THANK God Black Ops didn’t stick with the choice to axe its campaign.
In 2018, Black Ops 4 omitted singleplayer, only featuring multiplayer, zombies and battle royale mode Blackout.
Black Ops 6 features one of the best campaigns in a Call of Duty game[/caption]
Campaign missions offer great variety in terms of gameplay[/caption]
Black Ops 6’s campaign, however, makes a serious claim to be the series’ best yet.
All 11 missions are radically different, featuring a diverse mix of espionage, sabotage, and straight-up carnage.
Set in 1991, it sees you race to stop shadowy organisation The Pantheon deploying a superweapon to destabilise the planet.
This is cloak-and-dagger spycraft grounding outlandish conspiracies with historical touchpoints, such as cameos by global figures like Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein.
The mission called Blood Feud is Goldeneye-esque in the way it arms you with a silenced pistol and starts off with you dropping from a vent into a bathroom to take out a high-value target.
Another, Most Wanted, borrows from Hitman, tasking you with tracking down a senator in a Washington fundraiser by snapping covert pics, rifling through jackets, and frying power boxes.
You can even pick up and hide bodies to avoid alerting guards.
There’s also a sandbox SAS team-up called Hunting Season where you’ll drive a jeep across a swathe of Iraqi desert with the aim of blowing up three mobile gun emplacements in any order you want.
The campaign is short and sweet, taking only a day or two to finish, but thrilling while it lasts.
Well-intentioned extra features, like dialogue choices and a customisable base you can upgrade by collecting cash, unfortunately don’t add all that much replay value.
Zombies mode, meanwhile, marks the return of the co-op supernatural survival element – and this time, you can save your progress.
Only available in solo mode, the ability to quit and return at any point makes the experience much less of a slog.
For those who’ve previously found zombies too unforgiving, there’s a greater emphasis on directing you to points of interest.
This cuts down aimless wandering so you can worry less about being brutally killed within minutes.
That goes for both maps, which are the secluded island jailbreak Terminus, and sleepy West Virginian town of Liberty Falls.
Multiplayer is, of course, the main event, and it’s never been better than in Black Ops 6.
Omnimovement changes the game, adding the ability to sprint in all directions rather than just straight ahead.
Combined with the ability to effortlessly mantle ledges, perform diving leaps, lunges, and acrobatic spins, and go prone while shooting in a 360-degree arc, Black Ops 6 at times feels like Max Payne on fast forward.
You can hold the melee button to take someone from behind as a human shield, although that doesn’t happen often given the frenetic pace of matches.
There are 16 multiplayer all-new maps, 12 of them fit for 6v6 modes and four of them strike maps for 2v2 or 3v3 modes.
Featuring Bulgarian mountain retreats, pilot training facilities, lavish political galas and desert compounds, they’re all intelligently designed with speed in mind.
The action flows thick and fast, with quick time to engagement and liquid fluidity.
This puts the focus on satisfyingly precise gunplay that outshines every other FPS on the market.
From propping your weapon on a table for better stability to sliding round a corner and shooting someone in the kneecaps, multiplayer will keep you coming back throughout the year.
Developing your character and unlocking weapons provides the same hard-to-put-down hook as previous entries, and some of the weapon skins are a work of art.
Weapon loadouts persist in all modes, so you don’t have to build each one from scratch.
With developer Treyarch supporting the game throughout the year with updates, seasonal events, the return of Nuketown in November, and Warzone map Verdansk coming back in 2025, it’s never been a better time to drop into the series than with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
It’s the best Call of Duty in years.
For more on the latest game, check out why Black Ops 6’s Game Pass gambit is paying off.
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