Call of Duty®: Black Ops III

I've spent more late nights than I care to admit watching a squad slowly crumble on round 20 of Kino Der Toten, and the Zombies Chronicles Edition is the reason that still happens in 2025. What you're getting here is the complete Black Ops 3 base game - a futuristic, boots-off-the-ground shooter with a four-player co-op campaign, a fully featured competitive multiplayer suite, and the original six Zombies maps including Shadows of Evil and Der Eisendrache - plus the Zombies Chronicles expansion, which remasters eight classic maps from World at War, Black Ops, and Black Ops 2 inside the Black Ops 3 engine. That's fourteen Zombies maps total, and that number alone makes this the single largest collection of Treyarch's horde mode in one place.

The Chronicles maps - Nacht Der Untoten, Verruckt, Shi No Numa, Kino Der Toten, Ascension, Shangri-La, Moon, and Origins - have all been rebuilt with upgraded lighting, reworked audio, and modernized character models. Crucially, the mechanical overhaul goes deeper than a visual pass. GobbleGum machines (think round-specific power-up dispensers with randomized perks) appear on every map, and the Der Wunderfizz perk machine shows up in several of them, which quietly reshuffles the strategies veterans have relied on for years. Old safe spots still work, but the path to them feels different. Some classic perks got swapped out entirely - PhD Flopper is gone from several maps because the dolphin dive mechanic no longer exists in this engine - so returning players will hit small surprises that keep things from feeling like pure muscle memory.

The base game's multiplayer holds up better than many expected for a title this age, though the skill gap has calcified around veteran players who have had years to entrench. If Zombies is your primary draw, that's fine - the horde mode is genuinely where Black Ops 3 earned its reputation. The Easter egg quest chains, wonder weapons like the elemental bows in Der Eisendrache, and the interconnected Aether storyline give dedicated squads weeks of structured content beyond just surviving waves. Solo players can make progress, but Origins and Moon in particular are maps that assume you have people to cover your back while you fumble through a quest step. The mode rewards patience and coordination; it punishes lone wolves and people who skip the wiki.