Origins is the 4th and final zombies DLC for black ops 2 and takes place in northern France in 1902.
the 4 characters are the originals from the first black ops, Richtofen, Takeo, Nikolai and Dempsey.
the characters spawn in a standard room with two exits, costing 750 each. The M14 and a new weapon the Balista are on the wall. M14 costing 500 and the Balista costing 200.
the map is quite open compared to some previous maps, however, his does not make it easy as the central mound is condense and the mud that is around the tank route of the map and most of the do-able training spots make the map difficult. The panzer soldat, the new boss zombie, comes down on certain rounds, he has a hook that can pull you into him and a flamethrower that will down you if he gets too close. if the soldat grabs you, you can escape his clutches by shooting the small flashing red dot on his arm which will release you, however you need to be quick as it only appears for a few seconds. here are also three giant thousand foot robots that pass over the map, thor, freia and odin, they pass over at different spots, the spawn, the middle and the church. on occasion they will pass over the map together which makes training difficult, when one passes over on its own one of its feet will be glowing, if you shoot it, it will open, stand under the open foot and let it stand on you, you will be teleported to the top of the robots head where you can collect a piece of the wind staff.
A new feature in Origins is the ability to dig using shovels that are found around the map. you can get weapons or perk drops from dig spots, also pieces of the ice staff but only when it snows there are two in the spawn, one by the tank and one by the wind tunnel next to the work bench. dig spots spawn in at the start of every round. the tank is also new, similar to the bus in TranZit it is found inside the church and travels around the map, it cost 500 to activate and is useful to be able to complete the lightning staff.
Elemental staffs are also new, there is 4 of them, the wind staff, lightning staff, fire staff and ice staff. Each staff has three parts and there are different ways to get them i.e. the pieces of the wind staff are inside each of the three giant robots, once you have all the pieces of one of the staffs you can create it at the bottom of the excavation site in the middle of the map. you can upgrade the staff to become ultimate staffs which give them a massive increase in power and the ability to revive team mates with them.
New weapons in the map are the mg08 light machine gun, scorpion, mp40, KSG and the tommy gun. the pack a punch is at the top of the mound, to access it you must turn on all 6 generators that are around the map, all generators us be on at the same time, if one gets attacked the pack a punch will stop working.
The perks on the map, there is jug, sleight of hand, mule kick, quick revive and Stamin-up. there are other perks only accessible via the wonder fizz, to activate the wonder fizz the generator next to the specific wonder fizz that contains the meteor must be turned on. it cost 2000 each and you can only carry 4 perks at a time. perks available from this are the 5 perks on the map also electric cherry, PHD, dead shot and double tap.
Origins is a really good map, with enough difficulty to keep me wanting more and a ton of underlying secrets to be discovered, the Easter egg is a throw back to one of the black ops 1 campaign maps and the ending cut scene was jaw dropping. Treyarch pulled out all the stops to give zombie fans the best possible send off for black ops 2 and they past with flying colours.
rating: 10/10
