It’s easy to be dismissive of Call of Duty: Black Ops II on the Wii U for reasons beyond its quality. Over the past few years, tens of millions of gamers have already established a home for Activision’s shooter on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Meanwhile, Wii-only gamers have been stuck with gimped ports. While the Wii U now has the horsepower to render the full experience, the tiny install base for the console means that virtually nobody is playing this game online. When I played my first team deathmatch, the game said there was only 1,806 other players with me, which is laughably low compared to the hundreds of thousands of gamers who play CoD on other platforms at any given time.

Activision can’t control those variables. They could have chosen to back away from the platform completely to concentrate on more profitable platforms, which I personally wouldn’t blame them for. Or they could have put in a half-hearted effort towards porting this over to save on costs. Instead, they’ve made an honest effort to provide the authentic CoD experience to Wii U owners that want it, even if there aren’t that many on the platform.

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