Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Review (Patreon)

Editorially speaking, I get why some of the major outlets are writing three separate reviews for Call of Duty every year. First, the three modes are very distinct and, in some cases, attract completely different crowds, so readers who just want Zombies info might not care about a review that covers competitive multiplayer. Secondly, each of those three modes that the game ships with take different amounts of time to cover. The person writing the campaign review only has to play, what, ten hours of game, at most? Easy to get that one out first and have something up on the website. Those sorts of concerns are probably a not-actually-secret third reason: writing three articles about a game and spacing them out a bit will probably result in a lot more interest than just one write-up that hits all at once. I mean, it’s the biggest game of the year, every year, right? If you wouldn’t do this for Call of Duty, what would you do it for???

I guess this all gets back to how we think about reviews and the purpose they’re intended to serve. If we think of a Call of Duty review as a mostly pointless piece of output because millions of people are going to play it one way or the other and word-of-mouth will ultimately be a better decisionmaker for most players than editorial coverage, then hey, write three reviews. Get what you can out of it. But if we think of the coverage in a more classic sense—trying to give purchasing advice about a game—then three reviews that hit at different times are useless. If you’re weighing out a purchase, ya kinda need to know about the whole package.

To twist this mess even further, it’s 2024, and Call of Duty is now a Microsoft-owned property that’s debuting on Game Pass. The existence of the subscription service has been making reviews feel just a bit more pointless since… I don’t know, Crackdown 3 is the first game that comes to mind. Crackdown 3 is a bad game. If you were trying to buy that game back when it was new, I would say “hey, don’t do that.” But if you were trying to download it via your Game Pass subscription, naturally I would say “hey, you do that.” Because why not, right? All you’ll lose is time, and unlike a reviewer, you can just quit anytime you like and go do something else.

All of that is to say that I think that the overall usefulness of the humble video game review has declined a lot over the last 15 years. And yet, here I am, about to go and do it again.

I guess I did, in fact, have to do it to ‘em? Sometimes you finish a game and just need to write some stuff about it, if only so it’ll stop taking up 15 minutes of the podcast every week.

VIDEO GAMES

OK, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is exactly the game it needed to be. After a down year from the weird “was this an expansion pack” release of Modern Warfare III and the seemingly endless courtroom drama that pit Microsoft against the anti-trust bodies of the world as they attempted to decide just how much, in fact, Call of Duty matters, a lot of the conversations around the game seemed to be turning negative again. Infinity Ward’s initial reboots started feeling more and more distant, and Treyarch’s last attempt, Black Ops Cold War, was… fine. Black Ops 6 makes some bold changes, some smart changes, and some weird changes, but in the end it all adds up to one of the best packages Activision’s put together in a very long time.

CAMPAIGN

Let’s talk campaign. Black Ops 6 is set in the 1990s, stepping it forward a decade or so from the ‘80s-themed Black Ops Cold War. Like that game, you spend most of your time playing as a new character, a guy called “Case.” You’re in the CIA with your buddies, including one Frank Woods, the increasingly out-of-place operative who’s been jaw-jacking with main characters in this sub-franchise since it began. Russell Adler, the Robert Redford-looking guy who was at the center of Black Ops Cold War, is missing and presumed rogue, which is to say you bump into him in the game’s first mission, setting the entire game in motion.

Before too long you’re off on a new adventure, globetrotting against the backdrop of Operation Desert Storm as you attempt to figure out the origins and motives of a group called Pantheon, which seems to have eyes and ears just about everywhere. Is there a mole? Inside the CIA? Play the game and find out! The game plays fast and loose with history, using it about as well as any period-set action movie might. And that’s the most direct analogue here. The Black Ops 6 campaign is a pure action movie with some spy-tinged tension and absolutely ridiculous scenarios that just get more over-the-top as the story goes on.

In essence, this is Call of Duty’s Fast & Furious moment. While previous games have done some of these things around the edges, Black Ops 6 is dedicated to escalating the stakes, locales, and ridiculousness to absolute extremes, and the game is better for it. The only time Black Ops 6 becomes a military shooter like its lineage would suggest are when you’ve infiltrated Iraq, pretending to be normal troops and not rogue agents, hiding from the CIA while trying to figure out what’s in the basement of one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. And even then the game sets you up in a bite-sized open-world map full of enemy camps, SAM sites, and the like to do whatever you want on your way there. The next moment you might be pulling off Danny Ocean-style heist, swapping from one member of the crew to another when their part of the heist is “up.” And then there’s the head stuff.

