Full disclosure before we begin: I have fully been in the ‘it’s time to go away a bit COD’ camp for a few years now. I’ve bought and played every game since Modern Warfare, but the last few iterations I have just played the campaign, played an hour or so of multiplayer and got rid. I think the whole craze has just grown tiresome, and while I understand the draw to it, I personally want to spend my time with other shooters rather than what has felt like lazy new entries to the series that take ideas from other franchises. That all being said, every time I pick up a new one, I half expect to be drawn back in. For there to be that time when it just clicks again and I stay in the same lobby for hours on end playing domination. In fact, that niggling feeling that it was going to happen was probably at its strongest before booting up the beta for Black Ops 3. But has it managed to sway this once big COD fan to go back to a franchise that used to eat away a lot of my time?
It took me a good few games to shake off the old COD rust, but before long I got back into the swing of things (check out around the 37 minute mark in the video below where I actually top the leader board!!), because despite new bells and whistles this is the same game engine that has been in place for years, the core mechanics play out the same as they always have. And this is a good things and a bad thing. Good in the way that it is immediately accessible for the millions of people that religiously buy and play Call of Duty every year, and even those like myself who don’t play as much anymore. But it’s bad, because the list of frustrations a lot have with the games are still there. Sniping is still wayyyyy over powered – seriously, being able to use a sniper for one shot kills after sprinting around a corner to an enemy 3 yards away is mental. It’d be nice if for once the weight and size of a gun is taken into consideration. Also, the shooting through cover which has always bugged me is still there, watching a kill cam as the hit detector comes up as bullet hit me through a large rock is just as frustrating as it always has been.
On what was a busy weekend for me, I probably managed to get 4-5 hours’ worth of play in on the game. I would say that for a Beta there is a decent amount here, a lot of different game modes over 4 different maps. A fairly generous offering and I can count on one hand how many times I didn’t manage to find a game, with matchmaking as quick as I can ever remember it being in any game, which points to good things for the full release. And there are some nice map designs in the game. I am particularly a fan of Hunted, a fairly large level tailored more towards objective based game modes, with big outdoor areas, a small cave system, a vulnerable bridge space and a water area which allows for underwater combat. As said, I’ve not put much time in to recent COD online, but it felt fresh and different to what I’m used to, and that’s a good thing.
New to Call of Duty is the introduction of Specialists. A choice you make before creating your class where you can decide which on a choice of character each with two different abilities for you to master. It’s quite a fun new addition that allows for different ways to play the game, with some abilities that revolve more around tactics that pure killing (cybernetic legs, ability to recover from point of death and many more). There are of course some powerful weapons to play with as well. There weren’t any customisation options in the game which made for a battlefield full of identical soldiers, but hopefully there are options for that in the full game. Along with the specialists, the jump boost and wall running is back from Advanced Warfare and feels more like Titanfall than ever. This is where I go back to my point of taking ideas from others, because along with that, there is definitely a strong hint of ideas from Deus Ex as well. Now I’m not suggesting that it’s totally a bad thing taking inspiration from other, but there are times where it goes beyond inspiration.
Now, I’ve not said anything about whether I actually enjoyed the experience. Within the first few games I had the feeling that this was same old, and wanted to stop playing. It felt like another Call of Duty game, which isn’t what I wanted. But I persevered for the sake of getting a better opinion. And it all started to click again, despite the annoyances I actually found myself enjoying Call of Duty online like I used to. I think a lot of that is down to some cracking matches on the aforementioned Hunted map – and maybe managing to get a couple of killstreaks in too. I started to worry, because it was putting a spanner in the works of my plan for what shooters I was going to buy. I had planned to possibly invest in Destiny again, along with definite purchases of Battlefront and Halo. But here I was having fun with Black Ops 3. This wasn’t the script. This was meant to fuel my everlasting grumpy old man feeling about the Call of Duty series as a whole. But, I continued playing for a few more hours, and I fell into a ‘meh’ frame of mind about it (yes, that is a frame of mind, I said so). I had my moments of displeasure with it, followed by enjoyment and I’ve now settled on – it’s ok. I’m not going to hate on it, and I’m not going to heap praise on it, because I don’t feel it deserves either. This probably isn’t a game to bring back the detractors. But it is solid enough to keep the fan base happy. Has it done enough to make me want to buy it? Maybe if I find some extra money, but currently it is sitting 4th on my FPS priority list. So I guess it’s done something to warm me, because prior to playing the Beta, it was nowhere near the list at all.