Whenever I caught wind of the next Call of Duty titles, they were always changing the feel of the game, but never too much, but then did they change it too much?
I wasn’t much of a Call of Duty fan growing up, I was more partial to the Battlefield series with my first venture taking me to Battlefield 2142. Saying that though, I had enjoyed the first few Call of Duty titles that were set in WWII, but after that I stuck with Battlefield. I liked the teamwork elements, I liked how you could get in vehicles, and I enjoyed the Conquest maps and how big and vast they were, and of course. Squads. With Call of Duty, I didn’t actually follow the releases of the titles after Modern Warfare 4, and then I was suddenly hearing all about this, “Black Ops” title that launched, the most memorable part of that being, Zombies.
It was all anyone spoke about.
Black Ops II came out, people raved about it, but by that point I had only just got Black Ops and it didn’t really grip me, so the case sat there on the shelf, untouched, later traded in. A few years go by and I get introduced to the first Black Ops again in 2015, so I give the Zombies mode a try, and I enjoy it. To an extent. I’m still not a fan of the three or so hits and you’re grounded system, but anyway, the multiplayer aspect of it I didn’t enjoy, I’m talking about Team Deathmatch modes and the like, although it did feel nice and very playable.
Recently, I’ve grabbed Black Ops III on the Xbox One and…well. What the bloody hell happened?
I remember seeing the comments and rage posts about the jumping soldiers, and the stupid weapons, and then I remember seeing the praise the new Zombies got. I will admit, the latter is very good, the new Zombies is fairly nice and I do enjoy playing that part of the game, but my god, what is going on with the multiplayer?
I’m terrible.
I originally thought it was because I’m mainly a PC gamer and I’m not used to the controller sensitivity, so I turned it up and down and couldn’t find a setting where I was comfortable. Eventually settling on a setting (5 if you must know) I decided to just push on. I created my weak loadout and took to the Team Deathmatch mode. On more than one occasion, it took me around about eight deaths before I got a chance at killing someone. The worst thing about it? I opened fire first, I aimed at them first, and I unloaded a whole clip into them. No effect. They just fly jump over my head and then melee me in the head with some green boxing gloves.
What is with the weapons too? The wall running, jump launching style isn’t too bad in comparison to the weird weapons that litter the title. There’s boxing gloves instead of a bloody combat knife, there’s some type of electrical stunner gun that explodes you, and there’s a swarm of…mecha suit eating bees players can launch? That’s what they are right?
The graphics also feel incredibly over saturated and I feel like I’m playing on one of those Counter Strike: Source Orange .bsp levels nearly all the time, and the levels layout themselves don’t feel special, they just feel like you’ve been dropped into a crappy paintball arena with a few strangers. They don’t feel like they’re levels that are part of a bigger world.
I won’t mention anything about the hero characters because I think it’s stupid and I’m seeing it a lot in shooters these days. You know the characters that you choose that have specific skills that you can use in game? I miss being a standard person amongst other standard people. Anyway, I will mention Zombies. Black Ops III has done a good job on the Zombies mode, I like the overall setting, feeling very vintage and the locations felt very, art deco. I asked the team to help me figure out what style it looks like, and Rob in particular likened it to “Lovecraftian” and said, “Alternate 20s Art Deco meets madness infused tentacle demons”. Others agreed they saw, “Gotham”. I like the bubblegum idea although I never touch the system when actually playing the game, and the levels feel nice to survive in, nice and spacious. I’d say it’s the highlight of the title.
Despite all of the weirdness I’ve stated above, I’m still looking forward to the upcoming, Call of Duty: WWII, only because I’m confident that they’ll be following in the footsteps of Battlefield 1 and sticking to a rough guideline for realism, so no stupid fast running soldiers, no flying characters, and no suit eating fireflies.
The way I see it, Treyarch saw that players were enjoying crazy titles such as Team Fortress 2, and I want to say, Paladins, but that came out in the same month as Call of Duty: Black Ops III, and so Treyarch made a weird, over-the-top theme to their popular warfare title. In all honesty, I preferred the more down-to-earth previous titles rather than the sci-fi feel that Black Ops III gave, and that’s just my thoughts on the game, I mean, I suck at console shooters as it is. Maybe it is just me.
Maybe I should just put the controller down.
You’re not alone Ben…trust me
Incredibly glad to hear that! It’s a mess! Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment too 🙂
Ben i dont think you have played advance warfare mp? Play that and you would feel black ops 3 is a much better game. Anyways i do like all the COD games as a whole except mw3 and ghost.