2.5/5 ★ – alcoholicgoat's review of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

What the actual fuck is this campaign? Call Of Duty in a nutshell is propaganda, but I've felt that the Black Ops series did its best to try and present a more critical eye in terms of the representation of the CIA and America as a whole. Black Ops Cold War is pretty blatantly critical of the west and demonizes the CIA and the twist of Adler being the villain is such a great reveal and deconstruction (that's right. He's the bad guy in that game). Black Ops 6 rather prophetically sells out this sentiment. Trading it in for a safe and boring experience. I don't play Warzone because I don't like giving Activision all of my time, SSD space and money so I don't know if they did some MCU bullshit with Adler's character through a fucking MULTIPLAYER MODE, but the ending of Cold War made it clear he died and that he was a government stooge. Why is he all the sudden being redeemed? There are so many threads and elements from Cold War left intentionally abandoned and they weren't meant to be followed up on. All the characters present for Break On Through are all suddenly okay with Adler brainwashing people? And yeah, Park not dying is canon I guess. What about Perseus? Why is the antagonist another faction called Pantheon? This game is so sloppily conceived and written, don't get me started on the main campaign. So the narrative is a kitchen sink approach of the "greatest hits". Brainwashed protag? Bioweapon? Twist villain? Immersive sim stealth levels? Sandbox missions? It's all here. Daddy's home. The game is so threadbare with these elements that fucking none of them hit. Black Ops 1 and Cold War used period-accurate music pretty effectively. The 90s has some great grunge and industrial rock. Spec Ops The Line is basically the blueprint for this aesthetic. What did we get? One Nine Inch Nails song played in the background. Needle drops aren't everything, but that track should have been used in combat. We also get a ton of disingenuous easter eggs like the bike chase and Vorkuta as a whole. Okay? Cool? The game feels so barren given most of the original cast is fucking dead, and none of the new characters barring Felix are at all interesting or fleshed out. One thing I appreciate about this game is moving the big MKUltra twist to the midpoint instead of end of act 2. We've been on this ride before, I appreciate you not wasting my time. On paper, I love Emergence... where it loses me are zombies. And boss battles. There are some really fun, pulpy and interesting psychological layers to peel back that are constantly undercut by fanservice. Spoilers, the player character was brainwashed by the CIA and was being tested on in a black site. He lost his shit and killed everyone. He hallucinates mannequins that pursue him like weeping angels and you're forced to either shoot them or slaughter them with a tomahawk. The fact this incident is probably so traumatic that the character represses it by visualizing mannequins is such a cool and chilling detail. And then you get a grappling hook. And you fight zombies. And then they play the song from Kino Der Toten. What the actual fuck were they thinking? And why do people like this mission so much? I found Break On Through and Alone to be way more effective. And I hated MWII. Also, why didn't the CIA kill Case if they knew Cradle was a failure and he was unstable? The CIA has killed people for less. Surely being a loose end is a qualifying factor. But oh yeah I forgot, Black Ops 6 says the CIA aren't bad, it's a secret clandestine group WITHIN that are bad. I'm confounded by the fact that Activision needs to censor political commentary in a MILITARY SHOOTER. This was my last chance. I'm never playing this series again. The writing drives me up the wall with how sloppy and amateur it is. I understand the irony of me going to bat for Call Of Duty of all games in terms of political commentary, but Black Ops 1, 2 and CW genuinely do tackle east vs west concepts in its own way and there is room to argue that these games are critical of the US military. The bad ending for Black Ops 2 is actually one that I like as an exploration of a cycle of violence. You can have your cake and eat it with this series. The fact that Cold War parrots the MW2019 "we get our hands dirty" monologue throught the lens of Adler has to be ironic given the circumstances. Accident or not, the text does exist. The fact that a jingoistic military shooter lets you see the villain win and overthrow america in a nihilistic "tearing the system down" manner is so interesting to me. These characters are horrible people who have their own place in hell. The scene where Menendez kills Woods and it's played so bluntly is so fascinating. It's really easy to get the "bad ending". Replay factor? Sure but death of the author is a thing and I choose the bad ending of Black Ops 2 to be canon in my eyes. It's a game that lets you overthrow imperialism. Is what lies in its wake any different? No. But war is cyclical. The next guy will be just as bad. Black Ops 6 chooses to be a Marvel movie. Cool and epic missions with hehexd random dialogue and wholesome chungus 100 reddit moments. Remember when you hallucinated shooting fucking JFK??? THE AMOUNT OF HUBBUB SURROUNDING THIS GAME YOU'D THINK THERE WOULD BE A PLAYABLE 9/11 SECTION. No. Bill Clinton is just "in the game". The guy from the Epstein flight log. Cool. I hate the fact that this game generically introduces the mafia as one of the main enemy factions in this game to skirt the uncomfortable nature of politics in a Call Of Duty game. God forbid you say something provocative. I get it, this isn't Spec Ops. But come on. This franchise can monetarily take the risk. The playerbase is made up of mostly drooling idiots and children. Nobody cries about Spec Ops The Line being "woke". We can afford to take this risk. Yeah it might ruffle the feathers of the US Army since they need to play ball with the DOD to get those M16 model assets, but just make up guns at this point? Who cares. Half the guns are fictional or improbable anyways. Fuck Call Of Duty. Oh yeah the game runs like shit on PC. None of the characters have pupils, so they just have these disgusting colored marbles in their eyesockets. Fuck you Activision.