Path เสร ม call of duty black ops

WIRED.co.uk is investigating the latest video games and most interesting developments at E3 2015. For more E3 coverage visit our E3 2015 hub.

This year's Call of Duty marks developer Treyarch's latest turn at bat, with the California-based studio rounding off its Black Ops trilogy. However, the game is strikingly different to the last chapter from 2012, and shows a curious progression path for CoD as a franchise.

Set in 2065, Black Ops III tackles themes of transhumanism and automation amidst its usual battleground carnage. The story-driven campaign sees you implanted with advanced technology, gifting you "Cyber Core" abilities, and battling through a world where advances in robotics and supersoldier enhancements has led to a rise in violent social unrest around the globe.

Here in our world, the new setting allows for new gameplay features, both active and passive. The Cyber Cores change how you interact with the game, giving you more control over your environment and new ways to navigate it. Treyarch touts a "momentum based, precision focused, chained movement system", merging speedier movement with augmented leaps to better zoom around areas of engagement. Black Ops III also goes in a more team-oriented direction, with four-player online co-op throughout the story mode. Pleasantly, of the six main characters so far revealed, two are female -- bow-wielding sniper Outrider and criminal enforcer Seraph. Finally, an array of terrifyingly advanced weaponry makes for a brutal change to how combat takes place, especially when used in conjunction with Cyber Core skills.

Yet with all these additions, Call of Duty is starting to feel like a different game, one increasingly defined by science fiction rather than soldiering. Black Ops II was actually the instigator of the change, being the first game in the longer series to introduce speculative future military tech. Since then, 2013's Ghosts featured an alternate timeline and orbital superweapons, while last year's Advanced Warfare introduced exoskeletons to greatly enhance the physical abilities of characters.

Black Ops III goes one further though. The Cyber Core implants used by the soldiers give abilities that can only be described as super powers. Drones can be hacked remotely using techno-telepathy, then piloted around the conflict zone to target enemies; swarms of "firefly" nanobots can be used as destructive ranged weapons; stealth to the point of invisibility; even ranged attacks that, for all intents and purposes, are telekinetic slams. Factor in fancy armour, and it's enough of a divergence to make CoD feel more like Crysis.

What WIRED found particularly interesting though, was that in multiplayer sessions, other players weren't using many of these new skills. There are a couple of reasons that might explain why -- people defaulting to their well-honed styles of play, not having time to get to grips with the powers (given the conditions of play testing at E3, a strong contender), or simply not liking them. Whatever the reason, it made the versus mode hands-on hard to get a feeling for. The maps may have been unfamiliar but the experience was pure CoD, with the seasoned players making life difficult for the less gifted. New weapons addressed the balance somewhat, making the team deathmatch style rounds we played a frenzied back and forth between each faction. Numerous hidden paths, used to sneak up on rivals or infiltrate enemy territory, are a nice shout out to the stealthy nature you might expect from a game with "black ops" for a title, too.

In longer doses, Black Ops III's supersoldier approach could dramatically change how online matches are played, potentially delivering a seismic change to the next year's worth of competitive esports play. And in practise, the Cyber Core abilities are ridiculously fun to use, giving a real sense of power. But as each new Call of Duty for the last four years has edged further into the realms of the fantastic, the series risks losing the slice of realism that was once so integral to its identity.

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