Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Beta Gameplay Video and Impressions

In the video below you can check out a few full matches from the soon to be released Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Multiplayer Beta. In the video Will and I play a couple Team Deathmatch games and discuss our feelings about the upcoming shooter.

We both come at Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 from very different places. Will is a big fan, having purchased all of the recent games at launch and feeling like it will be an annual thing for some time. Conversely, I dropped out of the series long ago.

Like so many gamers I became enamored with the CoD franchise upon the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. After a couple more entries in the series though I was disillusioned by the fact that so little changed from one game to the next. Modern Warfare 2 was the last one that really grabbed my attention, and since then I have felt like Call of Duty just wouldn’t be a part of my gaming life.

Black Ops 3 brings the series further into the scifi arena

With that said I approached the CoD: Black Ops 3 Mutliplayer Beta with some hesitance, but my fears were quickly put aside as I became once again hooked on the fast paced action of this series. Black Ops 3 looked quite different from the CoD of old, bringing the series further into the scifi arena, and away from the “modern warfare” era that had been driven into the ground for me.

So many new and altered elements presented themselves in just a short time. The biggest of these was certainly the Specialists, super-powered characters that serve as your avatar amid the chaos. I say “super-powered” but really they’re just a little bit more powerful than a standard soldier.

Each Specialist has a special weapon that only they can use, such as a grenade launcher, lightning gun, and bow. These are unlocked as you play, similar to killstreaks, and are usually one-shot kills, with the possibility of more, such as the lightning gun chaining shots to nearby enemies. With proper use they can help swing the battle, but you’re still extremely vulnerable, and they expire fairly quickly. Given that I hadn’t played CoD in a while I found myself dying very often, even with my Specialist activated.

Another change is the movement system, which tacks on a few abilities for players to try out. Wall running and jetpacking completely change the landscape of a map, while keeping the action just as fast, fluid, and fun as CoD fans want. It took me just a couple of seconds to get right back into the game, it felt so natural, and once I did my Titanfall skills kicked in as well, letting me see the paths through the levels that CoD-only players might take a while to learn.

Overall the feeling of playing the Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Multiplayer Beta was that of coming home after many years of change. It felt great to get back to the series that I had scorned for so long. And to see it evolve so much in this entry was exactly what I’d been asking for these past few years. Will the game bring back lapsed fans like myself? Probably a few, whether or not it will get us all will come down to how it plays once it’s in the hands of millions of gamers.

COD: Black Ops 3 Beta Gameplay