I think in this day and age where Call of Duty has moved from being one thing to multiple things (Modern Warfare, Advanced Warfare, Black Ops) it’s generally been accepted that Black Ops is probably the most interesting one, despite the fact Advanced Warfare has been pretty good.
So how are we all finding Black Ops III so far?
I’ve mostly been busy trying to get good at Arena in Halo 5: Guardians, so I haven’t had time to play Black Ops III yet. The critical consensus, however, seems to be fairly positive. It makes sense — Call of Duty games are great. They have super solid fundamentals and even if you’re feeling a little beat down and bored by that formula, it’s difficult to deny its effectiveness.
How are you all finding the new Call of Duty so far?
Comments
34 responses to “Community Review: Call Of Duty: Black Ops III”
Jim Fucking Sterling Son gave it a 5/10 >:
Is he the guy at Gamespot?
While I don’t worry too much about reviews these days (I find game reviewers to be overly invested and rarely objective) I normally check Kotaku, Gamespot and IGN as my three sources of games news.
Normally there’s SOME consistency between the three sources, but lately there’s been a few big titles (CoD and NFS come to mind) where they’ve disagreed completely. Not that there’s anything wrong with that necessarily, reviews aren’t an exact science, it’s just interesting because it’s happened a few times in the last few months.
I get the feeling that Gamespot generally marks things 10-20% more harshly than other outlets.
EDIT: A basic amount of checking indicates that GS gave the game 7/10.
Not the kind of 9+ score that IGN gave the game, but not a 5 either.
No, it’s Jim Fucking Sterling Son!
Heh, I just read that review and I thought it was pretty funny.
It fits right in with my earlier comment that games reviewers are often invested to the point that they don’t objectively consider about the actual product.
His view that the game is crap exists only within the prism of him having played it every other year for the last decade.
I haven’t played it, but knowing COD I bet you anything If you put it on its own next to other similar titles that you could fork out full-retail for then COD would be higher quality and better value.
It’s the same as you can release Halo 5 with a pretty good story, multi-modal multiplayer and a comprehensive forge mode and people judge it and go “the story isn’t the best 8/10”. At the same time Nintendo put out a 2D level maker with almost zero additional content at the same price and everyone goes “it’s pretty fun” 8/10.
There’s no objective analysis of value, it’s a purely emotive reaction to a title. Reviews should still be largely subjective, but if you entirely ignore the comparative value of a game then you end up with a ridiculous review like the one Jim posted.
You’re asking for an objective review? You’re asking for an opinion on something that is free from opinion? Whether something is good or bad is entirely subjective; it depends on personal preferences. Think about a movie you recently watched, or a game you recently played. How would you review it objectively?
That aside, films and games are different and they aren’t traditionally reviewed in the same way. Providing you watch the whole film, your experience is more or less the same as everyone else’s and requires subjective judgement, that’s not the case with most games which are a bit easier to measure objectively.
As a general rule, films aren’t reviewed on the basis of value. People are as likely to complain that they wasted their 2 hours or that a movie runs too long as they are to say “this film is bad value”.
It’s a lot easier to compare something like Wolfenstein: TNO against Dead Space in the subjective style of a film review than it is Halo 5 or COD.
Take Trials Fusion as an example. If you released that as a single player game, a multiplayer game and as the creation tool all separately for $79 would you give them all the same score as you would if you packed them all together and sold them for $30?
If not then how the hell do you take a game like Mario Maker and not expect anything more for your full-retail price? Sure it might be 80/100 at what it tries to do, hell maybe you love it and think it’s 100/100 as a level maker, but compared to the other stuff on the market could you really call it a great value product?
You have to strike a balance between subjective and objective and that COD review doesn’t do that at all. Jim has focused entirely on his emotive reaction and ignored the fact that COD is still a better product than 90% of the stuff on the shelves.
