The Call of Duty series, which is a yearly volatile reaction to a new blockbuster, was extremely loud with the Black Ops 6 announcement. After the news that the new game would be set in the early 1990s, immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Treyarch not only assured a different perspective of history with this new release, which was also their record-breaking Game Pass first-day drop. However, the response to the question of whether Black Ops 6 is a revolutionary move or just a rehash of the same old disappointing fans is still a mystery to everyone.
Multiplayer is where Treyarch, the developer, is making most of its bold and daring choices for the majority. Just imagine an enemy that is running away from you through the window of your gunfire and at the same time, he is twisting his body mid-air – this is the kind of crazy new thing that Treyarch has come up with for the omnimovement aspect of their traditional tactic-focused style. Now the player can move at full speed in any direction, turn mid-air, and perform a stunt that could very well be taken from an action movie.
The gameplay is extremely fast and smooth, and one would be quite amazed at how easy it is to learn; that if one had played only a few rounds of this game instead of a more traditional shooter, one would feel it to be clunky. However, the acrobatics may get to be a little too much at times. Characters are doing things such as jumping through windows, spinning in the air, firing clips left and right – in short, it’s a great deal of fun and it will probably be the case that the times when you’ll be defeated will be just as much of a surprise as the times you’ll be winning, though in this case, by tactics rather than through sheer luck.
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.