Zombies used to be the very best mode in the first person video game shooter Call of Duty, it was so important to me and my best friend that it was often the sole reason we would buy the game each year. Tellingly, the only ones in the series we ever skipped since Zombies became a key mode were Call of Duty: Ghosts (that replaced zombies with aliens) and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (that didn't have a Zombies mode at all).
Then Call of Duty: Vanguard came out, it featured a Zombies mode so gosh darn awful that it near destroyed us. That mode was dreadful, getting rid of the classic round-based mode in favour of a tiny variety of identical feeling tiny challenges accessed from a central hub-area that extremely quickly became soul distressingly boring. Even the late addition of two actual round-based maps couldn't save the day. While the remake of 'Shi No Numa' was decent enough, the second of these maps was a lazily altered version of 'Terra Maledicta', which was the second of the terrible hub-area maps. This second round-based map had a new name of 'The Archon', but was identical to that other map, just with a palette swap.
The sole good thing to come out of this (quite possibly purposeful) self sabotage was that me and my best friend began to get into traditional Call of Duty multiplayer, even buying Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II despite it having no Zombies mode. Towards the end of that game's one year life, I really began to get into multiplayer, helped by the latest (and current) Battlepass that is Halloween themed and includes a lot of Spawn based skins and items.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is this years entry, and is one that has been getting a heck of a lot of criticism. Apparently, it was originally designed to be downloadable content for Modern Warfare II, but got changed into a full price game. Personally, I am really enjoying multiplayer, and embarrassingly enough I don't even mind the hacked together single player campaign, despite it being obviously patched together in a hurry, being made up of mostly areas ripped out of Warzone, rather than lovingly crafted levels. The game also includes a Zombies mode, something that neither me or my friend thought would be any good whatsoever.
It is certainly no classic Zombies, but I was surprised to find I am actually having more fun with the mode than I expected to, even if it is not without its faults. This new Zombies mode is a combination of Modern Warfare II's DMZ extraction mode and Call of Duty: Cold War's Outbreak mode. The DMZ mode from last year had you dropping into a small section of the Warzone map, here, you could complete contracts, battle other players, and collect weapons. The sting in the tail was that in order to keep all your loot, you had to call in a helicopter and ex-fill. I only played this once, the stress of possibly being killed by other players kept me away from playing it anymore. Outbreak was a Zombies mode that took place on large open world maps, again, the aim was to complete missions and ex-fill, with the option either to leave the game entirely, or head to a new map that featured tougher and more numerous enemies each time.
The intro cut-scene for the mode has some terrorists retrieving these strange vials from the basement of a hotel in the middle of a city. Upon becoming surrounded by the specialist crime fighting units, the terrorist leader smashes one of the vials, which immediately begins to transform all dead in the vicinity into brain hungry ghouls. A few weeks later, as part of a task force, you are tasked with infiltrating the sealed off city, in order to assess the situation and try and find a way to bring the zombie outbreak to an end.
Blissfully, Modern Warfare III's Zombies mode is players versus enemies rather than players versus players and enemies. You can only enter the mode as a team of up to three people, but twenty four players in total can be in the open world at any time. Players not in your team are able to assist should you stumble across them, even being able to revive you if you have gone down, or giving you the option to join up with them to complete missions.
The game world is the biggest Zombies map yet, I don't play Warzone myself (for my sins I much prefer Fortnite), but I believe that the mode is set in the new Warzone map that is due to release later this year. The map is split into three concentric circles, with you starting on the edges of the map, a place where zombies are weak and easy to kill. As you head towards the centre of the city the rewards increase, but so does the strength of the undead, and more and more special boss monsters appear. Currently, me and my friend have stuck to the outskirts, our very brief journeys into the second circle swiftly saw us fleeing in terror at the much stronger zombies.
Our very first go of this mode was a disaster, heading towards a contract we had activated, we were woefully unprepared for the presence of human A.I enemies. Zombies are the main enemy type, but there are human encampments, and these soldiers will quickly wipe you out if you are not prepared. Like DMZ, the only way to keep weapons found is to ex-fill, a few times we have been wiped out and lost all our equipment, extremely frustrating, as it means the next time you play the mode you start with just your bare fists rather than guns of any kind! Extremely annoyingly, one of these times we lost our weapons it was down to the game crashing, rather than any fault of our own, while the second time we died, we both had really good weapons, and so were crushed to lose them, especially due to dying to the frustratingly powerful human enemies.
What I really enjoy about this mode is how unknown things are, it makes each time feel like a real adventure where dynamic events can happen at seemingly any time. I have been in on my own a few times, where the lack of support makes the searching of buildings feel more tense (also giving a Dead Island vibe). Then random things can happen, such as me and my friend's last game we played (at the time of typing) in which a random group of players turned up and gave us a lift in the back of their trucks. When me and my friend called in the chopper to ex-fill, these players hung around to help fend off the undead while we waited for it to arrive.
The story missions currently seem very simple and achievable which is also a plus.
I guess my main concern is if they decide to change the game to be players versus players versus enemies, that, and it is possible that this mode could become quite boring once enough time has been spent playing it. Of course, this new open world Zombies is not a patch on the classic round-based maps of old. I have made peace with the fact that there likely may never be return for that beloved mode, so while this is nowhere near as fun as multiplayer (that I'm weirdly very good at currently), this still isn't a bad way to spend an hour (after forty five minutes the poison fog begins to come in, giving you fifteen minutes to reach an ex-fill site and escape). It has the potential to remain fun, but personally, I'm just glad they didn't find a way to go lower than the absolute train wreck that was Vanguard's Zombies mode.
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