The Black Ops series, in case you forgot, is largely about mind control experiments with varying degrees of success. Back in the original, Mason had his numbers. Bell, the guy from Black Ops Cold War, uh… apparently would go nuts when a bell was rang, because of… mind control? One game took place entirely inside someone’s dying head, like a grim take on the end of Newhart? Does that reference land? Should I talk about St. Elsewhere, instead? OK, forget it. Point being, the game traffics in the same stuff here, though instead of saving it like some big late-game reveal that you were definitely anticipating, the game handles it earlier and moves past it for an even bigger, weirder head trip payoff later on. The campaign isn’t entirely successful—if anything I could’ve used one or two more tied up loose ends with Case—but the ride is so nuts that it’s probably up there with the best in the series. The nature of Game Pass and the quality of the campaign means that I think you should give this thing a look, even if you have zero interest in the rest of the game.

COMPETITIVE MULTIPLAYER

The competition portion of the game builds off of the last five years or so of framework, but brings something very new to the table at the same time. Called “omni-movement,” it’s a system that allows you to do more things in, well, more directions than you could before. The game has had two sprint speeds—a regular run that you can do whenever needed and a tactical sprint that replenishes when you stop using it—for awhile now, but you could only do it when running forwards. Now you can do it sideways and backwards, also allowing you to knee slide in those directions, as well. This, in theory, lets you slide around a corner, already facing where a potential enemy might be.

But wait! There’s more. Treyarch’s games have had dives for awhile, but again, only forward. Now you can dive sideways like a frickin’ John Woo movie or dive backwards, landing on your back in the process, something you couldn’t do before. This means you can dive backwards down a set of stairs to avoid a grenade and still try to shoot the guy who tossed it as you go. That’s easier said than done, really, but it isn’t as difficult as all the silly 360 no-scope shenanigans trick shot weirdos have been doing for ages now. The inputs are sensible and, well, it all comes down to practice. I’m still the shits at it, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. Some weapon attachments and loadout options are designed to make you better at shooting while sliding or diving, which helps a bit. The idea of having more ways (and heights) to round a corner is a good one, as you want to keep opposing players guessing about where they’ll need to aim. But in practice, I’m not seeing a ton of effective use of it in the matches I’m getting. Organized teams that were, say, sending a couple guys around a turn at the time, at different elevations and speeds, might find themselves out-tricking the competition, I’m not sure. Either way, it’s a fun addition.

The average map size in Black Ops 6 feels larger and slightly more sniper-friendly than what we think of as the average modern Call of Duty map, but this still feels reigned in compared to the remakes found in last year’s game. Overall, it encourages a slightly slower pace of play than the meatgrinders that have made the series so aggressively frenetic as of late. Call of Duty is, once again, a footsteps game, and patience combined with good listening and an eye on the minimap has gotten me more kills than any sort of insane stunt dives have. The change of pace was, at first, a little off-putting. But as I settled in, I’ve grown to really appreciate the change. Also, well, the game also has incredibly tiny “face-off” maps that you can cram full of players and have matches that make Shipment look like a tempered, well-reasoned map. Stakeout is a tiny apartment building that doesn’t leave you many places to hide, and the matches there are some of the silliest, most intense spawn-and-repeats that I’ve ever had. It’s a great time, especially with the other, larger maps offering a more measured experience.

Guns and loadouts aren’t that different from the previous games, but everything has been streamlined down to the essentials. Weapon attachments in previous games used to be a mess of positives and negatives, leaving you to do the math on how much recoil control you were willing to give up for a faster aim-down-sights speed or whatever. Generally speaking, most of the gun attachments in Black Ops 6 are purely additive, leaving you to just decide if you want a barrel that increases bullet velocity or one that increases damage range. Or, hey, how about one that makes your headshots hit harder? That one still comes with some tradeoffs, but overall the customization is way more sensible than it’s been in years. Hopefully this aspect of the game doesn’t get crapped up with new, harder-to-assess gear as the game’s monetization gets underway later this week.

Prestiging—that is, hitting the maximum player level and resetting yourself back to level 1—is back to its old-school roots in that it relocks almost everything you unlocked on your trip up to level 55. You’ll earn a token you can use to permanently unlock one loadout item each time you go, and also… anything that came with a gun blueprint that you purchased or unlocked through other means (like the campaign) will always be unlocked, too. Again… hopefully this is something that doesn’t get crapped up once battle passes and cosmetics fill the shop. I’m ambivalent on the changes to prestige, mostly because it feels like you get there a lot faster these days. Back in 2007 it felt like an ordeal. Now I’m already level 40 and I’m not even playing all that much.

