Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is Activision’s latest entry into
the bestselling Call of Duty franchise.
Developed by Treyarch Studios, the Black Ops subseries of Call of Duty
games has been considered by many as the best of the COD games. Whereas Black Ops 1 and 2 were direct
sequels, BO3 seems only to be a spiritual sequel to its predecessors. There is no direct or clear continuation of
story from the previous entries. Rather
it takes the ideas of mind control and manipulation, and spins off its own
story.
It’s a futuristic world, where humans are infused with technology
(much like Robocop!) and fight alongside and against robots. This time around, you assume the role of an
unnamed soldier, who together with your partner Hendricks and a CIA agent named
Rachel Kane, track down a former Black Ops commander named John Taylor as he
and his former squad appears to have gone rogue destroying CIA sites around the
world. The story will take you to
Singapore, Egypt and even wackier, you’ll have battles inside someone’s head,
taking you to World War I and even in a cabin fending off zombies. Of the Call of Duty games so far, and
strictly from a campaign standpoint, this one was probably most wackiest (yes,
even considering the space and underwater fights in Ghost)!
The game allows you the option to play the campaign offline
by yourself, or online with three other human players in your squad. The game balances this out by increasing the
bullet sponging of the bad guys. As I
recall, they don’t do this with the human bad guys, but since half the game you’re
fighting robots, I guess they justify it by giving them stronger armor.
The campaign structure received an overhaul this time
around. Between each mission, you can
completely customize your loadout, similar to what you would expect in previous
COD multiplayer modes. However, not
everything is given to you from the outset.
Your mission performance awards you points, where the more you points
you get, the more you level and the more unlocks are given to you. From there, you can pick what weapons, perks
and add-ons you want at your disposal.
Furthermore, you’re given the option to pick between
different cybercore abilities which are additional skill sets you can use
during the game. The three are Control,
Martial and Chaos. Control, probably my
favourite of the three, allows you to hack into the different robots or tech
that you’ll encounter in game. For
example, you can disable a bad guy’s armor, or shut down the flight system of
drones, or even hack robots such that they turn on each other. Martial, which I used the least, relates more
to maneuverability related abilities.
Finally, Chaos as one would guess, is related to more offensive type
abilities such as shooting out a wave of fireflies to eat at enemies or
exploding robot soldiers.
Of the modern COD games, this campaign felt the longest to
me. On average, I’d spend an hour per
mission, including all the cut scenes.
And with 11 missions in total, it took around at least 10 hours to beat
the first time around. That’s double
than what I’m used to for a COD game. I
can’t say that this is exactly a good thing.
Part of the reason why I enjoyed previous entries was that the story
gave you a quick hit but never overstayed it’s welcome. Perhaps it’s because of the shittier story,
but the game just felt like it dragged on!
I really enjoyed last year’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but Black Ops
3 really felt like a step down from that.
I think part of the problem is that in AW they really changed the
dynamic by giving you dashes and speed boosts as well as the aerial
thrusts. This time around, they’ve
brought back the aerial thrusts, but the speed boosts are gone, so the dynamic of
multiplayer matches really took a hit.
That said, I haven’t spent too much time on the multiplayer
side, but from what I’ve played so far, it seems to be the Call of Duty as we
knew it. If you liked it before, you’ll
like it this time, but if didn’t like it before, don’t look for anything to
change your mind.
There’s more fun and interesting games out there, so unless
you’re a diehard COD fan, I think you can pass on this one. Until next time, later geeks!
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