I’ve played almost every Call of Duty game since the series premiered in 2002. It’s a series I’ve always looked forward to every holiday season, but the past several years I’ve found my excitement for the franchise has cooled off. There’s also been a general consensus in the gaming community that the series maybe in a downward trend with sales declining year over year and review scores dropping. The last several releases have only kept my attention for a few weeks and I haven’t had a real commitment with a Call of Duty title since Modern Warfare 2.
Black Ops 3 is the franchise’s second foray into futuristic combat and it tweaks and enhances what was offered by Advanced Warfare last year. The beta featured the 8 “Core Modes” we’ve come to know and love in past titles. No new modes playable as part of the beta.
Black Ops 3 brings over several elements from Advanced Warfare including boost jumping and sliding, The biggest change from Advanced Warfare is how grounded the combat feels. Rarely did I engage in combat while I was jumping in the air as I found boost jumping was most useful for getting from one spot to the next. The other big thing I noticed is that the gameplay seems much more frantic and fast. Death comes much quicker so being alert is extremely important.
One of this year’s new features are Specialists, which come in 9 different flavours. The Specialists offer an extra type of bonus on top of the killstreak reward system. As you rank up and earn tokens (in game currency) you can unlock more Specialists. Each specialist has two unique abilities: one weapon and one skill. You can only choose one of the Specialist’s abilities so it’s a good idea to experiment as certain maps are more well suited to certain Specialists. . My favourite Specialist was Prophet who can equip a weapon that shoots arcs of electricity that can take down an enemy with a single shot. Prophet also comes with an ability called a “glitch” that allows you to flashback to your characters previous position, while keeping all other conditions constant. It’s a great tool for escaping enemies who are behind you.
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” found the wall running to be an excellent addition as it quickly became my preferred mode of transportation and nothing is more badass than taking down an enemy while wall running.”
Another new feature of BO3 is the ability to wall run. You can run along any vertical surface when you activate your boost jump adjacent to it. Wall running is a gameplay mechanic that takes some getting used to. If your character stops while wall running you will fall, which often leads to your character’s death. The maps have been designed with this in mind as a lot of the large vertical surfaces seemed to have been designed over large empty spaces. I found the wall running to be an excellent addition as it quickly became my preferred mode of transportation and nothing is more badass than taking down an enemy while wall running. It is important to note though, that two of the four maps in the beta were not designed very well for wall running. This maybe a balancing issue the developers are trying to achieve by having different maps cater to different play styles. My only gripe with the wall running is that if you bump into another character, you both immediately fall off the surface. Hopefully this can be worked out in the final game. .
The beta featured a total of four maps to play on. The maps were well designed and what I liked about the levels is that there were so many unique pathways to attack and flank your enemy. One map in particular featured water that allowed you to get from one end of the map to the other and engage in underwater firefights. As I mentioned before the maps also help with keeping the combat more grounded. There still is that element of verticality from Advanced Warfare, but it seems to play a less critical role in combat.
Visually, Black Ops 3 looks great. The frame rate was solid and the environments offered a nice variety of colour from a tropical paradise to snow covered mountains The only complaint I have is that the limited number of Specialist classes will make you see double or triple of the same character running around the map. I imagine the character customization will allow players to change the looks of the Specialist classes in the final game. One of the biggest changes to the visuals is the level of gore. The gore in BO3 seems to have been turned up a notch from past titles. Limbs can now be dismembered and your character can literally be blown into pieces. These sorts of graphic deaths weren’t overly excessive as only certain weapons could inflict this type of carnage.
The overall beta performance was mixed. During the week I spent online, there were numerous times where i simply couldn’t connect to a single match. According to what i read online other players experienced the same issues. The best solution was to come back another time and try to connect again. When the game was functioning properly, joining matches was seamless and easy. There were several occasions where horrendous lag was experienced, but for the most part the gameplay was relatively smooth.
I was a little skeptical of Black Ops 3 when I first got the assignment to do the hands on preview. After spending about a week with the beta, I walked away quite impressed. The gameplay was familiar, but the tweaks and enhancements kept the game feeling fresh and fun. Even though the beta didn’t show off any new modes and only showed a fraction of what the game has to offer, it made me excited to see what the series is going to offer players this fall.
***PS4 Beta codes were provided by the Publisher***
