Like most highbrow gaming aficionados, I hate Call of Duty. Not because of the gaudiness of its big-budget corporate hype, that its formula hasn’t significantly changed in the last few years, the awkward militarization boner it induces in some people, and the questionable geopolitical stances of its single-player campaigns.
I hate Call of Duty because its multiplayer is so damned addicting.
It’s fast-food gaming, where the ingredients are all questionable, yet the combination is so potently addictive that I can’t put it down. I have to keep eating.
And for several days, I did eat, while getting absolutely nothing productive done as I played the PlayStation 4 Black Ops III beta test. I learned a few things during that time, that I’d like to share with you before the Xbox One version rolls out. Maybe it’ll help you survive a few extra seconds before dying in the game.
There’s just one thing I won’t be able to teach you: how to turn the gawd-damned thing off.
If I draw first, I win
Above: The only way I am losing this exchange is if my cat kicks the RJ45 out of my PS4
It’s crucial to keep in mind that Black Ops III is a “low combat” first-person shooter. It’s actually the least fight-intensive series in the genre that I’ve ever played. What do I mean by low combat, though?
In Black Ops III, the primary goal in a 1-on-1 gun battle is to see my opponent first, and then draw my weapon to fire before they do. If I am successful at beating them to it, I gain a ridiculous advantage over my opponent. This is often the case in most first-person shooters, but the actual fighting in Black Ops III is so quick and lethal that every other gaming-skill I may possess for that fight is tossed out the window.
This doesn’t mean that if I draw first, it’s an auto-win situation, but the advantage is so much in my favor that my opponent’s only hope is if I screw something up. Perhaps I get overzealous and botch the auto-aim, or one of their friends happens to flank and kill me before I can finish unloading. If I locate and fire on an enemy before they do, it’s completely my fight to lose.
Since gaining the jump on my opponent is 90 percent of the fight in Black Ops III, everything is designed with pros and cons surrounding this concept: the weapons, the equipment, the scorestreaks, the level design — everything. This is the most important factor to keep in mind while playing. Always consider what, how, and when to gain the advantages of speed and sight … and how to keep others from getting it.
You don’t need UAV to tell you where everyone is at
Above: This screen has tons of information.
Like other Call of Duty titles, Black Ops III’s UI contains a minimap in the upper corner. I’m afraid I’ve discovered a bug, however, that Treyarch may not be able to fix. You see, I can actually figure out where the enemy is located on the map without calling in a UAV.
The source of the exploit? The human brain.
Black Ops III gives its users a lot of information on when something is happening, where it is happening, and who it happened to. Someone has to be running around with all stealth based perks and a silencer on their gun to not pop up on the mini-map. Even then, those players still leave evidence that they’re in the area.
When a friend dies nearby, a skull icon marks where they went down for a brief moment. The minimap shows not just where teammates are but also which way they are looking. If one of those blue arrows that’s nearby happens to suddenly disappear, that’s a major clue that something bad went down in that area. A kill list on the bottom left even lists how someone died (was my teammate killed by some sort of equipment or a gun?).
Where my team is spawning is also a major chunk of vital information. If I spawned on the North side of the map just a few seconds ago, but team mates are spawning around me towards the West, that’s telling me that there are enemy combatants wandering around my last spawn point. If I wind up dying and respawning on the completely opposite side of the map in the South, that means two things: the North side is overrun and, even more important, that’s where my opponents are spawning in.
What works for me also works against me. If I gun someone down, I know damned well that I am spotted. Even running around with all stealth perks and knifing people in the back from the shadows, at least one person knows I am in that area (because I killed them). That doesn’t count anyone that suddenly noticed their friend missing on the mini-map (or their skull icon).
Flow-‘n’-Flank
Above: Be disruptive.
When I mention flow, I’m talking about the natural progression of all of the miniature conflicts moving throughout the map. The action from both teams is like two opposing sources of water, rushing into a stream with a bunch of rocks and channels as obstructions. It can sift through these pathways and eventually crash into each other.
Everyone playing is being manipulated by a combination of game design and level layout to take certain routes and engage in specific areas. In modes like Domination, capture points are great motivators, but even Team Deathmatch is heavily influenced by these factors.
This is where learning to use all of the small positional clues that I mentioned comes into play. I have two choices when I’ve determined where most of the action is taking place: I can flow down stream with my team, or I can gamble going solo and becoming a disruptive force.
Going solo means I am trying to move away from the main choke points where the gun fights are taking place, and trying to find a way to cut through the opposing team’s line of movement. I’m essentially trying to be a one-man flanking machine.
This isn’t exactly a secret tactic, but it can be an extraordinarily strong way of doing things in Black Ops III’s “no where is safe” level design. No matter where a player is, there’s always at least two directions that they can’t see, where an enemy player can kill them. A player that can tell where the action is moving, and intelligently knows which path to take to cut through that momentum, can terrorize large groups of players and gain some quick kills.