• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

So what is wrong with the BLOPS 3 campaign?

It was one of the best COD campaigns I've played tbh, I guess my standards are pretty low XD

Actually liked the story and VA for a female character is pretty good. Hendricks is unbearable though.

Ghosts still takes the cake for worst campaign imo.
 
I'd honestly put Ghosts above this campaign. Never thought I'd say that, due to the equally dumbass story and lame-ass characters and ending, it had better moments throughout. Nothing amazing or great by any means, it's still dull overall, but there were parts to it as I think back on it now, out-do BOIII. Space shooting, tank mission, the finale, DOGE, etc. Even the villain was better.

MUCH better.

Mister Negative said:
I already knew about the zombie campaign going in, and I just played the mission where you descend into some circular facility and it gets to a point where robots are popping out of windows and some water and I was just thinking "wow, they're just gonna pallette swap these guys with zombies, huh?"
Click to expand...

That part where the robots are busting out of the windows or whatever is still there, but everything else is zombies.

Boring zombies. Not even Hellhounds.
 
near the end of the game it almost completely invalidates one of the skill trees in the game, and then there's the teleporting enemies. what cod always needed
 
Innolis said:
It was one of the best COD campaigns I've played tbh, I guess my standards are pretty low XD

Actually liked the story and VA for a female character is pretty good. Hendricks is unbearable though.

Ghosts still takes the cake for worst campaign imo.
Click to expand...

I liked the
brotherly bond towards
the end and Eminem.

At first that whole
let's run with our dad, bro
was a bit much, but it caught on later.

I have to say BO3's cast would do better if they didn't interact with one another. The best part of MW was going from one moment to the next without conversing. It's okay with older technology, but the dynamic feels cut in half and some of the lines come off as being cheesy. One thing that helped MW was having mission briefs after a mission ended. This is like CoD TV playing in the background and it makes the impression of chaos, but not really. It feels like it's all been set up without any explanation and you feel like it's just getting there.
 
Toa TAK said:
I'd honestly put Ghosts above this campaign. Never thought I'd say that, due to the equally dumbass story and lame-ass characters and ending, it had better moments throughout. Nothing amazing or great by any means, it's still dull overall, but there were parts to it as I think back on it now, out-do BOIII. Space shooting, tank mission, the finale, DOGE, etc. Even the villain was better.

MUCH better.



That part where the robots are busting out of the windows or whatever is still there, but everything else is zombies.

Boring zombies. Not even Hellhounds.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it was mostly the part with the water where I couldn't help but wonder if they had written it with zombies in mind.
 
It would be a lot easier for those that did not like Black Ops III Campaign to mention whether or not they enjoyed BO 1 and 2 campaigns.
 
shinobi602 said:
To be fair Treyarch's games have always been more far gory than the rest since World at War. I actually don't mind, bodies are supposed to get fucked when you're blowing them up with crazy weapons.
Click to expand...

That's the problem though, in the gameplay it's pretty tame. We don't see anything substancial when sitting back and riddling people from cover, but in the cutscenes it's constant pathetic excuse after pathetic excuse for another gory scene.

In one point there's a segment of the game where they need to sever someones arm off because the two switch panels need to be activated by two people. What kind of futuristic system actually uses an ID scanning security technique, but then allows multiple of the same person to authenticate with the software? It doesn't make sense and it exists solely for the 'wouldn't it be cool if we cut her arm off' factor.
 
ryan299 said:
The second level where you're going through memories or whatever took forever. It just wouldn't end. I only got 3 or 4 missions through before I put it down. It's that bad.
Click to expand...

Oh yes! That's exactly one of the levels that I was thinking of. Two other ones would be
the WW2 flashback level and the final mission. The WW2 flashback level is the one that I hate most in the game. It wasn't necessarily even hard, it just kept going. I remember thinking that the final mission was pretty short after that sequence with Kane. Then it proceeds to go on much longer.
 
The story is trash and they literally used the name Blops 3 to sell games.

There is nothing related to the first two. Where the fuck is my reznov?
 
The SP is pretty fun. Gameplay wise the pacing is pretty solid and it is at the very least enjoyable. The story on the other hand is kind of a mess and pretty disjointed like others have stated. A lot of times you will just be randomly thrown around and have no idea what the heck is going on story/progression wise (especially at the beginning).
 
I'm a huge fan of COD campaigns, specially the Black Ops series, after 2 missions of BO3 I had enough with the futuristic crap and the story failed to hook me at the beginning. Played a couple of hours MP, Zombies and Dead Ops and returned the game back to gamefly.
 
