3.5/5 ★ – elmodonnell's review of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

Honestly, about as good as you could hope to expect from a franchise that rushes a half-baked shitshow out the door every year at this point. A snappy and creative campaign, tight and relatively simplified multiplayer, and a decent hybrid of the more atmospheric 'classic' zombies experience with the new streamlined consistency (derogatory) between modes. If it weren't as riddled with technical nightmares as the last few games it'd be an easy pick for the best full 'package' these games have ever offered, and the fact that it's the first CoD in years that had almost a full development cycle definitely shows, but I can't help but wish it had just a few more months to polish up. Obviously wasn't paying for this so flew through a lot on GamePass, and switched over to Geforce Now for streaming quality- looked and played gorgeously, but the UI is so poorly designed and unstable that even the RTX4080 running the cloud machine crashed to desktop a couple of times. Haven't been an avid CoD multiplayer guy in a long time, so can't offer much insight into the deeper balance/meta-game, but for a casual game or two every now and then it's been a lot of fun. Probably slightly less enjoyable than Cold War so far and the maps are definitely on the smaller end for my liking, but they're slightly more carefully put-together and balanced. Movement is a lot more smooth and cohesive, though the gun selection is severely lacking thus far- I expect that won't last long with the live service aspect in full swing this time around. Zombies is fun, it strikes a nice balance between innovation and classic atmospheric storytelling, but honestly I think the maps may be a little bit too small and simple. That's not to say the game is too easy, I think this might be the best balance they've hit with difficulty and easter egg depth, I just found myself pretty disappointed each time I opened the final new door on a map and realized I already knew my way around the entire place. The story and characters are fine and functional, I never got around to the more elaborate BO3/4 quests so don't really care if they were more well-rounded, because these ones are way more feasible for somebody with a job to follow. I will say that augments and gobblegums are still way too balanced towards no-lifers putting in 3+ hours a day on just zombies, but it's nice that there's a higher skill ceiling when it comes to customizing perks/etc. The always-online singleplayer and pause timer is absolute bullshit, but the save and quit feature is probably the best addition we've ever had. There's already triple the maps Cold War had at this point, even if we don't get anything as replayable as Outbreak during the DLC cycle here, I think it'll be the strongest zombies experience you can get without dropping €100. As for the single-player, I mean it with full sincerity (and not entirely complementary) when I say this is the craziest CoD campaign yet. Really goes out of its way to mix up the narrative structure and gameplay rhythm that has defined the series, even if its attempts to shake up the formula often seem redundant. On the surface, there's a huge amount of gameplay variety on the mission select screen; you've got the standard linear 'rollercoaster' experiences, a handful of the Hitman-inspired social stealth sections that were highlights of recent campaigns, plenty of splinter cell-esque skulking in the shadows, a sprawling open-world desert section, a few psychedelic horror trips and even a puzzle-filled home base to return to between expeditions. In actuality, most of these missions essentially boil down to a slow-paced walkthrough of some beautifully-rendered environments to get to a target (usually with the option of going loud or quiet), before all hell inevitably breaks lose and you backtrack through those same entire areas now crawling with explosions and enemies. Stealth is fine and silenced headshots are as satisfying as they always are, but there's never really any complications, and the inevitability of the game going 'loud' on you makes any effort put into skulking in the shadows feel completely arbitrary. There are a lot of promising new mechanics the game attempts to innovate with, but none are really used to their full potential, because the game rarely asks you to do anything other than fire, duck and reload. Throwing knives and proximity tranquilizers basically work as cheatcodes for when even your silenced pistol and awful enemy AI can't help you avoid detection, but I never really needed either one of them- the game often throws so much equipment at you that your grenade wheel looks like a Skyrim inventory, but other than explosive homing throwing knives and those insta-kill prox mines, I never really encountered a situation where I needed anything else. Occasionally an 'elite' will pop up, an enemy with a particular gimmick who will all inexplicably take about 30 headshots to kill rather than the typical one- some have novel ideas, like the RC-XD expert who spams explosive cars at you from behind cover, but thanks to their absurd health-pools all of these mostly just become nuisances. Instead of finding higher ground to escape and prioritizing these threats with a well-aimed shot, you'll need to get right in their face and dump two magazines or a few C4 bundles at them if you want to survive. The hub/home base serves as a tutorial for extra collectibles/activities like safe-cracking, lock-picking or puzzle-solving, but only if you really comb every identical doorway at the very start of the game, otherwise it'll be ten minutes of tedious busywork to wrap up before the final mission. You're rewarded for exploring levels and engaging with these side-activities, and I appreciated being able to unlock the equivalents of multiplayer perks as I progressed in the campaign, but I really think there was missed potential in not allowing you to play with the gunsmith and shooting range features in the campaign, since you literally build a shooting range and weapon bench as two of the three hub upgrades- the game ends with an agonizingly long home invasion scene a la Skyfall, and I would've connected with that a lot more if we'd actually had some involvement in setting up the grounds for an attack. Even Black Ops II had a loadout system, and it had much more exciting guns scattered throughout its missions. The Black Ops games have always tried to innovate to some level in each entry, and I just wish they followed up with some of their early experiments instead of throwing new shit at the wall every time. Mostly though, the storytelling is just absolutely batshit insane this time around. It's mostly coherent and fairly generic, there's not a whole lot of new ground being tread on a plot level, but that story is generally told through hallucinations and flashbacks that grow increasingly absurd as you go along. The finale involves you playing as the main villain, recounting childhood traumas through an induced psychadelic trip, trying to piece together a fractured psyche and fighting an evil version of yourself, zombies and crashing helicopters through apocalyptic cityscapes. It's such a big swing that I can't help but respect it a bit- was an interesting double bill to play immediately after Alan Wake II. It's annoying when these games market themselves with big controversial real-world figures like Saddam and Clinton without actually including them on a narrative level beyond two-second cameos, but knowing CoD's politics it's for the best that we've moved into shadowy fictional paramilitary groups rather than actual geopolitical powers. The pre-rendered cutscenes are still absolutely shockingly good-looking, even if the seams with the 'gameplay' cinematics are much more pronounced as a result. Overall a pretty good time- not sure I'd recommend anyone spend $80 and encourage Activision's descent into hell, but if you also get a free Game pass subscription with your WiFi then go wild!