The Good, The Bad And The Zombies Of Call of Duty: Black Ops III – Awakening

Black Ops 3’s release marked a big change for the Call of Duty franchise. It wasn’t to do with the futuristic setting – all three current gen games are set in the future – nor the enhanced mobility of augmented humans, but in Activision and Sony penning a deal so that the PlayStation 4 would now be the platform to receive preferential treatment and earlier access to DLC.

It’s still an unusual and strange feeling deal, for such a large franchise to show favouritism of this kind, but it means that I’ve been playing Awakening’s new maps for the past week, and haven’t been waiting until March.

We all know what to expect when it comes to the Call of Duty season pass and each expansion, with four new multiplayer maps alongside a map for that particular game’s co-operative mode. Awakening, however, goes in several fascinating directions.

There is, of course, the almost obligatory fan favourite remake, with Hijacked from Black Ops 2 reimagined as a huge VTOL in flight, now dubbed Skyjacked. It’s a fairly simple map, with two sniper spots overlooking a central courtyard and a couple of half protected corridors, but it has been revamped with smooth surfaces both inside and outside the ship, to allow for Black Ops 3’s ultra slick wall running.

Skyjacked alongside Rise are the two most conventional maps in the pack, with the latter featuring a snow covered construction site, that ticks all the boxes for Black Ops 3’s movement. Splash and Gauntlet, however, are much more refreshing, with a lot more visual variety.

Gauntlet’s military training facility features three lanes, each with a distinct and different simulated environment, so that you run from a rainy urban street to an icy central bridge and tiny patch of jungle, in a matter of seconds. It’s interesting and varied, but nothing compared to the vibrant and oversaturated look of Splash’s watery theme park, which simply looks magnificent, from its shallow pools and water flumes to the giant tentacles that wrap around the waterpark’s iconic pirate ship.

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Unfortunately, Splash is also the map that shows the most teething problems from the expansion’s release. While we can expect that they’ll be patched out in due time, there are a number of ways to glitch through scenery and get outside the map, which only adds more annoyance and aggravation to some objective oriented game modes.

Where the changes to the player movement in the last couple of Call of Duty games haven’t been popular across the board, and some struggle to get the feel for the much faster gameplay in the multiplayer especially, Treyarch’s Zombies mode feels as though it’s universally loved. For a lot of people having a new map to explore and battle wave after wave of zombies in is the main reason for getting an expansion or a season pass.

Der Eisendrachen – which means The Iron Dragon – takes place in a castle high up in southern Austria. The star studded cast that featured in the main game make way for the returning characters of Richtofen, Masaki, Dempsey and Belinski, somewhere quite early in the convoluted storyline that loosely ties the series’ maps together.

The map is packed with plenty of little secrets and nods to the rest of the series, which will be a delight for long time fans, but much more important is the early process of discovery and experimentation, backed by the familiar tropes of the mode. So, as a rocket fires off into the sky as you spawn in for the first time, experienced players will be quick to maximise the amount of cash they earn from each zombie kill and boarding up entry points, so as to unlock as much of the map as soon as possible.

The titular iron dragon comes to life at three points around the map, activated by and feeding upon zombies that you kill nearby, in a manner that’s similar to Cerberus from Mob of the Dead, and sating the appetites of all three unlocks a very powerful bow and arrow. That quickly comes into play for more than just surviving the next round.

It’s both familiar and new to existing players, and while I’m a relative newcomer to Zombies, it was easy to see the excitement of exploring for the first time in my co-op partners – thanks to Youles and McProley for keeping me alive and featuring in our video above – and how that quickly turns into an established method for getting through the level quickly.

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It helps that Treyarch have filled the level with so many secrets and easter eggs to find, like a disco room, and also made this a very attractive map. You can stare off into the distance and see an awful lot of rockets just waiting to be launched into the atmosphere, marvel at the wonderful animation of the iron dragons, and this really shows how far Call of Duty has managed to come visually, thanks to the latest generation of consoles.

In fact, Awakening as a whole shows how good Black Ops 3 can look, and there’s a few gorgeous locations spread across the multiplayer maps as well. Those obviously inject some welcome variety into the competitive playlists – well, once the handful of glitches have been ironed out – but for me and many others, Der Eisendrache is the standout addition.

2 Comments

  1. “it was easy to see the excitement of exploring for the first time in my co-op partners”

    Read: Youles screamed like a complete school-girl.

  2. Loving Rise and Gauntlet. Not so much Splash and Skyjacked. The faster paced gameplay doesn’t suit the latter at all IMO, and Splash is riddled with bugs. The zombies map is awesome though!

    One major issues I’m still finding online is the dodgy spawning. Either enemies spawn right behind me, or I respawn within shooting distance of an enemy resulting in many instant spawn deaths. Really f-ing frustrating to say the least.

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