Been playing multiplayer only as always, so as always that's all I'll remark on (sorry) with these first week impressions. This entry continues the series's recent streak of polished and bug-free launches, which is unfortunately still noteworthy for Call of Duty since it was not a given in the recent past. Even Black Ops "5" a.k.a. Cold War was pretty buggy, especially on last-gen hardware. This unsurprisingly feels pretty comparable to that last Black Ops entry as far as I remember, which I mostly had a lot of fun with.

The notable change here is adding a bit more freedom to the movement, as you can now sprint and dive in more directions. I really like this change because it feels like an obvious improvement while also feeling super intuitive. I'm not churning out insane trick shot clips with it, but personally I found myself easily engaging with the new movement almost immediately as something that feels like it's always been there but nonetheless does impact the action.

Perhaps at least partially related to those movement changes, snipers feel notably near-nonexistent in my matches compared to prior entries, which is not really a complaint for me as I've always found them one of the more annoying aspects of the game and un-fun to actually use. The balancing of time to kill and stuff combined with the design of the maps generally feels well-suited for a standard run-and-gun playstyle that gives you a chance to fight back if someone gets the jump on you. With even the default basic assault rifle being "meta", it was easy to get the feel for this game.

On the topic of that default gun working just fine, I increasingly wonder each year if the loadout/gunsmith system could undergo some kind of reset back to basics. There are so many options with minor effects that it's just not exciting to unlock anything, and I feel almost more incentivized to be lazy and stick with my gun that I have stuff unlocked for already. In the age of the battle pass and cosmetics, meta challenges also feel pretty meaningless, but ultimately I'm just here to play the game so I don't really care.

I don't expect that stuff to change anyway, as the series appears committed to its unified launcher and a consistent experience across all the latest entries. It's fine, and I think the launcher is mostly good these days about doing things quickly and being stable, but is just another area where it's more of the same without a lot else to say. (My install size continues to be quite low, by the way, for all the jokes that gets.)

And if that "mostly more of the same" feel is the theme of this review overall, I think that's fine. People pretty much know if they like Call of Duty, aside from those checking back in for the first time in a while thanks to Game Pass. And I think for those people, while they may find it a bit hard to get back into, with a little patience to re-calibrate they should be able to see the enduring appeal of the series's action shine through here. I wonder how much we'll remember the 6th Black Ops game and 21st Call of Duty as a distinct entity years from now, but in the moment I'm not going to complain about another entry that feels this solid.

This is a review strictly for the single player campaign of Black Ops 6.

I've never been a huge Call of Duty fan, but do enjoy the over the top popcorn action spectacles that are the single player campaigns. At least most times I enjoy them, as the year prior's Modern Warfare 3 remastered campaign was easily one of their worst ever. Thankfully they reevaluated the campaign and seemingly wanted to actually put effort into the next iteration. MW3 tried relying on implementing too many pieces of gameplay from Warzone, none of which worked out all that well. Black Ops 6 does have a few missions or sections that are almost open world, but they are much better implemented here feeling more natural instead of forced. In between most missions, you even have a base/hub area that can be explored for puzzles, interact with your teammates, upgrade your guns/perks/character. I liked these little bits of down time to break up the constant action of the missions.

There's not much to say here otherwise, as you know exactly what to expect anymore with Call of Duty games. The gun play and movement are still very refined, game runs smoothly, and no major bugs to speak of!

General Thoughts

Black Ops 6 marks the beginning of a new era for Call of Duty in terms of marketing & business model, being the first COD to be fully marketed & released after Microsoft completed their $69 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard-King in October 2023. No more timed content exclusivity deals for Call of Duty. It also marks the first COD to be launched day-and-date on Xbox Game Pass, as part of a gamble by Microsoft to use Call of Duty to stimulate the stagnant growth of Game Pass’s subscriber count. Not to mention that it follows up two straight years of Modern Warfare games (see my MWII & MWIII reviews here for my opinions on those games) that, while certainly having their fans (I personally love MWIII’s Multiplayer, but hate MWII’s MP with a burning passion), split the COD community for various reasons (not to mention the widely rejected Vanguard). Oh, and this is the first Call of Duty game to have gotten 4 years of development instead of 2 or 3 (or less in cases like Cold War, Vanguard & MWIII), making Black Ops 6 the longest developed COD in franchise history. So how does Black Ops 6 fair under those lofty expectations? In my opinion at least, it’s the best damn Call of Duty we’ve gotten in a long time.

