For the first time ever, I took part in a Call of Duty Beta, which is a bit surprising considering the amount of time spent playing the shooter franchise; I can’t say the Beta was awesome but there were some major advances in the style of play Black Ops 2 was known for. Side note: This semi-review is going off of what I experienced on Xbox, not PS4

Call of Duty’s most popular designer for the series, Treyarch, allowed players to experience why Black Ops 3 could surpass Black Ops 2’s popularity with gamers. A major highlight for me was how close it felt to Black Ops 2 but with a much larger futuristic feel.

Black Ops 3’s graphics were a definite step up from the previous game. I did notice a few framerate issues when it came to intense gunfights but it was only slight and I didn’t think much of it. I don’t have much to say about the graphics because most of the time it’s the same old stuff. The color scheme was a lot brighter than Advanced Warfare which did make the game look a lot nicer.

I’m not going to go into specifics about perks and guns because it would take a while to go through all of them. I will say that only a few guns were unable to be used which was awesome because it let players get the whole feel of the game. Four maps were released into the rotation Evac, Hunted, Stronghold, and Combine. After playing for a few days the maps got pretty boring and repetitive.

The majority of players were unable to play most of the time because they were kicked off the game every time a match was started. Treyarch was unable to fix this problem for the entire week the Beta was available.

Overall I thought Black Ops 3 was a major for the Call of Duty franchise and most can agree that it’s a huge step up from Advanced Warfare.