Call of Frontline: Girl Ops III

After 25 long years on this fricked up planet, it has finally happened.

I've played a Call of Duty.

And WOW have I been missing out, I mean look at this screenshot I took! Can't you feel the raw aura radiating from your screen?

I'm sorry Call of Duty, I wasn't familiar with your game. This is actually amazing, you could even call it "peak" as I hear that's what the kids say these days.

Though I do find it a little concerning that the character models don't seem to be able to hold anything correctly with it always floating near their hands instead of actually in them. I'd expect a lot better from a multi-million dollar franchise. Like this is the kinda shit you'd see from a free mod importing models that clearly don't belong.

It's also a little weird that the characters look almost exactly like the characters in the semi-popular gacha game "Girls' Frontline." Like that person talking to you in the video looks like a younger version of HK416 from "Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium" (pictured below).

I mean, I'm not complaining or anything. I like Girls' Frontline and I probably wouldn't have even played it if it wasn't like this.

Anyway I just wanted to give my thoughts real quick.

My biggest gripe is with how each missions' gimmicks weren't used to what I feel should be their max potential, or they were sometimes not really even used at all.

So in that video at the start we get given a tether from HK416 because it's really windy, and you need to tether yourself to the ground to stop yourself from being swept by the wind. This is a decent gimmick all things considered - you can easily imagine being forced to anchor yourself to one place during a fight and having to correctly time when to move to the next position.

The problem is that I don't think this tether was ever used in a fight. I think there was a fight where the wind was causing waves which could sweep you up, but I never had to interact with them because I just stayed under cover away from the waves and sniped every enemy from afar.

There's also an interesting night vision mechanic that sort of sends out a radar wave and shows you enemies only periodically (I don't know the lore reason for why it's like this when modern day night vision is much more useable and this is the game is set like 40 years in the future). This was also very rarely used and only for short times when it was. The entire campaign I was anticipating a kind of horror section that incorporated this limitation, because I think there was a lot of potential for it, or for it to at least be used for more than 30 seconds in a mission.

Also I found a lot of the standard shooting areas to be a little boring and uninspired. There's a fair amount of movement options in this game, but they were also very rarely used. I'm not expecting Titanfall levels of… levels, but just something different every now and then would be nice.

And I think the game could be prettier and have cooler set pieces. I mean Titanfall 2 came out only a year later, and it's prettier and has cooler set pieces, and that franchise is fucking dead now so like…?

I wasn't really paying attention to the story for - you know, uh, reasons. It also doesn't help the plot was confusing and super mindfucky, but in general I liked it, especially after reading explanations on what the fuck was happening after I finished. For most people this would be a bad thing, but I'm not allowed to complain about it - I'm a Fromsoft fan.

But I want to mention the experience I got from it was actually at times very different to what I'm used to with games like this.

I'm not sure how to explain this properly, but I found the moments with people getting tortured and beaten up somewhat distressing and uncomfortable. And I know that sounds really strange to hear, but if this were any other game I probably would not have had this reaction. I dunno I guess I'm desensitised to it or something?

But I don't really know why this game in particular is giving me these emotions. My best guess is that I'm not used to seeing this happen to my favourite cheery anime waifus - so does that mean if these waifus were replaced by realistic people like other games I'd go back to not caring? I'm not sure if this is something I should be concerned about.

And just to be clear - this is only a phenomenon with me and video games and other fiction mediums like TV shows and movies. I feel plenty distressed seeing atrocities in real life, of which currently includes a certain genocide that I don't really want to talk about in a video game review.

Actually, there is one small thing I want to mention about the plot. So from what I can gather, you and HK416 are part of the Winslow Accords Black Ops unit. And the Winslow Accord is basically just NATO 40 years in the future.

And if you look at the image at the start of this post, you'll see HK416 holding a "KN-44" which looks like a Kalashnikov rifle (specifically an AK-74) from the future, and which they use the entire game.

I think it is very weird to see what is essentially a NATO soldier use an AK rifle. After searching in the wiki I can confirm the KN weapons platform does originate from Russia so it is certainly based on the AK platform. I'm not sure why they gave the American a Russian gun instead of the HVK-30 (I think based on the HK416, which is German but commonly used by NATO countries) or the M8A7 (I think based on the M16A4).

I guess since it's 40 years in the future the geopolitics has changed or something?

Now, quickly touching on the zombies mode - it's also pretty good. I don't know how it's different to any other zombies mode (since I've never played them) but I like how this game has Steam Workshop support, and you can easily get new content that way.

One thing I don't like is the characters you play as. UMP45 is literally the only doll I like in the roster. I mean who the fuck wants to play as Vepley? What fucking weirdo even likes Vepley? Where's AK-15? Who doesn't want to play as AK-15? Where's AN-94? Where the FUCK is WA2000? Activision, if this was a fighting game roster, I would start riots over it. This is even worse than Ronaldo being in City of the Wolves.

Though I can't complain too much, it's commendable they even used anime waifus for all their characters. It certainly bumped this game up at least a whole letter grade for me.