90 seconds of combat in Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer (hands-on video)

cod 2 overflow

Activision Blizzard showed off some hands-on gameplay of Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer, and we were there to try it out. It has lots of new features that we described in our longer story. This piece is all about the visual actions.

The new multiplayer mode is the critical part of Black Ops II, which, if all goes well, could generate $1 billion in sales once again for Activision Blizzard. Publisher-owned developer Treyarch showed a couple of new maps and multiplayer modes at a recent event, where we captured this video. In this game, I had a submachine gun, a frag grenade, and concussion grenades. I cut out the best part (a very rare sequence for someone like me), which shows me getting the drop on a few of my fellow journalists in the middle of a Domination map, where the object is to control three flags at once.

The Overflow map takes place in a destroyed city in the Middle East, and it has lots of alleys, windows, and destroyed cars that provide cover. The streets feature long corridors for sniping, but it was a fast-action battle in which we didn’t have the time for sniping. It was a good map for tossing out concussion grenades around corners.

Here’s a slice of video from my turn at playing the Overflow map in Black Ops II. I had a lot of fun playing it. The game comes out on Nov. 13.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/zRg2O9gVNhg]

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.