Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Year: 2015
Developer: Treyarch
Publisher: Activision
Platform: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
BBFC: 18
Published: 12/09/23
Developer: Treyarch
Publisher: Activision
Platform: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
BBFC: 18
Published: 12/09/23
For years I held a grudge against the Black Ops sub-series of Call of Duty based almost entirely on my hatred for Black Ops II, hatred I found out recently was completely unfounded because I really enjoyed replaying it for the purposes of these retrospective reviews. It certainly wasn’t perfect, but I had a far better time with it than I anticipated. Because of my previously bad experience, combined with my general dislike of World at War, I had written off the Treyarch games entirely, to the point that I have never played the third or fourth Black Ops games until it came time to write these reviews. With my relationship with Black Ops II mostly repaired, I went into Black Ops III with cautious optimism. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
In the four decades since Raul Menendez’s drone assault new systems have been put into place to ensure that such an attack never happens again. Since then, a third Cold War has begun between two global alliances, the Winslow Accord and the Common Defence Pact (CDP). In 2070 an elite Black Ops squad from the Winslow Accord discover that the crime syndicate, 54 Immortals, has stolen and leaked data that could be useful to the CDP. But upon digging deeper they discover that some of their own may be double agents, working against the Winslow Accord from the inside.
In the four decades since Raul Menendez’s drone assault new systems have been put into place to ensure that such an attack never happens again. Since then, a third Cold War has begun between two global alliances, the Winslow Accord and the Common Defence Pact (CDP). In 2070 an elite Black Ops squad from the Winslow Accord discover that the crime syndicate, 54 Immortals, has stolen and leaked data that could be useful to the CDP. But upon digging deeper they discover that some of their own may be double agents, working against the Winslow Accord from the inside.
That’s really all I can say about Black Ops III’s story without giving too much of the mystery away, and I say mystery because it really is a puzzle putting everything together. By the time you do have all the pieces arranged to make a whole picture, you’re left wondering why it was all so complicated in the first place, and it’s hard not to be disappointed by how thin Black Ops III spreads itself across multiple story threads. I will elaborate more later in the review, but to keep things spoiler free for now I’ll hold my tongue.
The links to the previous games in the Black Ops series (World At War, Black Ops, and Black Ops II) are fleeting and inconsequential to this games story, which on one hand is good for newcomers but on the other feels a bit misleading when the title is literally Black Ops III.
Fully animated cutscenes should give us a stronger connection to the characters, but for the most part the writing makes the characters so cliché and devoid of any personality. Black Ops III tries to break new ground for the series by having the player character be either male or female, but then rather than giving them a gender-neutral name like most games would do, Black Ops III just never gives them a name. It’s hard to connect with your own player character when they don’t have a name, and whilst I appreciate the inclusion of female characters to Call of Duty for the first time, I feel it wouldn’t have taken much to do it better than this.
The writing really is the game’s biggest issue, because it has some great story ideas but doesn’t weave them together very well and the result is confusing and messy, plus it constantly lets the military bullshit get in the way which sounds dumb to say because Call of Duty is a military shooter, but this storyline is far bigger than the military and tries to narrow down on the human experience way more than I ever expected Call of Duty to attempt…but then destroys all the good it does by commanding officers getting in the way and rediverting the conversation back to the mission.
The story is also extremely violent, and often very gory. It’s weird because the combat itself isn’t any more violent or bloody than previous games, but some of the cutscenes in Black Ops III are brutal and it feels out of place. It’s almost like Treyarch knew the previous two games got 18 ratings because of their violent content so therefore Black Ops III must too. I think allowing the game to be a 16 rating would have been better, because then the violence during cutscenes would have been more equal to that of the gameplay.
The links to the previous games in the Black Ops series (World At War, Black Ops, and Black Ops II) are fleeting and inconsequential to this games story, which on one hand is good for newcomers but on the other feels a bit misleading when the title is literally Black Ops III.
Fully animated cutscenes should give us a stronger connection to the characters, but for the most part the writing makes the characters so cliché and devoid of any personality. Black Ops III tries to break new ground for the series by having the player character be either male or female, but then rather than giving them a gender-neutral name like most games would do, Black Ops III just never gives them a name. It’s hard to connect with your own player character when they don’t have a name, and whilst I appreciate the inclusion of female characters to Call of Duty for the first time, I feel it wouldn’t have taken much to do it better than this.
