Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Review (PS5) @CallofDuty_ANZ @Treyarch
Summary: Black Ops 6 returns the series to a revitalized and empowered state after several years of ho-hum entries. The campaign is pleasingly varied, the multiplayer contains a slew of fantastic modes and is very moreish, and Zombies is as furiously challenging as ever, making Black Ops 6 a winner on all fronts.
4.3
Black Ops Brilliance
For the first time in four years, Black Ops is recruited back into action with its sixth installment in the Call of Duty franchise. Now situated in the year 1991 amidst the rising tensions in the Middle East courtesy of The Gulf War in 1991, Black Ops returns to duty for another explosive campaign and next-level multiplayer implementations. The question is whether Black Ops 6 revitalizes the long-running series in exciting new ways, or whether it’s towing a predictable “business as usual” line.
This might seem crazy to believe, but Call of Duty has finally found love……nah not really it’s a first-person shooter fully committed towards warfare containing classified information, governmental tampering and leaving many bodies dead and strewn in your wake. As expected there’s an explosive campaign, feature-packed multiplayer, and of course an engrossing dose of Zombies madness. Altogether, Black Ops 6 thrusts the Call of Duty franchise back into brilliance after a few years of underwhelming entries.
Black Ops 6 continues the Cold War timeline from the previous games, this time landing in the year 1991 during the Gulf War conflict between the United States and Iraq, where we see CIA operatives Troy Marshall and William Calderon amidst Conflict Desert Storm, attempting to rescue Iraq’s Ministry of Defense Saeed Alawi, however he is gunned down by a rogue agent who absconded from the CIA. The bigger threat though is a paramilitary organization going by the name of “Pantheon,” whose mission is to usurp the deputy director of the CIA by staging a war against the United States.
There’s nothing remotely surprising about Black Ops 6’s story beats as they reflect the series’ biggest star-spangled tropes we’re overly familiar with by now, there’s at least enough involved goings on to keep you hooked despite all the predictable machismo and nonchalant bravado that’s defined the series over the years. You might get groggy at once again seeing America raised up on pedestal, but it’s got guns, explosions and high intensity scenarios aplenty-so shut up and enjoy your apple pie!
The Black Ops wing of the Call of Duty franchise has always been submerged in political turmoil, double-crossings and intriguing developments arising out of governmental shadiness, and the Black Ops 6 campaign continues this trend by entangling you in a bundle of high stakes missions that throw you into such scenarios such as following audio instructions to assassinate a target, infiltrating a Bill Clinton speech at a bustling gala, fending off swarms of militia in explosive vehicular warfare, and generally engaging in bombastic Hollywood-imitating endeavours that ratchet up the pace consistently with plentiful thrills and exciting off-the-rails situations that will keep you crunching buckets of popcorn all the while celebrating good ol Americana-especially when you bare witness a spotlighted all-American motorcycle painted in the glory of the red, white and blue.
As you play through the campaign, you’ll be spending time at a hideout known as “The Rook,” where you can liaise with your comrades, access story missions and a variety of puzzles. The Rook is an evolution of its predecessor Cold War’s hideout, playing a greater role because it gives players more to do, and crucially provides you the opportunity to upgrade your gear and weapons, making it a significant and pleasant contribution to everything else the campaign stuffs into its five-ish hour runtime.
While the campaign is a true thrillride you’ll no doubt enjoy, the mission variety is widespread to such an extent that the focus of the campaign emphasizes cramming in as many memorable moments as possible while showing off its flexibility, rather than opting to keep things straightforward. Black Ops 6 wants to be a puzzle game, a stealth game, an FPS game, and it wants to pack in as much as possible to entertain that you can sense it’s trying so hard to appease a dismayed fanbase. Sure, Call of Duty outings have dabbled in variety before, but when you’re dicing with comparisons to the Hitman franchise, you might be trying to fit into Agent 47’s stealth shoes, shoes you can’t possibly fill.
This overstretching and eagerness to cram every possible morsel of gameplay diversity into its short runtime, the Black Ops 6 campaign manages to be both unforgettable and unrestrained in its quest to keep players engaged throughout. Yes, Call of Duty campaigns are notorious for packing their campaigns in with explosive action-packed setpieces, a riveting and pulse-scurrying pace, and a smattering of epic wars that nestle you in the thick of the action, but they don’t need to try so hard now because the franchise is about as venerated as the Christian church due to its legions of fans who ritually purchase the game year in and year out, so it has the liberty to calm down and it’ll still make many millions of dollars.
