Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Review

After reading a book about anthropomorphic rabbits competing to see whether father or son loves the other the most, I kiss my seven-year-old good night, trudge to the loungeroom and ease my aging frame into a gaming chair. Switching to tactical night mode, I turn off all the lights and put on my headphones. I adjust my glasses and squint at the screen before checking my notes to make sure there hasn’t been some mistake. Yes, this is indeed Black Ops 6, and I am the 39-year-old man playing it. I’ve been playing Call of Duty for over 15 years and you’d think I’d had enough of it by now, but just like in Guess How Much I Love You? there’s always more love to give, and in truth BO6 proves worthy of just a little more of that love. The campaign hits real highs before shooting itself in the foot with a supressed XM4, but the multiplayer again shines as some of the best fun you can have in the adversarial multiplayer space in any franchise.

Campaign

I’ve always viewed playing Call of Duty for the campaign as akin to going to a brothel for a hug, and it’s true that recently there have been some real low-effort stinkers (looking at you Modern Warfare 3). But BO6’s campaign is actually surprisingly fresh, mixing in some inspired gameplay and story variations that keep you engaged and see it rise above the humdrum of by now well-worn FPS gameplay.

Take me back…

Taking place in the good old 90s and directly following the events of Cold War, BO6 takes us into the shadowy world of CIA operatives acting outside their official remit. As mute newcomer Case, you and a group of somewhat familiar faces become exiled from the Agency as they investigate the threat of a terrorist paramilitary group called the Pantheon, a threat that may have been brewed within the secretive bowels of the CIA itself. Alongside a couple of newcomers, your team includes Cold War’s complex protagonist William Adler as well as Black Ops series stalwart Frank Woods, who despite being in a wheelchair continues to be a bad motherfucker. Having some familiarity with these two in particular will probably help anchor you in the deeper lore, but BO6 does a commendable job of being a thrilling standalone story if you haven’t been keeping tabs on the now 14-year-old Black Ops mythos.

Much of the campaign gameplay will be incredibly familiar to anyone who has picked up a Call of duty title in the past two decades. You’ll scurry through endless shooting galleries of faceless bad guys, building up a body count that would make Rambo blush, and have things explode around, near and because of you in bombastic fashion. As is signature for a CoD campaign there are several brilliantly choreographed action scenes and set pieces that prove that it’s all right for cool guys to look at explosions. However the campaign also sidesteps the potential for this to desensitise you by mixing in some considered stealth and even light puzzle offerings. Linear missions are interspersed with more open level design that give you the option to choose how you tackle the main objective. For instance, several missions will encourage stealth (and some demand it for at least a small portion), but if things go south (which for me was basically inevitable) you can quickly switch it up and go on the assault. One particular standout mission had Case and co. assisting the SAS taking out SAM turrets to enlist their aid in storming a desert palace. Featuring an open map littered with several brief side missions, their completion was linked to acquisition of powerful armaments such as mortar strikes and attack helos. This made taking out the SAM turrets a breeze as I rained fiery death from above, but I could have just as easily gone through the front gate with guns blazing. Another mission had me disguised as a Pantheon soldier, dismantling their defensive and offensive assets from the inside. The key to the enjoyment of BO6’s campaign is the variation in level and objective design that ensures you aren’t merely proceeding from one shooting gallery to the next playing whack-a-mole with bullets.

This casino puts the pokies room at my local RSL to shame

Perhaps the most profound flavour of this variation comes in the survival horror elements that also feature. I don’t intend to spoil anything, but Case has an interesting backstory that’s explored in one particularly memorable mission that inspires some slight heebie jeebies and mixes in some tense boss battles. Case’s CIA handler Harrow also has her own demons to explore, and these missions in particular were nuanced and intriguing from start to finish. The Black Ops series is no stranger to weird sequences and mindfuckery, but it feels like the developer was content to take an idea well and truly out of leftfield and have fun with it, and it really works.

It’s unfortunate then that the campaign ends with a bit of a whimper, not really tying up the intersection of Case and Harrow’s tales in a satisfying fashion. Both these characters are at the heart of the entire plot, and they deserve better than the ambiguous fizzer of a conclusion they got. It feels like maybe their tale will be continued in DLC (or in bloody Warzone for some reason), but that’s not a model of storytelling I can get behind.

This is what happens when you don’t clap the plane when it lands

Multiplayer

BO6’s campaign is a well-balanced bowl of delicious soup with a (small) pube in it that you only find at the end, but it is merely the appetiser to the meaty main course. The multiplayer offering is some of the best the series has seen in years, with tight level design, a (slightly) pared back Gunsmith upgrade system that’s still deep and satisfying, a great use of perk combos and a moderately subtle but clever and intuitive update to the basic movement mechanics.

Starting with the omni-movement system, it reminds me of the bold introduction of jetpack mobility in Advanced Warfare but with a much more refined and grounded feel that feeds far better into the series’ strength as a boots-on-the-ground experience. This is to say that the revamped movement is kinetic without being “as chaotically frantic as a bag full of cats on drugs” (as referenced in my Infinite Warfare review), and it definitely feels different. Essentially you can now sprint, knee slide or dive in any direction by intuitive use of the left thumbstick, giving you more freedom to evade and outwit your enemy. For instance, imagine you know there’s a camper in the next room (not difficult, there always is). Do you slowly strafe in ADS like a damned clown or do you sideways knee slide in like you’re John Wick and hipfire spray before snapping to ADS to finish the fight? I’ll leave you to choose the right option. Furthermore, you can now turn a full 360 degrees while prone by shifting your body and leg position (not by breaking your spine), meaning it’s altogether possible to run from a would-be attacker, dive forward while doing a 180-degree turn midair, then land on your back with your gun raised and surprise them from a supine position. It’s not that it’s super revolutionary in terms of how movement should work, but it’s amazing how natural it feels to pull off these manoeuvres without even thinking about it, like something innate has simply been unlocked by a few more increments of freedom.

