Call of Duty: Black Ops III

 PC
User Score
3.7

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 1426 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 324 out of 1426
  2. Mixed: 256 out of 1426
  3. Negative: 846 out of 1426
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  1. TitaniumDragon
    Jan 3, 2018
    4
    Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is a game that really wants you to know that it is pretty. The game’s splash screen is nice looking, the menus look nice, and the characters all are quite high-fidelity and mostly look quite good, though the odd NPC has a case of plastic face. The explosions are pretty, the guns are pretty, the robots are pretty…

    But while all of this is nice, the eternal    Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is a game that really wants you to know that it is pretty. The game’s splash screen is nice looking, the menus look nice, and the characters all are quite high-fidelity and mostly look quite good, though the odd NPC has a case of plastic face. The explosions are pretty, the guns are pretty, the robots are pretty…

    But while all of this is nice, the eternal question facing me when I’m playing a game is “am I having fun?” And when I was playing this game, for much of its length, my response to that would be “Kind of?” at best.

    This is a game I put down for a year between playing the first three missions and completing the game. That isn’t to say I didn’t try to play it again; I remember picking it up about four months after putting it down, deciding to replay the second (tutorial) mission because I’d forgotten the controls, then doing so again several months later, because both times, while I had beaten the tutorial mission again, I just sort of didn’t feel terribly compelled to play the rest of the game.

    Indeed, I think it is safe to say that the only reason why I actually bothered beating this game is because it was eating up over 90 gigs of hard drive space, and thus, if I ever was going to beat it, I’d better do it now, because there was no way I was going to redownload it.

    And this is kind of telling, I think. I had to make myself play through the game, and while it was never actually bad, it was never really compelling, either. There were lots of pretty battles in exploding and falling apart places - in fact, every single level after the first two missions features at least some part of the level falling apart around you, and some of the later levels, the whole level is falling apart around you. This trick gets a bit old after a while, doubly so as these are never actually threatening – I never once had the level fall apart under me and actually kill me, despite the game trying to seem threatening about it.

    And this sort of faux spectacle held through much of the game – there were a lot of theoretically spectacular battles, but almost the entire game consisted of fighting just some dudes with guns or robots with guns, dressed up to try and look pretty. But I wanted the gameplay to be pretty too, and despite the fact that you can double jump and run on the walls, this was almost never useful in actual combat.

    This is, I think, a big part of what made the game feel dull – you are a cybernetic supersoldier, but throughout the game, just a few bullets will kill you, forcing you to retreat to cover and gradually shoot out from it. This is not a game with click-to-cover mechanics – you have to organically take cover behind environment objects by moving/ducking/going prone behind them and then shifting around to take potshots before retreating – but in the end, it doesn’t matter much. Most of the game is spent hiding in cover, trying to avoid getting shot while your health regenerates, and almost every battle is fought in this exact same way.

    This is a big problem, because it means that, for all the set dressing, the core of the game is pretty samey. There’s only a few battles where a boss (of which there are a couple) will actually either destroy the environment around you or move around to force you to react, and a small number of setpiece battles where enemies move to flank you or appear from various directions, forcing you to react.

    Most of the time, you can just sit behind cover, shoot people, then go back to the cover while you regain your health, making it feel like a pretty standard FPS. Your cool cybernetic movement enhancements are only occaisionally useful in battle, and then, it is mostly just jumping up to a higher level, rather than making your way around the environment in an agile manner and raining down death on your foes while running along walls.

    This lack of dynamicism carries over to the powers as well – in theory, the cybernetic powers are supposed to make you feel different from a standard soldier. Some were reminiscent of the plasmids from the Bioshock series.

    But ultimately, these largely weren’t that interesting in actual gameplay. The problem was that a lot of them ultimately trivialized encounters. Fireflies, for instance, would fly out and set enemies on fire and distract them from firing – a very powerful ability, that only took a few seconds to recharge after it had run. I used this power through much of the campaign. But the problem was it was never really fun to use; I’d use the power, duck behind cover, then move out and shoot people (who mostly died anyway due to the fireflies, no further involvement necessary from me).