Starting with the graphics, in MP & Zombies, the fidelity is similar to MWII & MWIII (not surprising given BO6 is on the same IW 9 engine as those games), but with Treyarch’s more vibrant colour palette & less gritty art direction. Whether you think BO6 looks better or worse than MWII & III will mostly boil down to preference, TBH. Personally I think it looks a bit better, though. Meanwhile, the Campaign is more impressive in this department than those last two MW games. It doesn’t rival Alan Wake II or Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, but it’s still quite impressive for a cross-gen shooter targeting at least 60 FPS on all consoles (even if the campaign reportedly doesn’t quite get there on PS4 & Xbox One consoles).

As for performance, while things were a little rough for me on the launch weekend (struggled to get 60 FPS at 1080p with mostly High settings & DLSS Quality enabled in MP or Campaign; my system has a Ryzen 7 2700 CPU & an RTX 2070, so it’s not exactly a spring chicken anymore), things have gotten better since then & I do get a higher framerate in MP now.

Campaign

After how much well-deserved backlash the Modern Warfare III campaign got last year for a myriad of reasons, the Black Ops 6 campaign needed to be a home run to redeem the franchise in the public eye. Did it succeed? In my opinion, at least, it did. But this campaign is proving divisive. Unlike the “Single-Player DMZ match” heavy MWIII campaign, BO6’s campaign has plenty of variety. For better or worse, some missions are so experimental in gameplay (Hitman, Metal Gear Solid V & Resident Evil, in particular, feel like strong influences here) & different from franchise norms that you can sometimes forget you’re even playing a Call of Duty campaign. But in my opinion, these missions are generally done well except for the open world, MGSV-inspired mission (but even this was more enjoyable than the Open Combat Missions of MWIII’s campaign). This campaign is also not really about the Gulf War. Sure, there are missions in Kuwait & Iraq, but the war takes a back seat in this campaign in favour of combating the mysterious Pantheon. Make no mistake, Black Ops 6 is a spy thriller with some doses of mind-screw, not a gritty war story like the Modern Warfare games we’ve gotten in the last 2 years. So don’t go in expecting that.

Another area where I have to give the BO6 campaign its flowers is in terms of characters. The writing & acting in this game are high quality and some of the best of the franchise, even if the ending is very ambiguous (not that’s this is a bad thing) & cliffhangery. Hells, I even think the main villain is pretty good (won’t say more bc it’s a spoiler).

Overall, while I understand the complaints regarding this campaign… I have to disagree and say this campaign is my second favourite COD campaign ever behind only Black Ops II.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is, of course, the bread and butter of any Call of Duty game. Personally, I had high expectations going into the launch of BO6. With both the previous Black Ops game (Black Ops: Cold War) and last year’s COD (Modern Warfare III) being my most played (non-Warzone) COD MPs to date, Black Ops 6 had a high bar to clear for me… and it sure as hell didn’t disappoint! While Black Ops 6’s MP isn’t perfect… it is a lot of fun (at least for me)! Treyarch has taken ingredients from BO4, Cold War & the recent Modern Warfare games and blended them all together into a great COD Multiplayer experience. Omnimovement shines here and the fluidity & options it gives you is phenomenal and it’s been hard to play other shooters without it (even when playing Fortnite, I find myself trying to sprint while side-walking sometimes due to muscle memory built up from all the time I’ve been spending playing BO6 lately). Even though the movement speed might be slightly slower than MWIII, it overall feels so much more fluid that you forget that pretty easily. Combine this with a Time to Kill that’s closer to (but slightly faster than) MWIII & Cold War than MW19 & MWII (albeit with some interesting changes to body multipliers) and you have a fast, arcadey & gunfight-focused experience…

Unfortunately, though, the maps are not quite up to the standard of quality we’ve come to expect from Treyarch. While none of BO6’s maps are as bad as… say, Santa Sena Border Crossing in MWII, a lot of these maps range from bad to just okay. Maybe it’s the result of Treyarch struggling to adapt their map design philosophy for Omnimovement or some other reason, but that’s just how things have shaken out (Skyline & Rewind are pretty good maps IMO though). The guns definitely feel good to use as well (although the gun audio is definitely not quite as immersive-feeling as the MW games (but definitely is punchier)), but the levelling required to unlock all attachments is a bit crazy (although not as obscene as Vanguard’s 70+ level guns or MWII & MWIII’s billions of attachments spread out across all of the guns).

The mode selection is pretty standard, all the usual suspects seen in other recent CODs at launch are here and the new Kill Order mode is just okay and I wound up removing it from my Quick Play queue after a few matches. The game also had issues like desync & packet loss (the latter was carried over from MWIII’s later seasons) but in my experience, these have been improving since launch (and it has been proven that packet loss is less severe when you’re on a wired connection like my PC is). Treyarch has also been fairly responsive to community feedback (even recently making it so that Double XP Tokens gained in MWIII & Warzone were usable in BO6 after initially not intending to do so), albeit not quite as responsive as Sledgehammer was over the last year with Modern Warfare III (they’re still a hell of a lot better than Infinity Ward though…).

