The best Call of Duty game of the last decade is seeing a resurgence
Finally, Call of Duty Black Ops 3 is getting its time in the sun with a surprise sales surge in February that sees it join the top 10 best-selling games for the month.
22nd Mar 2024 13:25
Images via Treyarch
The best Call of Duty game of the last decade is seeing a resurgence
Finally, Call of Duty Black Ops 3 is getting its time in the sun with a surprise sales surge in February that sees it join the top 10 best-selling games for the month.
22nd Mar 2024 13:25
Images via Treyarch
2015 was a simpler time, wasn't it? The Fantastic Four movie arrived (and was panned), we were still in Taylor Swift's 1989 Era, and the PS4 and Xbox One generation was starting in earnest.
It was the year when Treyarch brought back Black Ops, but not as we knew it, infusing it with a little of 2014's Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Dropping a true, linear single-player campaign grabbed a lot of headlines, but the multiplayer was some of the best in the series, wall-running included.
Now, almost a decade on, it seems like many of you are finally giving Call of Duty Black Ops 3 a go. Well, it's about time.
CoD: Black Ops 3 is the tenth best-selling game on Xbox for February
Maybe it's the Activision-Blizzard deal getting Xbox players all excited, but while Modern Warfare 3 (the current game in the franchise) is the top-selling game again this month on Microsoft's platform, Black Ops 3 sneaks in at number 10.
That's according to Mat Piscatella of Circana (formerly NPD). The full list is below, and it's not bad for a nine-year-old game in a series of annual releases, eh? There's every chance that, while Black Ops 3 offers some fantastic movement and shooting mechanics, the real draw is the Zombies mode.
Fans have been pining for classic round-based Zombie gameplay, to the point that some are jealously looking at Destiny 2's upcoming Onslaught mode. Still, maybe 2024 will be the year?
In the last 30 days, Black Ops 3 has a peak player count of 9,491 on SteamCharts, too, which is certainly impressive, but it was up to over 15,000 last year. That suggests that the PC playerbase is even stronger than the console one.
What is Black Ops 3's legacy?
Black Ops 3 arrived between 2014's Advanced Warfare, which introduced the 'jetpack' exoskeleton, and 2016's Infinite Warfare, which is widely maligned as being a low point for long-time fans of the series.
Despite being an excellent game in its own right, it sometimes feels like it gets lumped in with the entries on either side of it and used as an example of the series losing its "boots on the ground" style.
The game also has a special place in our hearts as the title that saw the debut of Specialists, each with their own ability or weapon. Taken on its own merit, though, Black Ops 3 is a good multiplayer game with a thin (at best) single-player component and solid multiplayer setup.
About The Author
Lloyd Coombes
Lloyd is GGRecon's Editor-in-Chief, having previously worked at Dexerto and Gfinity, and occasionally appears in The Daily Star newspaper. A big fan of loot-based games including Destiny 2 and Diablo 4, when he's not working you'll find him at the gym or trying to play Magic The Gathering.
