Call of Duty: Black Ops III Review Roundup: A Huge, Complex Game - Maybe Too Big
The reviews are in for Call of Duty: Black Ops III, and there's one thing critics have agreed on: Treyarch's latest military shooter is huge, complex and packed with features. Whether that's a good thing depends on the reviewer.
Since Call of Duty: Black Ops III was released on Nov. 6, game reviewers have had enough time to try out and come up with an opinion on the newest blockbuster shooter. A quick survey across the top reviewers in the game shows that the latest Black Ops sequel is quite divisive: Some have found it its complicated bundle of game modes, features, and odd storyline charming, while others have decidedly not.
The review from IGN's Brian Albert, for example, finds the game to be a nice blend of sci-fi surrealism and normal military FPS action. "With alternate histories and crazy weapons, Treyarch's Black Ops games have always been Call of Duty's oddballs," wrote Albert. "After killing mind-wolves with a swarm of nano-bees in the new campaign, I'm happy to say Black Ops 3 not only continues that trend, but smartly embraces its sci-fi oddities more than ever before."
And he loved the fact that the game was so expansive in what it offers gamers for $60, commenting that "the most remarkable thing about Black Ops 3 isn't its tone; it's the sheer amount of content which, at its best, is some of the greatest I've seen in Call of Duty."
GameSpot's Mike Mahardy couldn't disagree more about the campaign that Albert found so charmingly oddball. "The traditional campaign mode," wrote Mahardy, "is a chore. It's a boring crawl through routine shooter fare."
Despite the quirks and strange new additions by Treyarch, "I was on auto-pilot by the fifth mission, settled into a continual routine of 'aim, shoot, reload, repeat," he quipped. Even with the new sci-fi abilities available to players Mahardy complained that "when you're using them on such a repetitive group of targets, who react the same way every time, the abilities lose their novelty."
Destructoid's Chris Carter agreed, starting his review saying, "I'm just going to get right into it -- this is the weakest campaign yet from Treyarch." He added, "To boot, none of the characters are memorable or compelling in any way, and the dialogue is the most generic it's ever been."
But Carter found the additional content -- everything besides the campaign, including multiplayer, the Freerun game mode, and of course Zombie mode -- to be redeeming.
But it's all of those extra features that turned Kotaku's Mike Fahey off.
"There are too many Call of Duty games," he wrote. "Let me clarify that statement: There are too many Call of Duty games in Call of Duty: Black Ops III." He continued, "Rather than a single cohesive game, Call of Duty: Black Ops III -- more than any Call of Duty game before it -- feels like three separate experiences."
Those three would be the sci-fi laden campaign, the multiplayer experience -- which Fahey judged was "basically a slightly revised version of Advanced Warfare's multiplayer" -- and Zombie mode. While Fahey said he had a "good time" with each of those three modes, he feels that they weaken each other when taken as a single game.
"There are too many Call of Duty games," he reiterated. "After playing through Black Ops III I feel it more than ever and think they're hurting the overall quality of the games as a result."
What do you think of Call of Duty: Black Ops III? Is it all too much, or just enough to keep things interesting? Let us know in the comments!
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