Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is an incredibly confident game that strikes an impressive balance of pushing the franchise in fun new directions while also remaining true to the series, and Black Ops’ sub-series roots. This review will cover the singleplayer campaign in Black Ops 6.
There was a brief moment in my life when I was kind of into number stations. The mysterious radio broadcasts, often producing buzzing, morse code, and the reading of numbers believed to be intended for intelligence officers. Listening to UVB-76/The Buzzer on weird radio station websites (that were almost certainly stealing my data) became a small hobby of mine. I have the original Black Ops to thank for putting me onto numbers stations in the first place with that game’s plot involving character Alex Mason being brainwashed by a numbers station.
Sure, in the end we did find out what the numbers mean, but what that narrative really did was set Black Ops up to be the most playful and experimental Call of Duty series from a vibes and tone perspective.
While I can somewhat safely say I’ve never been brainwashed by a number station, I’ve always admired Black Ops’ commitment to twisting history in an Assassin’s Creed-esque fashion to add weight to their stories. You feel like you are playing alongside events in history that have been sanded down by the edges of time to feel just safe enough to recreate and reference in a video game. Modern Warfare’s stories and subject matter on the other hand often feel inspired by the works of Dick Wolfe in their timeliness. Plot elements and storylines ripped from today’s headlines even when it feels too soon to make a game that references the events of the 2012 Benghazi attack.
Some may feel like Black Ops is referencing unspeakable acts in U.S. military history, but Black Ops gets away with it due to a lack of recency bias unlike Modern Warfare. Something, something, history is written by the victors… I think I saw a quote like that in an older Call of Duty game back when they used to put those sorts of messages on the screen when you died.
While Black Ops 6 may seem long in the tooth given its legacy as a Call of Duty sub-series, it more than makes up for it with a trippy and exciting story that is backed up by some really great gameplay. For all that Black Ops 6 does differently, this is still a Call of Duty game. Nobody involved in development reinvented the wheel. The cynics may see these changes, inclusions, and evolutions as simple tricks and distractions. It may be hard to believe but a new idea for the Call of Duty series isn’t meant to simply fool the player into forgetting they have been playing the same Black Ops game since 2010.
Black Ops 6’s campaign feels like a natural progression of all the games that came before it. There is a confidence in the inclusion and execution of a lot of the new ideas in Black Ops 6. Ultimately I think what the team at Raven has done is fresh enough that Black Ops 6’s campaign should be used as the blueprint for future Call of Duty stories.
Black Ops 6 follows the events of the Cold War with the game taking place at the start of Operation Desert Storm with the Gulf War set as the backdrop for the story. You primarily play as Case, a silent protagonist who finds himself along with Marshal and Woods suspended from the CIA and forced to go rogue. Early on you meet up with Black Op‘s familiar face Adler who joins you on your new mission to stop the mysterious paramilitary force Pantheon.
Without spoilers, the story is another globetrotting tale full of conspiracy, coverups, double, triple, and probably quadruple crosses that manage to feature historical characters like Bill Clinton and multiple references to Saddam Hussein. The main plot involves you stopping a psychochemical weapon controlled by Pantheon as you seek to uncover who is involved with this organisation while doing so in that classic Black Ops-style of off the record warfare and mayhem.
Missions are selected from an evidence board back at your base which also operates as a small hub world. You can run around, talk to your crew, and even engage in side puzzles that offer you cash you can use to upgrade the player in the campaign. Your base is an abandoned mansion that you quickly set up shop in, but you eventually discover the manor holds many secrets. The mansion is far larger than what your team needs so there are plenty of quiet, dark, and empty areas to explore.
As you explore the estate you can use your blacklight to not only illuminate the shadows but also uncover clues you can use to solve side puzzles. One optional puzzle involves you hitting keys on a piano in a certain order that will unlock a secret door. The door leads to a hidden basement that offers a series of unique puzzles that also help uncover what the house’s previous tenants were up to before you arrived.
In a world where psychochemical weapons are being used and characters are being brainwashed by number stations, it seems completely normal for a hub world in Black Ops to contain Resident Evil-esque puzzles and mysteries. This may not be what you come to Call of Duty for, but if there is a theme I can establish in this review it’s that a lot of these weirder ideas genuinely make the game better.
Operation Desert Storm is also used as a cover to justify why you are doing direct approach military style action in a world where you are actually disgraced spies. There is one level involving your team working undercover and aligning with SAS forces to raid one of Hussein’s palaces in search for the psychochemical weapon known as “the Cradle”. It’s a great example of the gameplay changes made in Black Ops 6 because it’s probably Call of Duty’s biggest campaign level to date. In fact the level is so large and open it even features fast travel.
The actual objectives and side missions in the open world level are straight forward, but the side quests offer plenty of incentive for doing them and the game even does a decent job narratively to justify the need for you to help out. The open world design is Far Cry-esque allowing you to approach situations from multiple angles with an impressive array of tools and weapons. While praising a game for being more like Far Cry is so common it’s almost cliche – the now tried and true open world FPS action is at least matched by Call of Duty’s best in class gunplay and movement. It works really well, even if this feels like the same old song and dance from other games.
Another mission involves you switching back and forth between multiple characters as you pull off a casino heist. Featuring lots of stealth, hacking, and non-shooting gameplay to ramp up the tension before the big explosive gunfight towards the climax of the level. And yes, there is a Casino Royale style game of poker that must be played during the heist too. It’s maybe not as fun as playing Balatro, but having a card game in Call of Duty is novel no matter how you slice it.
The final mission I will reference is a level that is a love letter to developer Raven’s past sci-fi horror shooter Singulairty. I really don’t want to say much about the level because it offers a lot of revelations, but it stands out as one of the most interesting levels ever in a Call of Duty game because of its commitment to horror. Does every Call of Duty need a horror level? No, but again, like almost every new idea in the game – even if the idea seems weird for the series the game is better for it.
The level also allows you to use a grapple hook for both combat and traversal purposes that is really well done considering how little time you spend with the mechanic in the game. The grapple hook does appear towards the end of the game, but overall I think you use it for about two missions total.
If there is one serious piece of criticism I can provide it’s that the new Omnimovement system really doesn’t impact how you play the game. During my preview I said that the inclusion of the Omnimovement system provided a fresh take on traversal while still maintaining the increasingly fast and frantic pace we have come to expect from the shooter. But having now played a whole game with it, it’s maybe the only new idea that doesn’t quite work. Omnimovement doesn’t actively take away from the game, but in the bigger picture it just doesn’t make a difference.
Ominimovement is neat in theory, but you can very easily get through the game by playing Call of Duty, as you have since the reboot of Modern Warfare. Without the speed boost or verticality systems that were in games like Advanced Warfare, Black Ops III, and Infinite Warfare, there isn’t a real necessity to dive, slide, or roll in 360-degrees despite the inclusion of omnimovement.
This extends to both the campaign and multiplayer. Unless you are fixated on pretending you’re in a John Woo movie, you may be better off going back to basics with your movement. This belief also applies in multiplayer where one wrong dive from around a corner is probably gonna get you shot.
Black Ops 6 campaign is Call of Duty’s most expansive and varied campaign to date, but it still features plenty of explosive set-piece moments. Black Ops 6 campaign is not a game changer, but it is the best campaign in years and hopefully the standard for future titles to come under Activison and Microsoft.
You can also read the Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Multiplayer Review here.
