The 12th installation in the ever growing franchise of generic shooting: Call of Duty Black Ops 3. I got this game almost a year or so ago at this point, and only recently have I gathered enough desire to play through all the modes - Campaign, Zombies, Multiplayer. I'll be reviewing each of these aspects, showing that even being generic shooting, it's surprisingly not that bad.
Note: I will be reviewing the BASE GAME ONLY. No DLC. So if the DLC makes the game insanely better, I wouldn't know, and I don't have the money to put into this to figure it out.
The first thing I did when I got this game was mess around with the multiplayer mode. It surprisingly wasn't just "pick guns, pick game mode", there's also a sort of class system, which took me by surprise. There are a good few different classes, maybe around 10 or so, each with 2 different abilities. The ability you choose for your 'specialist' is charged up over the game until you get enough power or whatever to use it, unleashing a unique and helpful ability. Of course, only about 3 specialists are available to select from to start, and to unlock other abilities/specialists you need to get an unlock token from playing the game. Overall, it's pretty neat. Lots of different game modes (even though theres only 1 or 2 that have a decent amount of players lol), the mobility is pretty fun (wall running and little thrusters in your boots for a double-jump-esque mechanic), and the maps are surprisingly memorable. As someone who much prefers bright colorful Nintendo over dark and grey shooters, the multiplayer mode of CoD Bo3 is surprisingly fun.
Zombies is the first mode of a call of duty game I ever played. I and a friend or two went around and shot some zombies in the face, I dubbed myself the 'Window Repairman', and it was a good time. I don't know what game it was, but I think it was black ops 2. Now, in Black Ops 3, you're given 1 map if you don't have any dlc. This map... well, frankly, I quite dislike it. It's extremely hard to traverse/very easy to get lost in, the color palette makes everything look the same gross color (once again contributing to the constant "where am i" feeling), and overall, the map ruins the fun of shooting zombies and repairing barriers. There's a bunch of 'rituals' or whatever secrets in the map you can do, but they aren't remotely interesting at all. Honestly, I don't think there's a worse map I've played.
Last but not quite least is the campaign mode. I went into it thinking it'd be really boring and just shooty shoot shoot and war and whatever. However, I forgot to take one thing into account: this game takes a somewhat futuristic setting, allowing for robots and such, which is a fun addition, especially given the fact you can unlock abilities that allow you to mess with the majority of them in different ways. That was probably the most fun for me, turning the robots against themselves and having my very own robot buddy travel with me on to the next checkpoint. The story itself wasn't all that bad either, something about a CIA project that was unlawful or something, yadda yadda yadda, something about traitors, you get the idea (maybe). It wasn't anything super exciting or anything, but it was nice to not be bored out of my mind while beating it for trophy hunting. Hell, I even got excited at a few parts. The characters actually become half memorable too, which is something you don't expect from a generic shooter.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. Multiplayer was fun, Campaign wasn't as bad as I expected, however the Zombies mode kinda sucked this time around. I give this game a rating of 7/10. It's surprisingly not shit, in fact, actually pretty good sometimes, but it's still not worthy of being a 'good' game. It's just.. alright. It exists. It's decently fun. Maybe get it if you have some spare cash on you and you wanna check out a shooter game. I dunno, do what you want with your money.
