What the HELL did i just play O_o (black ops 3 - spoilers)

InsaneTiger said:
You actually died in the hospital, you were just living some last dreams or something. Taylor never died, it was terrible.
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even if it was just replaying memories or whatever, does that mean Taylor and his crew WERE bad guys? Did the events actually happen?

It is just so confusing.

Those last few chapters were sucha drag.. i cant express how much i hated that frozen forest stuff and the demon/ghost soldiers that kept respawning... urrghghhhhh
 
Beating the campaign in one sitting co-op and losing our minds by the end was legit one of the more unforgettable gaming experiences in 2015. I'm so glad we did it even though the campaign itself was terrible.
 
By far the worst CoD campaign I have ever played, and I have played almost all of them. How this doesn't get more is beyond me.

Makes Ghosts look like a masterpiece.
 
I can see how during the design process the more experimental story seemed like a good idea, because it's actually fairly interesting and has a lot of potential narrative weight. It doesn't even sound particularly tricky: your character is critically wounded at the end of the first level, and the rest of the game is just a long virtual reality dream/hallucination of you coming to terms with dying. That's a genuinely cool story, it's reasonably Black Ops in terms of tone and theme (especially the original and its big focus on fake realities), and multiple well-regarded movies (which I won't spoil) feature similar plots, though admittedly generally without the sci-fi tinge. The Corvus stuff is particularly interesting, because if you wanted you could even interpret that as some sort of spiritual angle -- unusual territory for an FPS. I totally get why Treyarch sat down and decided to go with this.

But combine that story outline with a long FPS campaign designed for co-op play (i.e. noisy friends) and it just falls completely apart. Characters act irrational and obnoxious in a way that would be fine in a shorter film, but become excruciating over the 12 or so hours the game lasts. Obvious clues to what's going on (e.g. the handkerchief) stop being obvious when you spend multiple nights playing through the game and you don't even remember them.

I feel the gameplay design is strong, the campaign is still fun to (re-)play through because they made the combat sandbox so much larger than the COD norm, but the story just didn't work. Unfortunate.
 
Played the multiplayer at a friend's house and it was pretty good. To be honest Black Ops 1 and 2 didn't have great campaigns either. The first game had some good moments but I could barely even finish Blops2.
 
The Last Wizard said:
You know that liquid at the bottom of trash cans and dumpsters that's a combination of all the garbage? That's what you played in video game form.

Only CoD campaign I couldn't finish, it was honestly painful.
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Same I fucking know COD campaigns with MW, BO, and AW being the standouts. This was just a really bad campaign that I couldn't get more then 2 missions in. I liked the multiplayer enough tho
 
The twist was stupid but I enjoyed the campaign

Co-op with 2 friends definitely made it one of my favorite COD campaigns so far.

But around here it's considered to be the worst thing ever.
 
The multiplayer is absolutely great though and the zombies mode looks insanely fun, although I'm too much of a wimp to really play it too much.

I honestly had no idea thats what the story of the SP campaign was, I played it and just thought at the end "huh... that was weird... ok, well off to multiplayer". I don't really remember much but I really, really dug the geneva, train, and underground tower thing level. Level by level some of them were quite fun, but yeah the story was utter nonsense.
 
I feel like I'm one of the very few people on GAF who really enjoyed the campaign in Black Ops III, mainly for how bashit crazy ridiculous it is.
 
God, what a terrible, TERRIBLE campaign. Worst in series history IMO, even behind Ghosts. No effort was put into making any of the characters likable. In fact I don't remember there being any character development at all. The plot is incoherent, there were no notable action setpieces, there was no spectacle whatsoever, and what little cutscenes/action setpieces that did happen looked like they were run through a blender before being rendered in-game. They all had this weird choppy effect, like they were all forced into 30 fps when the rest of the game runs at 60. The whole thing was choppy, unintelligible, and uninteresting. Couldn't bring myself to finish it.

Then there's the "Nightmares" Zombie campaign I was pretty excited for, and it turned out to be equally as bad (if not worse, thanks to the absolutely cringe-worthy voiceover throughout).

