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Call of Duty: Black Ops III

Call of Duty: Black Ops III

|United States|Adventure, Shooter

8.0 /10

Aww Great!

Super hit!

232.8k ratings
Time to beat
Main + extras
7.6h
Rating sources
Steam · Player score8.5/10232.2k ratingsIGDB · Critic score7.7/1018 ratingsIGDB · Player score6.8/10578 ratings
Trailers & screenshots
Why play it

Call of Duty: Black Ops III deploys players into a dark, twisted future where a new breed of Black Ops soldier emerges and the lines are blurred between our own humanity and the technology we created to stay ahead, in a world where cutting-edge military robotics define warfare. With three unique game modes: Campaign, Multiplayer and Zombies, providing fans with the deepest and most ambitious Call of Duty ever.

Story and worldbuilding

On October 27, 2065, the game begins with the Player and their new CO, Jacob Hendricks, infiltrating an NRC Airbase in Ethiopia to rescue Egyptian Prime Minister Said from the NRC with the assistance of John Taylor and his team of cybernetically enhanced soldiers part of the Winslow Accord Black Cyber-Ops Division. Needing to distract the NRC, the Player and Hendricks, along with Winslow Accord Special Forces Team Alpha, use the base's D.E.A.D system to shoot down an NRC plane. Disguised as NRC soldiers, the Player and Hendricks manage to infiltrate the base and rescue Said from the NRC, although they discover there are more prisoners than their Intel provided. The team soon become compromised after Said convinces them to rescue Lt. Khalil, an Egyptian Army veteran and war hero who the NRC plan to use as a tool in their campaign against the Egyptian people. They soon rendezvous with Taylor's Team after being cornered by NRC forces and proceed to escape the base, managing to procure an enemy APC. Before leaving, Hendricks convinces Taylor to rescue the other hostages after reminding that some part of him must still be human. While their escape is successful, the Player and Team Alpha are left behind after their evac harrier sustains heavy fire and bugs out to avoid being shot down, although Hendricks demands that they go back. The Player and Team Alpha are eventually overrun by enemy forces and the members of Team Alpha are killed and the Player is viciously attacked by an NRC Grunt, ripping both the Player's arms off and breaking their right leg until they are found and rescued by Taylor. Believing that it's the Player's best chance for survival, Taylor brings them to a research installation that specializes in the advanced cybernetic enhancements that Taylor and his team use and decides to use the same cybernetics in order to save the Player's life. The Player is later awakened onboard a train by Taylor, who reveals that the Player had survived the mission but had sustained life threatening injuries in the field. The Player soon learns that the train they're standing in is a simulation created within their DNIs. Revealing that the Player was given one and is currently in a medically induced coma, Taylor explains that their DNI's allows them to communicate with each other on a subconscious level and tells the Player that they have a long way to go. Taylor then introduces them to his unit, which consists of cyber operatives Sebastian Diaz, Sarah Hall, and Peter Maretti during a series of simulations of past battles that were connected with a terrorist attack on a Coalescence train inside the Player's own mind. Each operative assists the Player in putting the pieces together on how to use their new cybernetics in combat while also helping themselves progress through the simulated terrorist act. Although the Player proves themselves as an efficient soldier, the Player suffers a minor setback when they comes across a group of simulated grunts, causing the simulation to briefly destabilize until they are calmed down by Diaz, who reveals that their DNI can cause certain traumatic memories to seem realistic and can have damaging long term effects if not treated. The Player eventually reaches the final stage of the simulated train bombing and manages to reach the bomb, but is unable to defuse it in time even with their DNI. The Player remains unsure of what to do until they are helped by Taylor, who tells the Player that the solution is actually quite simple. Figuring out that the train car carrying the bomb can be detached from the rest of t

Game highlights
Rating momentum

Aww Great!: 8.0/10 across 232.8k ratings. Word of mouth is strong — if you like the genre, go for it.

Play style

Leans into Adventure, Shooter, with a main story around 7.6h. Check if that style and time commitment fit you.

Reviews

20 media reviews

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IGNBrian Albert · 7 Nov, 2015
9.2/10

From its four-player co-op campaign to the brand-new powers and a fleshed-out Zombies mode, Black Ops 3 meaningfully pushes the Call of Duty series forward on several fronts. Even where it doesn't innovate, it still meets the high bar Call of Duty fans should expect. Black Ops 3 isn't the best Call of Duty game ever, but it's the biggest and most feature-packed game we've seen out of the series yet.

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GameSpotMike Mahardy · 5 Nov, 2015
7/10

Black Ops III presents fine-tuned multiplayer, engaging fights against the undead, and a boring campaign.

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EurogamerEdwin Evans-Thirlwell · 10 Nov, 2015
8/10

Where Treyarch's single-player struggles, the deftly tuned multiplayer soars, delivering a Call of Duty that's rich with options.

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PC GamerIan Birnbaum · 11 Nov, 2015
7.5/10

The graphics get a little prettier, the story gets a little darker, and another Call of Duty counts time as we march together toward death.

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PolygonArthur Gies · 6 Nov, 2015
7/10

Black Ops 3 doesn't meaningfully move the series forward

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GamesRadar+Maxwell McGee · 5 Nov, 2015
8/10

This massive, wonderfully diverse Call of Duty theme park is best enjoyed with a friend (or three). Going alone dampens the fun, but either way it's still worth the price of admission.

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Game InformerDaniel Tack · 5 Nov, 2015
9/10

What begins as a mundane campaign pleasantly diverts into wild territory. While the campaign elements are the weakest of what Black Ops III offers, the amount and quality of non-campaign offerings carry the title beyond the finish line

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GuardianKeith Stuart · 9 Nov, 2015
6/10

Activision's monolithic shooter series returns with a blast of new content and features – but the cracks are showing

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Washington PostMichael Thomsen · 11 Nov, 2015

In a way, "Black Ops 3's" landscape of weaponry and corpses and layers of upgrades and economics signal the game's disposability, something meant as kindling in a bonfire of collective obsession and forgetting. Nothing this big and loud is meant to last, but nothing meant to last could bring this many people together.

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Rock, Paper, ShotgunAdam Smith · 10 Nov, 2015

In ye olde days, Call of Duty games would throw a famous quote up on the screen whenever you died, to provide a moment of reflection between attempts. Now that I've laid Blops III to rest, I've found a quote that seems like an echo of my thoughts and feelings. "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

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