'Call of Duty: Black Ops 6:' a classic Black Ops experience
Following “Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War” (2020) and the 1980s missions of “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2,” (2012) Treyarch, Raven Software and Beenox return to the COD: BO franchise with “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.”
Set during the Gulf War, Troy Marshall (Y’lan Noel) goes dark with a group of CIA operatives including Felix Neuman (Seamus Dever), Sevati Dumas (Karen David), Frank Woods (Damon Victor Allen), Russell Adler (Bruce Thomas) and Case (the player).
Together the group operate in the dark, working to expose the mysterious paramilitary group known as Pantheon, a corrupt faction embedded within the CIA who possess a deadly bioweapon known as The Cradle.
The campaign is well-made and fun to play through, unlike a certain Call of Duty game from last year.
The strongest aspect of the campaign is easily character interactions as “COD: BO6” is just as character-focused as it is combat-focused.
Within your undercover base of The Rook, the player has the ability to talk with other characters and observe their interactions with one another. This helps express each character’s backstory and motives to the player.
The new cast of characters are all fleshed out with Felix being my favorite, but I’ll always be a huge Russell Adler fan.
The missions within the campaign are especially unique as some missions are linear (going from one objective to the next) with others being more open-ended (multiple objectives to choose how to tackle a mission), or straight up open-world (free to roam around and complete objectives in the order of your choosing with side objectives throughout).
“COD: BO6” also keeps the mind-bending aspects we’ve come to know from the franchise around as well.
The mission titled Emergence primarily deals with this (remaining vague due to spoilers), but the mission plays like a horror segment that had me genuinely freaked out at times.
Combining the realistic graphics of the game with the mission’s horror and music, it genuinely felt like the 343 Guilty Spark mission from Halo with a COD: BO context applied to it.
While the Pantheon has unique enemy types like the shotgunner or minigunner, the enemy AI isn’t very difficult to combat leading me to want a bit more from the combat encounters which feature stellar gunplay.
The campaign also suffers from being predictable. The only COD games I’ve played before were “Call of Duty: WWII” (2017) and “COD: CW,” and from those two stories alone I was able to easily predict each twist the game had.
However, the campaign ends on an open-ended note leaving room for the story to be continued in “Call of Duty: Warzone” (2020) like previous games have done.
Earlier I mentioned there was an open-world mission within the campaign. After playing that mission, I thought I’d check out the multiplayer to see if there were any large-scale maps like that.
Unfortunately, there was none to be found.
What I found instead was the return of the classic prestige system, maps utilizing the 3-lane format, and well-designed operators.
I also found the negatives of the multiplayer to be the gameplay. Riddled with the occasional bugs, the Recon ultimate perk and blue perks seemed to dominate the matches.
Weapon variety also felt non-existent compared to the campaign as the ARs and SMGs filled most player’s loadouts, ones which have to be started from scratch regardless of your progress from the open beta held earlier this year.
It wasn’t fun going from Level 30 with a strong loadout to Level 0.
As mentioned before, there were no open-world maps in the multiplayer, but there were larger and more open maps found within the Zombies mode which returned to the round-based format.
Sadly, the Zombies mode only has two maps that get cluttered with the mode’s UI that makes it hard to appreciate the larger maps.
It’s also hard to appreciate the combat as it’s very similar to what was seen in “COD: CW.”
Regardless of the campaign, multiplayer, or Zombies, the biggest and most prominent positive this game has is the introduction of omnimovement, the ability to move, sprint, dive and slide in any direction.
It’s an aspect of gameplay that we as players haven’t ever really thought about, but after having it, I’m left wondering, “Why didn’t we have this before?”
Omnimovement allows the game to stand out among the rest in COD’s yearly release schedule, adding some longevity to the game and allowing for some insane action hero-like clips.
Multiplayer is where omnimovement is primarily going to be utilized, but it’s nice to play with in the other modes as well.
Gamers have come to expect a new COD game each year with similar gameplay, multiplayer, and Zombies with the campaign being the most commonly changed factor.
“COD: BO6” finds a way to add something new and fresh to each mode allowing for fun to be had in all modes while returning to the franchise’s roots with the classic prestige and round-based Zombies.
While I don’t play “Warzone,” the base game’s campaign was competent enough to leave me wanting more answers for the loose threads. “Warzone” for “COD: BO6” is on the way and I for one am looking forward to seeing where the story goes from here.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 — ★ ★ ★ ★
Release Date: October 25, 2024
Developer: Treyarch, Raven Software, Raven, Beenox, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, High Moon Studios, Demonware, Activision Shanghai
Publisher: Activision, Activision Blizzard
Systems: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC
Rating: Mature (M)