-Boring unmemorable characters with a story that you don't have much reason to care for.
-Levels take too long without the variety to back it up.
-Most of the game is spent in two locales, Singapore and Egypt, so that's a further lack of variety.
-Extremely tenuous relation to the previous Black Ops games.
-Final act went a little nuts. Those dream sequences are kinda old hat at this point and they felt incredibly disjointed. Didn't help that those levels dragged on the longest.

I had my fun with the co-op and the new powers but by the end I was glad for it to be over. I'd put any other CoD campaign that I've played over it.
 
The biggest problem was the huge focus on co-op. That alone, I think, would ensure that it wouldn't be as interesting as the first two BLOPS campaigns. With a game that has a huge MP component as well as a wave based co-op component that was very much unneeded. Let the single player be the single player. There's no need to shoehorn co-op into it. Speaking of shoehorning, the references to the previous games were just that.

Also Hendricks. What a dope. There's story reasons for why he acts the way he does, but it's overdone and he never shuts up about it. Honestly, I would've been more than happy if he left halfway through the game. Also
Kane's death was stupid. It was simply in there for shock value.
Granted, there's a bunch of stuff that's done in CoD just for shock value, this is just one more non-nonsensical thing in the campaign. Given that Treyarch had more time this go around, it's pretty disappointing that the BLOPS III campaign is what it is.
 
Ridiculous story that was hard to follow for the first few chapters and a focus on co-op which meant your character was just some random generic guy/girl. On a technical level it was awful on PS4 - constant frame rate drops, 30fps cutscenes and an atrocious sound mix.

This was my first BLOPs campaign and I was hyped having heard how good they are. What a disappointment, Advanced Warfare's campaign was infinitely more enjoyable for me.
 
You'd think story or script means nothing to a Call of Duty, maybe it doesn't, but a BAD actually detracts quite a bit. Part of why CoD 2 and CoD 4 worked so well was they actually tried to make a story

BLOPS 3's single player is just a mess in terms of the story it's trying to tell and it has terrible dialogue that even a good VO cast can't salvage. Ben Browder (Farscape) sounds like he's having a breakdown towards the end.

Actual gameplay isn't bad, but it has lots of repetitive mini-boss fights and in the end AW had a much better single player. The multi is good, if you get a dedicated server even though it still has lag compensation from P2P days tripping you up.

Only good thing about SP, hearing German-speaking enemies again.

All in all, it feels like a game not made by nerds, but by gymbros.
 
Barakov said:
The biggest problem was the huge focus on co-op. That alone, I think, would ensure that it wouldn't be as interesting as the first two BLOPS campaigns. With a game that has a huge MP component as well as a wave based co-op component that was very much unneeded. Let the single player be the single player. There's no need to shoehorn co-op into it. Speaking of shoehorning, the references to the previous games were just that.

Also Hendricks. What a dope. There's story reasons for why he acts the way he does, but it's overdone and he never shuts up about it. Honestly, I would've been more than happy if he left halfway through the game. Also
Kane's death was stupid. It was simply in there for shock value.
Granted, there's a bunch of stuff that's done in CoD just for shock value, this is just one more non-nonsensical thing in the campaign. Given that Treyarch had more time this go around, it's pretty disappointing that the BLOPS III campaign is what it is.
Click to expand...

There's a point during one mission where Hendricks comes on the radio and says "Kane, I've been separated from the others!"

and i'm like dude it's just me.
 
Female mc voice was great and the general idea of the story was awesome but it was really like they had no clue what they were doing in execution phase.

Also probably the dumbest scene in the series history (if not all of gaming) for what was basically an easter egg.
Nova 6 scene

Game shouldn't even have the Black Ops title, its basically tacked on for marketing.
AW2 would be a better title.
 
Razgriz-Specter said:
Female mc voice was great and the general idea of the story was awesome but it was really like they had no clue what they were doing in execution phase.

Also probably the dumbest scene in the series history (if not all of gaming) for what was basically an easter egg.
Nova 6 scene

Game shouldn't even have the Black Ops title, its basically tacked on for marketing.
AW2 would be a better title.
Click to expand...

What made that an easter egg?
 
I liked the campaign, but I can see why some don't like it.

Does not carry on the story of the first two black ops games. Much more of a focus on co-op play and that negatively effects the solo campaign. Game flow doesn't resemble a normal COD (feels more like Halo in this regard).
 
antitrop said:
This guy is the worst character from any Call of Duty.

fDUxNZk.png
Click to expand...
Somebody was paid to write this.

Like, what the fuck.

