![]() You follow Hendricks to the computer and then press a button.Ĭamera feeds appear on the screen and you can cycle through them to see various parts of the base. And then your superior tells you, via a radio that's probably implanted in your neck, to use a computer. Once inside, he moves across walkways and through rooms moodily illuminated by fire and waves of emergency lighting. Hendricks walks past burning soldiers and vehicles, and calmly enters the facility. It's an infiltration, I think, but there's little urgency and no attempt to stay hidden. Then it's time for a quick session of “Follow Hendricks” - which would be an apt subtitle for the game – as your partner leads your chosen character (you can be a man or woman, with several preset faces to pick from) into an NCR base to rescue hostages. High tech military folk have a plan and when it goes wrong, all of their computers and guns are worthless in the face of prescripted explosions and mindless enemies. That opening scene contains all of the grimly predictable, restrictive nonsense that forms a punching bag for detractors of the series. If Black Ops III has any intention of poking fun at its own heritage (and I very much doubt that it does), it swiftly becomes apparent that this is a campaign in search of a punchline. It was a joke that went on for far too long. It seemed to be a joke at the expense of the modern military shooter – corridors, brown textures everywhere, small groups of enemies and very little freedom of movement. Anyone who has played Serious Sam 3 might well recall the anxious opening stage, which bled into the opening couple of hours. The opening, before the introduction of the player's cybernetic enhancements that promise to introduce a more kinetic experience, is almost parodic. ![]() ![]() While the multiple endings and settings were sprinklings of seasoning rather than signs of an entirely new recipe, the setpieces were more involving than in some previous entries, and there was a greater sense of agency in combat thanks to some neat abilities and gadgets.īlack Ops III would seem like a game in retreat if its defining characteristic weren't a forward momentum that begins as a stumble and eventually becomes a headlong tumble. While most agree that the multiplayer showed the game at its best, as expected, the campaign was as enjoyable as any of these bloated blockbusters have been since the first Modern Warfare. That said, Black Ops II, which I recently played during a marathon tour of Call of Duties past and present, was marching in the right direction. In recent years, everything has become louder but much of the meaning has been lost. ![]() Call of Duty was sound and fury, a far cry from the considered approach of Arma, but it signified something. That it worked is testament to the thoughtful design, both of individual levels and the overall intensity of combat, which emulated the chaos and fear of battle. ![]() There was no simulation of the actual business of a battlefield instead, most missions contained a series of spigots that released a steady flow of enemies until stopped. Even back in the days when the series muddied its boots in the fields of occupied France, 'realistic' wasn't the first word that came to mind. The Black Ops III campaign has a 'Realistic' difficulty setting. With an arm full of not-plasmids and a sniper scope at the ready, I plunged into the campaign. It's somewhere in the middle distance, and while the concerns of military and intelligence organisations don't appear to have changed very much, the cyber-modifications available to soldiers promise to make the battlefield a place of superpowered clashes between robots, humans, and operatives caught somewhere between the two. Call of Duty: Black Ops III takes place in a future setting not quite close enough to describe as "near-future". ![]()
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