 system was a massive step up from the loadout customizations within the two previous games, and while it might not be as advanced as the modern gunsmith now being copy-paste in every fucking cod, it gave options for how you wanted to play the game. And this Pick 10 system flourished greatly within the amazing maps of Black Ops 2. The game launched with 14 base maps and some good DLC maps if you were willing to pay for them. Look, it's 2022. You think I'm gonna pay for 10 year old maps? Some of the base maps were ass, but a majority of them were really good. Call of Duty really did make some good maps back in their day. Let me name you some of the Black Ops 2 maps, and to yourself, count how many times you've played them outside of Black Ops 2. Express, Hijacked, Raid, and Slums. Probably a ton, because like I said, they were good fucking maps. If you didn't play cod, you might be content that you didn't get to participate with my little brain game there. Probably reminds you of school, when nobody picked you for their team in PE, didn't it? You deserve it. You also have standoff, Turbine, and Newtown 2025, which is more of a tradition than a remake, so I give it a pass. The design of Black Ops 2 maps were small and dynamic. Encouraging people not camp like Cod 2019 are the most recent MW2, and this was because the map design didn't award that playstyle as much as other titles. And while a lot of them still followed the simple three lane pattern, they still had unique architecture that allowed flanks and alternative routes. Another reason to not camp is because getting kills wasn't the only way to achieve a missile that comes out of the sky. Obama. The kill streak system was changed to the score streak system, so you could also get points by playing the objective and assisting teammates alongside getting kills in a match. Doesn't matter for me personally. I bought a gaming mouse and a gaming keyboard, so I'm obligated to be good at video games, right? But why can't you be pathetic when you can still have more fun on the amazing maps and get rewarded even more for doing more than hold one angle and sit on your ass even more than you do now? Um, playstyle's a subjective. What if I like to camp, and that's the way I have fun? Fuck you. But yeah, I liked Black Ops 2's multiplayer. Playing double XP weekends, hardpoint for the first time, getting gold and diamond weapons instead of generic, woodland and snow camos. I don't know why Modern Warfare was so obsessed with these fucking basic ass shit. Stomping on Christmas news, playing in custom lobbies. It's all very, very nostalgic. Black Ops 2 multiplayer isn't my favorite by design. That would still be MW2 due to it being total chaos, but it's my second favorite because of its environment as well as its care toward the players in comparison to today's call of duties. Before you had to open crates to get better guns or buy weapon cosmetics exclusive to only one gun, you could get cool cosmetics without sacrificing an arm and leg. You could get this stupid ass bacon skin for two dollars on every single gun, as well as the element one-one-five skin, the dragon skin and many more. Cool cosmetics that the community could vote for. I prefer cheap, good-looking camos than soulless corporate product placement and games like Vanguard with half-baked multiplayer experiences. But what if I want to be King Kong and I really like King Kong and I get to play as King Kong for the movie King Kong? I do not fucking care. I also really do miss ranking up and prestigious. While I clowned on this guy for this terminally online take, there is some validity to what he said about max prestige. Getting to master prestige meant something when you entered a lobby because it was visible to everybody. I also gave you another challenge to complete so I made you play the game more. But when I played COD 2019 I got to level 100 for it to reset, where I did it again next season and it never felt that good because all I got was a little emblem and in the new game it doesn't even pop up when you kill people. So what's the fucking point? No one's gonna see it. Also customization has been neutered heavily and Black Ops 2 you can make your own funny little emblem cards no matter how vulgar they were and you weren't even able to do this in Cold War. Black Ops 2 was simple, it was a simple better game and it most likely won't ever get this good again. But if you played in its prime I'm happy for you. You could still replay it now but it's just not the same as back then. But don't forget about those memories and if you ever feel nostalgic go watch some old videos and remember those good times. No matter what age you were, what financial place you were in and what lifestyle you lived. When you put on that headset you were not just yourself but instead the gamer tag you chose as you got to escape in a world of fun. It's 4 a.m. on December 18th, 2012. That's absolutely a number I just pulled out of the mirror. The members of the core friend group are either asleep or grinding for legendary weapons in Borderlands 2 like the degenerates they are. So instead of caving to terminal boredom you man the fuck up and load into transit by yourself. Call of Duty Zombies is a weird little accident made out of curiosity that still stands 14 years later, like me if it was 20. That joke didn't really work. Zombies was never intended to be a selling factor for Treyarch's games and was only