Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Call of Duty: Black Ops II arrived on Wii U as one of the console's launch titles in November 2012 and offered an experience comparable to other platforms, including a campaign set across two timelines — the 1980s Cold War and the near future of 2025. For the first time in the series, the story reacts to player decisions by branching events and offering several possible endings, which at the time represented a major novelty for an otherwise linear series and gave the campaign unusual replayability. Players also encounter, for the first time, command-style missions where they control units and machines on a future battlefield from an overhead view.

The Wii U version used the GamePad as a second screen for the map, weapon selection, or quick messages, and also offered stylus control directly on the tablet display, which at the time felt like an interesting experiment for such a large multiplatform title. The multiplayer offered the same maps and game modes as the versions on other consoles of the generation, complemented by the zombie mode, a popular co-op mode with waves of undead enemies and a system for unlocking perks and weapons between rounds. Technically, the game ran stably, though without visible graphical improvements over the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, which released on the same day.

However, the Wii U release came at a time when the online multiplayer community on the new platform was quickly dwindling, so the game's online portion became nearly deserted over time, while remaining active for years on other consoles. Still, Black Ops II on Wii U remains an interesting demonstration of what an attempt to bring a big multiplatform blockbuster to Nintendo hardware with a second screen looked like, and for collectors it represents one of the few big AAA shooters Wii U could claim right from its market launch, at a time when there was still hope the console would retain support from major publishers in the years to come.

Why play it: For collectors and fans of major shooters, it's an interesting demonstration of an early attempt to bring an AAA blockbuster to Wii U, even though it no longer has a functioning online community today.