Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Beta, First Impressions

So I finally had a chance to try out the latest installment of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 multiplayer since the Beta was open for anyone with a PlayStation 4 until the 23rd. 

I tried it out for a couple of hours, just as an average joe of course (I was never too into Call of Duty). Now that I’m done dying multiple times, I thought I’d share some of the things I liked, and what I didn’t. So if you didn’t have the chance to try out the beta and are still curious about it, here’s an unbiased opinion! 

The Good

I know most of us want CoD to go back to the past, or maybe the present. Everything is just a bit too futuristic now…and I agree! But for now I also enjoy these futuristic shooters so this still carries the fun factor for me. 

The thrust jumps are back, but it’s not to the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare levels

The thrust jumps are back, but it’s not to the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare levels and to be frank, I count this as a huge plus. The problem with Advanced Warfare was that it was too ‘arcadey’. It all just boiled down to whoever had the quickest reaction time and/or got lucky in aiming your gun at the point the opposing player was going to land after thrusting all over the place. 

Black Ops 3 still has it, but its much better. You still have increased mobility but it doesn’t as much as it did in Advanced Warfare. It actually felt like a welcome addition this time without being annoyingly so. 

The ‘Specialist classes’ are a welcome addition as well.  

I don’t think I’m ‘qualified’ enough to talk much about this since I only tried out two. Don’t think I have enough time to try all of them, especially since I’m still sitting at level 8 on the Beta (only started it this morning). But from what I’ve tried, this adds a new sense of variety to the matches in addition to the usual scorestreaks, gun loadouts etc. 

I found myself preferring ‘Prophet’, the cyborg dude equipped with the ‘Tempest’; A weapon that can fire bolts of electricity after a brief delay allowing for an instant kill with the potential of arching onto more enemies for chain kills. 

He has a second loadout called ‘Glitch’ which allows him to warp back to an earlier point of time. But I still stuck with the ‘Tempest’ since it was just way too fun to use. 

Of course you can only use these specialized equipment after a certain amount of time, and you use it only for a rather brief duration as well (compared to the entire duration of the match). 

Think of it as using a super in Destiny.

The Bad

I compared the subclasses of the game in the likeness to Destiny earlier, it’s something that is unfortunately something that I feel might end up dragging this game down.

This feels like I’m playing Destiny! A more faster Destiny with wall running

This feels like I’m playing Destiny! A faster Destiny with wall running. It all just feels too similar that now I’m wondering if its really worth it to dump $60 into another FPS that offers a similar experience. True, this does offer more specialist classes than the same three (Hunter, Warlock, Titan) we keep seeing in Destiny but at the same time I feel like Destiny offers way more.

The specialized equipment feels like Destiny’s supers as well. Heck, Ruin (one of the specialists) can slam the ground with his ‘Gravity spikes’ to take out enemies around him with a shockwave. Titans in Destiny do the same.

I don’t know…maybe I’ve just played Bungie’s shooter too much.

The Ugly

Just kidding, there’s nothing so bad here. My time with the multiplayer was fun. It’s just that as someone who has to budget himself when it comes to video games, I have to really look for the value each game will offer and to me, Black Ops 3 just felt like a Call of Duty skin slapped onto Destiny which is making me question whether it’s truly worth it to invest in two rather similar FPS games. 

But then again, I’ve only ever been interested in the Call of Duty games for the multiplayer so maybe it’s not fair of me to make decisions based on just that. 

In the end though I feel like this game will not disappoint any CoD fans. While it has strayed further away from its original formula, it still feels more or less like the traditional Call of Duty.