While potentially not as polished as long-time fan favorites such as the original Modern Warfare, Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 serves as the new pillar of the Call of Duty franchise. With smooth, mostly-balanced, arcade-feeling gunplay, less focus on killstreaks and a much-needed return to a gun-on-gun focus, Black Ops 3 is the new face of Call of Duty today, and brings high hopes for where it’s heading in the future.

Before you say it, Yes - Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 came out back in October. So, then, why didn’t I review it in October? Well, because in the 10 or so days left between the game’s release date and the end of the month, I couldn’t very well put enough time into the game to really get a good feel of how the game would play, how the metagame would adapt, how the player base would respond, etc. That’s why any time you see a “review” of a multiplayer title within a month of launch, it’s really just a “first impressions” video, and not a full review. You simply can’t do a review of a game - especially a multiplayer game - until you’ve put a solid amount of time into it.

I’ll be reviewing this game from the perspective of a Playstation 4-first player, though I do have experience with the game on PC, as well.

Let’s see what I think about it, a couple months after launch and prior to the first DLC drop.

Gunplay

Gunplay - how the game feels during normal gunfights, is fairly spot-on in Black Ops 3. Movement is tight and precise, aim controls work wonderfully - much better than Halo 5’s mess of joystick interpretation.

Overall, it’s great. There’s a huge focus on gun-on-gun gameplay over gadgets and flying gizmos, as with previous CoD titles. Guns work the way they’re supposed to, and attachments really feel like they make a difference to how guns work - which isn’t common for Call of Duty. The attachments aren’t anywhere near as significant as they tend to be in Battlefield titles, but it’s still a very good step for Call of Duty.

Movement is a step forward from Advanced Warfare’s messy system. Players have thruster packs which allow them to wall run, double jump, and slide quickly. This replaces the traditional “dolphin dive” of previous Black Ops titles, but feels great. Using the new “Bumper Jumper” button layout ensures players have complete control over the new movement mechanics while still keeping their thumbs on the thumbsticks.

While sometimes the connection just doesn’t get made for wall-running or climbing onto surfaces, movement feels amazing overall. Players can benefit from the use of a SCUF controller - or the Xbox Elite controller for Xbox One players - but it’s not necessary with the plethora of available button layouts.

This much movement does increase the pace of the game, however. This means a lot more running around maps and dying a lot. But, this does not detract from the “arcade” feeling of the game. It’s still fun and action-packed, you just shouldn’t take your kill-death ratio so seriously.

Most guns feel balanced great. Assault rifles and SMGs stay very even. Certain shotguns - like the Haymaker 12 or the ARGUS - can be abused, but that’s always going to happen. The Drakon sniper rifle can also be a royal pain in the ass to deal with, as players can load it up with a Ballistics CPU to reduce weapon sway, Extended Mags for extra ammo, and Rapid Fire for faster fire rate - and basically have a insta-kill bullet hose. Not to mention it echoes obnoxious shooting sounds across the entire map. That’s one of the few things I get really frustrated with - you can’t do much against a player prone on the ground with a SMG-speed sniper spam-firing at you.

Tactical and lethal grenades also feel decently-balanced. The C4 has changed a lot since previous CoD games, as you have virtually no throw distance and you can’t detonate it while it’s still in the air. Gone are the days of blindly tossing a C4 in the room and blowing it up before it lands to get a sick montage feed.

Scorestreaks are in need of some re-working. They’re fine as-is, but they’re not super useful, as most can be taken down with 1 or 2 rockets from either rocket launcher. However, Treyarch has already stated they’re working on these.
I don’t have much to say about the specialists - they give players extra time-gated abilities such as a one-shot kill weapon or the ability to see enemies through walls temporarily, similar to Destiny’s “Super” system. In my opinion, it’s balanced well. They’re there, they can be used, but players can also enjoy their time in the game without ever using the abilities and not really miss out on much.

Map Design

While obviously a new map pack is due out soon for the game, so map rotations will be changing, it’s still worth discussing the state of map design at launch.

(Especially given I traditionally don’t even buy map packs for Call of Duty titles in the first place - though this will be my first time actually buying the season pass. I feel I’ve already gotten my money’s worth out of the game compared to previous CoD titles, so it was worth it for me, definitely so given I got the game for $20 thanks to a GameStop mishap.)

