This hype around the new Call of Duty launches every year like clockwork, and in the case of Black Ops 6, it simply went off the charts. With the story taking place in the early 1990s, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Treyarch vowed a totally new experience of reliving the past with this new release, and they actually shattered their record of having a Game Pass first-day release. The thing is, after this release, the question that everybody keeps asking is whether Black Ops 6 is a shake-up or a fan disappointment of another same-old rehash?
It makes its most ambitious moves, thankfully, in multiplayer. Treyarch revisits its traditional tactic-focused style, but this time with a bit of a mad new twist in the form of omnimovement. Players can sprint in any direction, twist mid-air, and pull off flashy moves that look straight out of an action movie. It’s fast, smooth, and surprisingly easy to pick up—and once you’ve played a few rounds with it, going back to a more traditional shooter feels clunky. That said, the acrobatics can get a little over the top. Imagine players jumping through windows, twirling in mid-air, and shooting clips left and right. It’s enjoyable but tends to make battles more haphazard than tactical.
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.