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Call of Duty: Black Ops III Review Thread

I don't think it matters whether they like it or not, but they should at least cover it in a bit more depth seeing as how it's a major feature of the game. Tbh,

Ah ok, if they don't even go into detail then I get what you mean.

I didn't read the reviews yet, Gerstmann's to avoid any spoilers (not story but more more of game mechanics or any other modes surprises) and didn't read Gies's because I know I don't have the same views or tastes.
 
They are never 14 to 15. They can't do their pre rendered cut scenes for such a long game lol.

You can't believe what developers say anymore. In the 90s I think you could. Today, they just flat out lie. Always ignore that shot. It's straight marketing and lies. Just look at what ms does with their official press release on sales numbers. It's best to get truth from gamers before you really know what's up

Looks like there is a (don't give our game below a 7 or we will ban you from early copys of our game) going on here. Let's see if any big sites go below 7...

Starting conspiracy theories about review scores is real dumb btw and will get you laughed out of here fairly quickly.
 
Ah ok, if they don't even go into detail then I get what you mean.

I didn't read the Gerstmann review to avoid any spoilers (not story but more more of game mechanics or any other modes surprises) and because I know I don't have the same views as Gies.

This is literally all Gies said about the Zombie mode in his Polygon review.

Agies said:
The popular Zombies survival mode returns, as does Dead Ops, the overhead zombie shooter, which now features a full, lengthy campaign. I'll be honest: I've never enjoyed Black Ops' take on the undead with Zombies, and nothing here sold me on the mode more than usual.

Forget talking about the unique characters, narrative, 1940's film-noir setting, gameplay design or anything else...
 
This is literally all Gies said about the Zombie mode in his Polygon review.



Forget talking about the unique characters, narrative, 1940's film-noir setting, gameplay design or anything else...

Yea that's really poor reviewing. Either review the thing even if you don't like it, or like I said get someone who at least doesn't mind the mode to talk about it.
 
Yea that's really poor reviewing. Either review the thing even if you don't like it, or like I said get someone who at least doesn't mind the mode to talk about it.

He must be under the illusion that it is some small throwaway mode, but it is honestly massive and fleshed out. Poor form on their part.
 
This is literally all Gies said about the Zombie mode in his Polygon review.



Forget talking about the unique characters, narrative, 1940's film-noir setting, gameplay design or anything else...

Even Jeff, who doesn't like Zombies, does detail those things. I will say Jeff reviewing Halo higher than CoD is surprising.


It seems the divide in reviews depends on if you enjoyed the expansive move set AW gave you.
 
Just happens to be one of the very few new games I bought in the last 6 months..

Just happens to be one of the not so very few games you mention in every thread.

Anywho, great scores. I'll be picking it up on pc, I'd like to try the map traversal on a kb/m. I also agree that the zombies criticism/ignoring is stupid. It's the favorite mode of a lot of people. Would they ignore Firefight/Horde?
 
Good reviews, haven't touched mp yet but enjoying the campaign. So 2 hours down with 4 missions out of the way, so looking at maybe 6 hours if it keeps the same pace and then nightmares mode.
 
I'm appreciating the 7/10 sprinkled throughout. It's an entirely fair criticism if the reviewers are fatigued at this point and desire for the game to change more.

This is coming from someone who is still hyped for BO3 of course. But I won't deny I'd like more change in future versions.
 
Just happens to be one of the not so very few games you mention in every thread.

Anywho, great scores. I'll be picking it up on pc, I'd like to try the map traversal on a kb/m. I also agree that the zombies criticism/ignoring is stupid. It's the favorite mode of a lot of people. Would they ignore Firefight/Horde?

PM sent, no reason you you replying this way to me. Just don't read what i say or send me a pm if you don't like my opinions.
 
Reviews seem great.

I was watching Videgamers campaign review and they found it really lackluster. The AI robot enemies seem like total idiots. The campaigns a sticking point but really, the overall Blops 3 package has so much quality content compared to other shooters.

Very tempted to pick this up during Christmas.
 
Reviews seem great.

I was watching Videgamers campaign review and they found it really lackluster. The AI robot enemies seem like total idiots. The campaigns a sticking point but really, the overall Blops 3 package has so much quality content compared to other shooters.

Very tempted to pick this up during Christmas.
They were on easy.
 