greenlit in the late stages of World at War's development as a neat bonus to players that finished the campaign. Knock Durantotan was a massive hit, which isn't that surprising. From 2008 to 2015 making a zombies game was essentially just jiggling car keys in the face of gamers. So because of the success more maps were made for World at War and the game moved continued to flourish into Black Ops 1 with an even larger budget. Who are you people? What do you want from me? Keno Durantotan and the DLC maps despite being controversial were so loved and enjoyed that a whole designated team was made for the zombies game mode going into the development for Black Ops 2 with Jimmy Zelensky being the game design director. Earlier I mentioned how the game's marketing built in same height for transit, but now we're at the part of the video where I need to address transit itself. Transit is the largest example of popping said nostalgia bubble that I explained about in the intro, but I also have a large amount of empathy for the game designers of transit. As much as transit has its faults I will always respect when a studio tries to think outside of the box and fails. Way more than when a studio tries to play it really safe and ends up being uninspired or underwhelming. Black Ops 4 reinvented Mob of the Dead but worse. Newtown zombies slightly better but still shit. Five but worse and call the dead I said reinvented. Re-invented. I need to reiterate that because don't be misunderstood. The remasters in Black Ops 3 with zombie chronicles. And if you didn't play zombies just trust me. And if you really are that desperate for content go watch some zombie creators. Fuckers are pretty much zombies themselves living off of scraps. Transit had overly ambitious ideas while also having tight deadlines as well as console limitations. Treyarch originally had a lot of hope for transit's development process and if all the original concepts were able to work it could have been one of the best zombie maps ever made. But like I said transit was so big ambitious that the engine literally wouldn't have been able to run it. So because of this the map is littered with gross fog to shrink your point of view so the game could render textures. Also the denizens were put into disencouraging from exploring the map while also slowing you down so the game could have a buffer to once again render new areas without crashing. So with that being said 10 years later transit in its release state still sucks ass. The buses flawed and the player has no control of it. The areas are barren and are often better played standalone instead of within transit. Like town could actually be fun on its own when not playing in transit. And while the map was the debut for buildable items it was still flawed due to the turbine being essential for the map while only being able to carry one item at a time. Also two of the craftable items were pointless while we're at it the turbine mechanics sucked. The wonder weapon had to be crafted and it broke if you use it too much making you have to go all over the map to make it again. The boss sucked. The pack of punch process sucked. The fog and lava were annoying. Okay I see I'm starting to lose some of you with over specifics. You get the point transit really fucking sucked but I still like it. The chaos element of transit is definitely the most entertaining part of it. As Mike was asking from the hit film monsters incorporated one said The map could be unpredictable and confusing letting you know that you are playing something chaotically flawed. I have a lot of memories of shit hitting the fan or panicking because nothing ever went smooth. So I could say that I like transit as a kid but that's only because I had fun with friends time to time when I was a kid. But that's it right. One bad oop see from black up zombies and the rest were golden. I hate die rise. I hate it. I hate it. I fucking hate it. Transits ambitious plans falling short in development panic made it stand out as a total shit show and regardless of quality a shit show could be really fun. Die rise is something worse. It's boring. And I rather have chaotic and confusing than bland and forgettable. Wait no that's me. The elevators were annoying because you couldn't control them unless you had a one-use item. The closed spaces were obnoxious and the map's art style was ugly. But I had good wall buys and the slip of fire was nice. That's an understatement. It was really nice actually. I had personality shooting deadly soap on the floor making all the zombies slip and slide over the damn place. What a wacky out the box fun gun. Can't be said for this snoozefest of a map. I know I'm rushing. I just don't want to talk about die rise anymore. Fuck die rise. All my homies hate die rise. Now let's praise mom with the death. You forgot about this map. Nuketown Zombies was given to season pass holders. Not battle pass. Season pass. What the hell was that? Nuketown was a bonus map that was small and had zombies in the map Nuketown. That's it. It's the same as town pretty much. Not a full map but a fun area if you wanted to go high rounds. I don't hate Nuketown Zombies but there's not much to be said about it and I rather use my time to praise the other three maps for the rest of the zombie segment. I get the fuck out of my sight before I demolish you. Now as I was saying mob of the dead is one of the greatest zombie maps ever made and it was