But that still doesn’t explain how games are meant to be reviewed objectively. Value is completely subjective, for example. Take Mario Maker; someone who enjoys making their own creations might get a lot of hours out of it, someone else may not. And one player may be happy to work their way up to level 10 prestige in CoD online (is that still a thing? Haven’t played CoD for a while), while another player may consider it to be a repetitive grindfest. Do extra modes add value? CoD Blops 3 has a bunch of game modes, but it’s up to the individual players over whether or not those modes are enjoyable; one player may love zombie mode, another may be sick of zombies after the absolute deluge of zombie games over the past few years, and they might not even touch that mode. Should single player games such as Fallout 4 lose review points for not having a multiplayer mode?
Everything is subjective. Even your statement that CoD is a better product than 90% of the stuff on the shelves is completely subjective. It all comes down to personal opinion.
Edit: Forgot to add that price is not a static value, and one person may end up paying more for the same product, depending on where they shop, which would change the value proposition anyway.
It’s not unreasonable for fans of a series to want it to keep improving instead of stagnate, like the Witcher 3 compared to 2, Skyrim compared to Oblivion or Phantom pain compared to MGS4. COD and Assassins Creed have pretty much stayed the same for their yearly pumped out releases, and have been less and less interesting each time.
Don’t disagree with that at all. Still doesn’t make it a 5 out of 10 product though unless you’re throwing a hissy fit.
Mark it down for sure, but you can’t mark it down so much that it ends up being worse than a genuinely bad product. It’s still new content, it’s still polished content, it’s still a solid game.
I think that GameSpot is trying to dig themselves out of that Kane & Lynch (Gerstmann dismissal) debacle a couple of years ago…. Thus trying to be a bit tougher.
I’m fine with that I’ve enjoyed games that rated a 6…. This “has to be 10/10” stuff is bull.
Yeah I think Gamespot has upped their game since then.
The problem is that gamers WANT games to be great and the more hype the more they want a game to succeed, which leads to websites that only publish glowing reviews.
Nobody want’s their Fallout 4 buzz to be killed by a 7/10, and gamers will respond as gamers do (with a childish tantrum) when they don’t get what they want.
Remember when Gamespot gave Zelda: Twilight Princess an 8.8? Only reviewers had played the game, but the internet howled with the sound of 10,000,000 damaged rectums!
Give me reasonable criticism over “We’re all excited about this game and I wouldn’t want to ruin that! 10/10” any day.
Of course Jim Sterling hated it. Personally, not a huge COD fan, but I’m loving it. Zombies is my bread and butter and this is by far the best iteration of it yet. The campaign is cookie-cutter COD (pardon the alliteration) but I like that the story is actually sci-fi. Lastly, the multiplayer is really fun. The classes are cool and the titanfall-esque traversal methods are right at home here.
He also seems to be the only one calling it out for being a fucked up mess of a PC port, there’s three BLOPS related stories on the front page right now and not a mention of PC issues. First hurdle for me is finding out if it’s worth even trying, is it fucked or not?
I’m quite liking it personally. I didnt like BLOPS 1 or 2 much, but enjoyed Nazi Zombies, but 3 I have to admit, I’m really enjoying.
I like BLOPS1 but I still haven’t been able to get into BLOPS2…
Tried so many times.
S’good.
Campaign is way, way, WAY too serious. But the cool dude robot suits are good fun.
Multi is great, I just run around wall jumping and jet sliding. Sucks that melee is no longer a one hit kill. Gun Game is back and every shooter ever should copy this mode because it’s the best.
Zombies is as close to a Goon video game as we’re gonna get. It’s great fun with buds.
All in all, it’s bursting at the seams with shit to play and it’s all real fun.
Are you a developer at Treyarch DAN??? 😛
I believe gungame originally came from counter strike ?
Anyone feel free to correct me if i’m wrong
Cool.
Goldeneye on the N64 I believe, you had to build your way up to the golden gun 🙂
ah! this would make sense did you drop down a level from being melee killed 😛 ?
