not anything more than a generic mediocre big-budget popcorn shooter
You can immediately tell that even after Advanced Warfare the shadow of Titanfall is still hovering above this series. Is this the end for Call of Duty’s identity? Because I’d say, as much better in execution as BO3 is compared to AW, it still suffers from the same exact dissonance. The acrobatics and melee super attacks encourage you to go bonkers, but the old formula and linear level-design still reinforces the cover-based gameplay.
You have what’s essentially a class system, giving you different skills for each of the three classes. One of them focuses on melee combat and is probably the only one that’s actually somewhat fun. It’s still not gonna turn you into a cyborg ninja because even on the easiest difficulty you die quick from direct fire. But it’s at least something to use on occasion to gain a bit of an advantage. The other two classes are more focused on hacking, which boils down to holding down the Q button… These superpowers are mostly a hassle to execute because straight up shooting the enemy is usually the better option, and if you don’t do it, somebody else will long before you manage to execute your clunky moves. A lot of these powers require you to keep an uninterrupted visual contact with the enemy, which can get interrupted by a bullet, making the whole ordeal frustrating to pull off in the midst of an intense battle (which is most battles in any CoD cause these games can’t handle not being a constant spectacle). But even when you do pull it off, it’s not very satisfying. Before long you catch yourself thinking “this is not fun” and just bail on these classes. Not to mention, picking between the skills in the midst of combat is just impractical. The game doesn’t pause, and it’s not easy to memorize every skill by its logo and position. At least not until you’re more than halfway through the game, by which point you’ve probably lost interest in the whole system.
Then again I made a big mistake and pumped most of my skill points into one skill tree, thinking I’d be getting the amount of them I had after every mission. Only afterwards I realized that not only is this not the case, but also you use the same points to purchase new weapons and augmentations, making the whole progress feel very slow. I praised Black Ops 2 for the amount of mechanical variety it gave you by letting you pick from a huge array of weapons and augmentations, which could drastically alter the functionality of each weapon. Black Ops 3 is technically employing the same system, but the amount of gear available to you is minuscule in comparison. At the start of the game you only have one type of each weapon, and they don’t get unlocked with each new mission. But when you do unlock them, you need to spend your “skill points” on actually purchasing them and/or adding more slots for the augmentations. The whole system is made rigid to the point of redundancy. Not to mention, most new guns are not even necessarily better than the original ones. I haven’t bought one gun throughout the entire game. And to make things worse, they don’t even let you pick up enemies’ weapons anymore until you unlock a specific skill, which I spent half the game not knowing existed. Realistically, the only right way to play this game is to settle on one class and one loadout, and spend all the points on them. By the middle of the game you’ll have upgraded all the best stuff and can comfortably forget the upgrade system.
The new acrobatics, like wall-running, wall-climbing are very unreliable. You never know which walls they’re gonna work on and which they aren’t. Same goes for jetpacking, which will often send you to your death because there are invisible walls everywhere. And of course, who can forget the “you’re leaving the battlefield” notifications sprinkled throughout? Same can be said for the new Takedown skill, which seems to only work when a prompt appears, and I have no idea what makes it appear. So because it’s so unreliable, what could’ve been a gameplay-altering mechanic becomes another gimmick that you only use when it kinda falls in your lap. It’s like the game is pulling you closer with one hand and pushing you away with the other. Oh, you like Titanfall? Well, you can do the same things here, but GOD FORBID you have any fun with them!!! Thus the system completely fails at providing fluent and liberating mobility, instead further discouraging you from being adventurous. In fact, I think I’d prefer these mechanics weren’t there in the first place. I derived much greater joy from the “boots on the ground” fantasy of being a regular guy who can only rely on his guns and his brains. But BO3 instead engages in some sadistic exercise of teasing the player with food only to deny it.
The latter missions become an absolute shitshow as the game throws relatively big crowds of enemies at you, and since this is “sci-fi” half of them are robots, who are essentially bullet-sponges. Then there are also annoying tiny flying drones and tiny tanky mobile turrets, and the kind of boss fights in the form of these big mechs. The latter completely stops the flow of the game. The way to combat those is either through trickey, such as taking control over them, which is super tedious (and controlling the mech is not nearly as fun as in Titanfall for the same reasons as why the on-foot gameplay sucks here), or you can destroy them, which means you gotta first break their defenses and then hit them with rockets. The last mission throws several of them at you, and it’s such a slog to play through. To make matters worse, they put this new rocket launcher there, seemingly insinuating that you should use it. It shoots weaker rockets, but more of them. And that shit apparently only works against infantry. I spent like 10 minutes just wasting ammo until I realized that there was the other kind of rocket launch in the area as well. But after I beat one of these mechs and saw two more in the distance I was like “nope.” That’s where I quit.
But so, the gameplay here clearly sucks, which means the burden of carrying the game falls onto its story. And how is the story here?
Ehhhhh…. It’s alright by Call of Duty standards I guess. I can at least tell you that it’s better than either Advanced Warfare or Titanfall 2, but really the premise of the story here is just Ghost in the Shell. Would be a spolier to say what exactly the main premise is because it kinda gets revealed mid-game, which makes at least the first quarter of the game really boring. There is a lot of convoluted lore here that is delivered in a very heavy-handed manner. And like there’s no real point to any of it because the actual premise of the story is super basic. That being said, since I bailed on the last mission, I can’t know if it does a sudden MGS3 ending, but honestly that wouldn’t change my opinion on the story overall. Most of it is still mediocre and, unlike BO1 or 2, doesn’t even try to engage with any real politics. Yet I get a very strong impression that the devs thought that the story was some genius masterpiece because they threw in all these psychedelic visuals and shit, like this is some kinda deep piece of art.
But it’s really not anything more than a generic mediocre big-budget popcorn shooter.
I will end this review on a good note though. There was this mission where you get into the mind of another character and it takes you into an imitation of WWII. So now you’re jumping around with a jetpack and using all this cybernetic technology to absolutely wreck the Nazis. For a moment I felt like the game was trying to do some sort of meta-commentary on how the series has transformed into something completely unrecognizable over the years, making the player feel as an outsider in the environment that used to be home for this series. Meanwhile the character’s explanation for why this was in her mind was that she had studied this particular battle because it was an example of bravery/courage, something like that. Which kind of reminds you the title of the game: Call of Duty. Yeah, it’s no longer about duty or any of the values that the early games were supposed to represent. Frankly, I don’t know what it’s about anymore. That one mission seemed like a cry for help from the developers that were stuck imprisoned by a big corporation repeatedly sacrificing artistic integrity for the sake of following potentially profitable trends.
So yeah, good mission.