Game name: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (campaign mode)
Release date: October 25, 2024
Price: US$69.99
Available on: Steam
Genre: First person shooter
Developer: Raven Software, Treyarch
Publisher: Activision
Opencritic: Here
Before I begin this review for the campaign portion of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, I must confess one thing: I haven’t truly enjoyed a Call of Duty single player campaign since Infinite Warfare, and even that one came with some caveats, as while I liked the gameplay and some ideas it had, the story didn’t feel compelling and I couldn’t really connect with most of its characters. I’ve played every single mainline Call of Duty campaign with the exception of Vanguard, some on Steam, some via PC Game Pass now that Microsoft owns Activision and has started putting their back catalog on the popular subscription service. The last Call of Duty campaign that I enjoyed wholeheartedly was Black Ops 2, which was a very fun mashup of sci-fi and Cold War era gung-ho secret agents saving the world from hidden conspiracies. So with all of that in mind, join me as I take a deep dive into the sixth numbered entry in the Black Ops sub-series. Will it rise to the heights of the first two titles or drown in the mediocrity of the third one?
Story-wise, Black Ops 6 takes place some time after Black Ops: Cold War (a title that I neither hated nor loved, as it felt formulaic and too often afraid to try anything new, or even get close to the things that drove me to appreciate the first two entries in this long-running sub-series). Characters that were introduced in that game return here, but overall, this is a self-contained adventure that rewards long time fans with constant nods to earlier titles without ever drowning us under mountains of poorly delivered exposition. Raven Software clearly respects the player’s time and correctly assumes that anyone playing this campaign doesn’t need to get bogged down in unnecessary details, while at the same time knowing when and where to sprinkle fan service in a tasteful way. For me, this was already a massive step-up from last year’s dreadful Modern Warfare 3 reboot campaign, which never knew when to shut up about the most boring things, while at the same time losing me constantly with poorly seeded references to events in the previous two games which I’d already mostly forgotten due to how unremarkable these titles were.
Once the player is done with the intro mission, they are dropped into a safe house of sorts which acts as our base of operations, and plays host to some fairly entertaining puzzles that can be used to unlock some extra backstory and cash that will help us upgrade our character with some helpful but not game-changing boosters such as more armor pieces, or health, or better recoil control, etc. It’s a very inoffensive system in an age where even DOOM fell prey to the allure of faux-RPG systems, and while I think the game would have been more than fine without it, it didn’t really have any negative impact on my experience of it, and it did encourage some light exploration during missions, as there are hidden caches that require a small degree of puzzle solving, a welcome departure from the era where we couldn’t deviate a single millimeter from our intended objective lest some unseen observer decide to cast the fury of the gods upon our heads for “abandoning the mission”.
Anyone who has suffered through the campaign mode of the last rebooted Modern Warfare title might be thinking that these more open, exploration focused levels I’ve just praised are the “open combat missions” that made up the bulk of the playable content on that title, and may be rightfully worried about that. Thankfully, nothing could be further from the truth, as in reality only one mission follows that approach, and even that one springs enough surprises along the way to feel like something worth playing. Raven Software truly brought their A game when designing the levels in Black Ops 6, and, in my humble opinion, even managed to top the widely beloved two first entries in the series with some of them. This is a game that’s never afraid to get weird, without crossing over into the bizarre. I’m not going to spoil what I consider to be some of the best levels in the series, but mission variety is at an all-time high here, with some maps letting us approach things in a Hitman-lite fashion, but crucially also not forbidding us from engaging in open combat if things go wrong. Instead of instantly triggering a fail condition, being discovered simply ups the ante in a fairly noticeable way, with enemies rushing our player character and forcing us to think on our feet in order to complete the objectives and survive. The developers clearly understood that fans of Call of Duty campaigns want to shoot dudes in the face and play through elaborate set pieces, while at the same time realizing that the franchise sorely needed new ideas.
Another thing that added much-needed variety to the missions was that the game will often drop us into a relatively open section where we can take our time exploring and gathering cash for upgrades, and then transition into a more typical, set piece-driven Call of Duty experience where we must constantly push forward while everything goes boom around us. It might sound simple, but it works very well, and it made a relatively long campaign (eight to ten hours) feel like it never overstayed its welcome, something that sets it apart from the last four titles in the series, which were all fairly short, four to six hour long experiences, and yet I was begging for them to be over way before the finish line was in sight.