the most crucial for the zombies game mode. Before mob of the dead you get transit die rise in Nuketown Zombies. In comparison to world at war in black ops one black ops two was a laughing stock because these maps were mid as hell. Some were already not satisfied with black ops ones DLC maps so then to dive into three stinker ass maps that failed to meet expectations some were getting ready to jump off the fucking shut. People were losing hope with zombies and were getting nostalgic about the old simplistic map structures. Jimmy Zelensky was the leader for the past two projects but a new lead was assigned to mob of the dead and his name was Jason Blundell. He was originally a campaign design director but took on two maps for black ops two and to say he knocked out the park is an understatement. Mob of the Dead is a linear self-contained story that originally had no connections to any larger picture besides its own. But before we talk about the map let's talk about its atmosphere. Nowadays if you talk about Alcatraz you'll get a correction from an idiot 14 year old kid. Erm actually it's Rebirth Island? Yeah fucking you kid. Alcatraz is a historical prison in San Francisco notorious for holding high profile mobsters including the most infamous Al Capone. It's also stated to be impossible to escape from due to it being a rock in the middle of the ocean. So if an inmate breaks out they have to swim for freedom meaning they would either drown or freeze to death. An escape attempt was made but the three inmates either died in the water or escaped successfully to then never be heard or seen from again. The game designers visited the now closed prison to take notes and photos so that they could be accurate for the level design. But while Alcatraz is a cool concept for a map we've had other Call of Duty maps with great concepts like zombies bringing down the Titanic where you play on the literal Titanic. But the map wasn't executed well and was mainly due to its lack of impressive atmosphere. The main crew of Mob of the Dead are all played by actors who depicted famous mobsters in movies or television shows. The recently passed Ray Leota popular from Goodfellas played the intimidating Billy Hansom, Chaz Palmentary from A Bronx Tale played Salvatore DeLuca, Michael Madsen from Reservoir Dogs played Michael Fenn O'Leary and Joe Pentiliana who played Ralphie and the Sopranos plays Albert Arlington aka The Weasel. The Titanic map Voyager Despair had a messy plot with forgettable characters that didn't play into the maps theme. And while I like the original crew of zombies they don't really fit into the Mob of the Dead theme either. Some of the best characters in zombies are one-off characters that were made to fit the atmosphere of whatever map they're in. The only other map to encapsulate this feeling just as well as Mob of the Dead was Shadows of Evil which was also made by Jason Blundell for Black Ops 3. The four characters that you play in that game fit right into the map's gorgeous setting to encapsulate the time period. But that's Black Ops 3, I'm getting ahead of myself. Mob of the Dead's characters are amazing. It makes sense why they chose the cast they did because they're all supposed to be shitty prison inmates. And what better people to represent that than mobsters played by actors who played iconic mobsters? Everything you need to know about these people is set up in the map's amazing intro. You meet the cast one by one showing that they're all deceptive criminals, talking with the security guard Ferguson in a friendly matter knowing that his death is imminent for their escape. Feeling no emotion and working in their own self-interest. James Galalfini, the actor who played Tony Soprano died two months after this map came out and that's my main criticism. What is it? My fault? You're twice as likely to be robbed by a Black? What a fucking waste on Treyarch's part. Like imagine if you got to heavily breathe around Alcatraz while you go on a blood bus for Rigatoni. The whole premise of Mob of the Dead is that the main characters are stuck in a purgatory cycle due to the selfish and deceptive natures within them, living and dying again and again until they break that cycle from previous actions done on the map. And in the intro you have the characters leaving each other for dead. Left for dead reference. Shut up you goddamn bird! For all of them to die and have to repeat the cycle again. Also somehow their revolvers got extended mags. They fucking shoot 20 shots before dying. I don't know. And when you start playing Mob of the Dead you feel the atmosphere instantly. Candles, blood splatter, and hanging bodies everywhere. While the prison is destroyed and on fire. Look at the mystery box for fuck's sake, it's so cool. And the level design bleeds right into the atmosphere. Mob of the Dead fixed everything bad about transit. A closed off map with fun areas and good buildable items. A great wonder weapon that could be upgraded. No more shitty turbine to progress. It's said you have the afterlife mechanic that could also be used as infinite quick revive. Electric cherry was introduced. No more bank that made the game a fucking cake walk. A good easter egg. A good pack of punch system. A great boss character. Fun weapons. Feeding the dogs for the hell's retriever. I know I'm nerding the fuck out but Mob of the Dead is my personal favorite zombie map. And it fixed every single fuck up