Review – Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

It is a fact that most Call of Duty players follow the franchise for multiplayer. I’ve always liked the campaigns, seeing the solo experience as a warm-up before falling into the madness of online matches. It was like that with the excellent and then with , which disappointed me a bit. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 regained my hype with the beta tests, leaving me even more excited about the campaign revealed by the trailers.

Produced by Treyarch and Raven Software, with the support of several other studios, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 arrived with the promise of bringing an even bigger campaign, which mixes action with espionage just like they did in Cold War. And to this formula they still add Open world exploration in one of the game’s 11 missions. All of this would be beautiful if it weren’t for one detail: the campaign starts well, but ends too weak.

Campaign that starts well, but…

I won’t give spoilers, but I would say that the first half of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign has its feet firmly on the ground. There are action and espionage segments balanced in the right measure, with a great story going on behind it. Set in the 1990s after the Cold War and during the Gulf War, a clandestine task force infiltrates the CIA putting the agency at risk. Woods teams up with Troy Marshall, his new protégé, and they both work for agent Jane Harrow. Things don’t go as planned and Woods and his team are forced to rebel.

This team is made up of Felix Neumann, a technology genius; Sevati Dumas, an assassin full of secrets; veteran Russell Adler, who returns again causing distrust; and the player (William “Case” Calderon). You need to complete a series of missions to find out who is leading this plot against the CIA.

The story has a very good rhythm, connecting the missions through a hub called The Tower, where your team temporarily hides. There you spend the money collected on missions to unlock improvements (which extend to multiplayer), in addition to talking to the characters, deepening the dialogue through question options. Even better is dealing with NPCs on spy missions, observing clues to avoid giving wrong answers and having your access blocked in a prohibited area, for example. The Tower also hides a series of secrets, inviting the player to solve dark light puzzles to obtain valuable rewards, as well as discover more about the game’s lore.

I was having an excellent experience until I reached the Pleno Reverie mission. The developers’ insistence on connecting the plot to the plot is clear, using it as an excuse to place zombies and other creatures in the middle of the campaign. For me, this decision completely broke the immersion. Luckily, there are still three incredible missions in the sequence, especially the Master Card. Then it’s downhill, with narrative decisions disconnected from reality and a far from apotheotic ending. It lasts about 8 hours, with ups and downs.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and its omnimotion

The biggest new feature in the gameplay of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is omnimotion, which allows for more fluid movement when rotating your character according to your aim, whether during running, jumping, sliding and while dragging along the ground. floor. Seeing another player doing this, it’s as if the contortion of his body made sense, making everything more fluid. But, on the other hand, there are many players abusing omnimotion to escape shots while jumping and sliding. Seeing this happening on Killcam is hilarious.

Multiplayer is loaded with new features, including 16 new maps. There are 12 6×6 maps and 4 more maps that can be played 2×2 or 6×6. The most popular at the moment are certainly Skyline, Derelict, Rewind and Babylon. Apart from the return of the original Nuketown, released on November 1st, which continues to be a favorite among players. All new maps are small to medium in size and use the classic three-route structure. But not everything is perfect: there are design flaws in some of these maps that are allowing cheating, especially at respawn points. And there are maps that simply shouldn’t exist, like Payback (the house called The Tower, in the campaign), a real anthill.

I made a point of releasing this review after launch to have time to play the multiplayer and check out all the maps and variations with the modes. I only played the Vorkuta and Vault maps once, so much so that the community ignores them in the votes. In addition to hating the game’s interface, which is completely blocked and requires a lot of steps for simple things – especially when customizing loudouts – I missed more complete filters, like marking maps that I want or don’t want to play in a certain mode. Finally, on November 14th, three new Season 1 maps will be released: Hideout, Extraction and Heirloom, with 2×2 and 6×6 modes.

Escaping the Terminus

Zombies mode returns in its best form, with a good story set on an island in the Philippines. The Janus Project took control of this island, building a secret laboratory in the caves that were previously used for coal mining. Players choose between characters Grigori Weaver, Elizabeth Grey, Mackenzie “Mac” Carver and Maya Aguinaldo as they explore and fight to escape this bioresearch facility filled with the undead. The game takes place in rounds, with hordes of enemies becoming increasingly stronger. The objective is to collect Essence and Scrap, the game’s currencies, to unlock improved routes, perks and weaponry.

This large map, called Terminus, offers lore information to discover and many different routes to explore. This guarantees immense replayability, as it’s easy to die if your team messes up. Even if you are part of an experienced quartet, the challenge will still be high. Even to lift fallen friends when there are bigger creatures to stop you. Because of this, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s Zombies mode offers more tension than in traditional multiplayer matches. Especially when curiosity is greater than running to the extraction point.

Unfortunately, I faced a lot of bugs in my experience on the PC version. There was server instability (causing many crashes), an error in an update that had already been made (but the game could not identify it), and skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) continues to fail miserably. As an example, when I was around level 30, I played against high Prestige players. In other words, they had weapons with full setup and the best perks while I had a handful of options to choose from. Apart from the disparity in the skills involved, of course. Although I play with a keyboard and mouse, those who are playing on consoles via crossplay will always have a little help from the aim assistance on the controller. I think it’s unfair, but I also don’t see any other way to balance things.

We need to wait for more patches to see how much Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will improve from now on. There are many cheaters populating the servers at the moment, frustrating casual players in particular. Level progression also seems much slower, even when double XP is rolled. In the campaign, if it weren’t for the surreal crazy things going on in the plot, I would have had a lot more fun. The feeling that remains is that they have not reached the same level as Cold War. But in multiplayer, at least, the evolution is more than clear.