The writing really is the game’s biggest issue, because it has some great story ideas but doesn’t weave them together very well and the result is confusing and messy, plus it constantly lets the military bullshit get in the way which sounds dumb to say because Call of Duty is a military shooter, but this storyline is far bigger than the military and tries to narrow down on the human experience way more than I ever expected Call of Duty to attempt…but then destroys all the good it does by commanding officers getting in the way and rediverting the conversation back to the mission.
The story is also extremely violent, and often very gory. It’s weird because the combat itself isn’t any more violent or bloody than previous games, but some of the cutscenes in Black Ops III are brutal and it feels out of place. It’s almost like Treyarch knew the previous two games got 18 ratings because of their violent content so therefore Black Ops III must too. I think allowing the game to be a 16 rating would have been better, because then the violence during cutscenes would have been more equal to that of the gameplay.
The gameplay borrows a lot from Sledgehammer Games’ Advanced Warfare the previous year, continuing to evolve Call of Duty into a fast-moving fluid movement FPS akin to that of Titanfall. Thanks to the cybernetic enhancements your character receives early on in the game, you can sprint for longer, jump higher, use boosters to hover in the air, and chain all of this together with greater agility than a normal person. For a series that used to be about hiding behind cover and popping off shots, movement is actually your greatest ally in Black Ops III and feels considerably more akin to classic shooters like Quake and DOOM as a result. But then working against that is the combat mechanics which still require you to aim down sights or you won’t hit the broad side of a barn, and find a nice hiding hole to allow your body to suck up all the blood you’re leaking on your eyes when you’ve taken a lot of damage.
As well as agility improvements, you have a piece of cybernetic equipment known as the Direct Neural Interface (DNI) which allows you to interface with various machines and see what your squamates see to give you a tactical advantage. For example, a push of the right d-pad button will give your UI an enhancement which highlights any enemy your squamates can see, even if you cannot. Or you could take control of an enemy drone and use their weapons against them. Or even launch a swarm of nanobots which will fly around the battlefield and damage anyone they fly nearby. This is alongside the typical equipment you would encounter in a CoD game, and so it allows for greater playstyle flexibility.
One alteration I’m not a fan of though is the persistence of multiplayer features in the campaign. Some of the more recent CoD titles have allowed you to select a starting weapon at the beginning of a mission, but Black Ops III goes a step further by allowing you to setup multiple custom loadouts (as you would in multiplayer), and then at various points in the level are loadout crates which let you swap your weapons on the fly. There’s also ammo crates every five steps, ensuring you never run out of ammo, or need to think before you fire. For me it made the experience less fun, I just picked a weapon with good accuracy, fire rate, and damage, then sprayed that mindlessly for ten hours and I don’t think I ever got to a point where I was concerned I was going to run out of ammo. It also allowed me to change out my weapon for a sniper or shotgun if I entered an area that I felt required a different playstyle, meaning I didn’t have to adapt on the fly. I always had an immediate and guaranteed solution, I never needed to think about what I was doing, and that really sucked.
Shooting things also lacked the same impact because most of the enemies were robots. Forgive me for sounding like a psychopath but there’s something instantly rewarding and satisfying about shooting a human enemy and getting that pulpy ripping sound from bullets hitting them, which is replaced by metal dings and clunks for robots. It’s just not the same.
As well as agility improvements, you have a piece of cybernetic equipment known as the Direct Neural Interface (DNI) which allows you to interface with various machines and see what your squamates see to give you a tactical advantage. For example, a push of the right d-pad button will give your UI an enhancement which highlights any enemy your squamates can see, even if you cannot. Or you could take control of an enemy drone and use their weapons against them. Or even launch a swarm of nanobots which will fly around the battlefield and damage anyone they fly nearby. This is alongside the typical equipment you would encounter in a CoD game, and so it allows for greater playstyle flexibility.
One alteration I’m not a fan of though is the persistence of multiplayer features in the campaign. Some of the more recent CoD titles have allowed you to select a starting weapon at the beginning of a mission, but Black Ops III goes a step further by allowing you to setup multiple custom loadouts (as you would in multiplayer), and then at various points in the level are loadout crates which let you swap your weapons on the fly. There’s also ammo crates every five steps, ensuring you never run out of ammo, or need to think before you fire. For me it made the experience less fun, I just picked a weapon with good accuracy, fire rate, and damage, then sprayed that mindlessly for ten hours and I don’t think I ever got to a point where I was concerned I was going to run out of ammo. It also allowed me to change out my weapon for a sniper or shotgun if I entered an area that I felt required a different playstyle, meaning I didn’t have to adapt on the fly. I always had an immediate and guaranteed solution, I never needed to think about what I was doing, and that really sucked.
