Call of Duty has quickly become the yearly title that many people look forward to for a guaranteed first-person shooter thrill that will have no shortage of multiplayer options.
This year is no different, but that thrill has remained largely the same in the past few generations, and Black Ops III does little, if anything at all, to innovate on the series hallmarks of great action, storyline, or multiplayer.
The new story behind Call of Duty this year revolves mainly around the player. You’ve got a cybernetic core inside of you. A new tactical interface called DNI that learns what you’re about to do so you can control it with your mind. You can change out these cores to give you different abilities on the battlefield, or keep one but have a much more difficult time accomplishing your goal.
Okay, all that stuff is interesting, but where’s the story innovation? Where’s the gameplay innovation? Black Ops III adds co-op this year for what is sure to make an unremarkable difference to the way the game is played, especially considering that most CoD player focus on multiplayer rather than the single-player campaign.
The title looks better than last year, if only because the teams are more experienced with next-generation development kits than they were last year, but it really just seems like another Call of Duty.
But hey, that’s what people seem to want.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III launches