There’s a common sentiment that Call of Duty doesn’t change much each year. The maps and weapons between installments might differ, but the fundamentals are so ingrained in its DNA that it has virtually no unique experiences left to give. A juggernaut of the industry that set the bar for multiplayer first-person shooters slowly devolved into an IP frequently criticized for chasing outdated trends. Modern Warfare (2019) was a rebirth of sorts for the series, but that transformation wasn’t without compromise.
Every Call of Duty game released afterward has felt the same, from gunplay to campaign structure. It’s been one of my biggest gripes with every modern CoD title since the shift to the overhauled IW Engine. Going into Black Ops 6, I was fully prepared to play a carbon copy set in the 1990s. After playing for 30 hours, though, my fears were unfounded. Treyarch has created the most unique Call of Duty in years, drawing inspiration from previous titles to offer a solid campaign, strong multiplayer, and the best Zombies mode since Black Ops 3.
|
Time Played |
31 Hours |
|---|---|
|
Multiplayer Level |
Prestige 1, Level 13 |
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Highest Zombies Round |
Round 41 |
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Chosen Campaign Difficulty |
Hardened |
Much of this success stems from the new omni-movement system, an overhaul of player movement that allows you to sprint, slide, and dive in any direction. It cannot be overstated how much of a radical change this is to moment-to-moment play. You never have to shift your gaze away from an opponent during a gunfight anymore. I frequently found myself sliding sideways mid-duel to reach cover or diving backward to generate space, filling my opponents with lead in the process. I can’t think of a single past title where it felt this good to move around.
Diving Into Multiplayer
Omni-movement has been transformative to the multiplayer experience, for better and worse. Unrestricted mobility has led to frantic and stylish gunfights that’d feel right at home in a John Woo film. It’s a breath of fresh air from the slower-paced entries by Infinity Ward, but Black Ops 6 swings a little too far in the other direction sometimes. We’re reaching player speeds that haven’t been seen since the jetpack era.
Part of the problem stems from map design. Only two of the 16 maps available at launch leverage omni-movement’s strengths: Skyline and Vault. Every other map is a traditional three-lane symmetrical arena, all of which are surprisingly small. Players can weave between lanes at a moment’s notice, so there’s zero flow. Sadly, Black Ops 6 has the weakest map roster in a Treyarch game to date.
I only hope that post-launch support will include maps that live up to BO6’s innovative movement.
Even with its lackluster map selection, I couldn’t pull myself away from multiplayer. Omni-movement has added a new means of skill expression to a series that’s long stagnated. Each new shootout is an opportunity to hone your skills and uncover strategies that mesh with your playstyle, either through omni-movement itself or the game’s wide arsenal of weapons, gadgets, and perks.
Progression has also seen some long-requested additions this year, bringing back fan-favorite systems like account prestige and Dark Ops challenges. Attachment and weapon balance have also been streamlined to focus more on weapon quirks than stat optimization. It’s a design ethos we haven’t seen in the modern era, and I’m glad it’s made a triumphant return here.
Zombies Is Back
Speaking of triumphant returns, Zombies is arguably the best part of Black Ops 6. Treyarch has taken the best elements from every Zombies iteration yet to create a fantastic onboarding experience for new and returning players. I was worried that having omni-movement, armor plates, and perk upgrades would make Zombies a trivial affair that’d get boring after a few play sessions, but it turns out the opposite is true.
Zombies is far more challenging this time around. The roster of undead minions has expanded from mere shamblers to armored soldiers, mutated spiders, virulent bugs, and three-headed beasts that breathe lightning. Enemy health scales precipitously as well, forcing you to leverage all of Black Ops 6’s mechanics to stay alive in the higher rounds.
Fortunately, nearly every upgrade system in Zombies history is back and better than ever. Cold War’s rarity and elemental damage types return to give your weapons an edge against the undead. Black Ops 3’s Gobblegum system lets you bend the rules in your favor with one-time-use consumables, spawning wonder weapons and power-ups at will. And when you finish a match, you can use your hard-earned XP to unlock new weapons, attachments, and even perk augments that can fundamentally overhaul gameplay.
