Call of Duty: Black Ops III

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Call of Duty: Black Ops III “Imagine yourself in a frozen forest” Protagonist(s): The Player Genre(s): First-person shooter Platform(s): PlayStation 4 Xbox One Microsoft Windows macOS Release: PlayStation 4 Xbox One Microsoft Windows WW: November 6, 2015 macOS WW: April 4, 2019 Developer(s): Treyarch Publisher(s): Activision Series: Call of Duty Predecessor: Call of Duty: Black Ops II Successor: Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

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 2. 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 crappy port on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 exists, but this page only focuses on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC versions of the game.

Why It Rocks

1. Adequate graphics that look like an actual 2015 title.
2. The soundtrack is really amazing and done well and it’s almost full of great songs thanks to Jack Wall.
3. 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.
4. 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 that includes 8 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
5. Despite there being a limited face selection full of generic faces, you can customize your campaign protagonist’s appearance and choose their gender.
6. Unlike in other games in the series where you collect collectables in the campaign, you can place the collectables in your safehouse room.
7. The gunsmith and paintshop are fun to use as you can make variants and paintjobs.
8. It introduces the specialists with their own fun and creative abilities.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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 serious damage. It also comes with a few diversion abilities to make sure the player survives.
12. 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 nice references to the previous 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. The voice acting is great, especially since the zombies cast members reprised their roles.
16. “Outcome? Train go Boom.” (Despite the fact this meme had mixed reactions).
17. Even though the campaign is atrocious at worst and mediocre at it’s best in the sense it’s filled to the brim with plot holes full of confusions, 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. and to an extent, even if it’s mediocre at best, the campaign may still pretty fun to play.

Bad Qualities

1. 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 that the game had multiple endings that it was hard to pick which one is canon. Still, making the choice of the game being set decades after Black Ops 2 is a weird choice, 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.
2. The PS3/Xbox 360 versions are inferior, as they lack a lot of features in the normal versions of the game, most notably the campaign.
3. As mentioned above, a lot of fan favorite characters (not the zombies 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 very good.
4. 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 in the wound, 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.
5. The hitmarkers are a bit off.
6. The game (specifically on consoles) has some long, annoying, and boring loading times when players are loading in or out of matches which can make the player feel a little bit bored.
7. Realistic difficulty is a very hard nightmare because it makes the campaign feel practically unplayable in the sense that it’s veteran mode, but you die in one (two, if your lucky) hit.
8. As mentioned above at WIR#5, the faces you can choose for your campaign protagonist look generic.
9. 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.
10. In the multiplayer, there is some balancing issues, here and there, one of the most notable offenders are the VMP with its firerate.
11. The close up of Hendricks eye in the beginning of the Hypocenter level can be uncomfortable for some players.

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. This game is also considered to be 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.

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