GREYHOUND

Call of Duty: Black Ops II's Zombie suite gets its own reveal ad, promising a truck stop campaign set in the ruin of mid-western America. In expanding the ludicrously popular undead plugger, Treyarch seemed to have settled on straight Left 4 Dead lifts as grist. Okay, all zombie apocalypses are bound to look pretty similar, but these character designs are shameless sex ups of Valve's cast. We've got a beefy survivalist dude, a crop top chick, and a salary man that bears an uncanny resemblance to Fisher Stevens's racist caricature from Short Circuit. I couldn't get a clean bead on the forth character, who seems deliberately obscured, but in some low angles there's a chap that slightly resembles an American GI, possibly Tank Dempsey from Call of Duty: World at War?

Zombie content doesn't end with campaign; expect Survival to return, as well as a new competitive mode that sets two teams against each other as well as the walking rotters. After Call of Duty: Black Ops's pack-in levels - an Inglourious Basterds homage, and a Pentagon set stage featuring JFK and Castro - this bus trip reads a little samey. Although, I suppose that's what the inevitable DLC is for. Most of all though, this bonus campaign is the greatest evidence yet for Call of Duty as some sort of untouchable super-franchise. Packing in two separate campaigns, the usual time sink multiplayer, umpteen survival modes, and maybe even a dedicated training mode reeks of the kind of overkill needed to stamp out an impertinent rival. Treyarch are just showing off.