
Black Ops III multiplayer is a purist experience – a gift to eSports. We’re entering into an era of fully destructible environments, multiple physics objects, advanced AI, pervasive social connection – these are barely registered. Many hated the gimmicks of recent titles – the scenic shifts, the sudden weather changes – but at least they mixed things up. Once again, there are no “wow” moments, nothing to make you stop in your tracks. Largely, the stuff you’ve always done to stay alive will be the stuff you do here.
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Others will find that beneath the shiny surface, the familiar logistics of this series remain untouched. Newcomers will be bullet fodder for weeks. And they certainly are entertaining, especially stuff like Ruin’s barnstorming gravity spikes and, later, Reaper’s Scythe – basically an arm-mounted mini-gun.īut again, the many tweaks and additions, even the improved dynamics, are there for confirmed fans. The idea, perhaps, is to add extra variety to encounters and to give average players access to the sorts of super powers usually confined to killstreak pros. Then you have the specialists – nine selectable characters that provide either a defensive or offensive boost, which players can unlock through each match. Standouts like Evac, Exodus, Stronghold and Breach, provide a challenging combination of long sight lines and claustrophobic choke point chambers, often with gruesome central courtyards where multiple overlook positions guarantee tense, explosive stand-offs. The 12 initially available maps are compact and exciting, mostly providing variations on the horizontal three-lane system. Weapons are feisty too from the basic KN-44 assault rifle (skittish but easily stabilised with Quickdraw and Grip attachments) to the furious Vesper SMG with its lightening fire rate and the elegant Sheiva, a one-shot kill rifle that will no doubt be the cause of many unexpected long distance kills. Running along walls, sliding across the floor, spinning in mid-air, shooting all the time – you can tell that this is the studio that produced one of the best Spider-Man games of all time.

Treyarch has created a glorious movement system which gives you seamless mastery of your environment.
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Multiplayer is much, much better – indeed, pro gamers and YouTubers are already saying it’s the best multiplayer since Black Ops 2.

Instead there is bombast, destruction and narrative obfuscation – it’s like the whole game is shouting “look over there, a monster!” while sneaking a chain of mundane levels past you. Although the addition of co-op elements is welcome, there are no surprises, no wild new ideas, no moments of future shock: even the visually engrossing hallucinatory sequences are borrowed from the original Black Ops. We’ve already written about the campaign mode, a woozy 10-hour trip through CIA conspiracies, mega explosions and the sort of “artificial intelligence gone mad” narrative that Hollywood studios have been bashing out for the past five years. Black Ops III tries to give fans everything they want and more, but it does so under serious restrictions that drag it back down into the industrial production line this once thrilling series has become.

But what there isn’t is any sense of a truly game-changing shift away from the series archetypes.

Before launch, the team expressed its fascination with the sorts of nightmarish military technologies that may be available in 2065, and true enough, there are sentient battle robots and drone swarms aplenty. This is indeed, a thoroughly modernised Call of Duty offering, with slick, swift visuals, astonishing production values and a wealth of content. Certainly, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, the latest title in the conspiracy-laden side-series formulated by LA-based studio Treyarch, fulfils a lot of the promises that were made for it pre-release.
