Each Call of Duty entry is allowed a certain degree of deviation from the blockbuster formula – enough to give each year’s instalment some freshness. With Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Treyarch and Raven Software seem to have been given slightly greater flexibility than usual. Set at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991, this year’s model delivers a fairly substantial campaign with some genuine surprises and a welcome dash of oddness. An equally healthy multiplayer offering makes Black Ops 6 difficult to fault.
The campaign is again the showcase offering. Unusually, there are very few of the series’ trademark switches of perspective – the player is almost always in the boots of CIA operative William “Case” Calderon. During a mission on the Iraq-Kuwait border, Case’s team learns of a rogue paramilitary force named Pantheon, which ostensibly originated as an off-the-books Agency project. Case’s team set out to prevent Pantheon from deploying a novel new bioweapon, with their bloody world tour taking in Iraq, Washington D.C., Russia, and the fictional crime-ridden European locale of Avalon.
As usual, the campaign comprises short chapters in these various locations, each with its own particular mix of elements. Also as usual, these lift liberally from various films and other games that Treyarch and Raven have used as study material. A multi-stage casino heist in Avalon leans into disguise and stealth mechanics, and strongly recalls the Mission: Impossible series. Case’s descent into a disused bioweapons lab takes a trippy turn that is so obviously cribbed from Control that it is almost cute.
At their best, these missions are some of the strongest that Call of Duty has delivered for some time. One highlight comes in Russia, where Case’s teammate Sev must infiltrate a former military base being used for Pantheon operations. This is a successor to the “open combat” missions in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. Sev is afforded a pleasing variety of options as she seeks to spoil Pantheon’s party. These range from non-violent, dialogue-based solutions – deceiving and manipulating guards – to all-out explosive mayhem.
What is missing is a genuinely cohesive narrative, or the sense that these various episodes really ever coalesce into a satisfying whole. Some of the changes in Black Ops 6 seem insufficiently thought through. Most obvious is the team’s base between missions, a rambling mansion in Bulgaria. Here, Case can use cash found on operations to upgrade the base, his skills, and his gear. It is a mechanic that seems too obviously lifted from other games, feels a poor fit for Call of Duty, and causes the story to periodically grind to a halt.
With that being said, the Black Ops 6 campaign frequently fires on all cylinders. The rock-solid movement and shooting mechanics, cutting-edge cutscenes, and strong motion-capture and voice performances are as consistently impressive as ever. It is just unfortunate that the grab-bag of mechanics are rarely given time to breathe by another campaign fractured into small, disconnected sections.
While the zombies mode again feels phoned-in and only advisable to play with friends, the rest of the multiplayer offering is thoroughly slick and exciting. The much-vaunted “omnidirectional sprinting” mechanic makes little real impact, but in general Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a gripping online experience. There is an abundance of genuinely varied modes, with something for almost any conceivable type of FPS player.
The many new maps are built to a high standard, offering many routes and traversal options. As with other recent games in the series, they often have the same settings as the campaign missions. One sometimes frustrating issue recurs from the two recent Modern Warfare entries, however. Some maps are poorly suited to the fixed player counts dictated by certain game modes. For example, “Red Card” is a beautifully realised football stadium, which makes for lonely, slow-paced free-for-all (FFA) matches with only eight players. The “combat pacing” variable player count option, introduced in Call of Duty: Vanguard but then subsequently dropped, would have come in handy here.
Once again, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 does just enough to carve out a distinctive niche within an increasingly vast and confusing series. It still doesn’t truly push the envelope in any department, and it could be more cohesive, but it is supremely entertaining – as far as it goes.
