Call of Duty: Black Ops III
The following work contains material and themes that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images that may disturb some viewers. Mature articles are recommended for those who are 18 years of age or above. If you are 18 years old or above, or are comfortable with mature content, you are free to view this page; otherwise, you should close this page and view another one. Reader discretion is advised. |
Call of Duty: Black Ops III | ||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Call of Duty: Black Ops III is a 2015 first-person shooter game published by Activision and developed by Treyarch. The game takes place around 40 years after the events of the 2012 game Call of Duty: Black Ops II. It was released on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360 on November 6, 2015, and it was also released on the macOS on April 5, 2019. A port on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 exists, but this page only focuses on the game's PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC versions.
Why It Rocks
- Adequate graphics that look like an actual 2015 title.
- The soundtrack is really unique and done well. It's almost full of great songs thanks to Jack Wall.
- The Nightmares mode, while sadly it was only in this game and in Infinite Warfare (the game after this game) it was nowhere to be found, is introduced here and it’s the campaign mode, but with almost all the enemies being zombies.
- The zombies mode is the best and most detailed out of all the series and it helped this game be a good one, it has great maps, especially Der Eisendrache.
- To make this better, Treyarch released a pack in 2017 (Zombies Chronicles) that includes eight classic zombies maps from the black ops series; here's the list:
- Nacht der Untoten
- Verrückt
- Shi No Numa
- Kino der Toten
- Ascension
- Shangri-La
- Moon
- Origins
- Despite a limited face selection full of generic faces, you can customize your campaign protagonist’s appearance and choose their gender.
- Unlike in other games in the series where you collect collectables in the campaign, you can place the collectables in your safehouse room.
- The gunsmith and paintshop are fun to use as you can make variants and paintjobs.
- It introduces the specialists with their own fun and creative abilities.
- There was lots of content in this game and heck, after the release of Infinite Warfare content for this game was still being made. But sadly today content for this game have stopped.
- Just like in previous Black Ops games, The Operative: No One Lives Forever, Perfect Dark Zero, Original Hitman trilogy and Soldier of Fortune series you can choose your loadouts before each missions which adds further replay value.
- And speaking of replay value, there’s challenges in the campaign mode you can complete which also adds further replay value.
- There are also Cyber Cores in the campaign, which are a set of cybernetically-implanted offensive abilities from your protagonist’s DNI. There are three skill trees worth of Cyber Cores available to the player. Each type has a total of six abilities, along with one passive melee ability.
- Control: This tree is useful for missions that have heavy robot opposition, such as the beginning of Life or the latter half of Hypocenter. It has limited use against human enemies, but can still be effective.
- Chaos: This tree includes a variety of abilities to cause havoc among groups of enemies, especially on humans. This is very useful in the World War 2 part in Demon Within, in which that part is full of human enemies.
- Martial: A melee-focused tree that involves getting up close and personal with enemies to do severe damage. It also comes with a few diversion abilities to make sure the player survives.
- Despite the story having little to no continuation from the previous Black Ops games even if it takes place decades after Black Ops 2, the game gives out excellent references to the earlier titles of the Black Ops series such as Khalil mentioning Raul Menendez in the level Rise and Fall and in the database on the computer/data vault in your protagonist’s room in the safehouse, you can find old letters from Jason Hudson and Alex Mason.
- Great multiplayer mode that is still decently active even today because of the game's cult following (according to Wikipedia.) even if the game came out 7 years ago.
- Overall, along with Advanced Warfare, it’s one of the few good Call of Duty games during the dark age of bad games in the series. Not only that, but it’s one of if not, the best futuristic Call of Duty game, and also one of the best PS4/Xbox One generation Call of Duty games.
- The voice acting is excellent, especially since the zombies cast members reprised their roles.
- "Outcome? Train go Boom." (Despite this meme having mixed reactions).
- Even though the campaign is atrocious at worst and mediocre at its best in the sense it's filled to the brim with plot holes full of confusion, the weird choice of having this game take place decades after Black Ops II, and the characters not feeling as memorable and iconic as previous Black Ops characters, (all mentioned above) this campaign is probably one of, if not, the darkest campaign in the series. To an extent, even if it’s mediocre at best, the campaign may still be pretty fun to play.
