It’s just a month until Activision unleashes the latest title in its blockbusting Call of Duty series. And while we’ve seen plenty of information on how Black Ops 3 is tweaking the multiplayer experience, there’s been much less focus on the single-player campaign mode.
Set 40 years after the events of Black Ops 2, the world is now divided into a patchwork of international alliances, all investigating advanced cybernetic and bio-augmentation technologies. The narrative follows a group of robotically enhanced super soldiers, investigating the disappearance of a CIA operative in Singapore, as well as a huge data leak of military secrets.
During a reveal event in April, developer Treyarch announced that the campaign would be a four-player co-op mode with large, open environments – it even promised a more complex story in which multiple playthroughs may be required to get the full picture.
But how does this play out in practice? Recently, we got to play a demo of the Campaign mode – here’s what we discovered.
It turns out, co-operative play isn’t just an option – playing with up to three friends, or with others online, will be the core campaign experience. It’s the first time co-op has featured in Call of Duty since World at War, and this time each player will be bringing in their own individual rank progression and class customisations as well as the game’s new features: tactical rigs (which provide physical boosts like longer jumps and sprinting times) and cybercores (which provide special skills).
The latter are pretty interesting. There are three different categories: Cybercore Chaos is all about destruction, with options such as Immolation, which uses enemy explosives like grenades and enables you to destroy robots; Cybercore Martial is more about the player – Active Camo, for example allows you to become invisible for a short amount of time; finally Cybercore Control is all about hacking, allowing you to, say, take control of an enemy robot or aircraft. The latter means you’ll be able to undertake aerial raids whenever you want, not just when the scripted mission demands it.
Furthmore, each player’s configurations will be based on the decisions they have made throughout their campaign experience: the more you play, the more cybercores, weapon attachments and other pieces of equipment you’re able to unlock and utilise. What we’ll hopefully see then are parties of players with very different experiences and abilities, having to use those disparate skills together – almost like an RPG guild.
To emphasis this sense of cooperation, more experienced players will be able to lend advanced weapons to their friends, allowing them to compete in missions that they aren’t yet equipped for. Once the level is over, the gun is returned. It’s an interesting attempt to encourage social play beyond simply turning up at the start of a mission with a bunch of strangers and no intention of working together.
The DNI (Direct Neural Interface) is a major new feature
Black Ops 3 is set in 2065 and there have been a major advances in robotic and bionic technology since the Black Ops 2 timeline – as we saw in the “Ember” trailer. Direct neural interfacing, part of a new Tactical Mode accessed via the d-pad, let’s you tap into the visual stream from any of your team mates. In other words, you can see what they see. The idea is, it’ll allow you to identify enemy types and dangerous locations on the map; it will also show, via an augmented reality HUD, where your grenade will land at the current throwing angle.
What we found from the demo is that it could well open a whole new level of tactics. If you want all your teammates to see the location of every enemy in the area, you can place one of your team on a high vantage point – they can then move safely through the area or at least figure out the best way to engage every situation. It’s also possible to find out which enemies can see you, based on the colour layered over the area you’re in. This could prove especially useful on higher difficulties as you’ll know key areas to avoid altogether.
Again, the idea is to get players thinking together, rather than simply making separate run-n-gun forays into each mission. The problem is, that’s kind of how a lot of people play Call of Duty – this isn’t Ghost Recon, after all. Treyarch seems to be aiming for a big culture change in CoD play – it’ll be interesting to see if the level design and co-operative tools are really sophisticated enough to bring this level of strategic planing into play.
The Safe House is a fun extra – with hidden features
Before players enter each mission, they access the Safe House, an area in which they can customise their character, set class loadouts, learn more about the upcoming objectives as well as show off achievements to friends.
Within the Safe House every player has their own “Bunkroom” which contains a wardrobe for character customisation, a little like GTA Online, and a Medal Case, which holds awards you’ve earned after completing tasks in the campaign. You also have a trunk to stores collectible, which you can use to personalise your Bunkroom. Any of your co-op friends can work into your room and view your customised layout. It’s another little RPG feature, which doesn’t add huge amounts to the actual gameplay experience, but just enhances that sense of playing alongside other people, and actually having an existence within the game’s universe.
Each safe house also contains a computer terminal, or PDV, like the computer found in Black Ops 1, giving access to background information (in fact, it houses 100 times more files that its predecessor). There’s background info on the events between Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 3, as well as hidden Easter egg’s and a few surprise game modes. There was an arcade-style zombie mini-game in Black Ops 1, so could potentially expect something very similar to that...
There’s a whole new difficulty setting
Forget Veteran, in Realistic mode, players will only have a single point of health, meaning the slightest damage will bring you down, whether that’s being caught on the edge of a grenade blast or taking a pistol round that’s been fired through a wall. Of course, the whole notion of ‘realism’ is rather stretched in a game set forty years in the future and featuring bio-augmented super soldiers battling intelligent robot tanks, but this is going to be a major challenge for fans. What next? Call of Duty permadeath?
You can skip to the end of the Campaign mode if you like
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