Call of Duty: Black Ops 3.5

Last week I said that I would do a review on the Destiny 2 Warmind DLC, but with the reveal trailers of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 being released, I couldn’t resist sharing my thoughts. When my friend first told me about the game, I immediately condemned the game as a failure waiting to happen and the final nail in the COD coffin. But after watching all of the trailers, I feel a bit more…optimistic.

Campaign–The first thing that made me question BO4 was the lack of a campaign. Call of Duty has had some amazing campaigns in the past, that’s no secret. Black Ops and Black Ops 2 both had great campaigns, with BO2 being regarded as one of the best in the entire COD series. The Modern Warfare trilogy is also famous for their quality campaigns, and I personally enjoyed Ghost’s campaign a lot. I have yet to play either Infinite Warfare and WWII’s campaigns, but my brother enjoyed IW. Now Black Ops 3, that’s where things start to fall apart. The campaign was rather confusing and disconnected from the other Black Ops games, and there was one brief reference to Raul Menendez from BO2, but that’s it. Plus it turns out that your character actually died after the first mission and the rest of it was a dream or something. Point is, it was weird, complex, and complicated, so people didn’t like it. Now BO4 has no campaign, and I understand that it would be somewhat difficult to connect all the Black Ops games after BO3, but it makes me personally rather concerned for the game.

Zombies–Treyarch started the COD Zombies craze, so it makes sense that they would continue the tradition in this installation, and boy does it look interesting. The first trailer I saw, IX, looks rather unique, because the four new characters have traveled back in time to what looks like Rome, where they battle a horde of zombies created by a cult. And they’re gladiators fighting in a coliseum-esque arena. It looks interesting, and I’m curious to see what it’s like when it’s out, especially because it may be more melee combat oriented than other maps, but that’s just my speculation based off the trailer. The next map I saw was Voyage of Despair. This map follows the same four new characters as they have to fight off a horde of zombies on a cruise ship, because they were trying to secure some artifact, but a guy activated it, thereby turning everyone on the ship into a zombie. The same transformation thing occurred in IX with the cult leader turning all of the slave/sacrifice people into zombies. These two maps look rather intriguing, and I look forward to seeing how they connect to the Origins Timeline (it has a specific name but I forgot). And now for Blood of the Dead. I legitimately got goosebumps when I saw the trailer for Blood of the Dead. Mob of the Dead, one of the beloved DLC maps from BO2, is finally getting remastered, but this time with Edward Richtofen, Tank Dempsey, Nikolai Belinski, and Takeo Masaki as the playable characters. It would appear that the overarching Zombies story is still continuing somehow, and Revelations wasn’t exactly the end, but only the released game will tell.

Multiplayer–Now this is where my concern for the game comes back. I wasn’t concerned about Zombies at all, I know that Treyarch knows what they’re doing when it comes to Zombies, but I’m more wary about multiplayer. BO3’s multiplayer was rather…irritating. SMGs always had as much range as the assault rifles, the Brecci shotgun was mildly overpowered, specialists were obnoxious, as were their stupid taunts (whoever decided to add in the dab deserves to be fired), some kill streaks (RAPS) were broken and more or less guaranteed that the person who got them would win the game for their team, and supply drops (Hey, how about we add the cool new guns into the worst iteration of the supply drop system, thereby making them virtually impossible to obtain, but if you want ugly camos, costumes, and gestures we got you covered). And BO4 looks very, very similar. Specialists are returning, but they seem to have slightly different abilities, and there’s a manual health regeneration now. The inclusion of specialists does make me rather concerned again, because they were extremely annoying in BO3. However, a good friend of mine plans on pre-ordering the game, and he told me that he would get me a beta code so I can try out the multiplayer and see how good (or bad) it really is for myself.

Blackout–And finally, BO4 has a battle royale mode. I heard the rumors but I always dismissed them as that, rumors. But it’s true. BO4 will have a battle royale mode, and I really don’t know what to think. I’m really not a fan of battle royale games, so it pains me a bit to see it coming to a game series I enjoy. I know that I don’t have to play it, but in theory, the battle royale mode is about 1/3 of the game. Who knows, maybe Blackout will be ridiculously fun and entertaining, or maybe it will suck. Maybe the battle royale genre will have died off and faded in popularity by the time of BO4’s release. Only time will tell. However, one thing in the trailer did catch my eye, and that’s the ability to play as different characters. At first, you just see the standard multiplayer specialists, but towards the end, you can clearly see Richtofen and Nikolai. This really does make me curious, and I wonder if it will just be like skins in Fortnite or if there will be different characters, each with their own special abilities.

All in all, BO4 could easily flop, but it could be a great game just the same. I don’t know. When my friend told me about all of the new features, he and I just complained and I hoped that the game would fail. After watching the trailers, I’m somewhat conflicted now. I’m looking forward to the beta, because when I play that, I can see what the game will be like and judge it for myself.