Ah man I’m way off lol the game mode I was thinking of was the man with the Golden Gun (one shot kills) if the player with the Golden Gun gets killed another player can pick it up. Haha that will teach me for trying to remember something from 1997
haha i was 6 :), i was going to say i don’t exactly remember many game modes from that game but i definitely didn’t think it had a gungame mode! 😛
What ever happen to that Goon movie…
Am enjoying it so far. Single player is great, real fun with some friends. Zombies is fun but difficult, as per usual, still trying to wrap my head aroudn it as they kind of just throw you in the deep end with no explanation of what does what. Multiplayer is up and down, sometimes struggle with disconnections, and massive lag spikes, but other then that its pretty fun
I have enjoyed playing COD since the first one on PC, and despite telling myself I would not buy it each year, I can never resist (although I wish I did for ghosts…).
Multiplayer – Its typical COD multiplayer, i.e., the maps are tight, the weapons are spammy, the action is fast. That being said, the movement system is incredibly fluid, arguably the best part about the multiplayer action so far (Not quite Q3 or UT2004 fast though). The weapons are similar to every COD game, but there are plenty to pick from along with multiple customization options to suit every playstyle.
The maps so far are great, although nothing stands out as amazing. Nuketown, as in every BO game, returns with just a few minor tweaks but still maintains its core crazy gameplay.
Zombies – This is the best zombies yet, with a lot of depth in its maps that will have you coming back for hours. Additionally, you level up, allowing you to add sights and attachments to all your favorite guns. As with other zombies games, don’t think you can complete the map with a random group of people without mics. This is really one to get the co-op going with your mates.
Campaign – Have not played it yet
Overall – 8.5/10, it is not a revolution but a polishing of the game play that made COD:AW multiplayer so different and an amazing zombies mode. It is unlikely that this game will convert the COD haters over to the game but it’s a solid, all round well refined experience for those of us who can’t seem to resist picking it up every year. As with BO2 multiplayer, Treyarch have set the bar just the little bit higher for Infinity Ward next year.
I too have also come back time and time again with my wallet open for this franchise, and agree 100% on Ghost – the disappointment was real…
Black ops has always been my preferred flavour of COD – Blops1 was a clear winner for me, i miss the community that ends up building around dedicated servers, regular names youd see time and time again and generally having a solid time.
Im glad they moved away from the excessive jump/slide boosts from the A.W format – there’s still buttloads of movement in the game but theyve balanced it out a good amount.
All in all im happy with the purchase, and I think ill be playing more of this then Fallout at this stage – solo games dont have much pull for me nowadays and this is the happiest ive been with a MW game since Blops2.
Great review – I haven’t enjoyed the past couple of iterations, in particular the multiplayer portions – They just felt weird. But this seems to come home for me – going back to what makes Call of Duty great and the balance between new features/powers etc isn’t too impacting like IU believe it was in Advanced warfare.
Only played 3 campaign missions but very much enjoying the pace and cant wait to play through a second time and get all those achievements etc!!
Zombies… Well – Doesnt that just feel nice as well!! Overall the best COD game in YEARS!!!
After having to download a 2.7GB patch just to play single player, I found that the PS4 servers were down. The campaign has a few fun moments, but it’s pretty dumb, and the ending seems to completely rip off another game’s, I also don’t know why its called Black Ops 3, as I only found two references to past games. But… I did buy this game for multiplayer, so I’ll have to wait until I play some of that before I can provide a verdict. Also, I’ve never liked Zombies.
I’m enjoying it but due to nbn works in my region my ping has gone from 80 to 400 so Multiplayer aside from zombies is unplayable. Most people in zombies haven’t figured out how to do any of the stuff yet.
Not too bad. I really like the nightmare mode for the campaign. I just wish we had more levels where I am actually against proper opponents then being in a multitude of dream sequences. The idea of doing battle in my head against constructs does not really appeal to me. Overall though a lot better then Advance Warfare and Ghosts.
Multiplayer seems solid. Only played an hour of it. Zombies(The real zombies, not nightmare mode) however is great fun.
How similar is the MP to AW?
Never played COD, so think this might be a good point to jump on baord.
Really enjoying BO3. Although I enjoyed the campaign of AW, I didn’t like the multiplayer and hated Ghosts. BO3 is going back to what made COD good – the movement is the best it’s been and the maps are interesting. Only played zombies once so far but it seems to have a fair bit of depth. Haven’t touched the SP yet. Glad I picked this up. Think I’ll only buy Treyarch COD’s from now on.