Like most Call of Duty games, Black Ops 3’s story campaign is a highly scripted, tightly controlled experience. Go here, stand next to that, shoot those guys. Sometimes, in fact, you don’t even have to pull the trigger.
As I made my way through Blops 3’s opening levels, I reached the first Official Call Of Duty Turret Sequence. I was accompanying some… guys... to do… something, and I heard the call to arms that dutiful COD players know well:
“I got the wheel. Get on the turret.”
“Okay,” I thought. “Time to get on that turret and kill some fuckin’ robots.”
Our armored vehicle tore through a garage door, and I immediately opened fire on the robots in our path. My mounted gun exploded with a volley of ridiculously destructive, likely football-sized bullets. I kept shooting, quickly taking out a couple of enemy vehicles before blowing a massive VTOL out of the sky.
A couple of explosions later, however, something started to feel a little off. My gun felt too powerful, and the on-screen action felt weird and disconnected from my input. I remembered seeing a clip of a past Call of Duty turret sequence—from the first Black Ops, I believe—where the player simply stopped shooting and everything kept on exploding.
So, I stopped shooting. Here’s what happened (I stop at around 0:40):
Of course, it’s no great revelation that Call of Duty doesn’t always require the player’s input. These games set out to do something different from the more systemic, simulated Deus Exes and Far Crys of the world.
This is just another reminder of the kind of game Call of Duty is—and while these sorts of semi-interactive scripted sequences can be silly, they can also be damned effective.
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