So, I recently bought Call Of Duty Black Ops 3 — this is my experience playing it for the first time.
Immediately the gameplay made me think of Bio Shock Infinite, since the first person point of view looked very similar, so I was excited. Bio Shock was the first game I ever played on PS4 and it was amazing and taught me how to actually shoot in video games, so I thought I’d be pretty good at this game. Wrong.
I was killed almost instantly. How do zombies even more that fast, anyway?
So, the story mode opens with my character in an alleyway, shooting into windows that zombies are constantly running at and I have to shoot them in the head and pay to have boards of wood cover the open windows. It’s a lot of multitasking. So, I invited my girlfriend to play with me.
Multiplayer mode was much more forgiving than one player. With Phoebe covering the other window, I was able to focus on my window — but then the waves of zombies got harder and harder (as they do). Zombies started coming down the alleyway and eating us from behind, so we had to open up gates to get away, but those gates allowed more zombies to follow us. It was a vicious cycle of me and Phoebe dying and then reviving each other as fast as we could. It was a lot of fun, even though we didn’t get very far (maybe to wave 5).
I expected the game to have a good multiplayer mode, which was an important feature since I just got a second controller for the PS4, and it did, so I was happy with the purchase overall.
I think Call of Duty Black Ops 3 is doing humanistic work in that it contains some sort of basic narrative, characters, and engaging dialogue. I haven’t played much into the story mode, but I noticed from my character’s dialogue that there is a plot going on in the background as I shoot the heads off of zombies. I feel that the games we are making in class are more humanistic than this game, but Call of Duty shouldn’t be discounted from the digital humanities label.
I’m trying my hand at the online mode next — wish me luck! Hope I’m not repeatedly killed by 11-year-olds like in Overwatch.
-Sarah DeLena