Every year, high market video games are released prior to the holidays–but one game usually stands alone as the best. This year, however, the choice between Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II may be the most difficult yet.

Halo 4 takes place in the year 2557 in a fictional, alien-populated world. The game’s storyline begins about five years after the end of the prior game, Halo 3, where the protagonist, Master Chief, was abandoned in space on a broken down ship. Master Chief is a surgically advanced human, and his scientific advancements give him unnatural fighting abilities. Much of the game is spent fighting the Covenant, a population of enemy aliens, and trying to escape the planet of Requiem. Master Chief fights to destroy weapons of mass destruction that jeopardize the fate of Earth.

A large portion of Call of Duty: Black Ops II also takes place in the future, 2025, while the rest occurs in the late 1980s. The majority of the storyline is expressed through a conversation between a current soldier named David Mason, and a Cold War and Vietnam veteran, Sergeant Frank Woods. In the year of 2025, America is fighting the “Second Cold War” against Russian and Chinese forces due to the Chinese banning of the export of rare earth elements. The game’s main antagonist, Raul Menendez, a Nicaraguan terrorist, caused the series of events that led to the banning of the exports. In order to locate and stop the terrorists, Woods is sharing everything he knows about the causes of the terrorist outbreak, along with the end of the original Cold War. As Woods shares his stories of the Cold War and Vietnam, the user is placed in his flashbacks, where they must fight their way through military special operations.

        Call of Duty seems to have made even more drastic changes; the campaign is already incredible by itself, but several advancements were made from the prior Call of Duty games to make it even better. During the briefing of each mission, players can now choose their weapons, instead of receiving the usual weapons that the creators of the game choose. Also, the characters’ success, along with the outcome of the war, is completely in the hands of the player. Unlike most video games, there are several different outcomes for each level, based on what tasks are completed, and which decisions are made. This creates a very intriguing story that is worth replaying, as the results can differ every time. As Freshman Kevin Choe explains, “I really like the campaign. It is probably the best campaign of the [Call of Duty] series.”

Both games offer online multiplayer game modes, where you can play against other live players. Halo 4 and Black Ops II both offer many different courses, along with different game types such as ‘Team Deathmatch’ in Call of Duty and ‘Capture the Flag’ in Halo. Black Ops II made dramatic changes to their online play, and Grant Mitchell described this by saying, “The guns and courses are much better online than in prior games, and several other changes make the game much better.”

These games also have alternatives to the regular campaign. Black Ops II includes a ‘Zombies’ mode, which involves characters fighting to survive through a zombie apocalypse. Halo 4 matched this with ‘Spartan Ops’, which includes many storyline related missions, but are not part of the campaign.

Both Halo 4 and Black Ops are both great choices for the holidays. Whichever game you decide to purchase, you can’t go wrong.