Every year, the Call of Duty recently released series is met with great excitement, and this time, the Black Ops 6 hype was out of this world. After the announcement of the new game being set in the early 1990s, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Treyarch promised not only a different way of seeing history with this new release, which was also their record-breaking Game Pass first-day drop. Nevertheless, the answer to the question whether Black Ops 6 is a revolution or just a rehash of the same old, a letdown for the fans, is still unknown to everyone.
Fortunately, the developer, Treyarch, is making its most daring choices for the majority in multiplayer. Think of an enemy suddenly running away through the window of your gunfire and, at the same time, twisting his body mid-air—this is the sort of mad new thing that Treyarch has come up with in terms of omnimovement to its traditional tactic-focused style. Now the player is able to move at a full run in any direction, turn mid-air, and pull off a stunt that could be lifted right out of an action flick. The gameplay is fast and smooth, and one would be surprised at the ease of learning it that if one had played this a few rounds instead of a more traditional shooter, one would feel it clunky. On the other hand, the acrobatics can become a little too much sometimes. Characters are doing things like jumping through windows, spinning in the air, firing clips left and right—in short, it’s a lot of fun and is likely to make the times when you’ll be defeated just as much of a surprise as the times you’ll win, though in this case, by tactical 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.