Shooting things also lacked the same impact because most of the enemies were robots. Forgive me for sounding like a psychopath but there’s something instantly rewarding and satisfying about shooting a human enemy and getting that pulpy ripping sound from bullets hitting them, which is replaced by metal dings and clunks for robots. It’s just not the same.
Black Ops II does a lot to mix up its level variety though by bringing in various new elements to the franchise. One such mission that sees this early on is ‘Hypocenter’. You’re delving deep into an abandoned research facility and the game leans in hard on horror by having you confined to cramped dark hallways for most of the mission, with enemies that jump out at you from where you least expect. It works really well and it’s such a great change of pace from the usual shooty-bang-bang. The mission is even capped off with a boss fight, another new thing for the franchise. You’re confined to an arena where you need to hold off waves of enemies whilst also damaging a machine that you need climb and throw grenades into. This is such a welcome change for Call of Duty to try, and it’s great to see Treyarch looking for ways to keep the franchise fresh. This isn’t the only mission like that either, with various missions introducing new mechanics, or new variations of things you expect.
In the latter half of the game there’s a number of missions that employ a kind of hallucinatory element to them, altering the environment on the fly and seeing you navigate impossible spaces. These missions start off as a great break from the usual minute to minute shooting galleries, but as they become more and more frequent, they actually become kind of tedious. They tie into the story very well, but they could have been executed better from a gameplay perspective.
Speaking of which I’m going to talk spoilers now, so if you want to avoid them, head to the next paragraph. When it’s revealed that the rogue agents are actually being controlled by an experimental A.I. that has corrupted their DNI’s and distorted their reality, it’s a really great plot twist. You can tell the game wants to explore this in a really cool way, but the writing once again lets the concept down, it’s also too little too late at the point this reveal happens, and because there’s already so much other stuff happening it feels like the game is trying to do too much. This becomes the dominant storyline once the reveal happens, but that’s only for another couple of missions, and the ending then feels rushed and despite trying to go for a more emotional angle, because all the characters are so bland it just seems kind of dumb.
There’s also a second campaign mode dubbed ‘Nightmares’ which retells the story but with zombies and biological weapons rather than A.I. and technology, I didn’t play this mode, and I appreciate that Treyarch were putting in as much content as they could…but honestly it feels like they just threw everything at a wall just to see what stuck. It lacks focus, and the result means the ending and this cool A.I. storyline get left by the wayside.
Despite running on the same engine as Black Ops II, Black Ops III looks great on eighth generation hardware. It’s not quite as highly detailed as Advanced Warfare was, but it does have more densely populated environments and runs a lot smoother than Advanced Warfare did. That is except the cutscenes which I often saw significant slowdown for, as well as inconsistent frame pacing which made it seem like they were running at half the speed of the gameplay. It’s quite impressive that the Black Ops II engine looks this good, I half expected Black Ops III to look inferior even against Ghosts but it pulled its weight and then some.
In the latter half of the game there’s a number of missions that employ a kind of hallucinatory element to them, altering the environment on the fly and seeing you navigate impossible spaces. These missions start off as a great break from the usual minute to minute shooting galleries, but as they become more and more frequent, they actually become kind of tedious. They tie into the story very well, but they could have been executed better from a gameplay perspective.
Speaking of which I’m going to talk spoilers now, so if you want to avoid them, head to the next paragraph. When it’s revealed that the rogue agents are actually being controlled by an experimental A.I. that has corrupted their DNI’s and distorted their reality, it’s a really great plot twist. You can tell the game wants to explore this in a really cool way, but the writing once again lets the concept down, it’s also too little too late at the point this reveal happens, and because there’s already so much other stuff happening it feels like the game is trying to do too much. This becomes the dominant storyline once the reveal happens, but that’s only for another couple of missions, and the ending then feels rushed and despite trying to go for a more emotional angle, because all the characters are so bland it just seems kind of dumb.
There’s also a second campaign mode dubbed ‘Nightmares’ which retells the story but with zombies and biological weapons rather than A.I. and technology, I didn’t play this mode, and I appreciate that Treyarch were putting in as much content as they could…but honestly it feels like they just threw everything at a wall just to see what stuck. It lacks focus, and the result means the ending and this cool A.I. storyline get left by the wayside.