Meanwhile, I'm playing through MW2 and AW campaigns right now instead, and it's astonishing the difference in quality. Those were some good campaigns. Really hope IW makes a solid effort at it.
 
I'd give it points for trying something compared to the Battlefield 3&4 campaigns but it is easily one of the worst thing I have ever played.


The mindfuck twist thats only revealed it the fast loading screen almost makes it worse.
 
deadscreensky said:
I can see how during the design process the more experimental story seemed like a good idea, because it's actually fairly interesting and has a lot of potential narrative weight. It doesn't even sound particularly tricky: your character is critically wounded at the end of the first level, and the rest of the game is just a long virtual reality dream/hallucination of you coming to terms with dying. That's a genuinely cool story, it's reasonably Black Ops in terms of tone and theme (especially the original and its big focus on fake realities), and multiple well-regarded movies (which I won't spoil) feature similar plots, though admittedly generally without the sci-fi tinge. The Corvus stuff is particularly interesting, because if you wanted you could even interpret that as some sort of spiritual angle -- unusual territory for an FPS. I totally get why Treyarch sat down and decided to go with this.

But combine that story outline with a long FPS campaign designed for co-op play (i.e. noisy friends) and it just falls completely apart. Characters act irrational and obnoxious in a way that would be fine in a shorter film, but become excruciating over the 12 or so hours the game lasts. Obvious clues to what's going on (e.g. the handkerchief) stop being obvious when you spend multiple nights playing through the game and you don't even remember them.

I feel the gameplay design is strong, the campaign is still fun to (re-)play through because they made the combat sandbox so much larger than the COD norm, but the story just didn't work. Unfortunate.
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Basically this. They had a good idea. But they just had no idea how to execute it. I wonder what it would have been like if they had abandoned the notion of co-op. Maybe not much but maybe some stuff.

It's why I'm happy Infinite Warfare is going back to SP only.
 
Fbh said:
The twist was stupid but I enjoyed the campaign

Co-op with 2 friends definitely made it one of my favorite COD campaigns so far.

But around here it's considered to be the worst thing ever.
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I think it's because most people want to play CoD's campaign for a single player experience. BO3 completely falls on its face in that aspect. It's very clearly built to be a co-op experience first. So the usual rollercoaster ride that you expect from CoD campaigns really isn't there. As a single player game it's much slower because it's built more around enemy swarms than a linear set-piece driven experience. The end of the Hypocenter in particular is a good example of how much it's built more for co-op than a single player experience. Completing that alone on Veteran was a fucking nightmare.
 
You played one of the worst single player FPS campaigns ever conceived, with a plot that thinks is being smart but the reality is that is fucking stupid.
 
The whole end section with vine door portals and whatever the hell was going on in the story, that was not a good time. It's the first Call of Duty game I wanted to end sooner because I just wanted it to be over. The multiplayer made up for it, though.
 
AHA-Lambda said:
God I remember this piece of shit.

Waiting for someone to come in and say how the plot is secretly genius cos you didn't get the twist.

Even though said twist is something no one will get through playing the game normally, and even then, it's still a terrible twist!
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I mean, isn't that how most Metal Gear Solid games or MGS fans are (as OP seems to be?) :P
 
Kalentan said:
Basically this. They had a good idea. But they just had no idea how to execute it. I wonder what it would have been like if they had abandoned the notion of co-op. Maybe not much but maybe some stuff.

It's why I'm happy Infinite Warfare is going back to SP only.
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I think it would have helped dramatically, because they would have presumably added more cutscenes and other guided narrative elements.

At the same time the co-op was really fun to play so I'm torn. It let me specialize as a player in a way I couldn't in a normal COD campaign. Like maybe one stage I'd go all in as a support sniper while my inept friends kept rushing in and suiciding. I could play an actual role, and obviously there are many possible roles, which isn't something even BLOPS2 with all its character customization really allowed. There's some cool depth and replayability there.

But the IW campaign does seem like it's adding systems depth in other areas, so maybe it won't be an issue.
 
When the joke zombie campaigns makes as much sense as the main campaign, there might be an issue with the story.
 
