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Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3 Multiplayer Beta Preview

Boasting quick, furious gunplay and a new specialist system that offers tons of variety, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is shaking up its multiplayer experience.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

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Others, while functional, are just uninspired. Ruin’s second ability gives him a speed boost, Seraph’s special weapon is a glorified Golden Gun that one-hits its victims, and Battery’s Kinetic Armor adds a small bit of protection from body shots.

These abilities are powered up by getting kills and streaks until they can be activated by pressing L1 and R1. In a nice twist, you can save your ability for as long as you like, since dying won’t empty your meter, but if you die while using it, it’ll take a while to refill again. It’s an interesting risk/reward system that makes you think about the best time to break out your ace in the hole.

Call of Duty reigns supreme in the FPS genre for a reason: it’s been incredibly polished to a near-perfect sheen. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is shaping up to be the most polished yet, as the gameplay remains as addictive, slick and accessible as before. The beta wasn’t without its issues, however, and whether they were simply early bugs that will be ironed out remains to be seen.

A good handful of matches were unevenly balanced, with one team unleashing three players who had reached level 25 or higher and the opposing team maxing out around level 19. At other times, a match would start with one team at full capacity of six players and the other with only three or four. When the teams were about equal in strength and numbers, the matches were much more tense and balanced, and much less frustrating.

On the whole, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is shaping up to be the best entry in the series since Black Ops 2. While I personally enjoyed Advanced Warfare, this is definitely an improvement on the futuristic ideas that game brought to the franchise. Much remains to be seen about the single player portion of the game, but if it’s on par with the other two Black Ops games, fans have nothing to fear. Only time will tell how this third entry fairs in the series’ lengthy run, but all signs point to it being a crowd-pleaser.