You are our best player. Do not lose hope

This tweaked movement would be nothing without guns to shoot while moving, and in this department BO6 opts to continue the use of the now extremely familiar Gunsmith system. We all know the drill – pimp your weapon by equipping up to five attachments for your gun that modify things like sights, suppression, damage range and sprint to fire speed provided you’ve unlocked them by levelling up the gun. There are a few extra wrinkles though, such as being able to unlock attachments on one weapon that can often be used on other weapons of that class without having to re-earn them, plus several attachments that simply increase a gun stat, rather than being a min-maxing situation with nebulous trade-offs. This latter feature is extraordinarily welcome, as you can beef up your gun with all upsides and no downsides if you choose, which hasn’t been true of the more recent Modern Warfare entries. Equipping a suppressor (which eliminates map ping on shooting) for instance no longer effects bullet penetration or damage range, it merely takes up one of the five precious slots you have to hone your weapon. While bigger boons will come at a cost (rapid fire will always substantially affect recoil – as it should), depending on how you want to wield your weapon there’s a lot of choice and tangible benefits. While the implementation of Gunsmith here is still great and much cleaner and more streamlined than in recent memory, I do feel that it is starting to make modern Call of Duty titles feel a little homogeneous in the gun department, and is probably due for a shakeup. On a separate note, the starter XM4 assault rifle is currently a little overused given its superb all-rounder attributes and may need some balancing, and the paltry shotgun offering is underwhelming and not nearly as viable for rage bait run and gun sessions (oh USAS from Modern Warfare 3, Daddy misses you).

Marrying with the Gunsmith system is a great twist to perks, which much like the weapons you personalise allows you to lean into specific builds. The perks are largely the same as you’ve experienced before, but combining three of the same class (across Enforcer, Recon and Specialist) gives you access to a unique boon that plays into that class. For instance, in you pick perks like Ninja, Cold-blooded and Ghost (which generally make you quieter and harder to detect), you’ll get a bonus perk that lets you see enemies through walls shortly after respawn and alerts you when enemies are outside your view. My favourite became Specialist, which is essentially a support class that grants you score bonuses for completing objective-based tasks and lowers the requirements for support scorestreaks like UAVs and Counter-UAVs. The fun part is that you can use these support scorestreaks to earn yourself a juicy assault scorestreak like the attack helo if you’re clever enough and play the objective, which is a form of incentivised camaraderie that Call of Duty has often lacked. Speaking of camaraderie, the return of eliminations over kills, whereby anyone who lays a shot on a target gets an elimination if the enemy dies) is extremely welcome, and should be the status quo moving forward as it fosters strong team play and fair reward for effort.

I’m also a big fan of the level design, with most maps maintaining a smaller size and more or less three-lane design for focused action. It really doesn’t take long to acclimatise to maps and orient yourself, and as is tradition most maps have a small area where people tend to congregate if you’re looking for a target-rich meat grinder where you can kill fast and hopefully die less fast. This helps ease some of the pain of maps like Lowtown, which fails to impress with its complex weave of alleyways and canals, but does feature a popular room of death that is always fun to throw a frag into and hope for fireworks. Speaking of maps, maybe I’m getting better at avoiding them but the majority of maps don’t appear nearly as sniper-friendly (not that I will shed a tear for them), however maps like Vault, Protocol (my least favourite) and Rewind feature long sight lines that make certain parts of these maps an unpleasant death trap. All things considered I feel the balance is skewed towards the ever dependable assault rifles, but you’ll certainly see a few SMGs like the all-rounder C9 and large-magazine PP19 in a Play of the Match or two.

It bears mentioning that I had zero issue with netcode or connectivity during my journey through to First Prestige, and playing on a wired connection (100 up/50 down) in the outer suburbs of Melbourne I consistently found games with <25ms ping and 0% packet loss (a handy unobtrusive meter displays these metrics in the top left). Importantly, this flowed into matches that felt fun and fair rather than descending into battles of who managed to snag hold of the better end of the lag compensation stick.

Final Thoughts

Call of Duty has long been criticised for its lack of innovation and endlessly rehashed and recycled features, and it’s true that BO6 does not reinvent the wheel. However the fact I (and many others) have enjoyed this series for so long with only a few exceptions makes me wonder if Call of Duty itself is the wheel. Just when I think it’s time to join all the other angry old jaded gamers and shake my fist at the clouds and feebly declare that CoD is dead, an entry like BO6 comes along that takes me back to the joy I experienced when I first answered the annual call in the first place all those years ago. It’s the sweaty palms and sore hands, the thrill of the online kill and the hours that melt away and take the stress of the real world with them. Yes I’m older and not half the sweaty squeaker I once was, but as long as there’s room for me on the virtual battlefield, I’ll be there.

Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

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