SargerusBR said:
Still better than Ghosts
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Absolutely not. Ghosts was fairly unremarkable but at least shit was happening and you had your fair share of Call of Duty moments where shit hits the fan. Blops 3 has almost none of that, which I think is partially due to it being designed for 4 player coop. The levels are fairly big but there's fuck all going on. The moments that are supposed to be cool and different go on for way too long and are not fun to play at all, like that shitty zombie sequence. It sounds kinda interesting when you read or hear about it (like on the Giant Bomb goty discussion for best moment) but it plays like garbage. Lastly, while the story in Ghosts is fucking stupid, at least you can follow it, unlike the gibberish in Blops 3. It's a burning dumpster fire from beginning to end and the worst CoD singleplayer experience by far.

That being said, the trailers for Infinite Warfare make a way better impression and I'm looking forward to that campaign.

danmaku said:
Tbh, your description makes me want to play it.
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It's a trap!
 
Stolen from http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Black_Ops_III

Why they didn't go with this I'll never know. It's a FAR better story than the one we got.

Prior to the beginning of each mission, a stream of text scrolls across the screen too fast to be read normally without pausing the game. These texts are a series of mission reports by John Taylor. The first text describes the events of the mission in Ethiopia, in which Hendricks' team were left behind during the extraction of Minister Said and Lt. Khalil and overrun by Grunts, with the sole survivor taken to Zurich for emergency lifesaving surgery as well as recruited into the Cyber Soldier program, with Taylor personally interfacing with the sole survivor through their DNIs to assist in their recuperation. However, the mission report differs from the events of the game in that it reports the sole survivor of the mission in Ethiopia (the Player) actually died due to surgical complications during the surgery to install their cybernetic augmentations.

The remaining mission reports by John Taylor take place a significant period of time prior to the mission in Ethiopia, describing John Taylor's induction into the C.I.A.'s Black Ops program and his time serving alongside operatives Dylan Stone, Javier Ramirez, Alice Conrad, and Joseph Fierro, with Jacob Hendricks acting as their commanding officer. Several months prior to the Ethiopia mission, Stone, Ramirez, Conrad, and Fierro were sent to investigate a silent alarm triggered by an abandoned C.I.A. laboratory deep underneath the destroyed Coalescence Corporation building in Singapore. There, Stone and his team discovered evidence the C.I.A. had been engaged in illegal human DNI testing on kidnapped criminals, as well as recreating the vicious airborne virus Nova 6, its accidental release was responsible for the Singapore disaster and the resulting 300,000 deaths. Stone and his team threatened to go public with this information, at which point they were targeted for termination by the C.I.A. In retaliation, Stone's team decided to defect to the CDP, trading classified Winslow Accord data to assist their escape.

Taylor and Hendricks were assigned to hunt down their former squadmates, assisted by C.I.A. LNO Rachel Kane. Javier Ramirez was killed inside the C.I.A. lab while attempting to upload additional classified information to the public internet. Taylor, Hendricks, and Kane then tracked the remaining team members to Egypt, where the NRC had used the information leaked by Stone to gain a tactical advantage and seize control of the capital of Cairo. With the assistance of Egyptian military officer Lt. Zeyad Khalil, Taylor's group successfully fought through NRC forces and tracked down and eliminated Alice Conrad and Joseph Fierro. During the course of the mission, Hendricks voiced increasing moral objections to their assignment, feeling morally conflicted with having to assassinate his former teammates. Meanwhile, Taylor and Kane developed a close relationship but explicitly states that it is neither sexual nor romantic and does not impair his ability to carry out his missions.

Working with Lt. Khalil, Taylor's group ultimately triggered a civilian uprising against the NRC in Cairo, killing the NRC's military leader General Hakim and pursuing Dylan Stone through the NRC's regional headquarters of Lotus Towers. During the course of the fighting, Khalil's position was overrun and he was captured by the NRC. Taylor confronted Stone in a final battle on the roof of the Towers, but received serious injuries as a result. Hendricks arrived to save Taylor at the last moment. In the aftermath, Taylor was recruited into the experimental Cyber Soldier program, ultimately being assigned to lead a new team consisting of Sebastian Diaz, Sarah Hall, and Peter Maretti. Meanwhile, Hendricks resigned from the Black Ops assassination team due to his moral objections to the work, and transferred to a different Black Ops team involved in less controversial activities such as hostage rescue. Upon this decision, Kane chose to break up with Taylor due to her disagreement with his decision to join the Cyber Soldier program, leaving behind her bandana, which Taylor can be seen wearing as a keepsake during the mission in Ethiopia. By the time the rescue operation was conducted, Kane had returned to the CIA and broken off all association with Taylor, who stated to Hendricks that the relationship "didn't work out."
 
