Black Ops IIII ditches campaign for all-action multiplayer focus

THE latest first person shooter has caused a lot of buzz online and even been tipped to knock Fortnite off its perch, but does it live up to the hype?

DEVELOPED by Treyarch and published by Activision on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII was going to be a mega-success before the first copy shipped simply because the franchise is so popular.

The multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) series has been going strong since 2010 and the latest instalment promises — and delivers — more of the same action- and hype-fuelled gameplay fans have come to expect, along with excellent graphics, but it doesn’t really advance the series a great deal.

The plot — really more of a framing device since there’s no single-player campaign to speak of — involves some kind of mercenary operations in the 2040s, where a bunch of specialist operatives with buff physiques and many tattoos wear TactiCool equipment and shoot each other with some serious hardware.

There are a number of specialists in the game with a unique ability — one has a portable riot shield, another has a flamethrower, for example. I didn’t really connect with any of the specialists — and in some cases struggled to see what the difference between some of them actually was. The weapons handled well in-game but again, there didn’t seem to be a lot of difference between them, beyond “sub-machine-gun” or “assault rifle” or “light machine-gun”.

Field-stripping the marketing hype about “gritty, grounded combat in the most tactical, team-based experience in the Black Ops series to date”, Black Ops IIII is really more like a blockbuster action film in that there’s a lot of gunfire, a lot of explosions and a lot of people jumping about while guns are fired and things explode.

The removal of the single-player campaign is a surprising move and while not one I am a fan of, I can see why it’s been done — Call of Duty has strongly been about the multiplayer aspect for some time now and ditching the campaign means resources can be focused elsewhere in the game.

The gameplay is immediately familiar to anyone who’s played any of the current generation of online FPSes like Overwatch or Rainbow Six Siege, and if you’re new to it the tutorials are informative and explain the mechanics effectively.

The New Call of Duty launched Friday on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

There seems to be slightly more emphasis on teamwork; the controls were intuitive and handled well and working with other players proved more rewarding for me than running around in a weapons-free shooting everything situation.

The pace is generally well managed too, but sadly, the matchmaking still needs work — I frequently found myself playing against people of much, much higher level, which wasn’t a fun experience.

The ultimate abilities also took too long to power up in my view, meaning I might get to use them once per match, which was not great, and the killstreak abilities (killing opponents gets you points which can be exchanged for things like drone recon and guided missiles) don’t charge if you aren’t making kills — so if you aren’t very good at the game, you’ll rarely get to use them.

Beyond the standard “Kill everything that moves and then kill it some more” free-for-all, there are other modes included, notably the Heist mode (basically a variant of capture the flag), control point and team deathmatch. They all do pretty much what they say on the ammunition tin.

The star of the show is Blackout mode, an 88 player (or 100 players when playing in four-player squads) Battle Royale mode which is surprisingly well implemented — much more polished and smooth than Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), and more serious in tone than Fortnite.

There are some pretty big gameplay changes: New Battle royal mode, revamped Zombie mode and no proper campaign.

The Blackout map incorporates elements from iconic parts of the Black Ops series and has been well balanced; unlike PUBG I didn’t have any issues with suddenly getting killed from miles away by someone I hadn’t seen and had no way to react to and generally found it a more enjoyable Battle Royale experience than PUBG.

Black Ops series fans will be pleased to know Zombies are back, and represent the majority of the single-player content in the game. The mode puts players in some interesting settings — I particularly liked the level set on the RMS Titanic — and pits them against hordes of the undead, with the player’s death all but guaranteed; the only question is for how long they can hold out.

Beyond the usual issues endemic to hardcore online FPS shooters, particularly around having a community of power-levellers who can stomp all over newcomers without batting an eyelid, Black Ops IIII is a solid game but I don’t know how much longevity it will have, especially in an already crowded market which includes things like Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege, Call of Duty: WWII and next month’s Battlefield V.

The game has a very good Battle Royale mode, but I wouldn’t say it’s worth buying the game just for that — especially when Fortnite is free (well, freemium) and PUBG is about $39. Between Blackout and Zombies, and the solid but not exceptional multiplayer experience, it’s good, but not great

This isn’t a particularly original or fresh game, but if you’re a Call of Duty or Black Ops fan, you’ll be right at home and the game does nearly everything it set out to do. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for something new, less gung-ho, or less reflex-intensive, this isn’t your theatre of war.

The map is the largest in Call of Duty history.