--- title: "7 Reasons Why Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Is a Huge Disappointment" description: "Printing money by pandering to dullards." date: "2015-11-17" modified: "2015-11-17" authors: - name: "John Sciarrino" link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/john-sciarrino" url: "https://www.thedrive.com/tech/916/7-reasons-why-call-of-duty-black-ops-3-is-a-huge-disappointment" categories: - "Culture" - "News" tags: - "Video Games" --- # 7 Reasons Why Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Is a Huge Disappointment ![]() *\www.thedrive.com* Every year, when *Call of Duty* launches a sequel, Activision takes a moment to pat itself on the back for having accomplished something new and special. Just a few days after the launch of *Black Ops 3*, press releases began rolling into my inbox announcing that the game had reaped [an astounding $550 million]() in worldwide sales its first weekend, beating out *Jurassic World* as the biggest entertainment launch of 2015. Coincidentally or not, both *Black Ops 3* and *Jurassic World* are products of formulaic franchises designed to mill blockbusters, and whose cheap tricks continue to smash records. This kind of success boggles the mind when it comes to *Black Ops 3*. Here are a few reasons why: **Reason 1:** *Black Ops 3*’s campaign is a ho-hum, 10-hour affair with only the occasional spike of entertainment among the mindless, run-and-gun gameplay. It’s a 12-mission yawnfest with the exception of one standout level, which I’ll tackle below. **Reason 2**: The game shoehorns in sci-fi superpowers, which might get a pass had the franchise not used the exact same approach in last year’s *Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare*. As it is, the superpowers seem like an admission that Treyarch, the studio responsible for *Black Ops 3*, is out of better ideas. **Reason 3**: Treyarch has forsaken its *Black Ops* roots. Until now, the series under the COD banner was an over-the-top slaughterhouse, like the best kind of Eighties action flick, delivering spectacular sequences but never taking itself too seriously. But when your main character has his limbs ripped off by a robot in the first 20 minutes without *any* sense of humor, as happens in *Black Ops 3*, you know it’s gonna be a long ten hours. **Reason 4**: The game includes a lazy cooperative gameplay mode for up to four people. It’s exactly the same as the solo campaign only with even more repetitive, robotic enemies that we’re already bored of killing. **Reason 5**: *Black Ops 3* flaunts a character customizer...as long as you choose one of a handful of cookie-cutter defaults. And for the first time, you can even be a lady! Someone told Activision that was important, though judging from the lack of options they appear to have no understanding [of why](). **Reason 6**: The game’s online competitive matchmaking is broken. *Black Ops 3* time-sucked 75 million hours from gamers in its first weekend. That’s nothing to boast about when 25 percent of those hours were likely spent waiting to enter a lopsided six-on-eight match. **Reason 7**: *COD*’s online community still sucks. If I wanted to spend my free time being verbally abused by pre-teens who just discovered “your momma” jokes, I’d finally pursue my nightmare of being a substitute middle school teacher. And now for the one bright spot: Zombie mode. It’s the crown jewel of *Black Ops 3*, the part of the game that actually “gets it” and builds on Treyarch’s pedigree of combining action, parody and celebrity. Zombie mode is less than a third of the game but has 300 percent more celebrity talent than the rest. Priorities! *Black Ops 3* is the first product of Activision’s new three-studio approach to the *COD* series. The extra time Treyarch had to make *Black Ops 3* resulted in them biting off more than they could handle. Someone should have shared [the wise words of Ron Swanson]() with Treyarch: “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.” ### Author social links