Seriously OP, stay the hell away from this if you're only interested in campaign. Perhaps it's too early to call, but to me, it's easily the worst video game experience I've had in quite some time.
 
The story, which is mostly incoherent, but a solid premise that I was interested in seeing through. I saw it through alright... and by the end I was thoroughly done with it.

The dialogue, which was OK except for Hendricks and some of the bad guys being classic bad guys.

The replayability, which is hurt by all of the above, with unskippable cut-scenes to start, several in-game cut-scenes or unskippable slow moments or slow walks, and Hendricks and company's dialogue.

Blocky robot enemies that didn't feel as rewarding to take down as humans. Exploding rolling razor balls, because everybody likes those right? Swimming through water filled with sinking mines, another classic favorite. And objectives that put you out into the open while enemies would attack from all sides and other assorted deathboxes.

On paper the campaign is exactly what I want: Replayability, large open areas that can be tackled several ways, progression and skill trees that change up how you play, co-op, and multplayer-esque loadouts. I still want that - basically Spec Ops writ large.

But what we got instead was pretty basic enemies that clump together or simply walk forward as robots or bullet sponges, and missions filled with far too much story crap. And nothing about the scenario design looks in any way balanced for realistic mode, so that was just a bullshit checklist item. Good ideas all around, and there's plenty of content here, its just not executed well for a replayable co-op campaign.

Besides all that its ok I guess.

Edit: There is fun to be had, its just overwhelmed by lots of open areas filled with enemies where you just kindof go through the motions. There isn't really a flow of high points and quieter interludes, its just enemies and then some more enemies and it all ends up feeling the same outside of a miniboss here and there. And missions themselves felt very isolated from each other, without a solid sense of continuity or buildup or rising stakes as you played. Just a bunch of levels filled with humans or robots and sometimes humans and robots.
 
Worst goddamn garbage I've played since, fuck, I don't know. I got to some section in the last level where the floor is filled random crap that you get stuck on, then once you finally clear it a door opens and two robots jump out and then there's another robot on the catwalk directly up/behind you. Stunning game design. Bonus points for that CyberPower420 that makes you rush forward and shove your arm in the robots chest and pull out their power core to use as a grenade. Except when you just blow yourself up with regular grenade instead because your teamate kills the robot, or the robot beats you to death while you're in the animation or the power core just explodes in your hand or one of the other bugs and glitches.

All the people responsible for the campaign should have one hand chopped off and then their face stuck in fire like random ethnic lady #7. God forbid there's any non-white people for more then three chapters in the game. Oh wait, Kane has a big Jew ass and Kalil is pretty cool, so maybe but nah

Just watch it on youtube and stick to the multiplayer holy shit blops1 wasn't HORRIBLE and blops2 wasted some of it's potential and buzzwords like RARE EARTH METALS and SOCIAL MEDIA, but holyyy shit. Blops3 is the equivalent of licking the door knob of a public restroom stall in a greyhound bus stop
 
Play Black Ops 2 instead. It has a surprisingly natural branching storyline. My brother and I each played through it and had some pretty major differences in how things played out. Half of the time you don't realize that you're even making a decision, which in my opinion speaks to how natural it feels.

Certainly handed much better than most games, where the decision-making is clunky and heavily televised.
 
hoggert said:
Worst goddamn garbage I've played since, fuck, I don't know. I got to some section in the last level where the floor is filled random crap that you get stuck on, then once you finally clear it a door opens and two robots jump out and then there's another robot on the catwalk directly up/behind you. Stunning game design. Bonus points for that CyberPower420 that makes you rush forward and shove your arm in the robots chest and pull out their power core to use as a grenade. Except when you just blow yourself up with regular grenade instead because your teamate kills the robot, or the robot beats you to death while you're in the animation or the power core just explodes in your hand or one of the other bugs and glitches.

All the people responsible for the campaign should have one hand chopped off and then their face stuck in fire like random ethnic lady #7. God forbid there's any non-white people for more then three chapters in the game. Oh wait, Kane has a big Jew ass and Kalil is pretty cool, so maybe but nah

Just watch it on youtube and stick to the multiplayer holy shit blops1 wasn't HORRIBLE and blops2 wasted some of it's potential and buzzwords like RARE EARTH METALS and SOCIAL MEDIA, but holyyy shit. Blops3 is the equivalent of licking the door knob of a public restroom stall in a greyhound bus stop
Click to expand...

maybe it just wasnt for u
 
Toa TAK said:
It doesn't make anything better.
Click to expand...

What I'm saying, is regardless of whether any one person thinks it makes the story better or or salvages it or not, they should give it a read.