from die rise and transit while having personality alongside just being fun. I know Block Ops 2 had a rough ass start but what a redemption. And with that we go to buried. Is buried better than Mob of the Dead? Absolutely fucking not. But is buried the best map of the Victus crew? Yeah. And if you're not a freak but instead of average show the Victus crew is the one with the hot cow girl in the homeless guy. I smell a plan coming together. Let's be honest it's not that hard to be the best of Victus when your two previous maps were transit and die rise. Buried is a fun map with a pretty atmosphere of a buried western red dead redemption like town under a mining facility. And is a very casual map that introduces new mechanics that aren't too complicated. And is honestly just a good old time. You have two new wonder weapons the paralyzer which is a redemption to the jet gun and can be used to fly around the map and kill zombies with infinite ammo. And the other wonder weapon which is the ray gun mark 2 which is an improvement to the original ray gun and was put into the rest of the other zombie maps. You also had cool gimmick stuff like the chalk system which allowed you to put whatever wall guns in whatever area you wanted them to be in. You also had Leroy who was some hillbilly guy that was essential to the maps progression. Voltrade was cool as well. The map was easy and fun. It was a nice atmospheric time and I enjoyed it. But now let's talk about Origins. Some state that Origins is the best zombie map ever and I understand why completely. Origins brought back the original zombie crew and was their debut to the story Black Ops 3 which some considered to be the peak of zombies. The map Origins was once again made by Jason Blundell since Jamie Zelinski was either swimming with the fishes or burning in hell somewhere. Okay that was kind of mean. He's not fucking dead. He's just not making zombies anymore. Origins followed everything that made Mob of the Dead good and applied it to this map as well. A great cinematic intro that introduces all the characters. An amazing atmosphere of a world war one battle. Like the sky box alone and 100 foot robots can be enough but you have trenches muddy areas and cool temple shit. The maps wonder weapons were four elemental staffs that the player could build. The panzer was the maps boss and he was also pretty cool and had a part that was essential to build one of the staffs. Origins to some could be a complex map on the surface but when you get into the swing of things it flowed greatly. Also had one of the most controversial easter egg cutscenes ever which had people believe that the whole zombie storyline was just a board game until the release of Black Ops 3. You don't even know how to play properly. Girls don't know enough about songs. No. Origins was such a unique map and where I liked a lot of the aesthetic design of Mob of the Dead I really liked the layout of Origins. Areas were wider giving you space to move and the map was quite big while not being annoying like transit. But more free and open to explore. It encourages you to explore the area you're in and go around the map since you literally need to in order to progress with the new generator alternative to turn on the power. I had countless nights where I would just stay up till four in the morning looking up how to upgrade the ice staff while me and my best friend would discuss what the hell of Gartha was. We didn't really fucking know what we were talking about but it was just fun to discuss the lore at the time. Origins was just a great send off to a zombies experience at such a rocky start and it was so strong that it created the best zombie era in the following game while also tying a little ribbon to the chaotic rollout of Black Ops 2 zombie DLC maps. Overall zombie had its ups and downs yet we all continued to run trains, complete easter eggs and get annoyed when we went down and never take accountability for our actions. So for that chaotic as it was I always loved Black Ops 2 zombies. I'll go back and play the maps or play the remastered versions within Black Ops 3. Black Ops 2's campaign is interesting when you look at how people perceive it. Multiple choices. If I shoot you you're in the clan. A really good villain in the clan. Cut scenes and over the top missions. I recently finished the three modern warfare campaigns as well as the Black Ops 1 campaign and hot take. I honestly prefer those campaigns to Black Ops 2. Today we all have the benefit of hindsight and I'm not gonna lie about the campaign being the best in the series even though some people might believe that and I'm not gonna say that it's a perfect standalone campaign either. In 2013 the last of us came out which was a single player experience full of immersion, good writing and beautiful set pieces. This is Black Ops 2. Is it an unfair comparison? Absolutely. So stop doing it. It's not fucking Red Dead 2. It's not these thingies. Stop putting it up here. Black Ops 2's campaign isn't a Picasso painting and some of you hold it way too highly. It's a fun action movie with the same cheesy over-the-top action shit that you could find within any action movie. Some of the sets are stiff and repetitive. The choices aren't as meaningful as they might have seemed in 2012 and the AI at times could be fucking brain dead. But I don't give a shit in the honesty. It was goofy and action packed. When I play Black Ops