One disappointing change regarding the post-launch support though is how the Battle Pass works. While the shift to a more Fortnite-esque page system is great and makes the BP easier to understand for new players… the reduction in the amount of COD Points you get from the Battle Pass from 1400 COD Points to 1100 is disappointing. It makes the Battle Pass go from a purchase that pays for itself & then some if you play enough… to just something that maybe breaks if you can complete it. Not the worst change ever, but a disappointing one that is bad for consumers.

Overall, I love a lot about Black Ops 6’s MP… but it isn’t perfect & Treyarch does still have some work to do to improve it and live up to the bar MWIII has set in terms of support...

Zombies

Fair warning, I am a more casual, survival-focused Zombies player. So this section will be a shorter & more surface-level one. But that being said, BO6 Zombies has gotten off to a great start. The two maps, the smaller and more survival-focused Liberty Falls & the larger and more ambitious Terminus, are both pretty good and combined to provide enough variety to keep things from getting samey too fast. The gameplay feels like a pretty good attempt to marry the more streamlined Cold War Zombies with the larger, more complex & difficult BO3 & BO4 Zombies. And the difficulty feels quite challenging (even if in higher rounds it achieves this mostly through Mangler spam). The decision to guide players to unlock Pack-a-Punch is great for newer players, but I think there should be an option to turn it off for more experienced players who just want to explore the map and find it themselves. That new Directed Mode is a nice addition to make the Easter Egg more accessible for more casual players without sacrificing the challenge of figuring it out when it first comes out (because the Directed Mode doesn’t come until later (Terminus & Liberty Falls’ Easter Eggs got added with the Season 1 update (which came about 3 weeks after launch), for example).

Sure, the lack of things like boarding up windows or being forced to start with a pistol suck, but BO6 isn’t trying to replicate the Classic Round-Based Zombies formula but create a hybrid of that & the new breed of Zombies that Cold War brought to the table. And I think that’s great. I won’t say it surpasses BO3 yet… but depending on how this next year of support goes, it might. We shall see.

BONUS SECTION: Warzone (will have a separate conclusion & ratings)

The Black Ops 6 integration for Warzone… is a mess. Riddled with performance issues compared to even MWIII era Warzone (which already had it’s own performance issues) & design decisions from Raven that feel like one step forward, five steps back, BO6 Warzone continues Raven’s course correction away from Infinity Ward’s Warzone 2.0 launch decisions to the point of over correction. Having Omnimovement is nice, but BO6 Warzone getting rid of certain default perks like Double Time & Overkill just feels like a mistake that degrades the overall experience for me (not to mention the 20Hz tick rate of the Warzone servers is just ill-suited to this movement (COD’s regular MP servers (BO6 included) have a 60Hz tick rate (better, but still behind Valorant’s 128Hz tick rate) & even Fortnite (another BR game with similar player counts to Warzone) has 30Hz tick rate servers). The return of the Warzone 1-style backpack also feels restrictive after the freedom of choice the Warzone 2 backpack system gave in terms of what you carried… not to mention the audio issues that are (at the time of writing) hopefully about to be fixed, ridiculous desync issues or all the other MWIII-era Warzone improvements that have not survived the transition to BO6 (TheTacticalBrit has made some great videos on this topic).

And then there’s the lack of a new big map at launch. Sure, Verdansk is returning in the Spring, but having a new Warzone integration and still playing on the previous integration’s big map just feels wrong. Especially since we’re going from a Modern Warfare game to a Black Ops game and all of BO6’s modes pretty clearly setup Avalon as a big deal of a location & we know from leaks and datamining the COD HQ that Avalon is being worked on as a new big map & was intended to be the BO6 Warzone big map before Verdansk took it’s place either due to development troubles or just a desire to replicate the success of Fortnite OG…

As for the new Resurgence map, Area 99… it’s fine. It’s just another Resurgence map that’s even smaller than usual. Good if you’re into that mode, but I’m just not…

Conclusion

Black Ops 6:

Black Ops 6 is the best COD we’ve gotten in terms of the whole premium package since Black Ops 3 & Infinite Warfare. Unlike the CODs we’ve gotten since (besides BO4 & Cold War), none of BO6’s core modes are bad, but all do have some issues… none of which derail the entire experience. Treyarch & Raven have created a great package filled with variety, fast-paced combat & polish (something that’s felt missing over the last few years) that adopts things from the recent Modern Warfare games like the IW 9 engine without sacrificing that signature Treyarch look & feel. The Omnimovement is sublime. The campaign is a well-paced spy thriller that kept me on my toes throughout with plenty of variety and memorable missions. The Multiplayer is an adrenaline-fueled joy that I’m looking forward to playing even more of. And the Zombies is a long-awaited return to form that’s the best this mode has been since the legendary BO3 Zombies.