Despite running on the same engine as Black Ops II, Black Ops III looks great on eighth generation hardware. It’s not quite as highly detailed as Advanced Warfare was, but it does have more densely populated environments and runs a lot smoother than Advanced Warfare did. That is except the cutscenes which I often saw significant slowdown for, as well as inconsistent frame pacing which made it seem like they were running at half the speed of the gameplay. It’s quite impressive that the Black Ops II engine looks this good, I half expected Black Ops III to look inferior even against Ghosts but it pulled its weight and then some.
The multiplayer offerings continue to not spark much joy in me though. Traditional multiplayer mixes things up by having you select a character with unique gameplay abilities. These abilities work like permanently attached perks, but it means you can experiment with your gameplay style slightly, or just mix things up every now and again by playing a different character. But crucially you aren’t stopped from using any weapons or equipment with any of the classes, so you can still pick a loadout that works for you, upgrade it and get into your usual rhythm.
What makes Black Ops III’s multiplayer not sit right with me is the inclusion of the agility upgrades. Games very quickly become about jumping around, wallrunning, boost sliding, and sprinting around whilst holding the fire button. Knowing the maps has always helped with any multiplayer shooter, but this takes it to an entirely different level when you’ve got people jumping over buildings or appearing from off the map because there’s a wall just out of sight below it. It’s tough enough to get your bearings in a boots on the ground Call of Duty a lot of the time, so to suddenly need to be so aware of what’s above and below you and how you can exploit that is just too much for me.
Obviously, Zombies mode returns, and the focus this time is on large scale maps that tell a story and have lots of hidden secrets to uncover. I’ve never been much of a CoD Zombies fan but this mode is now designed around playing maps in particular ways to progress, ways that you can only learn through dozens of hours of trial and error or by scouring the internet for walkthroughs because they are so absurdly complicated and the game does nothing to inform you of what to do. Wave survival is one thing, expecting me to do that whilst solving puzzles that have no discernible way to tell whether I’m doing the right thing (or even anything at all) until a long while later is really just not my idea of fun.
I am not a big fan of Black Ops III, but I’ll give it credit where it’s due…it tried something very different for the franchise. Whilst some elements are just evolutions of what other franchises were doing, or even taken from Advanced Warfare to an extent, there’s definitely a lot of experimentation happening here from Treyarch to see what they could do with the franchise next.
The writing is not very good, and the tenuous links to the first two games mean that I wouldn’t exactly say it’s worth seeking out for the story, even if the ideas the story has are good. The multiplayer is just twitch central with far too much going on at once for my liking, and Zombies continues to just not be my thing. It’s a shame I didn’t like Black Ops III more, but I can’t knock it for trying.
What makes Black Ops III’s multiplayer not sit right with me is the inclusion of the agility upgrades. Games very quickly become about jumping around, wallrunning, boost sliding, and sprinting around whilst holding the fire button. Knowing the maps has always helped with any multiplayer shooter, but this takes it to an entirely different level when you’ve got people jumping over buildings or appearing from off the map because there’s a wall just out of sight below it. It’s tough enough to get your bearings in a boots on the ground Call of Duty a lot of the time, so to suddenly need to be so aware of what’s above and below you and how you can exploit that is just too much for me.
Obviously, Zombies mode returns, and the focus this time is on large scale maps that tell a story and have lots of hidden secrets to uncover. I’ve never been much of a CoD Zombies fan but this mode is now designed around playing maps in particular ways to progress, ways that you can only learn through dozens of hours of trial and error or by scouring the internet for walkthroughs because they are so absurdly complicated and the game does nothing to inform you of what to do. Wave survival is one thing, expecting me to do that whilst solving puzzles that have no discernible way to tell whether I’m doing the right thing (or even anything at all) until a long while later is really just not my idea of fun.
I am not a big fan of Black Ops III, but I’ll give it credit where it’s due…it tried something very different for the franchise. Whilst some elements are just evolutions of what other franchises were doing, or even taken from Advanced Warfare to an extent, there’s definitely a lot of experimentation happening here from Treyarch to see what they could do with the franchise next.
The writing is not very good, and the tenuous links to the first two games mean that I wouldn’t exactly say it’s worth seeking out for the story, even if the ideas the story has are good. The multiplayer is just twitch central with far too much going on at once for my liking, and Zombies continues to just not be my thing. It’s a shame I didn’t like Black Ops III more, but I can’t knock it for trying.