Call of Duty: Black Ops III (2015)

A major part of Call of Duty: Black Ops III is characters wondering if they're the same as they used to be. I thought about this a lot in terms of the Call of Duty franchise while playing Black Ops III. Is this series what it used to be? Remember when this series tried to bring to life real WWII battles, a surprisingly solid tribute to those who lost their lives by showing the terror and insurmountable odds that soldiers had to endure to survive? And while the franchise has adapted over the years, mostly for the better, Black Ops III—and the Treyarch CoD games in general—feel so far removed from what I love about this franchise.

While the Black Ops games have often explored conspiracy theories and were focused on our history, Black Ops III jumps forward in time, creating a story independent of any reality, full of robots and soldiers infused with AI. One review I read said this should've been called More Advanced Warfare, but I find that to be an insult to Advanced Warfare, which actually grounded its story in some reality. Narratively, this doesn't even feel like a Call of Duty game, and while I admire the ambition of trying new things that this game explores, it feels almost like an entirely different franchise altogether. But this story of neural links and double-crosses and questioning reality is more exhausting than interesting.

I also found myself sort of disgusted by the way Treyarch handled war in this game at times. There's one level where people are hanging around a city, with robots and soldiers everywhere. There's one point where a robot kills a husband and wife in front of you. But instead of even reckoning with the brutality of this moment (like I think many other CoD games actually would), the soldier next to us makes some comment along the lines of, "time to do what we do best: killing!" I feel like most CoD games at least explore the stakes of war and the sacrifice, but Black Ops III had no interest in thinking of larger implications, opting instead to focus on all the killing. Which, look, I get. This is a war game. But have some tact between what your game is and what type of story you're telling.

I also found the combat to be entirely lacking. Early on, I found myself on maps where I was told that I was out of bounds?? Why even make a map that has restrictions like that? There's also no way to pick up stray weapons left by enemies, as you're left to pick pre-decided weapon loadouts that can be changed within the game. But still, it messes up the rhythm of the game when you're looking for a giant box full of weapons, rather than taking what you can get in the heat of battle.

And most of these battles have no rhyme or reason to them either. Another thing I've loved about CoD games is that if you handle a battle the wrong way, you can take a different tact and try to do better. Here, I felt like everything was left to dumb luck. I would die out of nowhere without any idea of what happened to me. Most of the time, I was just holding down the trigger button, spraying countless enemies that get monotonous real quickly, and hoping that the game didn't throw some stray bullet my way that would immediately kill me. I don't like to say games are "cheap" in how they kill players, but this felt cheap. I even ended up finishing this on the easiest difficulty because of these random deaths I kept encountering, and even then, I still had this issue.

And good god, does this game have so many loading issues. Scenes go on and on and on, and it's clear that the game is simply taking its time so the next area can load. There are so many times I wanted to keep moving, but the game took its sweet time. And let's not even get into the completely useless waiting room between levels.

I personally found the most fun I had to be in the game's bonus options, like the incredibly addictive Dead Ops Arcade 2, or playing around in the Nightmares missions. But it's sad that I felt like I had to force myself to finish the campaign, just ready to move on to the next Call of Duty game.

Coming off of Ghosts and Advanced Warfare, I was at a high point in my Call of Duty fandom. I thought both of those games did a great job of evolving this series, trying something new by exploring the future, but all in a way that felt respectful and fun and had something interesting to say about the nature of war. But Black Ops III, like all the Treyarch games, feels like a game that wants to tell a story, but doesn't want a player involved to drag it out. I often felt like I was in the way of the story Treyarch wanted to tell, and the game had no time for me. I'm still excited to keep making my way through the Call of Duty franchise, but that's mostly because I know the next game isn't from Treyarch.

FPS - Follows a team of Black Ops soldiers as they uncover a conspiracy involving a rogue military A.I. named Corvus, and a network of compromised operatives.

PROS:

++ Best zombies mode. This is the primary reason as to why this game scores really high in my book. Zombies has always been a beloved mode to me since my brother and I spent hours playing Kino Der Toten together. A year ago, I managed to convince my brother and two friends to also buy this game on PC so we could play together again. Suffice it to say, it exceeded our expectations. The base map, Shadows of Evil, is one of the best maps in COD Zombies history. It's fun to play as-is, but it's also fun to complete the Easter Egg. On top of this, the version I bought included Kino, Nacht, Moon, Shangri-La, Verruckt, Shi No Numa, Origin, and Ascension, all of which are great maps in their own right. But the cherry on top is the INCREDIBLE mod support of this entry on PC. There are dozens and dozens of maps to download for free, many of which rivals Treyarch's design and content quality. There are wacky ones, there are great original maps, and there are maps that remaster past maps. This means that all you need is BLOPS 3 in order to play all previous Zombie maps. This game is worth it just for this mode alone since there is an infinite amount of maps to try and play.

++ Gunplay & movement. For a brief time, I missed the advanced movement of AW, specifically the ability to boost in four directions. But I quickly forgot about AW because of how refined and fluid the movement in BO3 is. Sliding, double jumping, and wall-running are the three cornerstones of its movement and the three together form a deeply satisfying movement system. This is the smoothest the movement has ever been in COD. It was also nice that the levels were designed for this advanced movement and the player was often given multiple avenues to approach the enemy. Gunplay is equally great. ADS is snappy. Guns feel great to fire. TTK is pretty fast. Overall, I think BO3 has my favorite movement and gunplay in the series so far.

++ Graphics & visuals. Not much to really say here. Environments, character models, and the guns all look great. Very vibrant colors too!