    All in all, this is a game that I never felt like I needed to play. It was not terrible, but it was never great, and when I walked away from it, I never felt like I was missing anything.    … Expand
  2. miamibreak
    Nov 9, 2015
    4
    Sci-fi is cool, CoD (more or less) cool but mixing together wasn't a particularly good idea...again. Story is a huge whatever (again), gameplay too. Stuttering on 870 GTX is very frustrating, has lots of typical big studio optimalization bugs. FFS, in 2015, it's not enough. Maybe the game itself it's good for 13 y olds but maybe not. Whatevs, I'm selling this crap - if I can.
  3. muzmuz
    Jan 27, 2018
    4
    A technical unoptimized cesspit of a Call of Duty game with generic/incomprehensive story line, clunky controls, and disappointing gameplay.
  4. LimitedEdition
    Mar 7, 2020
    4
    Singleplayer has a bad story and a very boring, repetitive setting. The new gameplay elements do not really enrich the game but rather make the overall gaming experience more inconstistent. Multiplayer is not really to recommend these days anymore, as player count is too low for having a solid reliable experience matchmaking-wise.
  5. KitsunePrince
    Nov 12, 2015
    4
    The Game series is tired and needs to go away for awhile as much as horror games need to. The game is hardly playable on PC and stutters worst then a game locked at 30 fps. Word of advice to Activision, please stop making games for a year or two, we won't hate you for it
  6. endermeister
    Dec 14, 2015
    4
    WTF you can slide up stairs. Fuc* gravity. though overall good grafic a kind of boring campaign but good online gameplay. recomend but still is unreal.
  7. miccael
    May 27, 2019
    4
    Wow this game is a mess on PC. Finally they added MOD support but oh my it was horrible on launch.
  8. megumin_OwO
    Mar 31, 2019
    4
    hahahhahahhahhahahahahhahahahahhaahahhahahahahhahhahahhahahahahhahahaah funny
  9. r03vg
    Oct 22, 2021
    4
    Проходняк обычный. Персонажи скучные, сюжет глупый, да ещё и растянут ордами врагов.
  10. Fallconex
    Jun 16, 2021
    4
    This game is a disaster. The campaign is a mess. The ending is ridiculous. I didn't like the atmosphere, it's weird. Graphics and action are maybe OK, but the gameplay ideas were not so good.
    P.S.: поезд сделал БУМ
  11. Legicey
    Mar 2, 2022
    4
    Story: Big story, Bad story, Make no sense story. I don't care about any of the characters and I don't think Treyarch did either. 1.5/10

    Gameplay: What you would expect from COD. Generic shooty shooty with added jet packs (although it is better than the "boosters" from AW). I HATE the maps, they are way too linear to have any fun and they don't really go well with the ""advanced    Story: Big story, Bad story, Make no sense story. I don't care about any of the characters and I don't think Treyarch did either. 1.5/10

    Gameplay: What you would expect from COD. Generic shooty shooty with added jet packs (although it is better than the "boosters" from AW). I HATE the maps, they are way too linear to have any fun and they don't really go well with the ""advanced movement*"". Although it is still fun to shoot things because the gunplay is alright. 5/10

    Graphics: The kind that looks meh when the game first comes out but also doesn't really age with time. 5.5/10 (for 2022) 6.5/10 (for 2015).

    Sound: Generic Call of Duty sounds. 5/10

    Stability: Alright now, but I heard it was a broken mess at launch (however that doesn't really affect my score) 7/10

    Zombies: Better than BO1. 8/10

    Overall: I really don't care about this game. BO3 does some stuff alright but it also does some stuff horribly. I would give it a 5 but the campaign is just so bad that the zombies would have to be perfect to get that score so I have to give it a 4/10 instead.    … Expand
  12. Shekky
    Nov 3, 2016
    3
    This game is a total rip off of titanfall 2 without the mechs portion. The Gameplay is somewhat decent but still in the same boat of futuristic shooter that is not at all what activision should be working on.
  13. Baronz
    Dec 25, 2015
    3
    This game should be called CoD LSD Trip Ops... Aside from the terrible lags even with a good system, the story is really unepic, the worst CoD i ever played...
  14. ultraviper
    Sep 10, 2019
    3
    I only played this for the single player and it was buggy as all hell. I would get lag. In single player. Not talking about frames per second or video here, but actual lag. The game kept telling me "connection interrupted" which is very strange because I only ever used the "play offline" option from the game's main menu.

