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People have asked me, a Call Of Duty liker, “How’s the new COD?” – such is the mass appeal of Call Of Duty that even a lot of my non-industry pals are invested in whether Black Ops 6‘s shooty really does bang. And every single time my brain clunks into gear and I turn inwards, where I struggle to come up with anything meaningful to say. So much so that a fog develops and out of the fog emerges a figure – it’s me. I’m holding an M4A1 with an extended barrel and a vertical foregrip. My brain and body perform a pincer movement of physical response: 1) I shrug 2) I say, “It’s like Call Of Duty”.
This year’s PvP offerings are much the same to COD’s kinfolk. You spit lead at other players in your team deathmatches and hardpoints and search ‘n’ destroys. Defeat dads spending their precious evening hours having just put the kids to bed, or kids who should be in bed already, and you’ll unlock new weapons, perks, and attachments. Of course, the real prize lies in unlocking some tiger stripes to make your gun look like it’s freed itself from the zoo.
There’s familiarity in it all, as you work towards that new gun everyone’s using and that new attachment that’ll make it as strong as the one everyone is using. Being a former esports head, I love chasing down those meta guns and – whether this is healthy or not is debatable – I do enjoy the dopamine hit when I see I’ve unlocked a new foregrip. But that’s not to say the Gunsmith (where you perform said tinkering) and the dinky weapon pool don’t do enough to encourage experimentation – they do!
You’d think a small pool of SMGs and assault rifles or whatever would make for a lackluster EXP chase and fend off variety. If anything, the sheer range of attachments combine with a manageable roster of guns to form a bunch of barrels and bullets that you want to experiment with. And crucially, when you do experiment, it feels like you’re easily able to find a build for you that’s able to match the meta.
Take your weapons to the arena and it’s classic COD FPS fare, minus those Battlefield-esque War maps with their tanks and capture areas. For some reason, it doesn’t exist in Blops 6, and I’m personally fine with that. Some of you who liked those modes might be a bit sad, but hey, there’s always a chance they get added later. As I type this, the game’s yet to experience its first season and battle pass, bringing with it new maps and guns and the like. It’s a constantly evolving thing so just take this review as my thoughts on experiences I’ve had with the launch iteration.
One entirely new addition is Kill Order, where both teams must simultaneously protect their VIP while hunting down the enemy’s. The VIP appears on the map for all to see and if killed, the VIP rotates to another team member. Exhaust their lives and voila, you win. It’s a good time with pals as it makes for silly escorts and panics as you take bullets for your president, while one or two slink off to slip some chrome between the eyes of the enemy’s high value target. Naturally, this also means it’s less fun with randoms, as “Wrinkly_B@llsaK”, “[ASDA] John Terry”, and friends all just end up ignoring the objective entirely.
Elsewhere, there’s Control, which is sort of like Domination except capturing or defending the points is split into rounds within a best of three. If the attacking team captures all of the points within the time limit, they win a point, and the teams swap roles. And as you might’ve guessed, if the defending team prevents the attackers from doing their thing, they earn a point. What’s neat is that both teams share a pool of lives, so this adds an extra win condition that amps up the tension. Don’t be the reason your team goes from a comforting 15 lives to 5…
… you might tell yourself as you perform a dive into a group of five players, before you get put down like an engorged clay pigeon that’s landed at the feet of a tweed-clad stag party at the shooting range. Treyarch calls Blops’ new movement system “Omnimovement”, in the way you can sprint and dive in any direction. You can slide around doors or chuck yourself backwards or even turn yourself in mid-air. Land on your back and you can roll over onto your tummy and ping bullets into someone’s ankles. I like how it’s ‘technically’ a game-changer, in the sense I’ve seen very good players pull off some John Woo manoeuvres and I, an average player, pull off the occasional cool slide driveby and feel good about it. Really, it caters to both parties, where 90% of folks can play COD like they’ve always done with some occasional flair, while the remaining 10% can master it like they’ve become World Chase Tag athletes.
And crucially, I’m a fan of throwing myself around the maps, only one of which I despise (this is very complimentary). While I do think it’s a slight on them that I’ve had to look up their names instead of them burying into my consciousness like Terminal or Favela or Castle, I think they’re overall a solid bunch that promote fun shootouts. Don’t ask me how exactly they promote fun shooting, just know that I really enjoy Payback’s old estate and its chaotic conservatory sightlines. Scud is similarly frantic and set in some crumbling military outpost where SMGs and shotguns rule its innards, while snipers outside can get some mileage by poking their heads atop chunks of broken concrete. Lowtown’s canal systems? They suck. I hate Lowtown.
Chucking aside talk of canals and PVP for a second, let’s move briefly onto zombies. The last couple of COD zombies have been open world affairs that felt a bit empty and left behind the simplistic round-based chaos of yore. Well, Blops 6 has brought the yore back to the fore, so to speak. We’ve got a couple of traditional maps with the usual rhythm: collect money by shooting the undead, open doors, activate traps, and wrestle your mates for the mystery box. One thing I appreciate is being able to take in any gun of your choosing, as opposed to always starting out with a pistol. And it’s nice being able to earn new power ups and the like once you’ve accrued enough EXP.
All in all then, I’d best sum up Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 like this: it’s like Call Of Duty. A good one, I think. Not a bad one. If you like Call Of Duty, you will like this. If you don’t like Call Of Duty, you will not like this. If you haven’t played Call Of Duty in a while but did like Call Of Duty in the past, then you will probably like this. Now imagine me, as I step back into the fog with my M4A1 and disappear into a lobby filled with the wet squelches of a man passionately eating a lasagna too close to his mic.