The Call of Duty franchise continues to be a difficult one to review. These days it is not so much a singular game as much as a package of several, disparate activities, not unlike a Jackbox Party Pack. We have the Black Ops single player experience, a wholly separate collection of multiplayer modes and the exciting zombies adventure. Each is its own fully realized product that could sell Call of Duty Black Ops 6 entirely on its own, and many gamers may touch one or two of these modes without ever delving into the others. For my part, I stuck with single player and zombies, and only ventured into multiplayer if friends pestered me into it. I simply lack the skill and reaction speeds to compete in modern Call of Duty and have given up the ghost on that front. But, for a lot of people, the multiplayer will be the meat of the product.
So, with that in mind, let’s start with the multiplayer aspect. This is perhaps the easiest part of Call of Duty Black Ops 6 to cover. There are new maps, new weapons, new killstreaks and the return of the prestige system. But, otherwise, it’s the same multiplayer you’ve come to expect from Call of Duty year after year. And that’s a good thing, because the gameplay has been refined over the years. Honestly, it’s a solid package all around, especially compared to Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3’s lackluster effort last year. Sure, some weapons stand out beyond others, and a few desperately need attention, but as with any recent Call of Duty anything I call out now will likely change within a few weeks, at most. It’s possible that the weapons I used have already been buffed or nerfed into something I wouldn’t recognize. The new maps are, overall, well designed and offer something for just about any play-style you can think of. If I were twenty years younger, I would absolutely be sinking a lot of time into this incarnation of Call of Duty multiplayer.
Moving over to the single-player campaign, this year’s entry is a marked improvement over last year’s. The Black Ops franchise continues to be one of the most consistent within the larger Call of Duty framework. This year we continue the time jumping that the series is infamous for and takes place during the Iraq war in the 1990s. The story takes you all over the world as you chase down the mysterious Pantheon group and the biological weapon they are developing. As is tradition for the Black Ops games, not everything is as it seems, and the story will take a few twists before you get to the end.
Call of Duty is at its best when it tries not to get too fancy with the story, instead sticking to solid tropes and only tossing in the occasional head-turner when you’re getting too comfortable. Black Ops 6 sticks to this, and tells a story that isn’t particularly special, but hits the right notes at the right times. It is also bolstered by a solid cast of characters that you get to interact with between missions. Particularly surprising to me was how much I enjoyed the character of Felix, whom I had several interesting conversations with.
The missions themselves are also solid, with a good mix of set-piece cinematic moments and tight combat scenarios that you can approach in different ways. The game does occasionally bring back the big open-world map, but it executes much better than Modern Warfare 3 did last year. Honestly, even if you normally forgo the single-player in favor of multiplayer mayhem, this year’s entry is one you may want to consider.
Lastly, let’s talk about Zombies. Last year the action moved over to a larger world with multiple squads working their way through it at a time. This year, we’re back to a more traditional zombies mode with smaller maps designed for one to four players. While I did love last year’s entry – I logged more hours in it than I expected to – I do like this return to form, as well. There are two maps available at launch, and I love them both in different ways. I found it to be accessible as a casual gamer, but there’s a lot of depth here for people who really want to go all in on it. Like competitive multiplayer, there isn’t much here to shake things up from previous entries, but instead its strength are the refinements made over many previous incarnations. I expect I’ll be playing this mode for many months to come.
Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Review Final Thoughts:
Last year Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 was largely disappointing. While zombies mode was a blast, the rest of the game didn’t leave much of an impression, though I imagine the multiplayer was as popular as ever. I briefly considered trying out Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 to see if they could recapture my interest, but I never got around to it (when are those coming to Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft?).
However, if Black Ops 6 had been my reintroduction to the series, it would’ve been a different story. The narrative hooked me, the gameplay was engaging, and everything just felt on point. It made me remember why the previous Black Ops campaigns sucked me in, even when I was falling off the Call of Duty bandwagon. I really hope the other Call of Duty development teams are taking notes from Black Ops 6.