    Another big bug happens the game gets paused. Yes, pausing the    I only played this for the single player and it was buggy as all hell. I would get lag. In single player. Not talking about frames per second or video here, but actual lag. The game kept telling me "connection interrupted" which is very strange because I only ever used the "play offline" option from the game's main menu.

    Another big bug happens the game gets paused. Yes, pausing the game, something that basically every game in the last 30 years has managed to implement without screwing the game up, will screw the game up. Scripted cutscenes will continue playing while paused, or will fail to play when the game is unpaused. Unpausing also makes animations of enemies stop playing and they just float around frozen.

    Also... why the ops gotta be black?    … Expand
  15. hein
    Nov 6, 2015
    3
    You would think that 24gb of ram is enough for just about anything. NOT the case with Call of Duty: Black Ops III. I frequently crash to the desktop and I'm still not sure what is causing that. The system I'm running is slightly older with a core i7 920, GTX 970 and as mentioned above 24gb ddr3. The specs are more than adequate for running this game at high settings, however, I have had toYou would think that 24gb of ram is enough for just about anything. NOT the case with Call of Duty: Black Ops III. I frequently crash to the desktop and I'm still not sure what is causing that. The system I'm running is slightly older with a core i7 920, GTX 970 and as mentioned above 24gb ddr3. The specs are more than adequate for running this game at high settings, however, I have had to lower the settings considerably just to get the game running. So not only is 24gb not sufficient, neither is the GDDR5 ram on the gpu. There are significant frame drops during gameplay and cut-scenes. The game to simply put it is horribly optimized. I will be asking for a refund.… Expand
  16. veyron2222
    Nov 28, 2015
    3
    as always the campaign is amazing and gives you lots of fun but when you finish the game and go to the multiplayer the game is the same game it always was, a disappointment.
    i promised my self to not buy any COD game and still bought this one and after i finished the campaign i realized how bad was the decision to buy it.
  17. Uxz
    Nov 6, 2015
    3
    First Call of Duty I didn't like. Just didn't "feel it" (Note, this is based on multiplayer, never touched COD singel player). Awful optimization issues did not help, 5930K/970 SLI and frame drops to 10-20 fps ever 30sec from 100. Seems to have bad memory leak issues.
  18. PAA1
    Nov 17, 2015
    3
    From 100fps to directly dropping to 20-25 = This is BS

    I got FX 8350, 16 GB Ram, Asus GTX 970, - all up and running on OC mode. And still i am facing sudden FPS drops, gets worse while playing multiplayer. Completed the Story & Nightmare mode with slopy FPS issues. Story is OK - yet Nightmare mode is even worse Haven't tried the Zombies mode yet, but i don't think its worth    From 100fps to directly dropping to 20-25 = This is BS

    I got FX 8350, 16 GB Ram, Asus GTX 970, - all up and running on OC mode.
    And still i am facing sudden FPS drops, gets worse while playing multiplayer.

    Completed the Story & Nightmare mode with slopy FPS issues.
    Story is OK - yet Nightmare mode is even worse
    Haven't tried the Zombies mode yet, but i don't think its worth playing now.

    And since last 2 days, while playing Multiplayer - constantly getting disconnected from the server.
    Can't play it any longer now - the server issue is even worse now than Titanfall

    First, Batman Arkham Knight and now BO3 - it seems that developers are now not keen enough to make games better compatible with PC.

    On the other hand, Ubisoft - after there last year's disaster with AC: Syndicate, they are now started pushing back the PC release - AC: Unity first consoles than PC, Far Cry: Primal first console than PC, I guess the same with The Division, and few others.    … Expand
  19. tarcom
    May 11, 2016
    3
    人がいなすぎてTDMとドミネ以外はプレイできません
    このゲームだけじゃなく、call of dutyシリーズは毎回こんな状態。
    いい加減アクティビジョンはテコ入れするべき。
    売り逃げして恥ずかしくないのか？
  20. ragnarokew
    Dec 15, 2015
    3
    Here we go i dont want to write early review so i wait some for patches and gain some play time

    source:50 hours gameplay. Why very low ratings ? Because game deserves very low ratings there is too much thing to fix and game is expensive.My computer near good-good+ but i barely can take 60fps and too much people have problem with optimization if game not gonna be stable then what's to    Here we go i dont want to write early review so i wait some for patches and gain some play time

    source:50 hours gameplay.

