It’s late on a friday night, the rain is pounding the windows and your parents have gone out for the night. Starting up your Xbox and launching Black Ops 6 as you hop into a voice chat with your buddies, you prepare yourself for another night of laughs, rage, and questionable language choices.
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6(BO6) is the latest installment in the 3rd best-selling video game franchise of all time, Call Of Duty(COD). The series has had its fair share of creative collaboration over the 20+ years it has been around, with different developers creating different faucets under the title. This includes the Black Ops series developed under Treyarch as well as the Modern Warfare series developed under Infinity Ward, with other spin-off games being developed over the years. In recent years, the series has been controversial between players as games have been pushed out unfinished and just overall bad. Has BO6 finally broken the cycle?
“I haven’t had this much fun on Call Of Duty in years.” said Thomas White, my brother and avid BO6 player.
BO6 has exceeded the expectations of many, having the most successful opening week in franchise history. BO6 racked up the most hours and matches played above any other COD game in their first week. This is due to a very welcoming and exciting multiplier, zombies, and campaign experience.
The multiplayer in BO6 is a welcome change of pace from the past couple of games. The weapons are solid and are pretty balanced with no real standouts being noticed yet. The map selection is one of my biggest gripes about this game. The open areas are massive and lack any cover to duck behind, whilst the close-quarter spaces are tiny. This only applies to about half of the maps however, and fan favorite and series icon NukeTown is still a fantastic choice with my favorite original map being Subsonic.
The other major problem with the game is skill-based matchmaking. Skill-based matchmaking is when players of a certain skill level are matched against similar opponents. On paper, this is a great system that can create fair and balanced sessions. In practice however, the lobbies become extremely challenging after playing multiple good games in a row, and matches the player against people who are just simply way better than they are. Other than these two factors, the multiplayer experience is very fun and rewarding to play and will only get better with time.
My favorite gameplay element is The introduction of Omni-Movement. This new way to move allows the player to sprint, slide, and dive in any direction and is a huge positive for the game. It is super fun to dive at people and this leads to tons of funny moments with friends and is hilarious.
Round-based zombies make their grand return to the franchise in BO6, a feature considered a staple and an integral part of the mode. The Zombies experience is overall fun, and improves on Black Ops Cold War(BOCW) by ramping up the difficulty.
My main problem with BOCWs zombies experience was that it was stupidly easy, and felt unrewarding for someone who used to play the earlier games religiously.
BO6 zombies are more difficult because of how many boss zombies there are. Each round after a certain point is crammed with these enemies, who pack lots of health and damage. My only problem with the mode is that there is a clear overreliance on these enemies, and the mode is still just a touch too easy for me.
The campaign is classically amazing in the usual COD fashion. The cutscenes are masterfully made and the gameplay is engaging as you follow along the Black Ops team set on taking down the militia group “Pantheon”
Overall the game is a ton of fun. The multiplayer is very strong this year, the only problems being a somewhat poor map selection and skill-based matchmaking. Zombies is a noticeable improvement over BOCW and introduces a sense of difficulty that has not really been seen in years with some room for improvement. The mode is fun and my only problem with it is the overreliance on boss enemies. The campaign is great and continues to flesh out some old and new characters in the franchise. This game has reformed my enjoyment of the series, as I haven’t bought the last couple of games due to them being essentially the same game as the last, but BO6 is a breath of fresh air for any COD fan.
