Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII – Our Review

The fourth title in Treyarch’s behemoth franchise Call of Duty: Black Ops is finally here with three distinct areas of play. This time around Treyarch made the decision to drop the traditional story mode with Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII and swap it out for another iteration of the Battle Royale genre, amongst other changes from the series’s last entry.

Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII
Developer: Treyarch
Price: $59.99
Platform: PC, PS4, and Xbox One
MonsterVine was supplied with an Xbox One code for review

First and foremost I should mention that there is technically a story. Black Ops IIII’s story mode is delivered in video format between what are basically tutorials, called Specialist Mission, for each hero, known as specialists, in the game. It is largely convoluted and inconsequential but if you’re extremely interested in the Woods and Mason lineages, it’s there.

The triad of experiences in Black Ops IIII are the expected multiplayer modes such as Team Deathmatch and Domination, various Zombies maps and modes and the new Battle Royale mode known as Blackout. Each mode is entirely separate, each featuring their own leveling system, mechanics and gameplay style.

Let’s start with the oldest tenant of the Black Ops IIII suite, multiplayer. Jetpacks, jump kits and wall-running have been dropped in lieu of a slightly more tactile boots-on-the-ground experience. It is worth noting however that movement is still much quicker than older Call of Duty titles and mechanics such as vaulting, sliding and crouch-spamming are very liberal in their use. As always, the gunplay is extremely satisfying. Each weapon, although futuristic, feels tangible and comparable to previous iterations of each of the weapon classes, and with fully predictive recoil each weapon can be mastered to a fuller degree.

Aside from the usual running around and killing, Black Ops IIII has a specialist system where each character has two abilities, a healing ability and a unique ability, as well as one ultimate ability. Theoretically, this differentiates gameplay from one character to the next and allows for team synergy between abilities. In practice, the specialist system leans heavily towards a select few specialists with instant kill abilities while using the other simply felt like I was missing out on too much raw power. The healing ability, combined with the fact that health is slightly higher overall, makes regenerating health a deliberate and paced-out action, occasionally making firefights more tactical and less fire-and-forget. More commonly, this results in players sprinting into you with submachine guns and one-hit-kill ultimate abilities such as Battery’s OHKO grenade launcher or Ajax’s invincible shield that he can fire through. Because players often utilize such quick tactics, games can end viciously quickly. Even in winning games near the top of my team, I frequently finished games using my ultimate ability within the last minute or not at all.

Overall, the multiplayer felt familiar but vaguely disappointing. Most of the abilities felt like lackluster special grenades or gadgets from previous games. The increased health means players can get closer without being punished, and rewards sprinting around and encourages a very small subset of high lethality specialists. Map selection also felt off to me. Practically none of the maps felt very memorable and there are far, far too many routes throughout each map. Very few maps felt as if there were any chokepoints or lanes to control, and with players sprinting at nearly all times spawns would completely flip dozens of times within a match. This, combined with increased score requirements of several of the starter scorestreaks, made even high-performance matches feel frustrating and short-lived. A massive upside to multiplayer, and basically every mode in Black Ops IIII is the attention to detail with stat tracking and how these are displayed in-game after every match. Players can very easily track their kills, their kill/death rations, map win-rates, and various other performance averages.

Zombies, perhaps Treyarch’s most notable addition to the Call of Duty series, is back in full force, both continuing the original Zombies storyline as well as introducing a new one. There are three new maps; two that focus on a new group of professional criminals, ancient gods and cursed artifacts, and one set in Alcatraz focusing on our good friends Richtofen, Dempsey, Takeo and Nikolai as they deal once again with the Kronorium: the book of the dead. The first map, Voyage of Despair, is a slightly more linear map in which players must traverse from one side of a sinking Titanic to the other to retrieve an ancient artifact and ultimately use its powers to free the people of the Titanic and eventually escape. The timeline with our Origin characters, Richtofen and crew, takes place in a reimagined version of Mob of the Dead, a previous Zombies map that also takes place in Alcatraz. I’m honestly not very sure what happens in either storyline, as the Zombies storylines are notoriously convoluted. Both maps have lengthy intro and outro cutscenes and multiple story objectives to complete, and are easier to follow both in both objective and story due to frequent dialogue and hints throughout the game. IX takes place with our new 1912 crew who have somehow been teleported into a hellish gladiator arena in ancient Rome. IX is a much more traditional map, with fewer cutscenes, an easy to activate pack-a-punch machine and 4 nearly identical corners of the map with perk machines, traps and frequent circular areas to “train” zombies in.

Series regulars will instantly recognize the mode and will instinctively know what to do. Small quality of life changes, such as customizable soda machine perks, ultimate abilities and max ammo boxes no longer requiring weapon reloads are all incredibly helpful. Similarly, solo players now have a legitimate avenue to complete all the stories as easily as cooperative players will with the addition of optional nearly-invincible allied bots. With all of the features now available to players it can feel too easy at times. When paying with bots I was essentially unable to lose, and with other players we ended up playing for an hour and a half before going down on our first attempt. While the general ease of the base mode is useful for completing story, it can really drag on and there were no real moments of holding the line or chaos unraveling the group.

Last, but certainly not least, is Blackout. Blackout is Call of Duty’s take on the ever-popular battle royale mode. While I don’t think Fortnite is going away anytime soon, I do fear for PUBG’s health. Players of either game will pick up on how to play almost immediately, but Blackout does have key differences to both. First of all, Blackout is entirely in first-person perspective, making conflicts both faster and terrifying. Deciding where to drop feels more forgiving as well, as parachutes and gliders have been swapped out for a high-speed and highly maneuverable wing-suit, allowing players to move further and faster should plans change. There are a lot more details to feel out, but Blackout is a perfect middle-ground between slow, tactical gameplay and zany antics. Perks and gadgets diversify gameplay forcing players to rely on more than just skillful gunplay, although the gunplay is incredibly satisfying and is in no way compromised for the mode. Motion trackers, trip mines, quicker crouch speeds and longer survival out of the safe circle allow for some really clever strategies amidst the gunfire. On the wackier side of things, Zombies spawn in various locations around the map. While initially this was simply funny, zombies can drop loot when killed, killing all zombies drops a mystery box, and numerous times zombies either distracted players or trapped me between a rock and a horde of the undead while fighting enemy players. Blackout manages to clash together the best parts of the Battle Royale genre with Call of Duty’s silky smooth gameplay. PUBG will forever hold a special place in my heart, but Blackout may have taken its seat as my Battle Royale of choice.

Everything else in the package is exactly as you’d expect. Graphics, sound design and frame rate all hold up as well as they usually do in Call of Duty titles. Minor issues and balancing problems have been swiftly patched and various fixes are delivered with frequent patches. The only other thing to mention here are the fun, if unmemorable, live event modes in all three of the main game modes. These vary from increased funds in Zombies to heightened explosive and vehicle spawn rates in Blackout.

The Final Word
Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII delivers the same tactile experience that it always has across three enticing modes. Multiplayer suffers the most here from bold changes to the formula that sometimes work, but ultimately create frustration and imbalance. Zombies is incredibly fun and full of an impressive amount of lore, but may feel slightly too easy for the experienced player. Blackout is simply amazing, and will likely stand up among the other behemoths of the genre. Like every Battle Royale game, surviving to the top 10 is a harrowing experience that is often hard-fought and every victory feels like a successful and exhausting climb, but without the Early Access issues of nearly every other Royale title.