Despite the Call of Duty series' reputation as a tentpole multiplayer game, I have always enjoyed the campaigns for what they have been: overblown popcorn action rides driving you from one bombastic set-piece to the next. The first two Black Ops games did this fantastically, even bettering Infinity Ward's efforts post-CoD4 in many respects. After last year's Advanced Warfare updated the Call of Duty gameplay with a fresh sense of speed and dynamism, complimented by an engaging take on the CoD single-player campaign, Black Ops III feels like a step backward. Firstly, the multiplayer is still as it ever was, which to my mind is a good thing. Though the freedom of movement from Advanced Warfare has been pared back a little in favour of a more traditional CoD movement style (albeit with added, rarely useful wall-running), the game is still fast, competitive and solid. The MOBA-style player characters are perhaps a poor decision, leading to a lack of aesthetic customisation in player characters, as well as repetitive and frankly quite annoying voice-samples, but all up the multiplayer is still the same sturdy foundation upon which this franchise has been built, and you will know if you're up for more of that. I've never been a huge fan of the zombies mode in previous games (it's confused pacing and flat gameplay have never struck a chord with me), and that remains the case here, but if you are into that then this seems like a good version of it. Perhaps uncommonly, though, I usually come to Call of Duty games for their ridiculous campaigns, and Black Ops III's may be the worst yet in the entire series. The story is self-serious, confusing, uninteresting, poorly written and terribly acted, the levels are universally dull and unimaginative and the 4 player co-op that was flaunted in the lead up to the game's release falls flat thanks to the tedious combat. The game has shifted away from the corridor-shooter style levels of previous CoD games in favour of wider areas with different paths through them, more in the style of a Halo game. This sounds like a good thing, until you realise that there are so few enemy types with such bland AI that you can't approach the same level of tactical creativity in some of Halo's best levels, but are just mowing down the same boring enemies from different angles. There's very little throughout the campaign that jumps out in the same way as some of the earlier Call of Duty's moments have. Where CoD4 had you creeping through a wheat field full of enemy tanks and soldiers, BO3 has you mowing down robots. Where Black Ops 1 had you pushing mine carts up a hill for you and your soviet prisoner allies to use as cover, BO3 has you mowing down people and robots. Where Advanced Warfare had a quite bad plane sequence towards the end, so to does BO3. Ok, perhaps not that much has changed. The argument could be made that the memorable moments of earlier Call of Duty games were scripted or simplistic, but even so they were effective. Whether or not the gameplay is significantly different, Black Ops III's campaign is bland and forgettable in a way that previous games weren't, so you still walk away feeling let down. Ultimately, as you might have expected, this is more Call of Duty. The campaign is a series low-point, but the multiplayer and zombies modes are as strong as ever. People who know they're going to play a lot of the multiplayer will not be disappointed by that mode, but If you're on the fence about whether or not you're ready for another Call of Duty game, this is probably one to skip.
