Every year, fans of the gaming community eagerly anticipate the release of a new Call of Duty game. With Black Ops 6, the excitement was just off the charts. The storyline of the game is set in the early 1990s, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Treyarch raised expectations of what a new retro game would look like, and to make it even more amazing, it was the first time that the game was available on Game Pass on the day of the release. Now that the game is out, though, the question that everyone is asking is: Does Black Ops 6 shake up the series as the fans were hoping, or is it just another rehashed storyline?
It is in the multiplayer mode that the game, by the way, makes its most daring and ambitious moves. Treyarch returns to its traditional tactical and focused style, but with a crazy new twist of omnimovement. Players are now able to run in any direction, turn in mid-air, and do a variety of moves that look like they came from a stunt scene of a movie. The whole thing is very fast and smooth, and quite surprisingly, it is very easy to get the hang of it, which is why, after a few rounds, you will find that going back to a traditional shooter is awkward. However, there is a downside to the acrobatics, which is that they sometimes get too exaggerated beyond the limit. I.e,. Players are imagined to be flying through windows while at the same time spinning in mid-air and shooting rapidly one after another. While it is fun, it tends to make the battlefield more chaotic and less of a tactics game.
Map design is somewhat of a mixed bag. The old three-lane format returns for most 6v6 maps, providing games with a consistent beat and keeping campers at bay. Lowtown is a standout, with its bright beachside village atmosphere and vertical layers that create visual depth. But not every map is a hit. Babylon, for instance, is marred by excessive sightlines and cluttered spawn points, recalling some of the same issues players were complaining about in Modern Warfare (2019). When the netcode falters or the spawn logic fails, the anger can accumulate fast.
Customization remains a balancing act. The Gunsmith system allows you to adjust almost everything on your gun, which is wonderful—until you see an overpowered build in every single match. Although the time-to-kill is slightly slower than recent installments, it’s fast enough that twitch reflexes prevail more often than not. Loadouts receive an improvement with a third perk bonus reward, catering to players stacking perks of the same type. Wild Cards also make a comeback, enabling creative setups such as dual primaries or additional attachments. The game ships with loads of skins and unlockables, but the worry is whether balance will be maintained with fresh content releases, something Call of Duty has previously struggled to accomplish.
Then there’s Zombies, which goes back to the classic format broadly. The experimental DMZ-style mode is gone. Instead, users are given two maps right out of the box: Liberty Falls and Terminus. Liberty Falls is big, well-detailed, and takes place in a dark West Virginia town, but its open design makes it play a tad too generously. Terminus, on a spooky island blacksite, does a slightly better job of recapturing that classic Zombies tension in tight spaces and creepy set dressing. Each map has its background and cool cutscenes, but they don’t quite have that legendary status of Treyarch’s classic Zombies maps.
Visually and technically, Black Ops 6 is a stunner. The engine cranks out solid graphics, silky-smooth gameplay, and a copious array of accessibility features. Crossplay is seamless, and overall refinement is first-class. But many of the same old problems persist. Janky netcode, obtuse UI, and cheating still plague the series. The new launcher is a minor step forward, but the series is starting to feel its age internally.
Meanwhile, the fan reaction has been tepid. On Steam, the title reached a high of about 300,000 players but fell to 100,000 shortly thereafter—a sharper drop-off than Modern Warfare 3. Some dedicated fans are questioning whether Activision and Treyarch can mend what’s broken or if the series is simply petering out. Even the possibility has been floated that the series will abandon its annual schedule or move further in the direction of Warzone in the future, particularly if current trends continue.
In every sense, Black Ops 6 is the multiplayer at its finest in years, perhaps even since before Modern Warfare (2019). It gets the fundamentals correct, takes gameplay in exciting new directions, and is stunning. But it pulls along some of the same baggage that’s weighed down the series for some time now. And with existing players already falling off, the question is whether this is the next big step for Call of Duty—or the end times for its previous formula.