Call of Duty: Black Ops II immerses players in a potential near-future Cold War in the twenty-first century, in which technology and guns have combined to produce a new breed of warfare.

In Black Ops 2, you play as Raul Menendez, a devious villain who uses the US military system to further his own purpose. Take command of the power of near-future technology and next-generation robotics to save the Earth from extinction.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II is a first-person shooter video game released in 2012 by Activision and developed by Treyarch. Black Ops II is the ninth installment in the Call of Duty video game series, and it is a sequel to Call of Duty: Black Ops from 2010.

Black Ops II is the first Call of Duty game to offer branching plots, in which your decisions impact both the current mission and the main plot. These branching storylines, called Strike Force missions appear throughout the 2025 story and include permanent death. The success or failure of these missions may have consequences for the campaign's overall plot. Unless you start a new campaign, selecting one of the missions locks out the others.

You may operate a variety of combat assets in Strike Force missions, including unmanned aerial vehicles, jet fighters, and robots. If you die in a Strike Force mission, the campaign keeps track of your death rather than allowing you to load a previously saved checkpoint. Your performance in the Strike Force missions may even influence the plot's villain, Raul Menendez.

Similarly, there are instances in the main plot missions where you are offered multiple options and routes to choose from, which might affect both the gameplay and the story.

In addition, Black Ops II is the first game in the series to let you customize your loadout before starting a mission, giving you more choice in how you approach a mission.

Pick 10, a new system under the Create-a-Class menu, is one of the most significant additions to the multiplayer mode in Black Ops II. Pick 10 provides you with ten allocation slots in a class, which may be used to store guns, perks, and grenades. You may change the slot allocation to have additional gun attachments or more perks.

Killstreaks from prior Call of Duty games have been renamed Scorestreaks, and are now won through accumulating points rather than killing enemies. This lets you concentrate on objective modes, which also contribute to Scorestreaks, rather than getting more kills.

Weapons in Black Ops II feature a progression system, which is utilized to gain weapon attachments, unlike in previous games. You can prestige a weapon after it has reached the maximum level, similar to how you can prestige your level, and have your attachment progress reset.

With new game modes, the Zombies feature returns in Black Ops II. Following Call of Duty: World at War and Call of Duty: Black Ops, this is the third Call of Duty game to have a Zombies mode, and the first to include game modes other than the basic survival mode.