Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Gets November Release Date

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 has been announced by its developers Activision and is set in the year 2025, where the enemy is not just human, but also computer operated drones with advanced weaponry.

Black Ops 2 centres on the enemy taking control of the US army's unmanned drones and will go on sale worldwide on 13 November, two years after the original Black Ops, which was set in the Cold War.

Fitting with the futuristic setting, the game features a whole range of high-tech weapons, such as hand-cannons which allow grenades to be thrown great distances, and rifles capable of "punching through cover with a railgun-like effect," according to CVG, which has seen an early build of the game.

Aside from the main game, Activision's Treyach branch revealed Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will feature an advanced version of the zombies mini game first seen in its 2011 predecessor, where eight-player co-op will be possible.

While the majority of Black Ops 2 is set in the future, some parts of the game are in the past, with occasional leaps back to the 1980s. CVG reports: "The only 80's environment revealed so far is Afghanistan - a dusty set-up with horseback gunplay promised as your Black Ops team secretly meets up with Chinese forces to supply the Mujahedeen with weapons intended to fight the Soviet forces - but more are expected thanks to some loose story ends."

CVG adds that Black Ops 2 will feature a branching storyline and the plot will change depending on actions made by the player. "We're told a lot of these choices are skill based: if you fail to, say, protect a friendly, their death or capture will trigger a splinter storyline rather than a fail state," the website said.

Finally, there is also a take on a real-time strategy mode: "At any point in time you can switch control between the men on the ground, the drones skulking around the floor, the armed quadrotors in the air or, our personal favourite, a general monitoring the entire battlefield from afar courtesy of cameras high above the site."

We're expecting to see more of Black Ops 2 at E3, which kicks off on 5 June at the Los Angeles Convention Centre.