With Black Ops 3 less than a month away, Call of Duty fans across the globe are preparing for one of the most exciting installments in the long twelve year running series. Following on from the highly successful Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (and in date order Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare), Treyarch aims to give the series the much needed revitalization that many fans have been craving.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III takes place in a dystopian future set in 2065, 40 years after the events of Black Ops II. Several countries around the world have developed high-tech air defenses that render air assaults useless. As such, most of the warfare between countries is done by covert operatives fighting behind enemy lines.

What's New?

Although the story doesn't go too far from the normality that is the Call of Duty campaigns, the way in which it is presented to the gamer integrates social play and a sense of replayability.

Multiplayer maps are influenced from a new movement system included in the game that includes better climbing abilities and wall running. (Think more Titanfall and less Mirror's Edge)

Players can now fight underwater. This new feature is used mainly in the campaign, although Treyarch have announced that certain maps will feature small areas with water for players to take cover in and battle it out.

The game is taking another element from Titanfall, with elements of storytelling and game lore being brought into the multiplayer. Some classes and specialists will have their own backstories to entertain you in the pre-game lobby.

The game is following the bi-gender route, with players given the option to choose either a male or female protagonist, and the script supposedly being gender-neutral.

The game's campaign won't be featured on the PS3 or Xbox 360 editions of the game, meaning that any last-gen Call of Duty campaign fans will need to upgrade to a PS4, PC, or Xbox One to play the complete game.

Unlike previous installments, Treyarch and Activision have teamed up with PlayStation over Xbox and are releasing map packs and DLCs earlier for PS4. These can be bought separately or bought as part of the hefty $50 season pass.

Multiplayer Redefined

For the first time in Call of Duty history, every part of the game can be played in multiplayer. With a 1-4 player campaign mode, 2 confirmed zombie campaigns, standard player vs player multiplayer, and a new unified menu system that allows you to go from mode to mode, Black Ops 3 certainly seems to focus on social integration. Looking first at the main campaign, BO 3 lets you play either on your own or with 3 other players, and the amount of players has an effect on the routes and paths the players will take. The campaign also replaces the previous branched out storyline with special missions that show different perspectives with more adaptive enemies. If played in co-op, the campaign contains a new Tactical mode; this allows the players to work together, when one spots and enemy, the enemy will be tagged for the whole team to see.

Game modes have also been announced, with one new game mode coming into the multiplayer arena:

Team Deathmatch

Domination

Hardpoint

Kill Confirmed

Search and Destroy

Capture The Flag

Uplink

(NEW) Safeguard – "Teams alternate in escorting a non-combative robot into enemy territory. Deliver the robot to win."

Killer Cast

After Kevin Spacey's solid performance as the tenacious leader of the Atlas Corporation Jonathan Irons in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, it seems Treyarch felt they needed to one up Sledgehammer Games with their cast. In the main campaign, we have Law and Order's Christopher Meloni, Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff, Once upon a Time's Tony Amendola, Farscape's Ben Browder and Seattle Seahawks Marshawn Lynch. With a well-rounded line-up like this, you wouldn't expect both of the Zombie campaigns to have a bigger load of star power!

[caption id="attachment_57602" align="aligncenter" width="585"] The first campaign, set in the 1940s, features the likes of's Jeff Goldblum and The Hangover's Heather Graham[/caption] [caption id="attachment_57604" align="aligncenter" width="587"] The second campaign, Giant, features the animation voice artist Steve Blum and gaming legend Nolan North.[/caption]

With all of the changes Treyarch are implementing, do you think it'll be enough to keep Call of Duty relevant and as successful as recent years? What do you think of the changes and with so many other FPSs coming out like Halo 5, Star Wars Battlefront and Rainbow Six Siege, are you going to get Black Ops 3? Let us know in the comments below.