Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Review

I am somewhat a lapsed fan of COD. Having been there for its meteoric rise on the 360 with Modern Warfare and its sequel, I fell off when titles like Ghosts and Infinite Warfare arrived. I also never played the super popular spin off series Black Ops, at least until 2022’s Cold War, which I found to be great. Well, Black Ops is back in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and it’s not just a litmus test for the series after a woefully received MW3 remake last year, but also a test for new owners Microsoft and the titles day one inclusion in Game Pass. Time will tell on that last part, though early reports are that it’s doing exactly what it said on the tin for subscriber numbers, but it’s safe to say Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a return to form for the series in quality, both in campaign and multiplayer.

We’ll kick off with the campaign, and this has been the main pull for me in COD’s of recent years. None have really floated my boat of the ones I’ve played (outside of the aforementioned Cold War) but I was keen to see what the plethora of studios working on this could pull off. 

Turns out, a pretty bloody good action ride with some surprisingly exciting twists in both plot and gameplay. There’s a returning cast of characters – Woods and Adler being the main draws – as well as a bunch of new folk who have a surprising amount of character to them for a COD game. We’re not a million miles away from the Soap McTavish’s and Captain Price’s of the universe, but there’s a bit more than just ‘gruff military person who knows how to shoot people in the face’ here. I think they may even have gotten one or two actual audible gasps from me at times. It’s not going to challenge for narrative of the year, but it’s an entertaining ride all the same.

What won me over mostly though was the mix up to the flow of gameplay. COD has its share of iconic missions from over the years, and topping those would be hard. What we have here instead are more freeform options and – steady now – open zone areas that offer up gameplay similar in feel to Far Cry. Which in my eyes is a great thing.

One early-ish mission sees us dropped in Iraq looking for the latest world ending weapon that’s been stashed in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. We can’t head straight there though, and our British Army teammates are none too pleased that we’ve halted their plans to just blow it off the face of the earth. So, we must help them out first before they’ll escort us to the palace. This entails exploring a mid-sized open zone filled with three main objectives, but also a dozen or so optional extras. These range from finding scouts for information, to rescuing downed pilots or clearing out bases of Elite Iraqi troops. What initially appeared to be just busy work to have an excuse for this open zone soon transpired to have more flesh to it; completing the side objectives unlocked more air support and back up, which carries over to when we storm the palace. It didn’t take too long to complete the extra missions, and the reward felt more than worth the extra time spent here.

There’s another smaller example of this style later in the game that we won’t spoil, but suffice to say it gives the gameplay another great shot of variety just as the rollercoaster ride of action starts to creep back in again. It’s not as in-depth as its inspirations by any means, but both of these sections gave us way more than we were expecting from a COD campaign, and it’s all the better for it. There’s still some incredibly enjoyable rollercoaster action scenes and big explosive fire-fights to enjoy too, don’t worry. We also get to use a lot of stealth to get by throughout, with one mission seeing us sneaking past an opposing force into a lab that could go either way depending on our playstyle.

These changes are a welcome touch to the campaign and if this is the future of the franchise, then I’m way more excited to see what comes next than I have been in 15 years. 

I’m less a fan of one particular mission that feeds into the Black Ops lore, but – without too much of a spoiler – that’s also because I’m not a big fan of the series popular Zombies mode. This particular mission was still fun, and surprisingly creepy, but I was also keen to move on from this level far sooner than any other.

But that section aside, I had a blast going through the campaign of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. It’s typical conspiracy/warfare/betrayal fodder, but well executed and thoughtful enough that I enjoyed it all the same. 

Multiplayer has also won me over this year, with the vaunted Omnimovement system playing into the feel of matches far more than I’d anticipated. We enjoyed the beta a lot, and the final game feels just as fluid and fun. There are a good selection of modes, from deathmatch to objective-type games, and from the handful of hours I’ve played it I’ve yet to find a map I don’t enjoy. I think my favourite combo so far has been the High Value Target game mode on the football stadium level, its tight corridors and open bleachers making for some tense firefights as we chase down each team’s HVT. 

I’m not an expert on the MP side of the game, and so I can’t delve into the minutia of the changes or improvements over the last few games, but I can say this is easily the most pick and play version of COD MP I’ve touched in years. It’s early days of course, but balancing feels fair, matches are snappy, and while we get inundated with unlocks and upgrades after each round, I’ve done well enough so far just sticking to a set up that I like from the early goings. There are lots of customisation options for guns and attachments, and upgrades and perks, but unless you’re aiming for eSports level play, you can just as easily get by with a standard class and still have some level of competitiveness. 

One thing I’m not a fan of (but I don’t see it going anywhere) are the menus. They are – quite frankly – awful, loaded with tabs upon tabs for all the other games that now fall under the Call of Duty hub, as well as things to buy and all that guff. It can make even getting to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 a bit of a faff, and while we can at least choose what to install, the fact that there’s no ‘just Black Ops 6’ button means it’s harder than it needs to be to get to the game we bought (or downloaded from Game Pass). 

As for Zombies? Well, I’ve not touched it and I don’t have any intention to do so. It’s never jived with me, and after that campaign mission I have no interest in seeking out a mode dedicated to it I’m afraid. Besides, the campaign and MP are more than enough in terms of enjoyment and how much time they take up, and I’d easily recommend this as a full price purchase on those two alone. Zombies is a nice bonus in my eyes, though it is obviously a hugely popular mode in its own right. So yeah, sorry but not for me.

One final downer – I came across several bugs in my time with Black Ops 6. From the game crashing after one certain mission on both PC and Xbox (solved by restarting and lowering the difficulty) to HDR not displaying properly causing all sorts of visual flickering at times, and the games insistence on hard crashing my laptop more often than not. The latter one was odd to me as when it ran it worked brilliantly on Ultra settings, but just loading into the game was pot luck as to if it’d load or crash. Hopefully these teething problems are resolved shortly as otherwise it was a smooth playing experience.

Conclusion

All in all, this year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 had a lot riding on its shoulders; big return after a poor showing last year, and the first big release straight into Game Pass. That it has come out this well in campaign and MP is no small feat, and no matter if you buy it or play on subscription, you’re almost guaranteed to have a good time. The campaign is the usual action blockbuster but shows promise for the future in its slower, more open-ended areas, and the MP is the best it’s been (in my casual eyes) for over a decade.