At this time of year, when you gather around and reflect, we look at Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 and see whether it deserves a lump of coal or a tasty, presumably out-of-season, orange.
It’s Christmas time and everyone should be merry or tipsy… whatever, we’ll settle for not drunk and violent. However, we did want to look at the areas where the series shoots first and somehow still dies, as well as things that just don’t deserve criticism.
More specifically, Black Ops 6, because this latest installment has had time to breathe and we are starting to understand how it’ll shape up. We’ll look at the ‘crimes’, those elements that people have a problem with but in a manner that’s all light-hearted and jovial and unlike every post on the Call of Duty Reddit.
We’ll also look at the ‘innocent according to the jury’ whereby I look at things that I think are fine but lots of people will disagree, but I’m a journalist if I’m not making you angry and riled up for no reason I’m not doing my job.
An opinion piece that acknowledges subjectivity? Yeah, I’m such a rulebreaker.
Crime! Nuketown, the not-Shipment
Nuketown might be the worst Call of Duty map they’ve ever made. Saying it is good is a challenger to the biggest example of peer pressure in gaming history, he says, not bothering to use Google.
Used as the classic map that is ever present when Shipment probably shouldn’t be used for the third time in a row, Nuketown has been a hallmark of the series since 2010.
Yet it’s terrible and exposes the brutal ultimate strategy of Call of Duty.
To do this map well, you have to manipulate the spawns, in that you keep a team trapped behind the opposing house, monitoring the four potential paths out. It’s easy to do if you win the opening shootouts. It’s also hard to collectively escape, it’s desperately not fun to play either.
Nuketown is the easiest map to do this on, it’s just big enough to have a distinct area to consistently trap people in, while being small enough that even if a member of the team doing the entrapment dies, it’s still quite quick to get back into position.
It’s a crime and they are never fun, despite what the last week of being on the internet seems to be suggesting.
Innocent according to the jury: the rest of the maps
I see a range of other maps receive heavy criticism but… Nope. It’s a good selection. Don’t get me wrong, I’d get executed by my peers for this but I actually love the maps in the much-maligned Call of Duty Vanguard. Yet Black Ops 6 has a good variety: Babylon is a good ‘small chaos’ map, Vault is an early strong contender for a bigger map.
The recently-added Hacienda seems like a great large map. Red Card and Rewind, fairly maligned by the rest of the community, avoid any major issues. It’s a good selection, even Lowtown makes it clear they went for something a bit more innovative even if it isn’t my favourite. Still, I get to be a massive boat and sail along on Prop Hunt, it makes me happy.
It could change by March, when the final ratings really should be in after another season or two, but so far so good.
Although bring back The Pines, you cretins.
Crimes! Mode rotation. Infected should stay, you fools
Okay, okay, okay, I’m ranting about modes again but hear me out. Prop Hunt and Infected should be full-time modes. Why? Because they do something unique that every other mode doesn’t do: it makes me play COD when I’m not up for playing it.
Playing a team deathmatch is a whole other game to pratting around being a zombie being like ‘ooo, I want brains for Christmas, which is why I’m not seeing my family’, or being a moving chair. It’s a different tone and level of pressure.
It’s fun even if you get completely thrashed. It’s hard to take it seriously. There’s been at least a week so far without one of these, and it’s a risk they shouldn’t take again.
Oh and add Sticks ‘N’ Stones. Please.
Skill-based matchmaking – outright innocent
I see this criticised a lot and I never understand it. Call pf Duty is usually fun for me because while I have natural fluctuations depending on my mood or how awake I am, I’m generally matched with people who have a similar skill level.
I’m rarely made to feel truly out of my depth by opponents. When I earn a big score streak, I feel like I deserve it and yet it’s never too rare to the point I feel a bit disillusioned with it.
Now I wasn’t part of the initial heyday of COD, so I can see how sticking with a lobby could be fun if the vibe was right. But still, I think this is a positive.
After that, let’s go onto my preferred methods of getting murdered…
Crime! Camoflague progression
If there’s one thing I now realise that I loved about the last iteration of Warzone, it’s that I had a lot of varied gun camouflages to choose from. This time around I’m about a month and a half into playing Black Ops 6 and I’ve not unlocked much. A fair few from headshots, sure, but I miss being able to start a new gun and have something unlocked from the start that seemed cool enough to personalise it.
Now I just can’t and it feels like to unlock one I’ll have to play a gun beyond what is feeling like a natural sense of rotation. That’s a shame.
I’m 30 years old, I want my pretty colours damn it.
Completely innocent! Omni-movement
Omni-movement is the big thing introduced in Black Ops 6 and it consistently makes small differences in gameplay. It also often leaves me dying while respecting how the other player was able to move around. It’s a great addition and one that I hope isn’t taken out of later installments. It’s fun and a wise addition, it genuinely feels a bit game-changing.
This entry is really short: if there’s one aspect that I see criticised that I truly do not understand, it’s this.
Crimes! The yearly release schedule
I can kind of explain EA Sports being a yearly release, but as much as I’m enjoying this, I wish it was still its predecessor. I didn’t even play Modern Warfare III, but that’s the point. I avoided it so that I didn’t get trapped with franchise fatigue. A break is the primary reason why I love BO6. Yet it would be more fun if I was returning to a more immediately fleshed-out game.
I’m old and decrepit to the point I remember the Tony Hawk’s games burning out and dying because of a yearly release. Now I feel like Abe Simpson pointing at Call of Duty and saying, “And it’ll happen to you..!”
The franchise has avoided it so far, and I’m sure it prints money in a way that my unemployed self would need a therapist to help me fully process, but it is a danger. As much as I really like the game it is a bit annoying that it’ll be around March when we get a good sense of how the game has turned out.
Ooo! Double Crime-bow! The yearly backlash
I’m not going to attack the fanbase much, but if you pay attention to some areas of it you’ll feel like Call of Duty is the worst game in the world.
The series, at its worst, is still incredibly good. I think one of the biggest issues is that they perfected the first-person shooter online to the point there hasn’t been truly anywhere to go for a long time.
There was a lot to say here, to the point I didn’t even discuss the proper prestige system returning! For what it’s worth, I’d say doesn’t need to be brought to trial; it’s excellent.
There are more crimes to be identified though, as this writer dives into the rest of the industry so stay tuned for potentially more. I say potentially because this writer can only ever talk about three different subjects.
Microphone drop! Although hastily picked up because he can’t afford to pay any fines.