This is literally all Gies said about the Zombie mode in his Polygon review.



Forget talking about the unique characters, narrative, 1940's film-noir setting, gameplay design or anything else...

Here's some more garbage he wrote:

First, Advanced Warfare introduced plenty of changes to the way basic movement and melee worked last fall, and it was a much better game for it.

Really? The movement in Advanced Warfare was like a neutered rough version of Titanfall, this is way better than Advanced Warfare, but not as smooth as Titanfall. AW was clunky and really weighty. The transitions were jarring too.
 
The game probably won't move too much from here. Maybe one point in either direction at most.

I really thought that this would be the first COD to hit 90+ on meta, since the devs are the best ones doing COD.
 
Wish there was still an option to rent games in the UK - I'd like to give this a go (and Advanced Warfare), but I'm not an online gamer and probably won't the value out of this to justify spending ÂŁ40-odd.
 
The game probably won't move too much from here. Maybe one point in either direction at most.

I really thought that this would be the first COD to hit 90+ on meta, since the devs are the best ones doing COD.

Modern Warfare 1 & 2 would like to have a word with you.


Treyarch seems stuck in the mid 80s when it comes to metacritic. World at War to Black Ops III. Even Call of Duty 3 hit the low 80s.
 
Wish there was still an option to rent games in the UK - I'd like to give this a go (and Advanced Warfare), but I'm not an online gamer and probably won't the value out of this to justify spending ÂŁ40-odd.

You can buy it for ÂŁ42 in tesco or on amazon and then sell it for ÂŁ36 cash in CEX (or ÂŁ40 trade-in)
 
Wait I thought reviews would wait a few days to try out the MP? Isnt that the important part?

To be fair if you've played 10+ matches of CoD you've probably played as much as you need to know. It's not like its some massive fleshed out levelling behemoth with a huge endgame to get at; a couple of hours will soon tell you how well it is or isn't.

Seems like it's getting good reviews though! Still not sure I'm sold but no doubt I'll pick it up when on offer.
 
Really? The movement in Advanced Warfare was like a neutered rough version of Titanfall, this is way better than Advanced Warfare, but not as smooth as Titanfall. AW was clunky and really weighty. The transitions were jarring too.

It's not that shocking. In fact i agree with him, last year was a nice mixture of titanfalls movement but still felt like call of duty. AW got me back into COD which is something i NEVER thought i would happen. But when i played BO3 beta the movement felt off and not very fun.
 
You can buy it for ÂŁ42 in tesco or on amazon and then sell it for ÂŁ36 cash in CEX (or ÂŁ40 trade-in)

It's too much hassle and I don't want to buy the game. Plus, I'd need to rush through it and then make sure I trade it in while the price is still high. I only typically get 1-2 hours' gaming time per night (some nights I don't get a chance to play at all), so I wouldn't want to buy it and then have to rush through to get my money's worth.

Boomerang got ya covered

Aren't they the ones who had the hacking scandal earlier this year?
 
Giant bomb seems to be the lowest so far
That's to one expected I would think

It's not that shocking. In fact i agree with him, last year was a nice mixture of titanfalls movement but still felt like call of duty. AW got me back into COD which is something i NEVER thought i would happen. But when i played BO3 beta the movement felt off and not very fun.
There was nothing titanfall about AW movement
 
Got it yesterday. Played the first mission, seems pretty good and expected. And tried online, it's a blast! #ps4
 
Little multiplayer variety after 10 hours

Looks like Gamespot is echoing the same thoughts I've always had about Treyarch's multiplayers. They're fun at first, with some solid map design, but the lack of variety in customization, weapons and maps, with pretty much all of the latter revolving around the idea of small areas focusing on CQB/SMG battles (despite of being well designed for this purpose), makes this developer's games quite boring after just a handful of hours. There's little to keep coming back to, not enough different playstyles or customization options to keep things fresh in the long run, and this monotony is something that I already felt after playing the BOIII beta while it lasted.

I'll be picking this up, but I'll be heavily anticipating IW's game next year. Even at their lowest, all of their games so far offer amazing customization and variety for what we've come to expect from the other COD developers. Their latest two games have had questionable map design, but the variety and options available always keep me coming back, always inciting me to play differently in some way or another.
 