Here's the post in full from the link on the first page for anyone who missed it.

After playing through the campaign and being confused and then reading all the Intel I could to figure out what happened I'm pretty sure i have a firm grasp on how this story actually unfolds and will try to make the most synopsized sense of it.

The first mission actually takes place AFTER all the events outlined in the game after.

What happens is your character endures heavy trauma from NRC robots and in order to save your life are taken into the WA cyber solider program.

Mission 2 follows along chronologically. Here Taylor interfaces with you via DNI to start you VR training to prep you when you awake. Now here's where it gets confusing. As you progress through your training at the abandoned factory you end up with a terrible hallucination that debilitates you and Diaz explains how the DNI can exacerbate the intensity of stimulus memory associated to senses. He also explains how the DNI functions and how it can do so even after death. This is key information

During the training with meretti he comments how you are still alive. This was touched upon in other comments but refers to you, the players, actual physical liveliness. However during this phase there is a micro glance where if you pay close enough attention you see the flash was actually of Taylor and two figures holding him back. This flash was actually your last flash of life. In actuality this is where you DIE in the game.

What happens for the rest of the game is you play through a dream projected through your DNI that recounts the past of an altered version of missions but you are in place of Taylor. Seemingly projected onto you via and imprint from his DNI onto yours.

If you follow all, all the missions you partake in are exact replicas of the missions Taylor and Hendriks had chasing stone and his team. The biggest difference is that you perceive them as being a cyber solider , when in actuality, they were not. This is evident by the fact that in the players mind Hendriks was a cyber soldier but in reality he wasn't. We know this because we established that the mission in Ethiopia takes place AFTER the events of the rest of the missions and Hendriks has 0 enhancements.

This is part matters not what sex of character the player picks because you are only playing through the game as an imprinted conscious and not that of actual Taylor.

Hopefully that explanation helps to clear everything up a bit. If not i can always rewrite it, since I'm 3/4 asleep writing it, or answer follow ups to clarify anything .
Click to expand...
 
I really enjoyed it even if I don't understand what the hell happened. The way they told you it was confusing as fuck. Was the majority of it
an hallucination
? The bit in the
hospital bed comes up twice with different people in the room
.

* Oh, didn't see the post above me. Still confusing as shit.
 
It's a lot more interesting once you look at different interpretations of the game. On it's own it's creative fun, but a bit of a mess plot wise (on the surface level, those interpretations are something no-one is going to intuit on their first fun through). It's a shame the choices of Black Ops 2 are gone, and it doesn't quite have the mind boggling revelations of Black Ops 1. The only really interesting character was Taylor, who was fantastic. Everyone else... eh.

VanillaCakeIsBurning said:
The real plot twist was interesting to read about. But judging from these responses it doesn't seem like many know about it.
Click to expand...

And it's hard to blame people, it wasn't like the classic twist in the first Black Ops, it's hidden away in text that scrolls past in milliseconds and probably hinted at deep in the intel. You can't expect people to know that. I think it was a bad move for them to not make that more blatant.
 
I liked it quite a bit, more than most COD campaigns, and I'm actually a bit baffled as to why I liked it so much when the response on GAF has been so negative. I didn't find it particularly difficult to follow, though some elements felt out of place (but there might be an explanation for that). I didn't find Hendricks to be a giant ass, and nowhere near the level of, say, Rico in Killzone 2/3 (who, yeah, is a big fucking asshole). The dialogue was kind of dumb sometimes, but it's a Call of Duty game; frankly I'm happy when the dialogue isn't just constantly "oscar mike charlie tango." And I know other people think the characters are shit, but I found them more relatable than the superhuman spec-ops military fellows of previous games (which is somewhat ironic given that you play as and work with literal superhuman spec-ops military people).

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of issues with how the story is executed. This is not Shakespeare. But I think ultimately I'm just a big sucker for the sci-fi trash that was BLOPS 3 (I also happened to enjoy Crysis 2 for what it was), I'm big into the transhumanism angle, and I never cared much for the military porn of previous games. If you're someone who really enjoyed the conspiracy secret-ops stuff of Black Ops 1 and became invested in the Mason/Woods/whoever characters, I imagine you will like this campaign a lot less than I did.
 
antitrop said:
My biggest problem with it is the intense focus on co-op. In a game that already has such a substantial multiplayer suite, including co-op zombies, I just want my god damn Call of Duty single-player campaign. Why you gotta fuck me like this, Treyarch?

The co-op focus leads the single-player experience into a tedious run through waves of spongy robots that take magazine... after magazine...... AFTER MAGAZINE, to take down.

