Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Review

Entering, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a known quantity. The first-person shooter series is a monolith, almost always the best-selling game of the year and a consistently high-quality product, but Call to action he also apparently has an inability to overcome his inertia. I played the original World War II-centric trilogy, but I really started working on the series during the quiet days in between. CoD 4 and the original Black Ops. Almost two decades later, It feels like I’m still playing an enhanced version of Modern Warfarewith a fresh coat of paint courtesy of the 2019 soft reboot of the same name.

This is not singularly a detractor, but a direct line to Black Ops 6a game that doesn’t really feel new, despite some details, but rather familiar, stable and optimized. When you play Call to actionthere is no doubt that you are playing Call to action – looks a lot like last year’s game. This puts the series in recurring conflict with itself: there is no reason to discontinue the well-designed and clearly successful formula, but there is very little room for meaningful iteration on the surface, leaving Black Ops 6 as a game with some interesting but not innovative ideas.

The latest in publisher Activision’s FPS series is primarily developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, but shipping Call to action every year is an almost unparalleled undertaking, with Black Ops 6 seeing support from Infintiy Ward, Sledgehammer Games, High Moon Studios, Beenox, Activision’s Shanghai Studio, Activision Central Tech, Activision Central Design, and Demonware. Black Ops 6 has had a particularly long development cycle compared to the rest of the series, and this is evidenced by a wealth of content, which offers quality gameplay that, however, is heavy due to the immense scale of the series.

Black Ops 6’s campaign is at its best when trying new things

But it’s not experimental enough

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6The single-player campaign offers a reasonably interesting narrative, with enough variety in gameplay and setting to keep your attention throughout. The story itself does well to avoid some of the more overtly propagandistic elements of the Modern Warfare subseries and remains compelling despite some pretty predictable twists. Wonderful performances from the main cast reinforce the plot and character-focused missions.

Similarly, Black Ops 6 uses a little explored era, the Gulf War, but avoids any attempt to analyze recent real-world history for CIA conspiracies and shadowy multinational conspiracies. Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait are just a backdrop, with Operation Desert Storm being used as little more than an excuse for a bombastic scenario.

There’s plenty of spy thriller charm to be had Black Ops 6however. Infiltrating an ostentatious political event in Washington DC (attended by then-governor Bill Clinton) or orchestrating a casino robbery makes for a welcome spy game to break up the shooting galleries that have largely dominated Call to action campaigns.

To this end, there are also a good number of puzzles to solve – including an optional one that is a distinct highlight of the entire game – and even several dialogue trees to navigate for extra characterization details. The main cast is made up of fairly routine characters, but excellent performances combined with CodThe exceptionally high production value helps make them respectable vehicles for the plot.

Black Ops 6The campaign really shines when it starts mixing genres. Some segments are genuinely unnerving, approaching a survival horror experience, and some missions that delve heavily into the Black Ops The subseries’ sci-fi leanings may at first seem like too sharp a turnaround, but they end up being some of the game’s most memorable sections. These are the most successful experiments, giving the campaign a captivating but There are also times when Black Ops 6 seems to be holding on to something bigger than a Call to action campaign.

A very open level leaves the player loose with scattered objectives and a long list of optional side missions. It’s interesting and a little disappointing; sort of like the survival game crafting elements injected at the end of the 2022 campaign Modern Warfare 2, It’s fun to see Cod try new things, and if it were fleshed out further it could be a genuinely exciting evolution for the series’ single player mode. However, it remains relatively superficial – at once not overstaying its welcome but also feeling undercooked.

Black Ops 6 multiplayer is intimately familiar

Unique CoD gameplay still reigns supreme

PvP multiplayer is the most familiar aspect of Black Ops 6occupying a well-exploited space that has remained practically unchanged since Call of Duty 4 laid the foundations. The game’s most significant mechanical innovation, omnidirectional running, also known as omni-movement, makes gameplay more agile but also appears to generally contribute to the dissolution of structured encountersgiving everyone so much mobility that any match can turn into chaos. This can be mitigated somewhat by carefully selecting which game modes are enabled.

Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, and Free-for-All typically descend into a frustrating frenzy as everyone zips around the map with little to no direction; Objective-based game modes like Domination, Hardpoint, and Headquarters often result in a more compelling round. With its 16 completely new maps, Black Ops 6Multiplayer is a stark reminder of why Call to action dominated the sales charts and multiplayer FPS space for so long: The gameplay is just fun. Especially in the wake of 2019 Modern Warfarewhich renewed the strength of the series’ gunplay, the series’ moment-to-moment action remains satisfying, even if it never approaches the complexity of other competitive shooters.

A lot of Black Ops 6The game’s satisfaction in its multiplayer modes comes from the heritage of the Gunsmith system, where new weapon attachments are unlocked quickly and frequently. New weapons, gadgets, perks, and wildcards also appear regularly, constantly providing new loadouts to try out. Black Ops 6Multiplayer mode is satisfying and engaging when playing, but is also mired in unsightly facets that entirely serve the monetization of its live service.

The menu backgrounds are dominated by characters awkwardly walking forward, the game is preambled by a slow-motion splash screen of the featured player, and the winner’s circle is a lingering view of otherwise useless emotes. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a full-price game, costing at least 70 USD. These superfluous elements singularly promote additional purchases and provide bloat to an otherwise quite enjoyable experience, bogging down a product that players pay good money for.

Zombies is round-based again, although it’s not really a return to form

Omni-Movement has a big influence on Zombies gameplay

Mainly separate from the issues of live service games, however, is Black Ops 6The other major multiplayer avenue of: Zombies. Far from its quaint and claustrophobic beginnings in World at warZombies are most affected by the introduction of the omni-movement. Round-based zombies have returned and Both maps – Liberty Falls and Terminus – give you plenty of space to run and slide through the walking horde. The tried-and-true strategy of circling while kiting the undead, regularly turning around to unload a magazine, is exceptionally prevalent.

It’s also wonderfully chaotic when you lead your teammates head on against your squadmate’s, undoing any strategy either of you had and causing everyone involved to feverishly search for an escape. Just like the campaign and multiplayer, Black Ops 6 Zombies is totally family friendly – ​​all the mainstays are there: the Mystery Box, the Pack-a-Punch Machine, wall shopping, doors to open, Perk-a-Cola (including the brand new Melee Macchiato), GobbleGum, wacky missions, the works.

There is some melancholy in the Zombies’ loss of foundation. Gone are the days of rebuilding window barricades to slow the deluge or getting through the first few rounds with just a pistol and knife to save points. Everyone can bring a weapon loaded with eight attachments into the game, but this is hardly of any consequence, because getting to the Pack-a-Punch machine on both maps is hardly difficult. Black Ops 6 Zombies ramps up very quickly in its gameplay and the atmosphere has lost most of the horror and mystery that defined its previous iterations.

But all of this amounts to a Zombies feeling in line with the rest Black Ops 6a game designed for those who have already been there. Put me inside World at war‘s Nacht der Untoten and I would probably get bored soon, despite my nostalgia for it. Zombies knows what we’re there for: blasting hundreds of enemies with laser-firing Pack-a-Punch’d weaponry and figuring out how to get some awesome weapons. Therefore, it is no surprise that it is growing quickly, showing once again Black Ops 6The desire to offer satisfying gameplay with very few barriers to entry.

Final Thoughts and Review Score

Rich in content, but not very ambitious

It’s hard to beat anyone Call to action very terribly title, especially one with as much polished content as Black Ops 6. This one simply aims to optimize and deliver the fundamental experiences of small-to-medium multiplayer maps with smaller player counts, core round-based zombies with a focus on quick power-ups, and a robust campaign that the latest entries in the franchise are under-delivered on. The gameplay itself is very good and Black Ops 6 is worthy of the series’ legacyknowing what players want and giving it to them, even if it means playing it a little safe when it comes to gameplay innovation. That legacy weighs heavily too, especially as it’s one of many games contained within the complicated Call to action launcher. Time will tell how Black Ops 6 perks, gear, wildcards, and omnimovement will impact the Warzone experience when Season 1 launches next month.

Unappealing menus probably won’t totally detract from the experience, though, so anyone who enjoys the series will probably be content with Black Ops 6. Its prolonged development cycle has clearly paid off, but it also makes me wonder what kind of ambitious projects the talent at Treyarch and Raven Software could come up with if they were freed from Call to action. Another year brings another iteration of gaming’s FPS royalty, and perhaps more so than its kin, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 It’s a pretty convincing argument for why the series remains at the top.