Modern Warfare 1 & 2 would like to have a word with you.


Treyarch seems stuck in the mid 80s when it comes to metacritic. World at War to Black Ops III. Even Call of Duty 3 hit the low 80s.

Haha yeah I meant current gen 😉
 
Looks like Gamespot is echoing the same thoughts I've always had about Treyarch's multiplayers. They're fun at first, with some solid map design, but the lack of variety in customization, weapons and maps, with pretty much all of the latter revolving around the idea of small areas focusing on CQB/SMG battles (despite of being well designed for this purpose), makes this developer's games quite boring after just a handful of hours. There's little to keep coming back to, not enough different playstyles or customization options to keep things fresh in the long run, and this monotony is something that I already felt after playing the BOIII beta while it lasted.

I'll be picking this up, but I'll be heavily anticipating IW's game next year. Even at their lowest, all of their games so far offer amazing customization and variety for what we've come to expect from the other COD developers. Their latest two games have had questionable map design, but the variety and options available always keep me coming back, always inciting me to play differently in some way or another.
Haha what? You can't say silly things like that with out examples
 
The game probably won't move too much from here. Maybe one point in either direction at most.

I really thought that this would be the first COD to hit 90+ on meta, since the devs are the best ones doing COD.
Nah, Giant Bomb will Giant Bomb

Plus isn't there dips in frame rate with the campaign? Even I would knock some score for that.

Game could hit a 63 on metacritic, I already had more fun in this than the 8 hours of halo 5 I played and that ranked higher.
 
Hmm I think the hype got to me regarding how much content is packed in this. I enjoyed the beta and multi will be fun like always, albeit frustrating as COD is.

I played the Battlefront beta and had a ton of fun as well... I feel maybe I should of waited for that.
 
Haha what? You can't say silly things like that with out examples

Most weapons in IW's games are much more viable than in the other games. Snipers for instance featured the very best balance in the series with Ghosts, but for some reason neither Sledgehammer nor Treyarch have used these improvements in their own games; the latter has tried to tweak them in their own way for BOIII, but in the beta they still felt underpowered next to the usual weapons. And that's just the thing. In any non-IW COD, it's SMG/AR territory all day, every day. Little else is viable, ever. Ghosts not only had the most viable snipers and LMGs, but it even added the category for marksman rifles, which were quite fun to use and which neither Sledgehammer nor Treyarch have put into their games so far, inexplicably.

Still on the subject of weapons, I've always felt that in Treyarch's games most weapons within the same weapon category felt quite similar to each other. There's not enough difference when going from, say, one assault rifle to the next (unless it's a 3 round burst one or something). This is not the case in IW's games. The weapons are balanced to be more unique, and they indeed feel different enough when going from one to another, even within the same weapon category.

Then there's perk and class variety. I would have thought that after BO2's innovative pick 10 system, Treyarch and Sledgehammer would realize that it's a trivial and unnecessary limitation to take class points from the player for choosing, say, two perks of the same category (when perks are already assigned to their respective categories trivially to begin with). Ghosts' class and perk system wasn't innovative per se, I mean, it just took Treyarch's idea and lifted this trivial limitation. But as it stands today, with the lack of this limitation coupled with the biggest amount of perks seen in any COD to date (most of them being viable, mind you), it stands without a doubt as the deepest COD when it comes to class customization.

I already mentioned how Treyarch map design philosophy revolves way too much around CQB/SMG battles. IW may have had less than stellar map design with MW3 and Ghosts, but they always try to offer more variety with bigger maps, maps with a focus on sniping and so on.

Overall, when you put all of these factors together, there's little doubt that IW's multiplayers last much longer if you decide to stick with them, and that Treyarch's really don't offer very much at all after the first handful of hours. They may be really fun during that first stage, but after that there's very little to come back to.
 
This is literally all Gies said about the Zombie mode in his Polygon review.



Forget talking about the unique characters, narrative, 1940's film-noir setting, gameplay design or anything else...

Yeah, something seemed really off to me about Gies' review. I watched his blops 3 video with Griffin and the entire time he sounded like he had already set himself up to dislike the game. Like really went out of his way to act all "ho hum" about it. If he didn't care about blops to begin with, couldn't they have attempted to get a reviewer on their team who had no prior bias to review the game? I mean, I know reviews are subjective things, but what good is it when someone's preference is so slanted to begin with?
 
