Whilst reviewing the rather unusual movie Hundreds of Beavers with a group of friends one of them mentioned they felt under-equipped to be able to critically engage with it. The movie is essentially a 90 minute long skit show and, whilst enjoyable, doesn’t have a lot of the elements that a critical analysis would usually latch onto. I made the comparison to the Call of Duty series as, for the most part, it’s been the same game for over 2 decades which presents a similar challenge. The argument I made is that, perhaps, critical analysis isn’t really needed something which I (rather ineloquently) made in my last COD review some 2 years ago. Black Ops 6, whilst being the most cerebral of the CODs, continues this tradition of being mindless action hero fun. It has also scaled back the nonsense that had creeped into the traditional multiplayer which has made me a very happy rusher player once again.
It’s the early 90s and Operation Desert Storm is in full swing. You’re on the Iraq-Kuwait border, tasked with retrieving the Iraqi minister for defence but that’s cut short as you’re ambushed by a secretive paramilitary group called the Pantheon. You’re able to successfully extract him from the attack but are quickly intercepted by rogue agent Russell Adler who summarily executes him before allowing you to capture him. He then gives you a message to relay to your old pal, Frank Woods, before he’s taken away to a CIA blacksite, presumably never to be seen again. You and your team and then suspended from active duty, but that’s not going to keep you from pursuing the elusive Pantheon organisation.
COD’s visuals feel about on par for what they did when I last played MW2 which is probably an artefact of this game’s long development process (4+ years) more than anything else. As always it’s highly optimised for fast paced gun play but it also seems like the cutscenes have taken a slight step down in quality as well, losing their cinema quality aesthetics and becoming a lot more stylized than I ever remember them being. I have no doubt that part of this is also due to the continued inclusion of the warzone game mode, one that doesn’t really support a ton of high fidelity assets scattered across a giant map. This all being said though it looks good, runs great and is inline with what I’ve come to expect from the franchise.
At this point it feels a bit trite to go through what a COD game is as, well, it hasn’t really changed that much in the 10+ years I’ve been actively reviewing them. The same core is there, now consisting of the campaign, traditional multiplayer, zombies and warzone. All of those modes share progression on your levels and weapons, giving you ample different opportunities to grind out the perfect build. The standout features for me this time around where the campaign, which shouldn’t be a surprise given I’ve pretty much always loved the Black Ops ones, and the multiplayer which feels like it’s returned back to its roots. Other than that, it’s the same old COD you’ve come to either love or hate.
Combat is as slick as it has ever been, putting you in charge of an extremely bullet-spongey super soldier against an endless army of people who feel like they’ve only just picked up a gun. This is if you’re playing on the default difficulty of course because otherwise you’ll be playing a vastly different game. Indeed I feel that’s probably the worst way to play it, as I’ve discussed with another mate of mine, as the whole action hero power fantasy is the core of the COD experience. Dulling that with enemies that have sniper like accuracy at all ranges and can kill you in 2 hits doesn’t really tickle the same part of the brain that running and gunning with reckless abandon does. I’m sure there’s a non-trivial amount of people though that relish that challenge but I’m certainly not one of them.
The singleplayer is a little more involved than it usually is, giving you an overworld/home base, mission board and a bunch of unlockable upgrades for your character that you’ll carry over between missions. You still don’t have any choice over what missions you do but they at least have a little bit of variety of choice in them now although none of them have any impact on how the story progresses. As always the majority of these missions are essentially demos for the multiplayer environments and mechanics that you’ll be rinsing for the next year. One standout map is the semi-open world one that lets you roll around with your squad, completing optional objectives and essentially building out your arsenal for the next mission. Definitely liked that.
The last few iterations of the COD multiplayer I’ve played through felt like they were a bit too aligned to the Warzone framework for my liking. To be sure, optionality and build diversity is a welcome thing, but there was a point where it became very tiresome. Black Ops 6 feels like a slightly simplified experience, more aligned to the Black Ops of old. That’s then reflected in the gameplay as well which is more focused on smaller, tighter environments that are much more prone to chaos that I’m able to exploit as the dumb rusher that I am. Of course this doesn’t always work, but it sure is fun when it does.
It might just be me not understanding how best to optimise my boosts or something else but progression does feel a lot slower than it used to be. I can remember being able to smash out half a dozen levels in a single play session when a double XP weekend was on but the last time I played, for about an hour or so, during such an event I barely got one. I might need to optimise the game modes I’m playing as well as, in the past, I’d pretty much stick to domination given how high of a score I could generate in those. The problem here is though that I have actually been enjoying the variety of the new game modes I never really got around to playing before so…yeah. That’s a problem.
I didn’t come into the game at launch but there were still a few weird teething issues in the first week or so when I was playing multi with another friend of mine. We’d constantly have issues joining each other’s party and had a handful of times where one of us would crash out of the game whilst the other would get into a match. We also both had a weird issue where everyone’s levels were set to 1 for us which didn’t seem to impact gameplay but seemed indicative of some other underlying issues. They largely seem fixed now though so barring any other crazy patches (which come frequently) it should hopefully be stable.
This is the kind of COD I like: solid campaign with a good, streamlined multiplayer experience. All the things that made me like COD originally are there with just enough modernisation to make it worth coming back to once again. Whilst I don’t think I’ll be as locked into the multiplayer experience as I have been in the past (since my desire for grinding is a lot lower than it used to be) it’s still a fun enough thing to do with a mate or two that it’ll probably be in rotation for a little while longer. Plus, with it being on Gamepass, there’s a good number of people who’d never shell out the $80 plus who are giving it a go, meaning the community is hopefully not going to be forever dominated by the sweaties who are the ones sticking around for the long haul.
Rating: 8.75/10
Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S right now for $109.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 23.6 hours total playtime and 19% of the achievements unlocked. Game is also available on Xbox Game Pass.
