This Year’s ‘Call Of Duty’ Is An Absolute Blast

It appears that Treyarch is leaning hard into everything that makes Black Ops tick when it comes to this year’s Call Of Duty.

I have now played quite a bit of Black Ops 6, or at least of the content that will be available in the upcoming two-weekend beta (read all about the upcoming beta right here). I’ve put hours into a number of the game’s brand-new maps across several modes including Team Deathmatch, Kill Order, Domination and Hardpoint, as well as a bit of Faceoff and some of the new round-based Zombies mode.

I can say, without hesitation, that it is absolutely fantastic. The game is polished despite being months from launch, and the myriad changes to the formula made by Treyarch and its partner studios really shine through, making this the most fluid Call Of Duty I’ve ever played. The game is tight and focused and it feels really good to play. I have very high hopes for the full release.

Time To Glide

The fast-paced movement of Modern Warfare III—which felt so good after trudging through MWII—will feel weirdly stilted to return to, I suspect, missing the one thing that makes Black Ops 6 really stand out: The new Omnimovement system that brings 360 degree sliding, diving and sprinting to the game, giving movement a dimensionality we simply haven’t ever experienced before. At times it feels revelatory: how has nobody thought of this?

I am a mouse-and-keyboard player (on PC, as God intended) and I am quite certain that Omnimovement will give more advantages to controller-players who can use the thumbsticks to great effect when it comes to all this directional goodness. But even so, the game feels great with KBM.

The new Intelligent Movement system allows players to customize a lot of basic movement options with things like auto-sprint, auto-crouch and more, reducing the number of buttons needed to carry out movement across the map. There were times, as I slid around corners or dove backward out of fire, that I felt almost as if I were gliding across the map. It’s an incredibly liberating sensation—and incredibly fun.

Even around the periphery of this movement system you can feel the difference. Moving at a diagonal, you’ll feel your shoulder push that direction first. Approach a corner slowly and you’ll move directly into a peeking animation. Lay on your stomach and you can roll all the way over to your back. Dive backwards into a corner and you can sit there on your behind, aiming over your legs. The possibilities feel endless. It will be interesting to see what this means for the skill-gap.

Maps, Modes And Gunplay

That sense of fun extends to both the maps Treyarch has put together and the gunplay. I have been asking for years for Call Of Duty to return to small-to-midsize maps with a more traditional 3-lane design. Big maps can be fun, but you don’t need many of them especially when you have Warzone. My prayers have been answered, it seems, because Treyarch has taken this philosophy to heart with Black Ops 6. All twelve core maps will be small-to-midsized, and will be differentiated not so much by size but by structure and layout and visual design.

There will also be 4 “Strike” maps at launch, built for 6v6 Faceoff and 2v2 Gunfight. I played one of these only—Pit—and only briefly, but it was good, chaotic fun in Faceoff.

I played much more of the available 6v6 maps: Derelict, a densely overgrown train graveyard that is long and narrow; Scud, an open-area map with a massive as its centerpiece; Skyline, a posh rooftop affair with a central pool and plenty of edges to accidentally dolphin-dive off of; Rewind, a retro Americana shopping mall with long sniping lanes outside and plenty of close-quarters interiors in the center; and Babylon, a very small map with a center hill designed for fast, frenetic encounters. All of these are engaging, requiring new strategies for each mode.

The guns—12 of which are never-before-seen in Call Of Duty—are great and varied, though I didn’t have time to really sink my teeth into each of them. Gunplay itself feels excellent. There’s that satisfying sense of impact in both the recoil and sound design that continues to make Call Of Duty the most satisfying first-person shooter year over year. It is not a huge change from the last couple years of Modern Warfare. I think the new shared Call Of Duty game engine has led to a less radical shift in terms of gunplay feel than say the change between Modern Warfare 2019 and Black Ops Cold War. That’s a good thing.

There are still plenty of things that make this game feel like Black Ops, from the Operators and overall presentation of the game, to the revamped perks system, which does away with boots and gloves, timed perks and all the other stuff we’ve seen over the past few years and gives us a more standard pick-3 perk system plus Wildcards.

There is also a return to a slightly altered version of the Classic Prestige system, wherein players can unlock the first 55 Military Levels and then opt to relock everything and join the prestige track. Obviously, my limited time with the game did not involve any prestige unlocks but I’m happy to return to this system, which will come with its own set of rewards.

Another good thing: Even in the beta, visibility is great. I swear, visibility has been a launch-and-beta thorn in the side of so many Call of Duty games, I’ve lost count. But here, I never had trouble spotting who was friend and who was foe.

If I had one complaint it would be simply that one thing I very badly want to live on after Modern Warfare III is not coming to Black Ops 6. That is the new Cutthroat mode that pits three teams of three against one another. It’s the best new mode in Call Of Duty and it will be a real shame to see it go. I asked Treyarch and the studio said that they had no plans at this time to add it to the game, but I can’t imagine it would be hard, and maybe if I pester them endlessly about it they’ll give me what I want. After all, they’ve given me most everything else I’ve asked for at this point.

Zombies

I haven’t been too invested—I almost typed infested—in Zombies mode in recent years, but I did have fun playing the new round-based Zombies that returns in Black Ops 6. We only were able to play a truncated version of one of the first two maps coming to the game. Liberty Falls is quaint little American rural town completely overrun with the undead.

It plays out how you would expect classic round-based Zombies to play out: Face off against increasingly challenging zombie hordes, unlock traps and new weapons, open doors to continue deeper into the level and its accompanying story, and try to survive by powering up and playing as a team with your three teammates. There is an exfil option this time around, but you can opt to just keep fighting until the inevitable.

Warzone

I played several matches of Warzone on the new Area 99 map and it was an absolute blast, but I’m saving my impressions for a separate piece. Be sure to follow me on this blog (and on on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook) as I’ll have those live soon. Lots of exciting stuff is in store for the Warzone crowd as well.

There is more. Much more. More to say about each of these systems, all the myriad little changes and improvements and tweaks, but I’ve written enough for now. You’ll be able to experience all of it for yourself in the next two weekends of beta play.