Bad Qualities
- The single-player campaign is a mess and atrocious, as it's filled to the brim with plot holes and confusion (despite having a dark and hopeless tone); not only that, but it has little to no connection to the previous two games (outside of two references) characters such as Alex Mason, Frank Woods, and David "Section" Mason are missing.
- However, this is probably because this game takes place decades after the events of Black Ops 2 or because it had multiple endings, so it was hard to pick which one is canon. Still, choosing the game set decades after Black Ops 2 is weird, especially since previous Black Ops games were more about conspiracies.
- Sadly, the characters in this campaign also don't feel as iconic and memorable as the previous characters in the Black Ops series. Or even the Modern Warfare trilogy to an extent.
- The PS3/Xbox 360 versions are very inferior, as they have downgraded graphics, lack a lot of features in the standard versions of the game, most notably the campaign and the rest of the DLCs.
- As mentioned above, a lot of fan-favorite characters (not the zombie's crew, which consists of Tank Dempsey, Edward Richtofen, Nikolai Belinski, and Takeo Masaki) are not present in the game which is one of the reasons that this game’s campaign wasn't great.
- The Supply Drops (yes, the loot boxes that made Advanced Warfare’s multiplayer feel pay-to-win) are back in this game and as repetitive as ever.
- To add more salt to the wound, with the Loot box-like mechanic, some of the best weapons in multiplayer, such as the XMC and the KVK 99m (AN-94), for example, are only obtained through there, which makes the multiplayer once again feel pay-to-win.
- The hitmarkers are a bit off.
- The game (specifically on consoles) has some long, annoying, and boring loading times when players are loading in or out of matches, making the player feel slightly bored.
- Realistic difficulty is a harrowing nightmare because it makes the campaign feel practically unplayable in the sense that it’s veteran mode; however, unlike veteran mode, you die in one (two, if you're lucky) hit from everything.
- As mentioned above at WIR#5, the faces you can choose for your campaign protagonist look generic.
- As mentioned above in the bad qualities, the campaign forgot to follow up on the previous Black Ops titles. Despite the canon Black Ops 2 ending where the main antagonist Raul Menendez is killed and Cordis Die supporters launch a massive worldwide revolution, resulting in global anarchy that results in the White House being burned down to the ground by Cordis Die supporters in a riot, the disbanding of NATO and the eventual outbreak of a Third Cold War. (The war this game takes place in.) and messages in the data vault from Jason Hudson and Alex Mason, There’s little to no indication that this game is in the Black Ops timeline.
- In the multiplayer, there is some balancing issues, here and there, one of the most notable offenders are the VMP with its firerate.
- Some players may find the close-up of Hendrick's eye at the beginning of the Hypocenter level uncomfortable.
Reception
Call of Duty: Black Ops III was well-received by critics and players, who praised its multiplayer, zombies, gameplay, and graphics. However, the story and lack of innovation were criticized. The game was the best-selling video game of 2015. The game is also considered one of the best Call of Duty games on the PS4/Xbox One generation.
Trivia
- Similar to the previous game in the series, Advanced Warfare spawning the “Press F to Pay Respects” meme, this game spawns a meme called “Outcome? Train go Boom”.
- This is the first Call of Duty game to be published by Sony Interactive Entertainment in Japan after Square Enix stopped publishing Call of Duty games in Japan after Advanced Warfare.
Videos
Comments
- Mature
- Good media
- Good games from bad companies
- Good games
- First-person shooter games
- 2010s games
- 2010s media
- PlayStation 4 games
- Xbox One games
- Sequels
- Games with a female antagonist
- Games with a human protagonist
- Games with a customizable protagonist
- Games with a anti-hero protagonist
- Activision games
- Call of Duty games
- Commercial successes
- Games with a male protagonist
- Games with a female protagonist
- Internet memes
- Games with stealth elements
- Adult games
- Games with microtransactions
- Dark tone games
- Dark tone media
- Multi-Platforms
- PC games
- Science fiction games
- Gross-out games