![]() That's not to say that Specialists have an entirely cosmetic impact. It suits a well-organised team, but a casual player might want to dip in simply for the baptism of fire that is having all your favourite assault rifles banished from play. ![]() Continuing with that parallel, the presence of an Arena playlist with the option to vote on which Specialists, perks, guns and gear make the cut is an obvious homage to the meta-games of DOTA and League of Legends. The idea, I think, isn't so much to change how the multiplayer works as to give it a human, or at least cyborg, face that might allow it to exist independently of an actual narrative - to acquire for Call of Duty's PvP component an ensemble charm comparable to that of a MOBA, with 'big names' a Twitch audience can rally behind, rather than generic classes or load-outs. ![]() They're presented, however, as fully functioning characters with bespoke animated menu screens, backstories, grating pre-match banter and medals. They are, in truth, nothing more profound than nine pairs of unlockable timed-use abilities, which charge up passively in the course of a battle, like Titanfall's Titans (also as in Titanfall, you can accelerate their arrival by piling up the bodies). Among its headline new features are the Specialists, nine multiplayer avatars who comprise a sort of cyberpunk Expendables. Predictably, the competitive multiplayer has adapted to changing times and tastes much more gracefully. I'd have liked a Loser's Circle too, with sarcastic clapping animations. 'Winner's Circles' are an opportunity for victorious Specialists to rub it in. And climatic battles too often default to chipping away at a juggernaut with a ridiculous health bar, rather than inviting you to make clever use of all the superhuman abilities at your disposal. But ultimately, the effect of having more players around is to make environments feel smaller, the rigid gating mechanisms all the more aggravating (there's the odd invisible barrier, even, while an NPC finishes uttering some forgettable line of dialogue). There are moments when the size of the environments and spread of auxiliary powers accommodate real teamwork - one player hanging back to remote-possess a trundling caterpillar mech, while another deploys nanobots to lock down infantry so that the remaining two players can wall-run into their midst, brandishing SMGs. The restoration of four-player co-op - a much-touted feature - underlines all this. Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are available, although minus the campaign. Availability: Also on Xbox One and PC.But at the end of the day, Black Ops 3's campaign embraces more of Call of Duty's old shortcomings than it casts aside. The new cybernetic abilities at least add nuance to larger firefights, and are the basis for some barmy, extremely self-aware level design. It alludes to the franchise's ongoing design hang-ups so frequently and explicitly that this is as much a cry for help as a battlecry. The story itself - a fretful piece of fourth-wall performance theatre that riffs on ethical and existential anxieties raised by the advent of military bio-augmentation - suggests a developer casting around for a sense of purpose. While ostensibly a question of hardware, Activision's decision to chop the campaign from the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Black Ops 3 sends a fairly unambiguous signal about which parts of the package it considers worth the asking price. ![]() That day isn't today, but perhaps it isn't far off. Where Treyarch's single-player struggles, the deftly tuned multiplayer soars, delivering a Call of Duty that's rich with options.Ī day will dawn when the muscularity and variety of Call of Duty's multiplayer component aren't enough to compensate for the muddled single-player - when the euphoria of a cross-map Tomahawk kill fails to outweigh the leaden writing, the hand-holding and the tedious inevitability of an on-rails vehicle sequence.
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