Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
For all of its ups (Black Ops 2), downs (Black Ops 4), and in-betweens (Black Ops: Cold War), there’s no denying that Treyarch’s knotty spy saga remains a defining jewel in Call Of Duty’s ever expanding crown, with the original Black Ops still undefeated as the best selling COD game to date. Following two years of lacklustre Modern Warfare sequels then, it seems fitting that the onus to bring Call Of Duty out of its funk lies with the franchise's gnarlier, feistier little brother.
Black Ops 6 not only fulfils the assignment but, thanks to a feature-rich package of fresh ideas that puts 2023’s half-baked Modern Warfare 3 to shame, ascends expectations entirely. The result is a game that gives players one of the best Call Of Duty campaigns in recent memory, followed by a generous serving of riotously entertaining Multiplayer and Zombies modes to boot.
Set during the relatively unexplored backdrop of the Persian Gulf War, Black Ops 6 retains the series‘ paranoia-steeped obsession with slippery governments, off-the-books operations, and covert kill squads, but swaps the Cold War window dressing for a decidedly 90’s milieu inspired by futurist spy flicks of the same era (think less The Deer Hunter, more Ethan Hunt.) The genre shift is a smart move on Treyarch’s part, allowing the studio to delve deeper into its 'spy-fi' toybox for more unique missions and inspired set pieces. One level has you infiltrating a political fundraiser for Bill Clinton armed with an omni-functional undercover camera, while another takes the form of an elaborate heist mission, frequently swapping between team members with all the cinematic flair of an Ocean's caper.
These missions play out interstitially between breaks back at your Safehouse, a permanent headquarters where you plan out future assignments, upgrade your character perks, converse with squad mates, or uncover secrets hiding behind some gentle environmental puzzles. An expanded iteration on the Safehouse from Black Ops: Cold War, the location serves as a clever pacing device for Treyarch's characteristically operatic storytelling, offering much needed downtime to flesh out the motivations and backstories for the campaign's sweeping cast of new and familiar faces from across Blacks Ops' history.
Call Of Duty's smooth, snappy combat has never felt better.
If there’s any shortcomings to be acknowledged, it’s that Black Ops 6 plays around with the history of the Gulf War and its power brokers without ever meaningfully engaging with the geo-political or humanitarian subject matter involved. This is admittedly par for the course for Black Ops, a series which once saw Castro, Nixon, Robert McNamara, and JFK fend off a zombie invasion at the Pentagon, but gaming has long since matured in its handling of real-world issues. It leaves this particular entry's carefree approach feeling somewhat dated at best, and irresponsible verging on tasteless at worst. Still, in a campaign that has you fighting Weeping Angel-style mannequins one minute and escaping police through the streets of D.C. the next, such impressions quickly dissipate amidst the pure entertainment value of Black Ops 6's moment-to-moment gameplay.
Speaking of gameplay, Call Of Duty's smooth, snappy combat has never felt better. This is largely thanks to a revamped traversal system which allows players to sprint, slide, dive, and lie prone across a full 360 degree range of fluid motion, with no impediment to their speed or sight-lines. The resulting 'Omnimovement' brings a welcome change-up to the usual corridor battles of the campaign, but is more importantly a revelation for Multiplayer, catapulting the familiar rhythms of Call Of Duty’s buttery gunplay into a frenetic dance of Olympian dives and physics-defying dodges. This can lead to some frustrating moments where seemingly easy targets slip from your sightlines, but the flipside to this new field of play is the ability to pull off some incredibly satisfying feats of stamina and skill in combat, creating dizzying displays of violence which the returning 'Play Of The Game' cam valiantly showcases at the end of every match.
Black Ops 6's map design is carefully catered to this new flow state, too, boasting vertically stacked environments pockmarked with vents, windows, and other convenient gaps designed to be speedily navigated over, under, or straight through entirely. The tweaks bring needed-flavour to the traditional three lane choke points Call Of Duty has leant on for decades, and it certainly helps that Black Ops 6's environments are also some of the series' prettiest to date. Anchored further by a strong roster of modes, operators, perks, and guns, not to mention a more streamlined weapon customisation that simplifies some of the built up convolution of recent instalments, Multiplayer thus strikes an impressive balance between nailing the fundamentals and delivering exciting innovation where it matters most.
As for Zombies, the fan favourite horde mode arguably reached its zenith with Black Ops 3, and has begun to feel more and more like a tacked-on afterthought ever since. To address this, Treyarch wisely decants the experience into a more purist throwback, trimming the open worlds and impregnable lore of recent instalments for a back-to-basics, round based mode playable across two different maps. It's a strategy that pays off, delivering an experience that's not doing anything new for the format, but instead returning it to a more dependable, dopamine-inducing rhythm that reminds you why Zombies became so popular in the first place. There’s still perhaps one too many systems in there designed to keep feeding the live service machine that Activision inevitably has designs for, but here they’re kept at the perimeter of the core experience, rather than threatening to dilute it entirely.
22 instalments in, and you can understand why Call Of Duty remains the poster child for AAA gaming malaise. But, following a string of misfires, Black Ops 6 provides a strong counter to that claim, refurbishing where it counts while still providing the nostalgic theatrics that the series is known for, most notably via an impressively rich and pulpy campaign. The final product may still not be enough to win over any outsiders, but for those who have stuck with the franchise year-after-year, through thick and thin, Treyarch's latest effort will feel like a much-needed shot in the arm.