Maps are… alright, I guess? The new movement mechanics meant map design needed to be changed, and I think they did a decent job of adapting for the new mechanics, but we’re still lacking my preferred map styles with big, wide-open areas for sniping.

The maps are huge - developers have said that most of the maps are bigger than any previous Call of Duty game yet, but they don’t feel it. In fact, I often tend to feel quite claustrophobic on some of the maps.

Advanced Warfare really focused on straight verticality in map design, on a micro level. Every map had tons of different buildings or objects - most of which had 2-3 levels - to climb on and shoot down on enemies. You had no reason to just run around and shoot people, it was all about getting as high as you could and fighting mid-air.

In Black Ops 3, however, they went back to focusing on even-level gunfights, with verticality introduced on a bigger scale. Most maps stick to the traditional 3-lane format, but each “lane” (or chunk of the map) would be on a different vertical level. These have smooth transitions via stairs or tunnels, but there is still a macro level of verticality.

There are also wall-running paths in the maps. These haven’t been utilized in any creative way thus far, however. These tend to just lie on the outer corners of the maps and you either run on the outer edge of that level, or they have random metal walls put up to jump between. It’s a decent way to try to flank around, but in most cases it is completely expected.

As I said, these maps are huge, but there’s not much open space in them. There’s objects, buildings, or terrain changes preventing long lines of sight from forming. This means that there’s not a whole lot of traditional long-range sniping in the game. I miss the days of Overgrown, Crash, Crossfire, sniping in Call of Duty 4.

Nuk3town is only playable for short bursts, and you just can’t take it seriously. The new movement mechanics mean you can get across the map in about 2 seconds flat. It’s chaos, pure chaos. Plus, they still force you to watch the explosion cinematic at the end of every match - which is super obnoxious. After you’ve seen it once or twice, the charm wears off.

Overall, I don’t really hate the maps. I don’t have any maps that I just love playing on for more than a week at a time, but they’re alright. It’s definitely time for a map pack update, though.

The only map I have a huge complaint about is Combine - it’s super small-feeling and it gets pretty chaotic - almost like a new Nuketown.

Content (Maps, Game Modes, Variety)

The amount of content in Black Ops 3 is actually very nice.

At launch, there are a total of 12 multiplayer maps, plus the bonus Nuk3town pre-order bonus map. There are 4 planned DLC map packs in 2016, too.

The game launched with 6 sub-machine guns, 7 assault rifles, 4 shotguns, 4 light machine guns, 4 sniper rifles, 3 pistols, 2 launchers, and 1 knife. That’s 25 primary guns and 6 secondary guns. There are also 6 lethal grenades and 7 non-lethal, or “tactical” grenades. That’s a decent amount of guns, and some may also get added later via DLC.

Players unlock guns progressively through the standard experience levelling system. Unlocks are then purchased with “Unlock Tokens” earned with every level up. On the whole, progression feels good, and it feels like you’re always making progress - which is great. But I wish they’d stick to either the “Pick 10 and progressive unlock” or “progressive levelling and unlock token” system, and not both. It’s fairly annoying to be limited by both level and unlock tokens.

There are 55 levels of progression, with 10 modes of “Prestige” - which reset gun unlocks (but not camo unlocks or attachment unlocks) - similar to previous CoD titles. There is also now an 11th “Master Prestige” - which allows players to continue levelling up without resetting unlocks all the way to level 1,000 - you heard right, level 1,000. Through this prestige, players can actually unlock and equip Prestige Emblems from previous Treyarch titles - World At War, Black Ops, and Black Ops 2. This is pretty cool. I really like this system.

Each prestige also unlocks a new loadout slot.

There are 9 “Specialists” - unique characters with special abilities similar to Destiny’s “Super” abilities. Each Specialist has 2 different abilities to be unlocked or used. You can only choose one specialist or ability at a time, and must be before the match starts. Each Specialist also has their own armor variant progression to unlock through, as well, by completing different challenges.

Each gun has 18 levels of progressions and 2 prestiges of their own. Weapon Prestige 1 unlocks the ability to display your clan tag on the weapon model, and Weapon Prestige 2 allows you to display a kill counter on the weapon model, kind of like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s “stat trak” system. However, I feel the visibility of the clan tag and kill counter are next-to-nothing, and thus isn’t really super impressive, compared to the Stat Trak system in CS:GO.