The Zombies community has been split for years on which direction the mode should go. Black Ops 4 had far too many convoluted easter eggs, and Cold War’s shift to casual open-world design was a violent overcorrection. Black Ops 6 has effectively done the impossible and merged the best elements of each entry to create something greater. There are deep progression systems, brutal difficulty scaling, and a plethora of secrets to discover. Zombies hasn’t been this good since Black Ops 3, and with any luck, it will only get better.
Easter eggs also make a major return in BO6 Zombies, both major quests and obscure secrets. I have not completed any as of the time of writing this review, but the Zombies community should be pleased with what’s there for launch.
Cold War: Part Two
My only major gripe has to be its campaign. While this is nowhere near as disastrous as Modern Warfare 3 (2023), we have received a downgraded version of Cold War’s campaign set in the 90s. It’s narratively uninspired and thematically confused, but the mission design thankfully does enough heavy lifting to keep things entertaining during its eight-hour runtime.
At its core, Black Ops 6 is trying to tell a spy thriller narrative riddled with conspiracy. You play as a faceless protagonist named Case, fighting alongside a ragtag team of soldiers to topple a shadow organization called The Pantheon. Their reach is global, and their motives unclear. Not even the CIA is safe from their schemes, nor are your allies. It’s a premise ripe with twists and turns, and it sets the perfect narrative foundation to explore themes of fake news and psyops.
None of that happens. There’s one twist in the entire game, and the campaign shifts gears so violently when it happens that it completely loses thematic cohesion. Until that point, Black Ops 6 walks a fine line between a stealth game and an action shooter, doing so rather well through excellent mission structure and level design. But when you approach the final third, it turns into another mindless corridor shooter.
For fans of Black Ops, the campaign also features the return of familiar characters like Woods and Adler. Their commanding presence and hardened personalities mesh perfectly with the new cast of characters.
The mission structure during the first half of the campaign is some of Call of Duty’s best. One mission takes you to a political rally where you must blackmail important figures to give you information. Another has your squad infiltrating a ritzy casino to commit a grand heist. Even the more traditional CoD levels experiment with their mission structure, opting for non-linear objectives set in an open landscape—similar to MW3’s open combat missions—or injecting elements from Zombies to deliver surreal combat encounters.
As great as these missions are, they can’t be the only load-bearing wall for the campaign’s narrative. Pantheon’s motivations are superficial at best and never properly expanded, so all BO6 has going for it are its flashy cinematics and characters. Cutscenes continue to carry the tone, but BO6’s characters are generic, stoic soldiers who won’t rest until the job’s done. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but there’s not much to sink your teeth into either. You’re left with a fairly two-dimensional roster battling a two-dimensional foe.
My system (RTX 4090 with a Ryzen 9 7950x) was achieving an average of 110 FPS in multiplayer and 84 FPS in the benchmark tool on 4K Ultra, no upscalers enabled. This is noticeably worse than MW3. Upscalers were broken during the launch period, so I can’t accurately estimate performance gains—FSR and DLSS only gave +15FPS at 1080p internal, which means something’s broken.
I’d caution PC players to wait for a patch before picking this up.
It’s a shame because everything else Black Ops 6 iterates on is a smashing success, synthesizing the best elements of past games to create something greater. This is the first truly unique CoD experience we’ve received in half a decade. Omni-movement and more old-school gameplay design have gotten me excited about multiplayer again, while its rendition of Zombies might be my favorite in franchise history. Outside of several standout missions, however, I wasn’t impressed with the campaign, but I’ve begrudgingly come to accept that campaigns just don’t matter to the wider community at this point. The real value is in the multiplayer and Zombies; in that regard, Black Ops 6 is a strong return to form.
- Released
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October 25, 2024
- Omni-movement is a great addition
- Zombies has never been better
- Strong campaign mission design
- Deep progression systems
- Campaign quality drops near the end
- Weak map roster
A PC code was provided by the publisher.