I’m savouring the current state of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Right now, the shooter is enjoying its honeymoon phase of critical and commercial success before Activision crawls in and begins its predictable rollout of the seasonal content. We’ve already seen this begin with an updated Nuketown and social media accounts letting us know exactly what new maps, weapons, and modes will be coming in the first major update.
The Call of Duty content machine is already fired up and ready to go, and in the coming weeks and months we are going to see Black Ops 6 become more and more bloated with seasonal content and additional updates that further integrate it into the Warzone ecosystem. It’s easy to understand why this is the case, and has been for the past several years, but part of me misses the simplicity of older entries and how they used to be supported before shooters of this size became all-consuming live-services.
Does Anybody Else Miss Call Of Duty Map Packs?
When I was growing up during the glory days of Modern Warfare and Black Ops in the late ‘00s, what you saw in the game you purchased on release day was what you got. People settled into a comfortable routine of a bombastically brief single-player campaign and a huge multiplayer mode that would dominate your life for the next ten months. You’d also have extra bonuses like Special Ops or Zombies depending on the year, but for a long time, Call of Duty traded on a familiar selection of offerings that appealed to its mainstream audience.
These would be complemented by regular map packs featuring a mixture of new or returning battlegrounds that you could pick up for $10 or so. Every new map became an event in itself and a focus of new playlists you’d jump into with you and your friends to discover everything they had to offer. Or, when it came to returning to biomes like Overgrown, a nostalgic jaunt into the past to see exactly what changes had been made. Every few months gave Call of Duty new life, encouraging its community to stay engaged and peruse over every little thing.
But a handful of new maps every couple of months isn’t enough anymore, neither for players who have become accustomed to generous battle passes or corporations who wish profits to reach unprecedented heights. If you can throw enough staff onto Call of Duty to pump out an unending stream of content and your audience continues to lap it up, why bother stopping?
It has been proven time and time again that, even with entries like last year’s Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty is a name that is simply too big to fail. So it keeps evolving and leaving behind what made it so special in the first place. But Black Ops 6, at least right now, is an exception worth savouring.
Black Ops 6 Is A Temporary Return To Form For Call Of Duty
It sucks that, considering the amount of money that goes into every Call of Duty entry, we’re often forced to make concessions about one part of each game being mediocre. Every year it feels like either the campaign, multiplayer, or Zombies is going to come up short. But when it comes to Black Ops 6, everything it has to offer is killer. That’s why audiences have been so enthusiastic in recent weeks, and why folks like me who often dip in before witnessing things unfold from a distance are suddenly so invested.
We’re in it for the long haul because the base experience is a sudden reminder of what Call of Duty used to be, and what the series resembled in our nostalgic upbringings before it was consumed by untold amounts of corporate greed. It has been the biggest video game series on the planet for the better part of two decades now, managing to ride the wave of new blood like Fortnite, Apex Legends, and PUBG, but there is no doubt in mind about Call of Duty long outgrowing what it used to be.
But this return to form is still special, even if its positive changes aren’t folded into the next title. With how Call of Duty is developed across so many different studios, it can be hard to track a consistent evolution or lessons learned with each passing year. Black Ops 6 seems to have struck a perfect balance, however, and that alone is worth celebrating.
