Call of Duty: Black Ops III Reviews
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.
Black Ops III is a return to form for the Call of Duty franchise, and two of the three main components are as good as they've ever been. The story mode remains a disappointment, but there's so much content and endless customization packed into the competitive and zombie modes that you'll have no shortage of things to do for many months to come.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III flips the script a bit by serving what's arguably the weakest campaign in the Black Ops series but redeems itself with a fresher and more content-filled multiplayer with its online and zombie modes. The addition of new specialists and faster, more fluid movement within more layered maps adds plenty of extra polish to the game's traditional mechanics. Zombies mode also gets extra depth in terms of both production and gameplay. Although it doesn't revolutionize shooters per se, it's one of the more polished entries in the genre this generation.
If you are the type of player that skips a couple years or only focuses on Treyarch's installments of the game, this would be the one to pick up. The customization aspect is a very nice addition, and the campaign feels long enough and worth the time investment.
How you feel about Black Ops 3 as a package will depend on what you're looking for in a shooter. If your focus is on competitive play, then this will be your favourite CoD of recent years. If you and your mates love to smash things up in co-op, Black Ops III gives you plenty of opportunity, so get stuck in. Yet it's hard to escape the nagging feeling that this would have been a better CoD had Treyarch focused less on the co-op and the extras, and a little more on delivering their best CoD campaign to date.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 feels like a progression of the series as opposed to the advancement past entries from Treyarch delivered. Still it is hard to argue with how much is packed into this release, and I found myself exploring it all over and over again. The sheer amount of content makes up for the lack of innovation in some areas, and while I don't think it stands out as much as Advanced Warfare, it still keeps me playing a series I never thought I would care about year in, and year out.
The campaign could have been so much better, but while throwaway characters and lackluster scenes hurt the single-player product, there is no denying that Treyarch did a solid job with the multiplayer options. Killing zombies will become your favorite pastime and a great change up from all those online deathmatches you'll have against players around the world. It isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still a good time.
Black Ops III has upped its game, giving exciting updates to the fan-favorite Zombies and the classic multiplayer, but the single player doesn't measure up to the same standard.
The sheer length of this review should tell you that Call of Duty: Black Ops III is filled to the brim with content. While there are some low points and pacing issues, the campaign's customisation, freedom, and verticality make it excellent to play with friends. Meanwhile, mutliplayer has more customisation and replayability than ever before, and Zombies is brilliant in its complexity and difficulty. While Ghosts may have bitten the bullet, Black Ops III reloads the franchise into a new, brighter era.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is a great and very important multiplayer return for the series, which was surprised us by the variety of modes and the general fun of the gameplay. It's like three games in one, and they're very good.
Review in Russian | Read full review
No, it's not the best Call of Duty ever made, but the sheer volume of content on display largely makes up for its weaknesses in specific areas. A worthwhile story would have added enormous value to the overall package, but its absence doesn't undermine what is another solid release.
Campaign is dull and forgettable, but multiplayer is great fun and Zombies has had some real effort poured into it.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III is a good third chapter for the Black Ops series and features a long story mode that could have been just a little better in details. The game offers a lot of content, but suffers from the balancing of weapons, abilities and specialists across all the game modes.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Treyarch has clearly packed a lot of effort into Black Ops 3 and while not all of it necessarily hits, there's enough to keep both solo players and social butterflies active. While the campaign story itself feels silly, co-op is a marvelous addition and a far better way to experience the narrative for those that don't feel like killing zombies. Meanwhile, multiplayer feels like a huge difference from previous CoD games and much of it is for the better. With a faster pace, more fluid movement, and cool Specialist ablities, it feels like a refreshing twist on the CoD multiplayer formula.
From the big marquee features to the small touches and hidden modes, Black Ops 3 features an awful lot of content, and every aspect of it is designed with cooperative play in mind. It can feel a bit disjointed in places, but it's a broad and expansive game with plenty to enjoy, especially so when playing with friends.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III continues the evolution that began in last year's Advanced Warfare. The current-generation of the mega popular war shooter series impresses with (some) freedom of choice and fun abilities. So much so that most of the time, the rather pedestrian visuals and unmemorable story won't be a deal breaker. Especially, when you consider all the extra content like a second zombie themed campaign.
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.
If they tried to give us something fresh and if it weren't for such a ruthlessly steep learning curve in the game's competitive multiplayer, I'd actually see this as Game of the Year material. Disregarding these drawbacks, Treyarch's shooter is still a product that offers quite a lot for the standard price tag. It's a solid and well-polished shooter.
In the end, Call of Duty: Black Ops III is a good shooter that falls somewhere between "safe" and "chancy." It gives you great maps, awesome Specialists, a truly challenging and interesting Zombies mode, and a solid and more dynamic control mechanic. It also has a convoluted and uninteresting story and a co-op mode that doesn't consist of much more than extra enemies.
I used to hear that Treyarch's efforts with the Call of Duty series were inferior to that of Infinity Ward, and that may have been true in the past, but here Treyarch has really put their stamp on the game and created what is, in a nutshell, the game that made me come back to the series after such a lengthy time away.