Review – Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6

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It’s that time of year again; the time that everyone decides to take time off work, skip school, or ignore loved ones. That’s right, it’s Call of Duty time and the series returns with Black Ops 6. Although it’s been a few years since the Black Ops series has popped up, the last one being Black Ops Cold War, it doesn’t mean that this particular section of the (in)famous first-person shooter is any less respected by long time fans. There is a lot to go into with this release, and the life cycle has barely even started, so I’ll be breaking up my thoughts on each aspect of the game respectively, so if you don’t care about the campaign, or you’re in love with the story, you know where to look.

Let’s kick it off with the campaign. Black Ops 6 follows on years after the events of Black Ops Cold War, this time taking place during the Gulf War. While the details are accurate about who was involved, why it was happening, and everything else Wikipedia will likely teach you on a quick glance, the end product is straight out of some conspiracy theory sci-fi movie. This is a pre-warning that this section of the review will go into spoiler territory, because it’s kind of needed, but I’ll give warning when it’s coming incase you want to avoid that.

The campaign takes some aspects that we learnt to expect from last year’s Modern Warfare III, while for the most part the campaign is structured like a traditional Call of Duty, with missions that essentially force you shooting down hallways, there are also less traditional bits. This is the return of open world missions. One of which is easily the biggest that’s been done in a Call of Duty, which sees you running around the desert with not only main objectives to do, but A LOT of side objectives to do as well. There are only a couple of “open world” missions in Black Ops 6, but there are a lot of missions that give you a lot more variety on how to tackle them, as well as a main open hub to explore between missions and have conversations with your team.

One of the craziest aspects of the campaign though, and this is your OFFICIAL SPOILER WARNING, is the use of biochemical warfare. This whole plot line leads to an entire mission where you’re being chased by mannequins, attacked by zombies, and other crazy psychedelic effects. As someone that doesn’t cope well with jumpscares and stressful games, as much as I love them, these sections did a lot to make me have to step away. I did not need to see a mannequin exorcist crawl under a door, thank you very much. The final missions are really interesting as well, with two missions happening at the same time that you bounce back and forth between right up until the credits roll.

Remember, this is not a game for kids!

I have to point out I adore the voice acting in Black Ops 6 and genuinely think everyone does an outstanding job. It’s not saying much as Call of Duty has never had particularly uncomfortable or awkward sounding characters, but some games do have very questionable choices of tones for character that don’t match the way the character is build or trying to act.

One issue I have on the music side though, and this bleeds over into multiplayer and Zombies as well, is the fact that every time you use a chopper gunner you hear the same 30ish seconds of a generic sounding rock song. Gone are the days of Slaughter To Prevail popping up in the campaign like in Modern Warfare III, or Avenged Sevenfold in Black Ops 2, this just feels like an unfortunate miss. Although, big shout out to the song “115” appearing. While this isn’t the first time that there had been some crossover between the campaign and zombies modes in a Call of Duty game, Black Ops 3 had an entire version of the campaign you could play with zombies, this is the least shoehorned in attempt compared to others.

We all know this is the bread and butter of Call of Duty. If you need any further proof, look at the achievement unlock percentage for people beating the first mission of the campaign (currently sitting at just over 10%) against the amount of people that unlocked the achievement for earning a weapon mastery badge (nearly 12%). It’s insane to think most people are going to play this and not even experience the story, especially with the amount of work clearly put into keeping the longevity of the story alive. Little gripes with the player-base aside, this might be one of the most destablised version of multiplayer that Call of Duty has had in quite a long time.

Keep leveling, keep unlocking.

So let’s look at what’s going on with the multiplayer. First off, the maps. The series has always had specific maps that always reappear in the series, and most people sit in the 24/7 lobbies instead of experiencing the entirety of what the game has to offer, but this time around I can completely understand it. The map variety is just a mess with either tiny maps that clearly want to be the next Nuketown, Rust, or Shipment, or maps with a lot of unnecessarily open and long corridors. This, coupled with the fact that spawns are in a horrible state being able to be spawn killed or trapped on any map quite easily is infuriating. One of the biggest reasons it’s so easy to spawn trap, or be spawn trapped, is because the assault rifles, specifically the XM4, are not balanced at all.

Now I can hear little Timmy returning from Modern Warfare III telling me to just get good, stop complaining, use the same gun if it’s so broken, blah, blah, blah. You’re right, I also have access to the broken guns, but if I want to play the game, I want to play the game my way, which means using the guns I want to use and not using THE FIRST ASSAULT RIFLE that you get. This isn’t even a gun you get for playing the game, everyone starts with it. At least people with less time are on even footing, but lobbies are packed full of people running basically meta classes trying to do crazy spins through the air before they kill you at point blank when you can’t even one shot them with a shotgun.

If you know, you know. If you don’t, look it’s a neat looking gun!

Mentioned before was the weapon masteries, basically get enough kills with a particular gun and you’ll unlock the mastery for it. It doesn’t actually do anything, it’s just a way for you to show how many kills you’ve gotten with a particular weapon. Everything has a mastery, whether it’s the XM4 that most people have 15000 kills for, or the RC-XD, so you can show off how much you love driving your little explosive car around a map. Mastery badges can be applied to your account to show off whatever three badges you choose if you come in the top three of the winning team.

On the note of customisation, there’s quite a lot to pick from. You have always had your calling card and emblem, but now as mentioned you have mastery badges to show off, you can also pick three calling cards to show off if anyone looks at your profile. There are also plenty of skins to pick from, and a lot of skins have options for changing them, which can be earned in the battle pass, unlocked through challenges, or even unlocked in the campaign.