Obviously, great level design and mission variety can only do so much if the story itself is a poorly written mess, but I’m happy to report that’s not the case here, as while we won’t find any award-winning scriptwriting, Black Ops 6 knows very well how to keep players entertained with interesting twists and turns without ever devolving into a weirdly over-complicated mess like Black Ops 3, or a boring slog like the past three Modern Warfare reboots. Characters are introduced and we get enough time with them to understand their motivations and root for (or against) them. The voice cast did an excellent job with the script they were given, and the animators and motion capture artists also helped tremendously, as almost every single important line is given the right amount of weight via the characters’ facial expressions and body language.
How does the gunplay and general gameplay hold up against everything else, I hear you ask? Well, the much-publicized omni movement system that had everyone hyped for the multiplayer portion of the game is actually included in the campaign as well, and while I was fully ready to dismiss it as a marketing gimmick, I’m now a believer. It’s not some incredible game-changer (or at least not for someone of my skill level) but it does enable really cool moments that truly feel ripped straight out of an action movie. Swan-diving behind cover while blasting everything in a 360-degrees angle feels as good here as it did in Max Payne 3, and the fluidity of the animations ensures the player is almost never left stuck in a corner wishing they wouldn’t have tried this or that move when confronted by a minigun wielding elite soldier. As for gunplay, this is still Call of Duty, and it feels pretty much the same as it has for the past half a decade or so, which is not a bad thing, as the one thing I quite enjoyed in the three Modern Warfare reboots is their gunplay and gun-feel. Spraying down hordes of enemies never gets old, and there’s a bunch of very satisfying weapons to be used as the campaign progresses, with my favorite being a Dragon’s Breath shotgun that left a fiery apocalypse in my character’s wake.
So far I’ve been unflinchingly positive when it comes to Black Ops 6‘s campaign, but there is one aspect that left a little to be desired, and sadly it’s Activision’s weird kink for forcing every single post-MWII (2022) title into their Call of Duty HQ launcher. You’d think it wouldn’t be a big issue, but in practice, using this half-assed launcher for everything means that launching the campaign can take a fairly long time (especially the first time you do it, since the game has a shader compilation step) and if there’s an update, you can expect to fire up the main launcher, select the BO6 campaign option, wait for that to launch, then receive an “update requires restart” prompt, restart the main launcher, go back into the appropriate option… and in some cases, have to restart AGAIN just because Activision wanted to have every single new Call of Duty game as DLC for their shiny new launcher.
Now, if nothing else goes wrong this isn’t as much of an issue for anyone who has a good few hours to sink into the campaign, but the real trouble starts if you encounter a connection error (which can kick you from the single player mode for some reason) or, even worse, a crash. Before the first post-launch patch hit the servers yesterday, I was playing through the campaign, thoroughly enjoying myself, until I got to a mission where the game sent me back to the desktop with an error message. No problem, I thought, and I went through the whole launching process again (having to click on a “want to go into safe mode?” message mid-way through because of how the thing works), only to experience further lockups, which were apparently happening on all versions of the game, including the console ports, and forcing me to go through a lengthy ritual every single time I wanted to see if I could progress. Eventually, a patch came out and fixed it so I was able to finish the mission and later on, complete the game (with no more crashes, to be fair). But the real question here is why is all of this a thing? Why can’t we just go back to the previous system where we could select the campaign mode right from Steam, and skip a bunch of nonsense?
Moving on from that annoying stuff, the actual tech side of the game is pretty much flawless, with all sorts of graphical options ensuring that even a mid-range setup like mine (Ryzen 5 5600x, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3070) can play the campaign at an average 90-100 FPS with DLSS on and settings at a mix of High and even some maxed out. Special praise goes to the music, both the original pieces and the licensed portion of the soundtrack, which was carefully selected to fit certain set pieces and augment the experience. Gunshots and ambient sound were all fairly well mixed in my opinion but I’m no audiophile, so don’t take my word for it if you are.
But enough from me, I’ve droned on for far too long and I really want to get back into the Zombies mode, which has so far proved an excellent experience (look for our review of the multiplayer/Zombies portion later this week if you are interested in that). What are my overall thoughts on Raven Software‘s return to the spotlight? Black Ops 6‘s campaign is a much-needed return to form for the long-running franchise, providing a fairly meaty experience that’s never afraid to surprise players while at the same time delivering some of the best set pieces in the series. This is modern Call of Duty at its best, shedding its corridor shooter DNA whenever it needs to, and embracing it again at the next step if that means the player will have a good time, and I couldn’t be happier with it.
9/10 – Great.