Black Ops 6 modes and playlists

What are the Black Ops 6 modes? While you can always expect the bread-and-butter game modes to appear in every Call of Duty game, each new entry offers up some much-needed variety to ensure you’re not left in a Domination hole for the year. Black Ops 6 is no different, and this year’s addition, Kill Order, is a real treat for Halo veterans in particular.

The FPS game has shaped up to be an explosive one on the action front, with plenty of shiny Black Ops 6 weapons on offer. There are a variety of modes that should please any variety of bloodthirsty player. Read on to find out everything we know about the Black Ops 6 modes.

Black Ops 6 standard modes

The Black Ops 6 modes available right now are:

• Kill Order
• Team Deathmatch
• Domination
• Search and Destroy
• Kill Confirmed
• Hardpoint
• Gunfight
• Headquarters
• Control

Kill Order

If you ever had the pleasure of playing VIP in Halo, it shouldn’t take long to get up to speed with Kill Order. In this 6v6 mode, a player on each team is initially designated as the High Value Target (HVT) and gains armor. Killing the enemy HVT offers bonus points for your team. Each time an HVT is killed, a new player takes up the mantle. The first team to reach 125 points wins.

Kill Order requires your team to measure when it should be hunting the enemy HVT against protecting its own. The longer you can survive as the HVT, the better it is for your time as killing an HVT offers as many points as five standard kills. What’s more, HVTs earn double points each time they score a kill, incentivizing aggressive play rather than turtling.

It should be noted that a new HVT won’t immediately spawn once the previous one has been killed. If the enemy HVT is the one that’s died, use this time to bunker down your own to prevent a counter-assassination. Likewise, if your HVT has died, we’d recommend using the opportunity to mount an all-out attack while you don’t have to worry about your VIP.

Team Deathmatch

Team Deathmatch shouldn’t require too much explanation if you’ve played a shooter before. The concept is simple: load in and kill the enemy team more times than it kills yours. In Black Ops 6, TDM is still 6v6, and still requires you to reach a certain score to win the game. Though it’s not yet been confirmed what the score limit is, we expect it to be 100 as it was by the end of the Modern Warfare 3 era.

Domination

Another classic 6v6 mode, Domination is a simple zone control mode featuring three objectives that need to be captured and held to accrue points. These zones are designated ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and ‘C’. Zones are now considerably larger in Black Ops 6, allowing you to reposition to a different angle post-capture while maintaining control of it. As with previous CoD titles, the more operators you get on a point, the faster it will capture.

In Black Ops 6, the first team to reach 200 points wins. While zones A and C should be simple enough to capture and hold for each team as they’re on opposite sides of the map, zone B is where the real action will take place – at least initially. There are many Domination games where one team will somehow snag A and C, leaving you pincered in on B. At times like this, pick one of the outer zones to push, rather than trying to fight on two fronts.

Search and Destroy

If you’ve ever played the Counter Strike games, this mode should be very familiar to you. Teams alternate between planting and defusing a bomb, but you must be careful as there are no respawns in this mode, so every life matters.

Kill Confirmed

Two battles battle for supremacy as they race to collect dog tags. The tags are dropped whenever a player dies, with blue tags representing your team’s death, and orange tags representing the enemy’s death. Collecting orange tags adds to the team’s overall score, while collecting blue tags denies your opponents the chance to add to their score.

Hardpoint

It’s wild to think that it’s been over a decade since Hardpoint debuted in Black Ops 2, and the fan-favorite mode is back for more in Black Ops 6. Similarly to Domination, Hardpoint requires you to capture and hold a zone to accrue enough points to win – 250 being the score limit. However, in Hardpoint there’s only a single zone that moves to another pre-determined location on the map every 60 seconds.

The Hardpoint zone revolves around a fixed rotation, so paying attention to its pattern is crucial to getting the jump on the enemy team when it’s time to change location. In Black Ops 6 zone numbers have been added, which will help your team better understand where to push next. It should also be noted that some Hardpoint games will end before teams can reach 250 points due to the match timer running out. Should this happen, the team with the highest score when the match ends wins.

Gunfight

Perhaps the least surprising inclusion in the Black Ops 6 modes outside the core CoD staples, 2v2 showdown mode Gunfight is back on the bill. With randomized loadouts each round and no respawns, only the most versatile and prolific aimers will come out on top. Gunfight ends only when the required number of wins has been reached. As with Face Off, Gunfight takes place on the smaller Strike maps, so make sure you spend some time getting to know them when you jump into the game.

Headquarters

Similarly to Domination, teams fight to control one specific zone known as the Headquarters. The team controlling Headquarters must defend it, but they won’t be able to respawn until the enemy team has captured the zone for themselves. The winner is determined by who can hold onto the zone for the longest amount of time.

Control

Another zone-based mode, Control pits two teams against each other as they take turns to attack and defend specific areas on the map.

Black Ops 6 Face Off modes

Originally introduced in MW3 (2011), Face Off is a modifier for other modes, maintaining their rules while removing killstreaks and pitting teams against each other on smaller Strike maps.

In Face Off Kill Order, for example, you’ll still be hunting down HVTs, just in a much smaller arena. Face Off games are typically much more frenetic than their non-Face Off counterparts, even with the removal of killstreaks, so get ready to murder and be murdered a lot.

The Black Ops 6 Face Off modes are:

• Face Off Team Deathmatch
• Face Off Domination
• Face Off Kill Confirmed
• Face Off Kill Order

And that’s all you need to know about the Black Ops 6 modes. While you’re here, check out some of the other best multiplayer games you can enjoy right now. If you’re curious about what else is soon to hit our screens, make sure you consult our upcoming PC games guide.