Call of Duty Black Ops 2: Send in the zombies

Kill it! Kill it with fire!

Zombies.

Next to Nazis, Russians, demons and orcs, zombies are some of the few enemies that the gaming industry never seems to tire of.

Oddly enough, Nazi zombies appear to be an unholy fusion that gamers await with baited breath for at the announcement of a "Call of Duty" title. It's strange that a game mode that really has nothing to do with the story or the multiplayer style has sold millions of copies for the franchise.

Obviously, the appeal is more than just shooting hordes of the undead. The survival mode that it offers is challenging in itself - repairing your barricades between waves and purchasing better weapons with the money you've earned from successful kills.

Perhaps it is the risk/reward ratio that really has people flocking to this particular mode of play.

 It's not often that gamers get to directly see results from their hard work so soon after an enemy attack unless there is a leveling system. It also shows a player's skill in direct correlation with their performance because of the rewards that they can spend on protecting their team and arming themselves.

Most multiplayer modes reward a fighter or team after the end of a match. The gradual skill growth is then displayed through items and perks. Player skill is measured in the fighting ability.

In a survival mode, it is measured in progress and effectiveness of weapons and defenses. It is almost unnecessary to show the player's skill when the rewards right there prove that they're excellent. Of course, as time gets shorter between the rounds, the skill of a player is much more important and the effectiveness of their defenses and weapons really come into play.

There aren't many defense-survival games out there. Games where you actually have to build up barriers from the enemy to stem the tide. Most zombie shooters have you traveling from one place to another. There are so few that have you staying in one place and fighting to the last man (or woman) and bullet.

Smile, handsome!

"Dead Island" came close to this, but you never really had a reason to stick around the survivor zones other than restocking and resupplying. There was more movement in there than anything. If "Dead Island" incorporated a game mode like the one in "Call of Duty" against zombies, it might actually add a level of survival to it, so much that you would actually dread the night and value your companions, NPCs or not.

Of course, "CoD: Black Ops 2" is close on the horizon and players are chomping at the bit to kill some more of the undead. Perhaps if we were to see more games employ this mode of gameplay when dealing with  the walking deceased, we'd see a lot more variety and success in fields other than "Resident Evil" or "Left 4 Dead." It's not that those games aren't phenomenal in their own right, but variety is the spice of life.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 E3 preview

The trailers have been everywhere. It was a big deal when they aired all over TV that the return of "Call of Duty: Black Ops" was imminent in this newest installment of the "Call of Duty" franchise. I won't talk about how somehow Woods survived jumping out a window with a man holding a grenade in his hand, or the crazy Michael Bay-esque cornucopia of explosions that filled television screens. What was interesting was what the commercial didn't show and what gaming press got a taste of at E3 2012.

In the bowels of the Activision pavilion, a demo was shown to display the shiny new "Call of Duty." "Black Ops" developer Treyarch has really worked hard to compete with what Infinity Ward, of "Modern Warfare" fame, has laid down over the last decade. With "Battlefield 3" storming through shelves there's been a lot of worry in the competitive multiplayer shooter bracket as to what can now become the new giant.

"Black Ops" took place in the Vietnam and Cold War era, while "Black Ops 2" seems to have leaped forward into the near future. The pitch a Treyarch spokesman gave was the what-if scenario that of all the world's nations' automated and un-manned technology being turned against them in a full-scale attack.

The setting: Los Angeles. Appropriate for the expo and ironic as the demo showed a demolished skyline, a smouldering Staples Center and a battered freeway. Escorting the president through this hellish glimpse into the future, the player was assaulted by drones running strafing patterns and camouflaged enemies hiding behind freeway walls and broken-down cars.

Luckily for Mason, the player character with the same name as the hero from the original "Black Ops" (relation or coincidence is up for interpretation until more is known), he wields a rifle that fires charged rounds through cover and swats his enemies down.

While the game asked Mason to provide cover for the president and her guard, the spokesman for Treyarch mentioned that it was entirely possible for the player to rappel down and fight alongside the honor-guard as opposed to provide covering fire from above.

"Black Ops 2" depicts a future with quadrupedal war mechs.

After driving through a crowded freeway tunnel full of enemies, Mason and his team enter L.A. proper and begin to fight their way through city streets while drones bomb and strafe from above. That's the least of their worries as boar sized quadruped mechs ram and blast their way through the local forces.

Explosions! Violence! Tiny little RC helicopters that attack the enemies you target from the first-person-perspective! But that's not all! Taking a page from "Battlefield 3's" book, Mason jumps into a hover-jet to provide air support.

It looks like Treyarch has hit everything on the checklist for a current shooter. The most impressive addition to the game was a group of missions where the player can command ground forces to take objectives.

Now, it's hard to describe exactly how this works, but it works almost completely like the mission in the first "Black Ops" where the player positions the team from the Blackbird above. Except instead of a jet thousands of feet above the team, it looks like there's a helicopter. As the mission goes on, mechs or small helicopters can be sent to assist the ground forces. Not only that, but the player can control any of these from the first-person perspective, humans and robots alike. Alternatively, the entire mission can be played from the overwatch perspective.

Unmanned drones are now part of the player's arsenal.

Of course, the shooter fans who mainly buy this franchise may not enjoy this micromanagement. It's a risky move, but it might be what is needed to reinvigorate the shooter franchise by proving this method may work and then incorporating it into future games. Fans of other games like "Total War" or "Company of Heroes" may become interested in a shooter like "Call of Duty" if this works.