Call of Duty: Black Ops III Reviews
From its four-player co-op campaign to the brand-new powers and a fleshed-out Zombies mode, Black Ops 3 meaningfully pushes the Call of Duty series forward on several fronts. Even where it doesn't innovate, it still meets the high bar Call of Duty fans should expect. Black Ops 3 isn't the best Call of Duty game ever, but it's the biggest and most feature-packed game we've seen out of the series yet.
The graphics get a little prettier, the story gets a little darker, and another Call of Duty counts time as we march together toward death.
Where Treyarch's single-player struggles, the deftly tuned multiplayer soars, delivering a Call of Duty that's rich with options.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 a familiar experience dressed up in a way that it might feel slightly different at first, but getting into the nuts and bolts reveals not much has changed.
This massive, wonderfully diverse Call of Duty theme park is best enjoyed with a friend (or three). Going alone dampens the fun, but either way it's still worth the price of admission.
What begins as a mundane campaign pleasantly diverts into wild territory. While the campaign elements are the weakest of what Black Ops III offers, the amount and quality of non-campaign offerings carry the title beyond the finish line
Black Ops III presents fine-tuned multiplayer, engaging fights against the undead, and a boring campaign.
Black Ops 3 doesn't meaningfully move the series forward
You'd think a game with this many modes and features would be more exciting than it is.
The campaign is great. The multiplayer is good. The zombie mode is lovely.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III offers few surprises, but even so, it's a great package. The campaign sometimes feels like it's trying too hard, but is ultimately solid and enjoyable. Zombies mode is a nice bonus. But really, it's the multiplayer that steals the show. It doesn't stray far from the usual formula, but it's been honed and polished to perfection to deliver seriously brilliant multiplayer competition.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III was created in a three-year development cycle and it shows. This is basically five standalone games wrapped into one deep package. While it will have DLC released for it, there's enough content out of the box to keep players busy until the next Call of Duty and probably some time after that. The campaign is perfectly paced and entertaining throughout, the multiplayer is rich with customization and Zombies is refreshingly challenging. The only real black mark is a story teetering on the on the brink of pretension, but the existentialism of it is undeniably fascinating. Jam-packed with meaningful content, Black Ops III is the Call of Duty you've been waiting for.
Black Ops 3 makes up for a terrible single-player campaign with great multiplayer.
In ye olde days, Call of Duty games would throw a famous quote up on the screen whenever you died, to provide a moment of reflection between attempts. Now that I've laid Blops III to rest, I've found a quote that seems like an echo of my thoughts and feelings. "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."
Call of Duty: Black Ops III is a big step forward on multiplayer play, the quality of the single-player story, the imaginative story paths, and the outstanding quality of the wide-open landscapes, and the wide variety of enemies. I suspect that Activision has a very good chance of restoring the series to record levels in comparison to the last couple of years.
A phenomenal multiplayer along with a larger, improved zombies mode mean that, although the solo campaign is a slight misstep, Black Ops is the best call of Duty on the current gen consoles.
Campaign is dull and forgettable, but multiplayer is great fun and Zombies has had some real effort poured into it.
Ultimately, Call of Duty: Black Ops III hits a lot of targets, but misses some, at times in ways that I struggle to understand. That said, it's fun, fast and it comes nicely wrapped with a ton of content and longevity. If you love first person shooters, you'll most probably sink a lot of hours into this game. It's not a revolution, but I can definitely define Treyarch's labor of love as a positive evolution.
While both the story and the multiplayer will likely be divisive—we're a long, long ways from Modern Warfare or the original Black Ops here—I'm glad to see Treyarch taking risks, trying something different, and impressed that even with all the changes, the core game still feels very much like Call of Duty.
While the campaign could certainly be a lot stronger, Black Ops III is living proof of that concept.