That's to one expected I would think


There was nothing titanfall about AW movement

This. Advanced Warefare was this awkward abomination where the animation felt clunky. You would speed boost into the ground, hit it, then wait to recover before you can start moving again. You had the movement and fluidity of a tank.

Titanfall is like butter, no, it's like water flowing through a canyon. It goes where it can go. Very smooth and very easy to chain together different moves.

Black Ops is closer to Titanfall and COD but further from AW. Not to say Black Ops IS Titanfall.

That's not taking into account the maps, AW maps were over designed with god knows how many openings whereas these are actually better designed maps.
 
Yeah, something seemed really off to me about Gies' review. I watched his blops 3 video with Griffin and the entire time he sounded like he had already set himself up to dislike the game. Like really went out of his way to act all "ho hum" about it. If he didn't care about blops to begin with, couldn't they have attempted to get a reviewer on their team who had no prior bias to review the game? I mean, I know reviews are subjective things, but what good is it when someone's preference is so slanted to begin with?

I mean, most of the time publications will assign a review to someone who liked previous games in a franchise, or at least similar games (the platformer guy, the FPS guy etc.). So a reviewer's preferences will always be "slanted" to begin with, just the other way around. Whether you'd prefer someone who really likes a franchise or someone who's critical of it to review the next game in said franchise is a debate we've had on gaming forums for years and years, but the important thing is that everyone goes into a game with a certain bias.
 
I am really on the fence about getting this. I don't like zombie mode and I have no interest in it. So I was hoping the campaign would be good and the multiplayer would be fun. Seem like there are mixed reactions to the campaign though, and the multiplayer seems solid but the whole picking a preset appearance with abilities seems dumb. I mean what if I like the appearance of one character but like the perks of another, can I not switch them? If not then that really turns me off the multiplayer.
 
I am really on the fence about getting this. I don't like zombie mode and I have no interest in it. So I was hoping the campaign would be good and the multiplayer would be fun. Seem like there are mixed reactions to the campaign though, and the multiplayer seems solid but the whole picking a preset appearance with abilities seems dumb. I mean what if I like the appearance of one character but like the perks of another, can I not switch them? If not then that really turns me off the multiplayer.

The characters are only really different in their ultimate. Each character has 2 ultimates to choose from. The regular perk system is still in the game and is not tied to characters.

Also having a set character for the ultimates makes sense. Since if you could have any appearence with any ultimate, it would make matches far more random as you couldn't tell who had what.
 
The characters are only really different in their ultimate. Each character has 2 ultimates to choose from. The regular perk system is still in the game and is not tied to characters.

Also having a set character for the ultimates makes sense. Since if you could have any appearence with any ultimate, it would make matches far more random as you couldn't tell who had what.

Yeah that makes sense. I guess I just want to look like however I want. But then again, it's a fps so it really doesn't matter that much.
 
Looks like Gamespot is echoing the same thoughts I've always had about Treyarch's multiplayers. They're fun at first, with some solid map design, but the lack of variety in customization, weapons and maps, with pretty much all of the latter revolving around the idea of small areas focusing on CQB/SMG battles (despite of being well designed for this purpose), makes this developer's games quite boring after just a handful of hours. There's little to keep coming back to, not enough different playstyles or customization options to keep things fresh in the long run, and this monotony is something that I already felt after playing the BOIII beta while it lasted.

I'll be picking this up, but I'll be heavily anticipating IW's game next year. Even at their lowest, all of their games so far offer amazing customization and variety for what we've come to expect from the other COD developers. Their latest two games have had questionable map design, but the variety and options available always keep me coming back, always inciting me to play differently in some way or another.

BO2 was SMG heavy game, but Stock + Lightweight made Assault rifles very fun and allowed for very high strafe speed while aiming down sights. New movement options have solely benefited CQB, and made it much more interesting, while medium and long range engagements are slower and less fun than before because they've nerfed Stock and removed Lightweight(and Toughness). If you're aiming down the sights, you can activate thruster only if you've started aiming during the thrust, and it fucks up your aim when you do it, at least that's how it worked in beta. Assault rifle variety is also exactly the same as BO2, only there's less of it(no AN-94 or FAL counterpart)
 
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