As has been the case now for two decades, the multiplayer is the roast-turkey centerpiece of Call of Duty’s Christmas dinner table. This roast turkey is stuffed with succulent and sumptuous modes that’ll keep you hitting prestige level multiple times over. Free For All and Team Deathmatch are the staples that are the quickest and most satisfying, allowing you to swipe across maps killing every enemy you see as quickly as a bird swooping down into a river to feast on a fish whether sneakily from behind or while you’re running madly about like an Olympic sprinter practicing his or her profession by darting through a bullet-flying and body-strewn war zone.
Capture and containment-based modes like Hardpoint, Domination, Headquarters and Control are all intense and heavily chaotic offerings as both teams will be forced into messy squabbles for area supremacy. While these modes encourage a lot of getting stuck in and will feel enthralling, these modes don’t offer the straightforward satisfaction of the classic deathmatch modes because success hinges on the team rather than your own personal efforts-although Team Deathmatch is a bit of both, requiring teamwork to kill as many as possible your contributions to killing members of the other team boosting the team’s overall score.
The maps in Black Ops 6 range from a fancy condo with a pool outside, to a cramped hotel room, a training air base, a train yard, and generally very intimate settings for quick kills and places to hide and get the drop on opposition via opportunistic vantage points. Fast and frenetic multiplayer fun is always at a premium in Call of Duty games and Black Ops 6 doesn’t alter this to any degree, which is fantastic and the range of modes provides you with much multiplayer meat to sink your teeth into.
There are some niggles concerning map design though. Some like the hotel-based map are far too small and chaotic, it forces you into a squeezed in environment where the space between the walls are so narrow they’re almost suffocating. Call of Duty’s map designs favour close and intimate play so you won’t need to wait for more than 30 seconds to encounter an adversary, but they could’ve done with some spatial variety.
Zombies has clutched onto the Call of Duty franchise like a ravenous undead straggler since World At War came out in 2008, and now in 2024 the mode continues to go strong with upgrades and additions that further pump it up in new and exciting ways. Two maps are available at launch-Liberty Falls and Terminus. Terminus is a lethal prison facility where you can be trapped inside of the dingy cells if you aren’t careful enough. Traps are all over the place, and you may end up greeting a monolithic tentacle if you stray too far from the map itself. Liberty Falls meanwhile, is more open and thus more dangerous and littered with zombies. If you decide to pop some of these undead shufflers in the noggin, you may find an unexpected creepy crawly surprise within you’ll want to be very weary of. These nasty little spidery pests are like the mutated surprise inside a zombie-skulled Kinder egg, and thus you gotta be on guard if you want to eviscerate them swiftly.
Both of these zombie maps are very different and when working together with 3 others to repel the undead hordes, you’ll find that the challenge ramps up fiercely, but this is no different from World At War’s inaugural Zombies mode as far as the base concept is concerned. Trying to survive waves is hard graft, and you got keep on killing to earn enough currency to open locked areas and buy a slew of better weaponry. Co-operatively, Zombies has always been thrilling and highly intensity, and 15 years after its debut, there’s still plenty of reason to gather some buddies together and slaughter zombies en masse, just don’t become overwhelmed or you’ll be savaged and there’ll be no janitor available to wipe up all those bloody entrails.
Huzzah! Black Ops 6 has broken the streak of disappointing and underwhelming Call of Duty games from the past several years with its juicy and varied campaign, a raft of trigger-happy multiplayer features, and the fabulous return of Zombies. You’ll be granted big bang for your bucks with Call of Duty Black Ops 6 and it will keep you playing until the next entry in the franchise shows up. There is room to criticize the campaign for leaning too heavily on its attempts to shake things up with some puzzle sections, a few not-so-veiled attempts at replicating the auras of James Bond and the Hitman series, and of the sense it’s trying to be too many things during its short runtime, but you’ll no doubt be impressed with what’s on offer. The multiplayer has a fantastic set of modes that’ll keep you coming back for more, although the map design caters to close quarters play a bit too much, and despite modes that cater to both short and long play, they are a little too safe and risk-averse. Zombies delivers exciting thrills and will keep you and three other players strategizing and mowing down hordes vigorously.
Final Thoughts?
Altogether, Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is a return to form for a franchise that has struggled to regain its footing over the past several years. This is a strong entry in the franchise and deserves your full attention. Black Ops 6 certainly doesn’t have the best campaign or multiplayer in the franchise, but it does what Call of Duty does best, and is thus in the upper echelon of the series. Now go raise hell in the Persian Gulf and nab those juicy killstreak combo medals to rejoice in Call of Duty returning into the book of good graces.
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