There are a plethora of weapon camouflages to unlock for every weapon via completing challenges.

On the whole, I feel there is a ton of content value in Black Ops 3, and there’s always something you can work at unlocking. This really extends the life of the game. There’s plenty of customization between Specialists, Specialist armors, gun camos, reticles, calling cards, emblems, etc. - it’s pretty nice for a console-first shooter.

Microtransactions

Let’s get to the less-popular side of Black Ops 3’s unlocks - the microtransactions, DLC, and Supply Drops.

There are 4 planned DLC map packs in 2016, which will come to Playstation 4 30 days sooner than other platforms. The Season Pass can be purchased for about $50 on Xbox One, PS4 and PC, but is not available on PS3 or Xbox 360 - which players should avoid for new titles, anyway. Maps can also be purchased individually. These are fine - this is what we’ve expected from Call of Duty, and they should work out great.

They also just introduced a small-run “CODE Warriors” DLC for the game, that isn’t a part of the Season Pass. This is a small set of gun camos, reticles, and calling cards for $4.99 and the proceeds go to aid veteran employment via the “Call of Duty Endowment” program. This is a small set of extra cosmetic items for a small price for a good cause - I had no problem buying it.

Next up - Supply Drops. So, as you play the game, you unlock “Cryptokeys” - which are essentially points to unlock random cosmetic items. These can be gun camos, skins for weapon attachments, or calling cards and various Paintshop or emblem creation graphics. These come in various rarities of Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary and Epic. It’s a decent system that most games have now - Fifa’s card packs, Halo’s REQ packs, etc. It adds a trading card game-like element to the game whilst encouraging players to keep playing. I like this system, and it’s fun to open up a ton of Supply drops at a time - though you get your best value by buying only Common Supply Drops, and not wasting Cryptokeys on the Rare Supply Drops, which cost 3 times as many keys.

They just added in a “COD Points” system, however, wherein you buy COD Points with real-life money to buy free Supply Drops. They start at 200 points for $2.99, which is the equivalent to one Rare Supply Drop. I think this is very pricey, and I really don’t like that the points don’t work on Common Supply Drops.

I think the microtransaction system in this game is fine - it’s just for cosmetic items - but others seem to hate it. If it doesn’t impact gameplay, it’s not bad, in my opinion.

Visuals & Performance

Black Ops 3 looks great - the graphics look really nice, textures are fairly high resolution for a console shooter, and it remains crisp, clear, and colorful - instead of being gritty and brown like Modern Warfare 2 and previous CoD titles. This is Black Ops’s M.O., though - as Black Ops 2 was very colorful as well.

It looks great, and it runs very smooth! A solid 60 frames per second is maintained pretty much nonstop throughout the whole gaming experience. I’ve never really experienced any major frame lag or frame-dropping, when it wasn’t related to latency and internet connection issues.

That’s really all I have to say - it runs great and looks fantastic. It makes it laughable to me that Halo 5 had to make so many sacrifices for 60fps - PS1-looking Forge maps, 5FPS far away graphics, short render distances, etc. The game looks ridiculous to maintain 60fps, but Black Ops 3 has no problem at all.

Audio

The audio in Black Ops 3 is great, as well - it’s mixed well, high-quality. Gunshots sound great, player movement is crisp, so you can actually listen for enemy footsteps with a high-quality pair of headphones, which I love doing.

Dialogue lines are cheesy as hell, though. And if you have your Specialist Ability ready but don’t use it, it’ll make the noise to signify that it’s ready every time you respawn - which can get grating quite fast.

Networking

On the whole, connections are pretty good in Black Ops 3, but there are some issues.

When you are on a dedicated server, it runs great and you won’t notice any issues. But when you’re on a P2P match, you will know it - it will be quite laggy for at least some of the players. This can get pretty frustrating, but it seems to be getting better and better since launch.

Conclusion

So - Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is the new face of Call of Duty. For a while there, the Call of Duty franchise seemed to continue falling downhill - releasing more and more games that people didn’t like - as with Modern Warfare 3, Advanced Warfare and Ghosts - it’s high time that Call of Duty gets it right.

It’s balanced, feels just “right” to play, and offers more content than any other shooter released this year. If you’re looking for a casual, arcade-y shooter, I definitely recommend picking it up on your platform of choice - as long as that platform is not Xbox 360 or Playstation 3.