Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 review – the best CoD in years

The Black Ops series has a different vibe than the wider franchise call of Duty Franchise. It's billed as a grittier, perhaps more cerebral offshoot of the FPS phenomenon - although at a basic level it still requires solving your problems until they fade away.

Rather than being a single experience, a Call of Duty game can be considered a package deal, with most entries containing three games' worth. Whether you're a fan of turn-based zombies, a fan of prestige-hungry multiplayer, or just trying out the single-player experience, I think there's a lot to like about Black Ops 6, even if I don't like it.

Last year’s campaign confused me. MW3 eschews the set pieces that most players crave, instead plodding along through an unbearable story. The scope is so large that it can be cumbersome to play, especially those open-ended combat missions. Feeling very tired.

By comparison, Black Ops 6 feels like the shot in the arm that Call of Duty players deserve. The campaign, while not showing any real innovation, kept me engaged, the full range of movement in multiplayer is an exciting improvement, and Zombies mode returns to turn-based action rather than reused Warzone maps are cause for celebration.

This activity has a tendency of "good guys turning rogue". With the entire world turned against them, our group of morally ambiguous heroes must use every resource they find to save the world—without government organizations handing them thousands of grenades before carrying out their mission.

That's not to be, however, as the team almost immediately find themselves in a luxury estate filled with cash and seemingly able to book flights to any country at will, although that sounds like a pretty hectic most...wanted list. The slums are never really taken into account, and what might have been a major point of difference ceases to be an issue.

You're free to explore the estate - The Rook - which serves as a safehouse hub between missions. Through the use of blacklight and some ingenuity, several secret areas can be discovered, but once these areas are gone, the space remains fairly static. You can collect money as you travel and upgrade various benches in the house to unlock additional perks, which I found to be redundant on the normal difficulty option.

Collecting money became a joke in my head. The places you visit have piles of banknotes, golden toilets, and priceless antiques, but the only valuable currency is small bundles of U.S. dollars. I like to imagine the player character taking a breather in the middle of a firefight, pocketing a single, and then getting ready for the next attack.

The story seems to have taken note of last year's boredom fest and instead decided to throw everything at you at once. It doesn't necessarily come up with anything original, but instead borrows elements from other, often more interesting games. There's a Far Cry-style open world mission (much better than last year's Open Combat), an almost Hitman-esque level where you can destroy with stealth, and a too-close-to-Control-style mission with a background setting Office space in retro style.

All of these ideas are well implemented and provide a unique experience - at least compared to other Call of Duty campaigns. While they didn't show me anything I'd never seen before, I'm glad it's more than just a straight-up military shooter. My real qualm is that even though many of the higher-concept missions take place outside of reality, they still follow typical Call of Duty rules - find these things and shoot anything that stands in your way. This is a missed creative opportunity.

Some story elements never materialized during the campaign, and some huge, dangling threads were left hanging in the wind. I know suspense and open-ended questions are par for the course here, but I wasn't satisfied, rather than excited to see more. I'm sure many will praise this campaign for taking the kind of swing that other recent entries have shied away from, and there's definitely some merit to that. That's solid for a CoD campaign, but we're now six games into the Black Ops series, and the characters and world still feel shallow.

With this annoyance, I started playing multiplayer games to relieve some of the tension. This doesn't work. The game is lightning fast and I have to keep my wits about me at all times. I'm not relaxed, but I'm happy.

Call of Duty multiplayer is perhaps the gold standard for arcade FPS games, and this year is no exception, with the biggest innovation being a new omnidirectional movement system that allows you to dash and dive in any direction. It sounds like a small change, and I guess it's in the grand scheme of things, but the full range of movement makes every movement feel smoother. You can become a mobile harbinger of death, which is a huge step forward in a game that's struggled for years to achieve real change.

The maps provided will depend on personal taste. Gala is the standout for me - it's a three-lane arena with plenty of sightlines and opportunities to get behind enemies. You also have the Subsonic, which is the most destructive semicircle you've ever seen, with a working hangar door in the middle to surprise anyone camping at the point.

BO6's weapons feel powerful and powerful, with a dull, satisfying thud as each round lands. The basics of gunplay are pretty well established here, which makes multiplayer fun, and with a variety of maps, I can see it becoming a fan favorite. With the addition of full range of movement, gunplay feels fast and frenetic - just like a great Call of Duty game should.

The last mode I looked at, and the one I had the least experience with, was Zombies. This year's game is a back-to-basics, wave-based survival game that pits you against an endless horde of the undead. This sounds fairly simple and unambitious, but the two maps on offer - Liberty Falls and Terminus - are highly interactive and full of secrets.

Gameplay and progression are basically the same as before. Zombies become more powerful each round, requiring you to unlock more maps to gain access to purchasable upgrades and weapons to improve your arsenal against increasingly powerful foes. There was a secret vault, some kind of interdimensional rift, and I was eaten alive by a bald guy in a rope vest. Very interesting.

Zombies' longevity is tied to how deep its secrets run - players will spend days searching for the next Easter egg, and the map here is dense and dangerous. While the two maps won't keep you busy for long, Zombies is still a fun time so far and I'm looking forward to the next round, always striving to do better.

The highlights of this year's CoD are undoubtedly zombies and multiplayer. Despite the story's convoluted gangster escape, the campaign's repetitive ideas and weak ending let it down. I'm sure the developers hoped that after I finished playing the game, those narrative questions would fade from my memory as quickly as they were asked. I can't imagine myself going back to this.

The real highlight of Black Ops 6 is its multiplayer mode. An enjoyable set of maps, a new movement system, and satisfying gunplay are what make this year's CoD one of the strongest in recent memory. Its inclusion in Game Pass opens the door to those who wouldn't risk paying full price in years past, and Black Ops 6 finally has what it takes to win over old and new players alike.