I want to ride a horse at the gun, take over a robot, glide like a squirrel and go on a rampage. And if I really wanted a God of War experience I'd go play God of War. This is Call of Duty. It's an experience that only lasts a couple of hours. The funny thing is though I'm saying that Black Ops 2 isn't good as like these real story games that are made strictly for single player experiences. Like after Black Ops 2 you got some really shitty campaigns. So I don't want to take this one for granted. The game is a revenge story from all sides. There's twists and turns from the past and present and you have to play between the past and present from the perspective of Alex Mason and his son David Mason. And that's why this campaign isn't as good as some of the other ones including Black Ops 1. David Mason is really fucking boring. Harper's a fun sidekick because it's Michael Rooker and Michael Rooker is just awesome. But the futuristic segments are trumped by the flashbacks where you get to play as Alex Mason on Woods. Menendez is also a good villain. I don't want to skim over him. He's more complex than any other Call of Duty villain. To be fair though it really isn't that hard to outdo them. He ties right into the story and is the reason why the campaign is talked about so much today. He has gripes with characters. He has history with characters and he's tied directly to every character. I know I'm not saying much about the COD campaign. I don't just think there's that much to say. Overall I enjoy the Black Ops 2 campaign as a fun action movie. I still prefer Black Ops 1 in the realism aspect. Having real world figures and the whole plot with the numbers and stuff. It was really good. I also still prefer the three modern warfare campaigns. It sounds like I'm discrediting Black Ops 2's campaign. Go play it if you have time. It's a fun time waster game that you don't have to pay too much attention and you could just enjoy what's going on. And it's still better than some of the shit that came out after. So you did it. You made it through the old days of YouTube, the fun multiplayer and the over the top campaign and controversial zombies. You also got to see my childhood from my perspective for a little over half an hour. And before you go on with the rest of your day I want to touch on a word that you've heard multiple times throughout this video. And that's nostalgia. A question I've thought about even before scripting this video that I now want to present to you with is if a game of the exact same quality of Black Ops 2 released today, would you still like Black Ops 2 more? While making this video I'm a 20 year old man who has graduated from high school, done taxes, found love, lost love, made friends, lost friends, gone to college, dropped out of college. It is now chasing a passion project while dealing with doubt and security, success, failure and thousands of stresses that we have to deal with every day in this little game we call life. And in 2012 I was a 10 year old kid. A kid who would never have thought we would have gotten 100k on YouTube. A kid who would have never thought we would have gone through the character arc that we did. A kid who didn't know what was yet to come. But what he didn't know was that hours of fun, laughs and nostalgia were being made on a game that he played every day. And I don't think most of us feel this way about the older stuff because we were kids. It's more just a general passing of time for everyone. Some of you watching this aren't like me. The idiot kid who is an adult now. But some of you were teenagers enjoying that fast period of life while also gaming every day after high school. And now most of you aren't those kids anymore. You have real jobs, real responsibilities, some even families and children. Even some of you watching this might have been that adult who played the game with your children and friends as time passed and now you're older and you watch your kids grow older and you're now reflecting on the older times. Age doesn't matter when it comes to nostalgia. We all have nostalgia. Change is fucking scary and it comes and goes super quick and when life gets hard or we deal with challenge it's really easy to look at our past where everything was simple. Regardless of age and position we were all much younger and different from who we are today. And that's why these games are so important. They aren't just old games but time capsules of our past. The old positions of life where you could look back and reflect on the old you. It could be sad sometimes I know but you're always grateful it exists. But today isn't all bad either. Shit might seem grim. You might not like the games you play now or the life you live but in 10 years you might come to the same crossword that we're at right now. There will always be good games, bad games, fun games, and sad games. And sometimes it doesn't always matter about what the game is out of 10 but more about what you made out of that game. When you were sad or scared you built that dirt house and found those diamonds and saved the world as master chief or you went 25 and ate on nuke town 2025 and that helped you forget about all the white noise in the world. And that's why these games will always be so important. That's why even if Black Ops 2 was a load of shit I would still love it. Because I can never let go of that kid who didn't do anything wrong and just wanted to play a game and make friends.