CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS 6

Yes, it's true that we were late to review this year's Call of Duty, unfortunately various real-life issues during the release period led to the review being up in the air for some time. However, it's not all bad since we are now able to thoroughly evaluate the game of Treyarch and Raven Software and have a completely clear picture of both the singleplayer campaign and the various multiplayer modes. This picture shows the following: Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is definitely among the best CODs of the last decade and the first in many, many years that managed to get me absolutely hooked on the multiplayer. Let's examine why.

Let's start with the singleplayer campaign which takes us back to the early 90s and the Gulf War, with the plot actually taking place in the background of Operation Desert Storm and dealing with themes that can now be considered as "classic Black Ops", namely paramilitary organizations, government corruption, inhuman experiments and secret services involved in all kinds of shady ops. I don't want to be more specific because the campaign's surprises are fun and it would be a shame to spoil them, but I will say that the campaign missions have it all: Action, impressive set pieces, mystery, psychological warfare, stealth, James Bond-style spy shenanigans and more.

The thing that impressed me the most was the variety of environments and gameplay. Black Ops focuses on the activities of secret organizations influencing the world through targeted operations and all sorts of dirty dealings. This is exactly what you are called upon to do in the campaign by travelling the globe and performing assassinations of key people, infiltrating restricted areas and recovering people or objects, sabotage, deception and, if necessary, open warfare. The storyline isn't hard to understand even if you haven't played all of the previous Black Ops games, however the appearance of people and events from the past means that you'll definitely gain in immersion and nostalgia if you've been following the series since its first game.

In some missions the campaign opens up and becomes... open map with RPG elements! Okay, I'm exaggerating slightly, but I was really surprised to see that in some missions a map appears with mandatory and optional objectives, as well as different ways of solving them. There's even Bethesda-style lockpicking! The developers made a great effort to ensure that the player never gets bored and for me they almost succeeded perfectly, since with the exception of some parts that take a bit longer than they should, the whole campaign maintains a pleasant and exciting pace with carefully placed moments of tension and relaxation. Overall, I really enjoyed the campaign and highly recommend it to those who love singleplayer FPSs. If you're not into multiplayer, a comparatively inexpensive solution is to sign up for Game Pass Ultimate to play the Black Ops 6 campaign and any other game on the service you like.

The available multiplayer options are the Zombies mode (basically co-op along the lines of Left 4 Dead) and the classic PvP multiplayer which in turn includes several sub-modes. I have to admit that I didn't really engage much with the Zombies mode because although it is well done it didn't attract me as much as the PvP. In Zombies your main goal is survival as you have to withstand waves of zombie attacks, upgrade your equipment and traverse the levels until you reach the final objective and extract. The action is intense and I didn't notice any obvious problems, so if you're among the fans of this mode I think you'll be pleased.

The "regular" multiplayer though... My god, what an addiction! For me, a gamer who almost exclusively prefers singleplayer games, it was really a shock that I not only spent hours and hours on the game's multiplayer, but I actually became addicted to it, to the point of neglecting other games I was playing at the same time or playing for hours on end without realizing how much time had passed. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the developers' achievement, the previous multiplayer game I spent dozens of hours on was... Battlefield Bad Company 2 which came out in 2010!

Since it was a big surprise to me too that I liked multiplayer so much this year, I tried to analyze why. I think that apart from the classic elements that are tweaked slightly in every annual release such as time to kill, weapon handling, the way of levelling up and the way of using different perks or equipment, the biggest positive change is found in the movement system that was dubbed by the developers "omni-movement" and gives players the ability to sprint and dive in any direction. While at first glance it may not sound like a revolutionary change, in practice it gives combat a speed, unpredictability and spectacle that I don't recall in any previous COD, even those that attempted to innovate in the area of movement like Advanced Warfare.

Of course, such a movement system could easily become annoying if every time you saw an opposing player he started doing stunts and you couldn't hit him. The developers have very carefully adjusted the speed of movement and weapon effectiveness so that killing an opponent is not a chore, but both he and you have the tools at your disposal to make one last effort to escape elimination. There were several instances where I escaped a kill by diving at the last minute towards a door or behind crates and when it worked I felt like the ultimate badass, especially if I could then manage to get a kill against the person who targeted me. Similarly though, there were many moments where I laughed and said to myself "alright dude, you deserve it" when a player was in my sights and with a deft move managed to turn the situation around and eliminate me. In both cases I felt a sense of justice, that the person who managed to act intelligently in a difficult moment was rewarded.

Since I mentioned justice, let's talk about the issue of cheating. In the time between the day I started playing multiplayer and the day I'm writing this, I managed to achieve my first prestige (i.e. to reach max level and start leveling from the beginning). In the dozens of full matches I played along the way, only once did I see in replays a case of a player who could have been a cheater (it was a player with a fairly jerky and unnatural mouse movement that seemed like it would "lock" automatically). Since the review is taking place quite some time after the initial launch and I was obviously at a fairly low level compared to those who have been playing since launch, perhaps the cheaters were at higher prestige levels and thus matchmaking was not throwing them my way. However, my experience under these circumstances was pleasant and the issue of possible cheating was not a concern for me at all, just keep in mind that, as the Americans say, your mileage may vary.

Practically, the only complaints I have about Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 are about the business model and the external launcher. For the former, I find the various rewards given through the free battle pass to be too poor compared to the premium. "Well, what did you expect" one might say, however we must not forget that Black Ops 6 is not free to play but costs eighty euros. It's kind of... in bad taste to shower those who bought the premium battle pass with goodies while the ones who paid "only" for the main game have to settle for xp tokens or a skin every now and then. As for the launcher, I played the Battlenet version and noticed that the service's interface with the Call of Duty launcher is not the best possible. Both the updating process and that of switching between modes should be much smoother and faster.

I never expected that the developers would turn me into a Call of Duty bro but here we are. Never say never. With the exception of the two issues I raised above, my experience with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was completely and to some extent surprisingly positive. Great singleplayer campaign, addictive and very high quality multiplayer, very good performance with no stuters and frame drops even on my mediocre PC with RTX 3060, only one crash in dozens of hours of gameplay, smooth matchmaking and good server responsiveness. What more can you ask for? The full price is undoubtedly high but the value of the game as a total package is undeniable.

Thanks to AVE for providing us with review code.

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