    Why very low ratings ? Because game deserves very low ratings there is too much thing to fix and game is expensive.My computer near good-good+ but i barely can take 60fps and too much people have problem with optimization if game not gonna be stable then what's to point of playing ?

    Very bad campaign don't even play not worth

    Fun Multiplayer new specialist thing adds more fun unless game freeze.Multiplayer is good but they can still fix some things; weapons (smg long distance,shoutgun annoying) ,flamethrower tottaly annoying , too much jumping , not much player etc. etc.

    Zombies: Well this time nice job i really like zombies finnaly good ai , im giving 3 for zombie mod but you have to buy dlc for upcoming maps

    Worth buying ?

    NO    … Expand
  21. sashaCZ1
    Nov 11, 2015
    3
    I didn't expect that from Treyarch. I really liked both Black Ops and Black Ops 3.. But after playing this.. (cough) **** I thought it's Infinity Ward's CoD. Awful graphics, no optimization whatsoever. Boring singleplayer, characters. There's nothing good in this game. Not even multiplayer. One of the worst CoD games EVER made. I rate 3 out of 10.
  22. Brend0g
    Nov 14, 2015
    3
    I'm just going to state the facts

    Painfully boring and the same linear campaign. It has no creativity and inspiration.Multiplayer is better than the Advance Warfare and Ghosts (the only good thing). The main thing for me is that buggy, crashing multiple time in half an hour and those fine for 2-3 hours before crashing repeatedly for another half an hour. Frustrating and annoying.    I'm just going to state the facts

    Painfully boring and the same linear campaign. It has no creativity and inspiration.Multiplayer is better than the Advance Warfare and Ghosts (the only good thing). The main thing for me is that buggy, crashing multiple time in half an hour and those fine for 2-3 hours before crashing repeatedly for another half an hour. Frustrating and annoying.

    Overall a bad quality game, don't buy.    … Expand
  23. hanibrl
    Dec 2, 2015
    3
    to be honest , call of duty should stop producing any further games . why they are stuck on future wars ? beside the bad optimization i don't see a story , if like a war games i like it to be realistic set in the US or maybe Russia etc with an ak-47 with some nice graphics that's it ****
  24. weariedalmond42
    Nov 23, 2015
    3
    it is horrible for pc you must have the i3 processor or it will not work for i5 i7 or any others and I'm getting a refund unless that patch comes soon and its another call of duty advanced warfare and titan fall so if you have those games just don't buy it and what they did to last gen they didn't give them all kinds of stuff they d at should at least have update have everything they leftit is horrible for pc you must have the i3 processor or it will not work for i5 i7 or any others and I'm getting a refund unless that patch comes soon and its another call of duty advanced warfare and titan fall so if you have those games just don't buy it and what they did to last gen they didn't give them all kinds of stuff they d at should at least have update have everything they left out.If I could score this I would give it a 3.1.I'm a huge cod fan but this was a let down I wish it was world at war 2 I bet that would be better than what this is th is a low spot for call of duty.… Expand
  25. Pedobear987
    Apr 16, 2016
    3
    Confié en treyarch para que trajera un buen port a PC pero me arrepiento de haber pagado 60 euros por un juego lageado a mas no poder, solucion comprad una PS4 o XBOX ONE para poder jugar porque no vale la pena comprarlo para PC.
  26. alain9331
    Apr 17, 2016
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Estaba muy ilusionado con este CoD, sobre todo por quien lo hace, acostumbrados a sus buenos ports para PC como Black Ops 2. Pero es una vergüenza lo mal optimizado que está y el lag que hay siempre, seas host o no, es habitual ver +100 de ping en la mayoría de usuarios en partida, da igual que conexión tengas, 1 mb o 300 mb...y ya que haya que tenre un pc con +8GB para que vaya estable en la mayoría de casos, es una pasada. Ni The Witcher 3...