You also have finishing moves to pick from for takedowns if you catch an enemy from behind, emotes because every game needs emotes now, and sprays. Which I honestly don’t think I have seen a single person use in my time playing. One big issue is for some reason everything I set, specifically my emotes for if I’m top of the winning team, constantly reset. No matter how many times I change them, they revert back to the default emotes, so I gave up on trying.

It is called Nuketown after all…

The long story short is Multiplayer is in a little bit of a bad state, so it’s not overly surprising that people are just sticking with Nuketown because it’s expected for that map to be frustrating. Hopefully with some new maps, a bit of balancing, and a good scrub of all the hackers that like to pop up, multiplayer will find its way before it’s too late.

The return of round-based Zombies has made this my most anticipated Call of Duty release since they messed with the formula half way through the Black Ops Cold War lifecycle. Launching with two maps, Liberty Falls and Terminus, it’s time to jump back into what easily makes up for 90% of my total time playing Call of Duty in general. Much like Black Ops Cold War, you’ll have a loadout to pick when you start each zombies map. This includes your weapon, because you don’t have to start with a pistol anymore, your equipment like lethal and tactical grenades, and your field upgrade, which is a special ability with a variety of options like a heal, an energy mine with a big blast radius, or a taunt that restores armour.

Armour also returns of course, this helps reduce the amount of damage you’ll take from enemies, but be careful to keep it topped up and repaired. You’ll also be able to augment all of your field upgrades, perks, and weapon mods, making this likely the most customisable, and by proxy, personally unique zombies experience to date.

Hello friend!

The two maps that are available at launch are almost polar opposites of each other. While the general concept is there, it’s still round-based zombies afterall, Liberty Falls feels closer to what Black Ops Cold War was doing with its maps, while Terminus feels massively expansive. In Liberty Falls you’ll be in the downtown area of a city, with a few shops you can manoeuvre through, a bowling alley, and a church that is actually the void that we call the dark aether.

It’s not a huge map by any stretch of the imagination, only being a bit bigger than maybe Der Riese in my opinion. While on the other hand you have Terminus, which is much darker, has multiple levels to it making the map very vertical, and even a boat you can drive out to islands that are around the map. It might not be the biggest round-based map that they’ve ever made, but it probably comes quite close.

And hello other friend!

Each map has it’s own personality as well, featuring map specific wonder weapons, easter eggs, and elite zombies. Liberty Falls easter egg, or main quest as they call it, is fairly straightforward. It didn’t take long for the community to figure this one out at all. Terminus on the other hand features not only a step that can end the game on you as an explosion goes off destroying the map, but if you manage to prevent this, you then have to fight a giant zombie octopus boss. The steps to the Terminus easter egg are also a lot more convoluted. One thing that was added though is directed mode, which gives you the steps to the easter eggs and waypoints around the map, it also gives you a round cap so the game doesn’t get too out of hand, and makes the final encounter much easier overall.

I didn’t touch on the elite zombies too quickly because there’s two parts to this. First is the elite zombies themselves, Liberty Falls features what I would argue is the easier of the elites, the abomination. A massive three-headed zombie dog monster thing that shoots lightning. Overall not that bad, shoot it in the glowing mouth and you’ll take it down before too long. Terminus has the Amalgam. This is a big thing made up of a bunch of zombies. It’s weakspot are different glowing parts around its body.

The worst part about it is the fact it has a grab, much like the mimic had in previous zombies. This makes it really easy to get surrounded by zombies, it’s not too hard to dodge generally if you’re far enough away, but I despise these types of attacks from any kind of enemy. Manglers also return, they’re not elites, but they’re “special zombies” instead.

Now, on Terminus they’re not massively annoying as they don’t show up too often and usually it’s only one or two once you’re far enough like round 25+. On Liberty Falls though, get ready to be blasted by their cannon from every direction. Without even the tiniest bit of exaggeration, on round 31+ you’ll watch around 8 manglers spawn at the start of every round, and this is on solo. I swear Riley Reid takes less shots from big guys than I do at this point.

I know it’s an amalgam of zombies, but this thing really is the true abomination.

The last things to throw in, mostly because there’s not a massive amount to say on them, are the fact that in solo you can pause again. You’ll be on a time limit though, only being allowed to be paused for fifteen minutes total across an entire match. This timer resets if you save and quit though, a new feature this time around. Did your run end up going better than expected? Maybe you got the ray gun, but then you realised it’s time to go to work.

Save and quit lets you keep one match stored to return to at any time you wish. This resets your fifteen minute timer as well. Lastly, GobbleGum returns, these are little gumballs you can get that give you any number of small upgrades, like guaranteeing a wonder weapon from the mystery box, dropping a power up, doubling the time of a power up, or making zombies flying off into the sky when they die.

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div id=”attachment_169692″ style=”width: 1930px” class=”wp-caption aligncenter”><img data-recalc-dims=”1″ loading=”lazy” decoding=”async” aria-describedby=”caption-attachment-169692″ data-attachment-id=”169692″ data-permalink=”https://waytoomany.games/2024/11/26/review-call-of-duty-black-ops-6/9242ce5d-9bb5-4e5f-ad8e-57a80166608d-1/” data-orig-file=”https://i0.wp.com/waytoomany.games/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/9242ce5d-9bb5-4e5f-ad8e-57a80166608d-1.png?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1″ data-orig-size=”1920,1080″ data-comments-opened=”1″ data-image-meta=”{“aperture”:”0″,”credit”:””,”camera”:””,”caption”:””,”created_timestamp”:”0″,”copyright”:””,”focal_length”:”0″,”iso”:”0″,”shutter_speed”:”0″,”title”:””,”orientation”:”0″}” data-image-title=”9242ce5d-9bb5-4e5f-ad8e-57a80166608d (1)” data-image-description=”” data-image-caption=”The ray gun, my oldest friend.
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The ray gun, my oldest friend.