Every year, the gaming community goes into a frenzy of anticipation for the release of the new Call of Duty, and with Black Ops 6, the excitement could hardly get any bigger. The time period of the game was the early 1990s, not long after the Berlin Wall had been brought down, and Treyarch was setting the bar so high for a revolutionary way of revisiting the past with this new game. Also, it was the very first time a game was available on Game Pass at the moment of its release. However, the question that remains unanswered and that everyone is talking about is whether or not Black Ops 6 actually shakes up the series or if it’s just another typical reboot.
The funny thing is that it does not accomplish most of its daring moves in the single-player campaign but in the multiplayer mode. While embracing the traditional focus on tactics of the style that Treyarch is known for, the developers decided to give it an insane twist with the introduction of omnimovement. Now, in this game, the users are allowed to move at full speed in any direction, change their mid-air position, and do stunt-like things that would make people think they are watching a real action movie. Everything goes very quickly and smoothly, and to one’s great surprise, it is also very easy to get the hang of it. Moreover, a player who has just wrapped up a few rounds with this game will find it totally awful and clumsy to play a traditional shooter. Having said that, the acrobatics sometimes do get too exaggerated. Suppose that players are jumping through windows, turning in mid-air, and shooting clips that support their left and right hands. It is a good time, but at the same time, it tends to make the battles more chaotic and less tactical.
When it comes to the map design, the description ‘mixed bag’ would be an understatement here. The classic three-lane format is back for the majority of 6v6 maps, thus offering games a steady rhythm and, at the same time, keeping the so-called campers under control. Lowtown is definitely the highlight here; not only does it have a nice, bright beachside village feel to it, but it also has vertical layers that do a great job in creating the illusion of depth. Unfortunately, not every map is a hit. For example, Babylon is a place where one can observe that the problems with too many sightlines and spawn points being heavily congested are the reasons why the players are still complaining about the same things that happened in Modern Warfare (2019). An explanation of why this is happening is that as soon as the netcode starts faltering or the spawn logic is failing, the folks that are already biting their nails in frustration can very quickly get to a point where their anger just explodes.
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.