Assuming the post-launch support even gets close to being as good as MWIII’s was over the last year, BO6 might become my favourite COD of all time when it’s all said and done. No game is perfect, but BO6 just has all the stuff I enjoy in a shooter, and I’m glad Treyarch & Raven got those 4 years to cook. Hopefully, the rumoured (and now potentially teased) Black Ops 7 next year isn’t a total mess, though with the 2 years of development though…

Warzone (as of Black Ops 6 Season 1):

Black Ops 6’s Warzone integration is a disappointing mess and by far the worst part of the BO6 package. Raven’s made some misguided decisions here and I’m just not sure what the direction they’re going in is beyond just chasing the heights of Warzone 1. While Warzone has seen its share of messy integrations over the years, BO6 gives Vanguard a run for it’s money as the most disastrous one yet (although this still isn’t quite Warzone 2.0 levels of calamitous… yet). At least Fortnite’s around for me to play for my Battle Royale fix instead until Raven & co get their shit together… But if this continues & EA can stick the landing with their rumoured Battlefield Battle Royale game… Warzone may be on the brink of losing it’s position as the arguably second or third biggest Battle Royale game behind Fortnite (and maybe PUBG).

Ratings

Black Ops 6:

Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction):

Campaign: 9/10

Multiplayer: 9/10

Zombies: 9/10

Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)):

Campaign: 8.5/10

Multiplayer: 8/10

Zombies: 8/10

Business Practices score: 6.0/10 (bog standard for any COD game, but with the additions of it being on Game Pass at launch (positive change) and the potentially Pay to Win Embody Spatial Audio tech (negative change (even if the free universal solution is quite good (in BO6 anyway) paired with the reduction of COD Points gained in the Battle Pass (negative change))

Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience):

Campaign: 9/10

Multiplayer: 9/10

Zombies: 9/10

Warzone (as of Black Ops 6 Season 1):

Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7.0 out of 10

Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 5.5 out of 10

Business Practices score: 5.5 out of 10 (same as BO6 but F2P)

Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 6.0 out of 10

I remember absolutely hating the first Black Ops. The Call of Duty series had already jumped the shark with MW2; the veneer of military authenticity that the first Modern Warfare had was abandoned around the time you were firing an smg while riding a snowmobile like it was Die Hard 2. But Black Ops wasn't just ridiculous, it was also nasty in a way that felt, even by CoD's standards, reprehensible. Odd and a pleasant surprise then that Black Ops 6 feels comparatively wholesome.

It's still full of grotty torture, and has that unseemly combination of fetishising not only the scale and extremity of its violence but its military character. For the games conspiracy-thriller text, this is a game uncritically in love with war and unsanctioned military action. Maybe I shouldn't expect nuance from a game with a Zombies mode though. But despite that, it has characters that I was surprised I could remember, and aims and frequently achieves a tone that feels like a more murdery Mission Impossible. At least, when it's not veering off to do some nonsense.

The plot is so pulpy that babies might find it too mushy, but any weight it might've had is lost by the wild swings in tone and a redundant plot revelation that's so stupid, I stopped caring. It's a shame because lurking underneath the fat there's a fun playable b-movie here.

This swings in tone also apply to the levels, which are too varied, frankly. There's an open world level that's good, and another open-ended stealth section that's pleasing if basic. Likewise, the couple of set piece non-combat levels deliver on the secret agent fantasy. But there's some incredibly ill-conceived forays into other genres. The dip into survival horror is particularly dire but a dream sequence that tries to explore a character's psychology and memory with a tortuously blunt metaphor is laughably out of place.

Not that it matters. The shooting and levels are so extravagantly polished it's a pleasure to go from A to B, shoot the guys, use the gadgets, and repeat. The combat encounters are also restrained in a way completely opposite to the plot. I played on hardened and there was none of the endlessly spawning waves of enemies nor the constant barrage of grenades to dodge, that turned sequences of previous Call of Duty games into a slog.

The friction and challenge comes from armoured enemies, which are peppered throughout. They are absolute bullet sponges, but can be overcome with gadgets. They are clearly telegraphed so needing to unload stupid amounts of bullets to take them down is surprisingly not jarring. The other enemies go down as normal so the instant catharsis of the hyper-realistic violence remains intact.

It's the first Call of Duty I've played in years. It's daft and if I think about the politics of it for a minute, probably immoral, but it's such an opulent thing, I couldn't help but enjoy my time with it, like spending a few hours at a rich idiot's mansion.

Multiplayer is alright, too.