++ Loadout customization. I appreciated the ability to set custom loadouts for the campaign. It was a bit more extensive than BO2's system, and I really enjoyed all the options available to me.

++ Dead Ops Arcade 2. Dead Ops Arcade is back and better than ever. My only complaint is that the camera is a bit too close to the player, but everything else is an improvement over the first iteration. Visuals look better, there are new weapons, stages, power-ups (the first-person power-up was cool), and enemies. Getting to the boss takes more effort and skill. Once again, for a bonus mode, I appreciate that they put so much effort into it.

++ Tons of content. Along with the campaign, you also get a "Nightmare" mode which is basically replaying the campaign in a different order and with zombies added, the ability to play the campaign in four-player co-op, "Freerun" which features four parkour courses, the aforementioned "Dead Ops Arcade" and "Zombies" mode, and a solid Multiplayer mode that features all-new "Specialists". Not all these modes are homeruns, but I appreciate how packed with content this entry was.

CONS:

-- Subpar campaign. This entry has the worst campaign out of all the main-line CODs. All of the characters are unlikeable and forgettable. The overall story was confusing and convoluted. There was a noticeable lack of memorable set-pieces. Writing and dialogue was very weak. There was no main character, instead you get to play as some unnamed soldier. Overreliance on robotic enemies. The campaign was also longer than usual, and for the first time in the series, I was asking myself "When is this going to end?" because the plot was so mediocre. The highlights for sure were the brutal intro where the player gets torn by a robot, the "Hypocenter" mission that had a great atmosphere, and the Cybernetic Abilities that spiced up the gameplay and gave the player the option to approach combat encounters differently. If the moment-to-moment gameplay wasn't so fun, this would have been an insufferable campaign to play through.

There are 4 modes of this game: campaign, multiplayer, zombies, and extra content.

Campaign: I like that it's cooperative, it's been a long time since Call of Duty has made a cooperative campaign (World at War). The story is confusing and forgettable. I haven't finished the zombies campaign, but it's pretty much the main campaign with out of order levels, some ok narration, and most shooting soldiers are zombies instead.

Multiplayer: Good luck getting all the guns, loot boxes aren't very kind. I like playing offline multiplayer against bots though.

Zombies: One of the best zombie experiences. Unfortunately, you will probably need to buy the Season Pass and Zombie Chronicles, just Shadows of Evil is not enough.

Extra Content: Freerun is ok, I suck at the last course. Dead Ops Arcade 2 at least had an interesting FPS powerup, but Cold War did it much better.

Overall, I would say Zombies carry this game pretty hard and somewhat well. They have made better campaigns (World at War, Black Ops 1, Black Ops 2, maybe Cold War).

Pros

• Intro of character abilities is done very well and are well-balanced
• New characters in multiplayer are diverse and have a great amount of personality (for how often they are featured)
• Guns feel diverse and have great customization

Cons

• Story mode was a massive miss
• Too many new mechanics to get used to
• Strays a little too far away from the Black Ops-style gameplay

With CoD:BO3 being free this month for PS Plus members, I thought I’d give it a shot (if you’ll excuse the pun). I’ve only ever tried to play one other CoD game, and it was Modern Warfare 2. I put it down after about two hours because I was so fed up with being bombarded with the message that America’s military is the greatest in the world, and if anyone ever says otherwise we’ll bomb them into oblivion. Even the loading screens were blueprints of weapons of mass destruction, proudly boasting how many lives could be taken if they wanted to.

I recall Good Game said CoD:III had a great single-player campaign, and after so many hours of crawling through vents in Deus Ex (both Human Revolution and Mankind Divided), I wanted to play something that was the very opposite of stealth. And CoD handled wonderfully – the control were tight, the gunfights were challenging but not unfair (at least on the harder difficulty mode I chose) and the options for different weapon loadouts allowed for a variety of playstyles.

Yet I put it down again after making my way barely halfway through the story because I found the characters disikable and the plot unrealistic. Everyone in the military seems to be an angry white dude (except for my character, who I was happy to see I could make female). More upsetting though was the idea that my player had both her arms ripped off and a leg broken, and hours later her commanders were making her replay terrorist missions in a kind of virtual reality. She hadn’t even had life-saving surgery yet when they were putting her right back into traumatically violent missions, no explanations or options. The game didn’t talk about PTSD in a particularly helpful way, stating that it’s just very vivid memories that it can be fixed with the right medication.

I can’t help but compare this to the excellent Deus Ex. In Human Revolution, Jensen suffers traumatic injuries, and in order to save his life he is given high-end augmentations. He feels conflicted about the surgery, and six months into his recovery (getting used to his new limbs and processing the trauma he went through), he is reluctantly called back to duty to stop a terrorist act. In Mankind Divided, he meets an augmented lady who has developed a second personality to protect her mind from the trauma of her reality as a persecuted aug. Jensen never questions or belittles her for doing her best to stay sane in an insane world, and I appreciated that so much. CoD by comparison… It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Tight as the gameplay was, once I found my favourite gun and ability I used them in every mission and the lack of variety really started to wear on me. It was more fun when I branched out to multiplayer and had a teammate to fight alongside with, but 90% of the way through the mission he stopped moving (either had to go afk or was affected by some kind of bug), and I couldn’t complete the mission without him. It was a bad way to finish, and I didn’t mind uninstalling it rather than replaying the mission. I ended up googling the plot, which turned out to be surprisingly sophisticated, but I don’t think it was worth several hours of slogging through the campaign. Not a terrible game, but not a great one either. I don’t think I’ll bother with any other CoD’s