Finally, Black Ops 2 sees the return of Treyarch’s zombies mode, but this time it isn’t just a side-attraction, it’s a full open-world campaign. The studio really is dredging the market to hoover up everyone’s attention this year, and what’s interesting is how well it has has held the whole package together

We’ll start with zombies because chances are this is what you came here for. The core zombie campaign is called TranZit, and the plot follows the events of Rezurrection – the final piece of zombie DLC from the original Black Ops.

Treyarch wouldn’t confirm this, but it appears as if TranZit is set in the modern day, rather than the 2025 setting of Black Ops 2. The world smacks of the American south-west, with burned out diners, boarded up theatres and rusted car shells lining the dilapidated streets.

The zombie outbreak is back with a vengeance and your only hope of understanding the cataclysm and escaping the undead is to blaze a trail across the region – either on foot or by bus. Along the way you will encounter focal points, arenas that can be selected in Survival mode if you fancy a classic bit of zombie action with mates.

There is an element of Dead Island in here too, as crafting is available for the first time. We’re unsure of how many items can be built, but we did see survivors building spiked shields out of car doors and shrapnel.

Treyarch also showed us a new Black Ops 2 campaign mission called ‘Celerium’ that really got a reaction from the press on show.

It underlines the game’s enhanced engine, gadgets, gameplay and aesthetic prowess wonderfully. If anything, the studio should have shown this mission at E3 instead of the Los Angeles one.

It’s the second mission in the game, and it tracks Mason and his buddy Harper – played by the brilliantly rasping Michael Rooker – as they attempt a covert siege on a drone facility owned by villain Raul Menendez. It opens with the duo scouting the area on a rain-slick cliff edge.

It’s not like the frankly boring rappel sections that every Call of Duty has. In fact, you choose your own route down the rock face, swinging left and right to get a better path down to the ground. The visuals are truly superb as a storm rolls in, genuinely hampering your vision.

The objective is far away, so the team free-fall off the cliff before deploying wingsuits that see them swooping through the skies at high speed. None of this is scripted, as Treyarch steers Mason around cliffs and through jagged canyons with his squad in tow. It’s thrilling stuff.

Landing in the dense jungle, the mission goes fully covert as Harper spots a patrol of stealth-cloaked snipers roaming the compound’s perimeter. You can choose to open fire or take the goons down silently and steal their stealth suits for yourself, giving you an edge over unsuspecting enemies.

Already the freedom to approach objectives as you see fit makes the corridor sections of previous Call of Duty titles a fading memory. It’s not Battlefield: Bad Company levels of sandbox, but the exemplary stage design hits a sweet spot between freedom and focus that keeps things interesting.

Treyarch begin by answering some frequently asked questions surrounding multiplayer. You have 55 levels per Prestige, and you can Prestige ten times. After you level up you get an unlock token, and this can be used to buy a piece of equipment out of a selection of 100 item.

There are more content than levels, so you can’t get everything in one Prestige, however, once you complete your 10th Prestige you earn ‘Master’ status and unlock all 100 pieces of available kit at the same time.

After you Prestige you lose all of your unlocked gear, but your weapon ranks remain. You can reset your stats after you Prestige and even spend an unlock token to get a refund on a token you spent elsewhere. So say you don’t like a particular gun, you can lock it again and spend the token on something else. It’s clever.

There is a new ‘Party’ playlist that includes returning classics Gun Game, One In The Chamber, Sharpshooter and Sticks and Stones. These are no longer wager matches however, and grant players XP for participating, just as normal game modes do.

Combat Training has also been expanded, and is now split into three tiers. First is Bootcamp, which covers levels 1-10 that puts two teams of three humans and three bots, against each other. Objective training covers all objective modes at level ten-plus, while Bot Stomp mode pits six humans of any level against six bots.

Treyarch’s list of new features doesn’t seem to end as the presentation rolls past the hour mark, with over 1000 new challenges that unlock cosmetic items – such as callsigns, playercard decals and shapes for the emblem editor, which now gives players 32 layers to play with.

We then see a new multiplayer map called Express which is set in a bullet train station, and features a high-speed carriage doing laps around the track. It will crush anyone foolish enough to linger on the track for too long, and adds another dynamic element into the mix.

Everyone likes free stuff, right? On that note, we are happy to announce that all Call of DutyŽ Elite features for Call of DutyŽ: Black Ops II will be free! Some new and improved Elite features, include: Player and Clan HQ, Zombies support, Elite TV content, social sharing and notifications, plus much more! Additional details about our upcoming features will be making their way out over time.