    Luego, lo he probado con mi portátil con una 840m un i7 y 8GB de Ram, con el que corro BF4 en Ultra a 768p y +30 fps y si lo bajo a medios +60 fps sin problemas... y aquí tengo que bajar la resolución a 720p y rescalado a 600p para que vaya estable a 35fps con todo en bajo. Lo dicho, vergonzoso, y más aún habiendo tenido 3 años de desatollo y una beta pública casi 3 semanas entre todas las plataformas.

    Sin contar todo esto, y hablando solo del juego... pienso lo que pensé en la beta: hemos visto los mejores mapas y el resto estoy seguro que serán muy genéricos y pasilleros. Con el 4º mapa de la beta ''stronghold'' se empezaron a cumplieron mis sospechas, y ahora con la salida del juego se terminan de confirmar... mapas ratoneros llenos de ventanas y huecos, perfectos para Camperos. Solo 3 o 4 se salvan en mi opinión (Combine, Evac, Hunted y Nuk3town) y uno de ellos es de bonus por reserva y reciclado de los otros dos Black Ops. Sin contar todas las cosas ue tienes para guarrear: minas trampas y eléctricas, poder ver las huellas de los enemigos, mira térmica para camperos, sexto sentido para ver en el mini mapa sin uav cuando tienes enemigos cercanos, armas que no hace falta ni apuntar para matar... da puto asco.

    3/10 por el modo zombis que es divertido y la campaña que es entretenida y rejugable (cuando te la pasas una vez te la puedes pasar una segunda con una historia un poco diferente mezclando zombis). El resto, BASURA.    … Expand
  27. Shatter77
    Dec 3, 2016
    3
    *Single player only review*

    Words can barely convey how awful the campaign is. It attempts to tell a kind of cyberpunk story of technology run amok. It is utterly inept at even keeping your attention while at it. Right off the bat, you have no clue who the good or bad guys are or why you're doing what you're doing, or even what the game tries to tell you is happening. As the plot gets    *Single player only review*

    Words can barely convey how awful the campaign is. It attempts to tell a kind of cyberpunk story of technology run amok. It is utterly inept at even keeping your attention while at it. Right off the bat, you have no clue who the good or bad guys are or why you're doing what you're doing, or even what the game tries to tell you is happening. As the plot gets clearer though, it becomes obvious how derivative and pedestrian it is. Treyarch delivers the story with totally misplaced bombast and freighted with emotion and meaning as if you haven't seen this stuff many times before in other games and film. The final mission, with your character railing and ranting is particularly cringe worthy. This is by far the worst Call of Duty I have ever played.

    Also, the music is terrible. I had all sorts of technical issues, like your gun not producing any sound, crashes to desktop, this a year after release. What a piece of ****    … Expand
  28. Greggg
    Sep 4, 2016
    3
    This is an excellent game, but the servers forced me to rate it so low. They are many times disconnected at zombies. I dont know for multi. It's so annoying
  29. VigilanteOito
    Jan 27, 2021
    3
    Eu curti todos os COD que joguei, mas esse não tem como.
    Pior campanha, personagens sem graça alguma, historia nada haver.
    Bugs e bugs.
  30. DivineDDT
    Dec 9, 2020
    3
    The fact that it's only white character they have when you want to select your characters in campaign is a no for me. They got like 6 or maybe more characters both make and female each and they are all white. Plus gameplay is too Arcady, like wtf is wall run and double jump
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Awards & Rankings

21
#21 Most Discussed PC Game of 2015
35
#35 Most Shared PC Game of 2015

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 10
  3. Negative: 1 out of 10
  1. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Dec 3, 2015
    60
    A bit better than the Ghosts, but worse than Advanced Warfare – new Call of Duty is awkwardly trying to make some changes in single player, but adding a bunch of technical problems in the same time. Multiplayer it is flawless as usual. [Issue#258]
  2. Riot Pixels
    Nov 30, 2015
    60
    Treyarch should have created one awesome sci-fi campaign instead of three mediocre ones.
    Read full review
  3. Ragequit.gr
    Nov 14, 2015
    81
    Treyarch gives us a Call of Duty game that is brimming with content and is sure to provide hundreds of hours of entertainment to its buyers. It’s just a shame that the focus on the quantity of content ended up causing a lack of polish in some areas.
    Read full review
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