The zenith of Call of Duty storylines was the marine campaign of Modern Warfare 2.

The best COD storylines were the ones that were just about regular soldiers surviving battles moment by moment, part of a war much bigger than themselves. Mostly that means the World War II games but the marine missions in the first couple Modern Warfare games did a good job with this too. They they transformed it into special forces super soldiers singlehandedly winning the whole war.

Kalentan said:
Eh... Ghosts story was dumb, like really really fucking dumb. But I think the levels and such were far more memorable. Though granted still less memorable than previous games.
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I feel the same way about basically all IW's games. The storylines and reasons for the wars happening are stupid as fuck, but the moment-to-moment level design is still pretty great. Ghosts is my favorite current-gen COD campaign. Advanced Warfare is close.
 
Campaign sounds way cooler than I expected and I almost just went ahead and bought it on a whim. Does anyone like it?
 
It really is a shame, BLOPS 1 and 2 are some of the best campaigns in the franchise, and then they follow them up with what is arguably the worst one.

As mediocre as entries like MW3 and Ghost's were, they were at least cohesive and had a small handful of memorable levels each. I can't think of a single level in BLOPS 3 that I want to replay nor any that really stuck out. I can appreciate how bonkers the game got near the end, but not even Christopher Meloni could save that mess of a campaign.
 
Falchion said:
Yeah it was bad, stupifyingly bad.
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This. So much this.

And a pain in the ass if you want to replay campaign missions just for the co-op shooting aspect, with all the intrusive cut-scenes, slow walking segments and full on mindless headtrippery that only gets worse as you progress through the campaign.

Not that its all that good even as a straight up shooter, though it has its moments here and there.

I still want future CODs to copy its single player loadouts/progression/intel/customization ideas though. Its the template I've always wanted in COD and I hope that it returns. Just need to have a campaign that makes that stuff really worthwhile.
 
hampig said:
Campaign sounds way cooler than I expected and I almost just went ahead and bought it on a whim. Does anyone like it?
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ohgod.jpg
 
hampig said:
Campaign sounds way cooler than I expected and I almost just went ahead and bought it on a whim. Does anyone like it?
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I shared complaints about the story already -- cool concept, poor execution and pacing -- but I had a lot of fun with the campaign and its gameplay. It's the usual COD gunplay and movement (i.e. really fun shit), only evolved and polished to a new level. And for the record there's actually lots of set pieces and other traditional COD stuff in it, you get big in-game 'environmental cinematics', rail-shooting sequences, chases, unique equipment in certain situations, etc. I'm not sure why some posters are pretending otherwise. I'm sure most people are being genuine, but the amount of hatred and hyperbole certain GAFers direct at BLOPS3 is still a little bewildering, even incomprehensible. I understand disliking the game, but the level of outright hatred is bizarre.

It's definitely more fun in co-op though, and seems designed largely around that. Fair warning there.

I do wish the campaign hopped around a bit more when it comes to environments and eras, Treyarch definitely did that much better in their previous games. Spending so many missions in Singapore feels a little same-y, for example, even if the actual environments tend to demonstrate some real variety. One of the coolest things about the previous BLOPS games is you were constantly getting thrown into totally unexpected situations and places, and 3 fails there. But the actual moment-to-moment combat in BLOPS3 is great fun.
 
Not only was the campaign story garbage, but the levels were about double the length they needed to be each. There were only a few good ones, like the stealth parts(CoD usually has amazing stealth levels though).
 
Ugh! Absolutely terrible campaign. I'm not sure I even made it halfway - the story was awful and the gameplay was mediocre... thankfully the MP was decent. I know a lot of people here detest AW (I enjoyed the MP :) ) but at least the campaign was miles better than this POS.
 
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