Overall, competitive multiplayer has launched in a much better place than last year’s game did. The changes to movement are goofy fun and despite what “the pros” are saying online, the maps are good, actually.

ZOMBIES

Dude, I don’t know. Treyarch made a big deal that “round based zombies is BACK,” and what’s here is certainly more reasonable and entertaining than the DMZ mode reskinned as a zombies thing was last year, but I’m just never going to be a big zombies guy. I’ve been into round-based survival modes in the past, Gears was usually a pretty good time, but this stuff never stuck for me. All these years later, now that it’s been crammed full of lore I don’t know and secrets easter egg weapons that I don’t want to learn the 90-step unlock process for, this just feels even more beyond me. Also, it seems like the maps are mostly outside and the game isn’t about continually boarding up windows to keep zombies out? That’s actually probably a good thing, I guess, might as well change it up.

I keep unlocking “gobblegums” as I level up in competitive multiplayer and I swear to you on my life that I have no idea what a gobblegum is, I have no idea how you use one, and I’m scared to use of them because they look like they might be single-use items?

I tried this out a few times and, ultimately, I just don’t think that shooting zombies is especially engaging here and playing a Call of Duty game with even-more-limited resources just isn’t my thing. I came here to shoot guns, get shot, respawn, and keep shooting. I’ve seen mostly positive things about both of the maps since the game was released, for whatever that’s worth, but I guess I’m just not going to be of much help to you here, I’m sorry. At least it looks nice and the maps feel large.

OK, THEN

It’s a great-looking game with a fun soundtrack and some great voice performances in the campaign, though I’d also say that having Frank Woods curse at you when you’re losing in competitive multiplayer just comes across as… I don’t know, childish? It’s very much in-bounds for his character but I don’t think it’s a great fit for the overall vibe of the game’s competitive section. There are some other mis-steps, as well, like having a couple of zombie-style characters in the game’s competitive multiplayer. While the campaign actually does a pretty good job of justifying why this might be the case, they stick out in a bad way, not a good one, especially when the overall roster is still so small in these early days before they’ve started selling Socks the Cat or Arsenio Hall skins or whatever. This is all pretty minor stuff, ultimately.

I think this is one of the best Call of Duty games they’ve produced. In some ways it’s the game that Black Ops Cold War should have been, with bolder choices and smarter, more streamlined player options. But it’s also a game that builds so directly on some of the things that were perhaps more nascent back in that game that it simply couldn’t exist without it, as well as the other recent games in the line. Assuming you’re not on a Microsoft platform, where the recommendation is “yeah, get it on Game Pass and play it, it’s rad,” I’d still make a strong recommendation here on PS5 or Steam, which is where I’m playing it most of the time. The PC version looks fantastic and hasn’t given me any technical trouble, though I know that hasn’t been the case for everyone out there.

5/5 on all platforms (except PS4, haven't played it)

ONE LAST THING

Ears. We all have them? And now multiple entities are vying for control of them. First Mark Cerny was coming for your ears, and now Call of Duty has partnered with an external firm to do customized headphone mixes based on you uploading a quick video of your head and ears to a this third-party company. These spatial mixes are designed, so they say, to be more accurate and rendering the world of Call of Duty around your head. The catch is that this personalized profile is only available to you for 30 days unless you want to pay this external company $20. That’s a lot for better ear stuff!

Is it actually any better? Look, I am no earologist. But as I said before, this is a game about footsteps. Hearing footsteps and determining where they’re coming from is kind of key. I think it’s hard to reach anything conclusive about this feature without doing way more testing than I can do on my own, but I will say that I found the audio mix on the free trial to be nice and spatially accurate. Is this leading me to aim the gun where I know the footsteps are coming from so I can shoot guys the moment they round a corner? I’m going to tentatively say yes, but I was already paying attention to this stuff before switching to the personalized mix. I can’t tell you it’s better, but I can tell you that it definitely hasn’t been worse.

Without writing another 3,200 words of an alarmist screed here, I will say that the very concept of paying for an audio mix in a game where better audio helps you win more gunfights seems positively fucked. But then I also can’t say definitively that it’s making a difference in my play, so I’m also a little hesitant to call it “pay-to-win” or whatever term we’re throwing around at this kind of stuff lately. I will be very interested in hearing about what the esports scene for this game does about this and if these mixes are preferred, shunned, or perhaps even banned by those players and organizations. That seems like it’d be the easiest tell to watch for on this one.