The last time I touched a Call of Duty game was when the title had me walk through an airport and watch as Russian terrorists gunned down a number of civilians, with my irl bros spurring me on to join in on the endless ‘fun’ of mass homicide. I dropped the title there and then. Not due to deep conflicting notions based on a society always in fear of terror in this new millennium, not on some grand moral ground either. No. I dropped the title because it wasn’t fun. Between being gunned down by tea bagging 12 year olds in the multiplayer modes and the disjointed campaign of the single player story, I realized the series had come a long way from the period piece shooters I once enjoyed, and that it was a franchise that had left me frozen and forgotten in its avalanche of popularity much like that one mission with the two soldiers whose names I forget who were also buried under an avalanche.
I was a late bloomer when it came to FPS, and never cared for Call of Duty in general, I just didn’t have that same feverish excitement I felt over say, Assassin’s Creed, where I could grant the benefit of the doubt with a thought process that said ‘perhaps an annual cycle won’t be so bad.’ Each time a new Call of Duty released it was easy for me to roll my eyes. From the intense jingoism ra ra Team ‘Merca Fuck yeah adverts of Ghosts to the playdough face of Kevin Spacey I just never get excited. Yet year after year I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a little tinge of edging curiosity. A whisper in my ear begging to experience what the series had become. That feeling I was missing out on a cultural event and a new age of futuristic asymmetrical first person shooters. I prodded our boss Jared as to whether or not this was a title worth investing in. He convinced me to purchase it. I’m glad I did.
First and foremost I would like to cover the campaign. The campaign in a majority of FPS games is quite simply just an hours long demo of all the neat stuff you can do in multiplayer, to the point some FPS games have flat out gotten cynical about it and not bothered to include a campaign at all. Looking at you Titanfall, Evolve, Black Ops 3 for generation 7 consoles. Yet Black Ops 3 for the current gen feels long and substantial. You are actually playing a video game here, not just discovering which gun can do what, and though the missions are still relatively on-rails the game at least encourages some kind of lateral thinking as you approach the many shootouts, challenges and bullet sponges it has to offer.
For me the richness of the campaign did not come from the actual story, which itself is your serviceable popcorn blockbuster sci-fi fare, but from how you could tackle it. The game actually lets you go in quiet or loud, solo or with a friend. Most important to the story experience are your ‘Cyber Cores’ abilities, three sets of skill trees with two different branching paths that allow your black operative to become as the game puts it ‘a badass motherfucker.’ I went with a stealth camo build that allowed me to shut down enemy weapons and create localized EMP storms, but one could also spit fire bugs from their hands, remotely hijack drones and induce the oh so frightening anxiety attack on their foes. It’s a game I looked forward to playing just because of all the cool stuff I could do, or watch other players do. The game allows you to play around with weapon setups in challenge modes called ‘Combat Immersion’, so you could project your loadout from the very start.
Treyarch claims the influence from the story comes from Alien, though it more reminds me of Terminator or a Paul Verhoeven film. Okay that’s a bit generous. It reminds me of one of the new Terminators or a Paul Verhoeven remake. Still I enjoyed the roller coaster the title had set up, I enjoyed the villains, I enjoyed the world and the freakiness of the “Digital Neural Interface’s” impact on your character’s psyche and the general ‘how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real?’ tone of the title. The acting on the other hand needed some work. When your biggest star is ‘That Guy from True Blood’ it’s not exactly a hard hitting cast. Your sidekick and foil, Hendricks, also sounded like he would have been more appropriate as the Red Ranger in the next season of Saban’s Power Rangers than the moral anchor in a dystopian world threatened by amoral intelligence agencies and emotional AIs run amok. Even so the campaign surprisingly switches over from B Thriller to compelling blockbuster sci-fi, complete with massive global warming induced tsunamis, mega city tower structures, VTOL dog fights and Nazi German hallucinations to keep you engaged along the way.
Now for perhaps what remains the bread and butter of Call of Duty. The multiplayer aspects. The big news of course is that Black Ops 3 provides a co-op experience, which I love. Admittedly some robotic foes that can provide a bit of a challenge to the single player campaign end up not being challenges at all with the co-op, not with one dude generating local EMP storms while that dudette over there emits fire bugs and the third dude pops off headshots, but I always enjoyed cooperation more than competition. The game is well balanced for co-op overall, with nothing feeling like too much of a challenge in any one mode. There is the odd snag here and there. The campaign insists on the presence of an enemy called the Warlord that is quite simply a bullet sponge for solo players. The campaign is also littered with honest to goodness boss fights that can provide a fun challenge while alone, but sadly become a bit trivial with a team. There are also a few odd ‘survival horror’ esque sections of the game that, you guessed it, though effective while playing by yourself become a bit of a joke in co-op.
