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Black Ops 3 is perhaps the biggest Call of Duty game yet. Single-player and co-operative campaign modes - online and split-screen - are joined by classic PvP multiplayer and the return of the popular Zombies mode. Based on the lavish effects work present in the new game, Treyarch is clearly keen to push the graphical spectacle on consoles further than ever before and this has clear repercussions on the core experience. Our initial impressions of the campaign showed highly variable levels of performance, while the use of dynamic resolution scaling meant that image quality doesn't always impress - particularly on Xbox One, where sub-900p imagery is commonplace.Returning to Black Ops 3 for this full Face-Off, a number of matters remained outstanding - could Treyarch match or indeed improve upon the accomplished performance in the multiplayer modes we tested in the beta phase? And on top of that, given the performance issues we encountered in the console campaign, could we power past those limitations with the PC version? Advanced Warfare was highly optimised for PC, and we were very curious to see if Black Ops 3 could follow suit.
Of course, one area where PC gains a guaranteed advantage over console is in terms of resolution. There's no dynamic framebuffer set-up here (not even as a selectable option) and running at a fixed native resolution allows us to achieve a consistent level of image quality throughout. In terms of anti-aliasing, more options are available to PC owners, with standard SMAA T2x offering up a visibly sharper image than the filmic SMAA implementation used on consoles, at the expense of letting through more jaggies, particularly on long edges. If you'd prefer the console look, that's still an option though - the filmic variation is also available. This works well on consoles in providing a clean presentation across near-field and distant details, though some high frequency texture information is smoothed over in the process.
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