The magic powers they give you in this one are pretty cool, but you know what? The only thing more boring than waiting behind cover for your health to recharge is waiting behind cover for your magic to recharge.

One boring-ass campaign, no Kevin Spacey gimmick to keep me interested, nothing. Better luck next time.

And I certainly can't forget them introducing a character as lame as Hendricks into the franchise, him and his fucking candy bar.
Click to expand...

Holy shit, you are pouring your heart out on this one. I thought coop was à good change of pacing for once. But the spongy robots though, I agree.

They should come back to WW2 or maybe WW.

Why not médiéval !
 
Ceadeus said:
Holy shit, you are pouring your heart out on this one.
Click to expand...

I do take CoD campaigns pretty seriously, it's been one of my franchises since the beginning strictly for them. I dig the multiplayer, too, but CoD has always been about the campaigns, for me. As FPS campaigns become increasingly rarer things, I want the scant few we do get to be as good as possible.

I would be all about some more WW2 Calladooty. After all the magical super powers of Black Ops III, a grounded campaign is just what I want to see from this series. I wouldn't mind them decoupling the campaign and the multiplayer from a technology angle, give the MP crowd what they want, do something different with the campaign.
 
antitrop said:
I do take CoD campaigns pretty seriously, it's been one of my franchises since the beginning strictly for them. I dig the multiplayer, too, but CoD has always been about the campaigns, for me. As FPS campaigns become increasingly rarer things, I want the scant few we do get to be as good as possible.

I would be all about some more WW2 Calladooty. After all the magical super powers of Black Ops III, a grounded campaign is just what I want to see from this series. I wouldn't mind them decoupling the campaign and the multiplayer from a technology angle, give the MP crowd what they want, do something different with the campaign.
Click to expand...

Graphics tech has advanced significantly enough that I think revisiting WW2 would be awesome.

But don't be lazy and do it on this CoD Engine that we've essentially been using for 7 years. Do it over again. Do it right. Reboot it. Just straight up release "Call of Duty" again.
 
antitrop said:
I GAVE UP TASTE IMPLANTS FOR THIS, BRO

*throws it away*
Click to expand...
Did somebody do something similar during your time of service?

I do take CoD campaigns pretty seriously, it's been one of my franchises since the beginning strictly for them. I dig the multiplayer, too, but CoD has always been about the campaigns, for me.
Click to expand...
I'm not alone!

I would be all about some more WW2 Calladooty. After all the magical super powers of Black Ops III, a grounded campaign is just what I want to see from this series. I wouldn't mind them decoupling the campaign and the multiplayer from a technology angle, give the MP crowd what they want, do something different with the campaign.
Click to expand...
You know, it's weird when a 3rd Person Character (that is just flesh and blood...well, I suppose he is technically a cyborg too) in a certain recent stealth game somehow feels more capable then the supposed 1st Person Cyborgs you're playing in this. Like, they really seem to make the advancements obvious instead of also applying that to the small stuff besides able to just walk through glasses. Crazy.
 
"Imagine yourself in a frozen forest" is the new "Tell me about the numbers".

It was an enjoyable co-op campaign but I could see it being a real drag solo. Also reading up on what really happened after people lifted the mission briefing texts makes it pretty rad and explains the crazy.
 
I love that it's co-op (playing with my buddy is really cool) but actually dislike how much you have to rely on the eye tech to see enemies. It feels like a crutch but otherwise the enemies are extremely overwhelming and hard to see
 
COD campaign stories has always been too convoluted. The problem here is the same as always, the AI is shit. And suppossely this COD was getting a revamped AI capable of more than hiding behind cover and peeking their heads...

They should take a pair of notes from WTNO in how to make a compelling FPS enemy AI.
 
it's not like previous COD games. i think that's the main issue people have. it's no longer this crazy, fast, michael bay explosion filled roller coaster ride type experience start to end...which made it one of the better campaigns for me since i never liked that stuff about COD in the first place.

basically i liked it because it was the least COD-like COD so far.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

What is wrong with Nintendo's account system?
2
75
863
rodrigolfp replied
What is wrong with modern game developers lol (rip PoP remake)
2 3
118
935
Xaeroxcore666 replied
Why is no one talking about what is going on with Sony?
2
67
767
DenchDeckard replied
So what happened to Hindustan Electronics, the studio behind The Last Guy?
4
174
Hudo replied
Xbox is losing the console race, so Microsoft is rethinking what Xbox is [digitaltrends]
2 3
126
3K
Neo_game replied
Top Bottom