In the true multiplayer mode you’ll get to pick a ‘Specialist’ to raise as your own son or daughter of the battlefield. The game encourages you to choose from and stick with one of these Specialists from the get go with little context as to how they play and can be upgraded. You can change your choice later on, or experiment with your other unlocked specialists in custom match modes, but you’ll be saddled with your first choice for awhile. I went with the product of Brazilian favelas, a little Outrider. Specialization ultimately comes down to one of two special abilities you choose before you sign up to any particular lobby or match. The powers generally come in two flavors, weapons or utility, my Outrider came equipped with a RamBow capable of exploding enemies in proximity or, her other option, the ability to detect others through walls. One provided more of a tactical advantage while the other was, well, more fun.
Issue is I never once found a Specialist ability to be a real game changer. Treyarch’s pick ten system returns, letting you choose a custom loadout that includes guns, attachments, cybernetic abilities and passive abilities. Pick Ten has way more of an impact on gameplay and play styles than Specialist abilities do. While the Outrider’s power could sometimes afford me a chuckle as I watched a player frantically run and jump with a ticking time arrow embedded in their ankle, the silent movement and tracking skills I could give her via pick ten are what allowed me to become a silent killing machine.
Specialists aren’t really a game changer. Nor is the vertical gameplay and free running. I found free running when used effectively could provide a nice little tactical advantage, getting behind enemies and speeding to objectives, but this was an uncommon usage. The maps seemed to be designed with no particular care or want for the new movement options. Which is too bad because free running really is a blast, there’s even a mode exclusively for just free running as you dash along in vertical marathons across digital cyberscapes. I suppose there is only so much you can ask when a company is intent on selling a familiar formula with their yearly multiplayer experience. It’s just a shame because Black Ops 3 has the elements to make a truly fresh asymmetrical multiplayer game with more lasting power than Titanfall or Evolve.
Then of course there’s zombies. Black Ops 3 actually has two zombie modes. One you get for clearing the main campaign, then the one we’ll be reviewing which is unlocked from the very start. In this mode you are saddled with one of four randomly generated survivors. Each is a pastiche of 1940s tropes, your oversexed theater vixen, your corrupt detective, your boxer who’s seen sum tings buddy, your indebted magician. For obvious reasons they don’t have Cyber Core or Specialist abilities, yet they can use a few of the modern weapons from the other campaign modes. They also get a Beast mode, powers they can collect randomly scattered around the various levels. The Actress for example is able to transform into a plant woman unafraid to wrap zombies up in her little vines and hug them and squeeze them and call them George. The story and character interactions and even some of the gameplay are reminiscent of Left 4 Dead. Your goal is to survive waves, unlock doors, and find out what in the heck is going on. It’s good, mindless fun that serves as a great distraction to the multiplayer’s carrot stick offerings and the campaign’s all twisted up story.
My experience with the game wasn’t all peaches sadly. In addition to some of my, though rare, complaints related to the campaign, I also ran into the odd unexpected glitch that also required the odd unexpected fix. A lot of these glitches had to do with progress and stats not recording properly. Additionally the campaign seems to work off two save files that are entirely separate from one another. If you intend to go through with the single player game then it’s probably a good idea to just stick to the online experience, or face starting over from scratch if you start offline and decide you want to co-op later on.
Black Ops 3 is a remarkably fun game that has one of the most shine through campaigns of any Call of Duty, and perhaps most FPS games from the past few years. The Cyber Cores allow for a unique, custom approach to the campaign’s challenges, while co-op with the right partners allows you to steamroll the game. None of the creative ideas that make up the campaign really translate into the multiplayer, and the few new additions to the multiplayer do little to mix up the gameplay and in that sense this becomes Just Another Call of Duty release. Other custom modes are still a blast, with one capable of spending hours in the gunsmith making their own death devices and unique art patterns. The Zombies and Free Run modes make for a nice distraction from all the attention you’ll likely be throwing Campaign and Multiplayer. All in all I feel that Treyarch has created a tight little package, and while I’m not sure it’s going to go down as one of the greatest Call of Duty’s of all time, there’s enough here to make it stand up and stand out on its own.
