Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Multiplayer Review | Unhinged Action Hero Adrenaline

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - *CODE PROVIDED BY PUBLISHER

SEASON 1 of Black Ops 6 is live now!

Call of Duty is like an amusement park. Running its same bread-and-butter operation for 20+ years becoming one of the go-to destination for playing pretend shoot a man. With yearly iterations comes new attractions: Zip around the battlefield with exo-suits! What if we all did swan dives and spammed grenades! Remember Rust? Remember Price? Well, what if we just did that again!? Some of those attractions become ingrained in the DNA of the experience and become fan favorites getting to stick around for years to come. Black Ops 6 is the latest entry to introduce a new ride, and this slip-n-diving masterpiece is called omnimovement. Which sounds like a move used by a Final Fantasy boss not a fundamental mechanic in the world’s biggest fps games. Michael Bay would tear up watching this bad boy in action because omnimovement is the star of the whole show, a complete game changer for the Call of Duty franchise and FPS games as a genre. It is the absolute definition of action hero complex and this bolstered tool set alongside some slick gunplay and some of the best feeling weapons in a while elevate what could have easily been another far too safe COD title.

Treyarch has nearly perfected the art of making players able to zoom around maps constantly adapting new features to increase mobility and options. Black Ops 6 is magnum opus of that dedication to slid-n-slides for the military because omnimovement opens up every possible angle of attack. You may be wondering what the hell is omnimovement and first off don’t curse there are definitely children in this lobby but secondly Omnimovement means diving, sprinting, leaping falling and strafing in whatever direction you darn well please. It’s as if Max Payne and Die Hard’ John McClain were the lead designers for the gameplay here, because there is something so inherently action hero about diving to the side while firing off a massive number of bullets to take down an unsuspecting foe. When I say this fundamentally changed the gameplay of Call of Duty for me, I mean it. I usually take a more deliberate pace in these games despite the design practically shoving me down the flight of stairs to high-reaction twitch shooting. But, Black Ops 6 has me doing party tricks diving from the second story building to take out an enemy on the ground. Taking a leap backward while throwing an impact grenade. Or even just utilizing the any direction sprint to pull of near donuts worth of turn around while sliding. Combine this with a plethora of excellent perk options and I really do feel this is peak Call of Duty.

It’s not just the new movement system working the dopamine rush in game, but the weapons all feel equally viable and handle extremely well. The XM4 and AEK became my go to weapons but the sheer variety of ways to utilize the arms in this game is kind of astonishing. A lot of what makes Call of Duty work is a snappy but not too quick time to kill. For the most part the hit detection and time to kill are solid, with a reasonable amount of bullets required to down an enemy. Finding the balance in your attachments to help smooth out that kill time is I suppose the meta of it but I think it comes down to HOW you use your weapon more than anything. The specialist system for perks came back offering some new buffs and bonuses for using the same trait typed perks. Recon perks offering a chance to briefly peep enemies through walls on spawn, Enforcer bringing some adrenaline junky type shit, letting you heal and gain movement boosts from getting kills and Strategist offering up a score bonus for objectives and destroying enemy equipment also letting you see that enemy equipment through walls. This gives players a real chance to pick their preferred play style and not have to just stick to the fastest one.

Now comes the part of the review where I break from talking about what I like and throw some serious critical rants out like a throwing knife to the dome of this game. CALL OF DUTY. HOW HAVE YOU BEEN DOING THIS FOR 20 YEARS AND YOUR GAME STILL SUFFERS FROM SOME OF THE WORST SPAWNS IVE EVER SCENE IN AN FPS AND I HAVE PLAYED SOME BAD ONES? How hard is it to make sure I have some chance of survival on spawn by just simply making sure no enemies are within a certain radius? Also maps range from claustrophobic to unbearably spread out but the gameplay is too chaotic and fast for either of those sizes. You needed a mid-sized sedan not a hummer or moped. Okay so map design in this game is actually interesting because initially I felt all the maps felt weirdly laid out and were too inconsistent. Then I started thinking about it in terms of loadouts. Each map is clearly driving a set of loadouts as the best selection for them. Maps like Scud are perfect for mid ranged weapons with great corridors for snipers, Rewind has a great variety of options for mid and long range, but the tight interiors are begging for SMGs to run rampant. Then there is maps like Stakeout. A never-ending massacre of spawns directly next to or around the corner from an enemy. It’s like the chaotic enclosed brother of Rust but somehow more unhinged. Regardless once I found my footing finding a loadout to match a map I had a lot more fun.

Let’s talk for a minute about the menus, which I was going to applaud for being updated and streamlined, except sometimes switching menus cause the game to crash. I turn off cross play when playing with PlayStation friends and boom it switches itself back on after EVERY. SINGLE. MATCH! WHY?! I’m just saying, while I enjoyed my time with this game, I had a hard time getting passed these flaws. Especially considering how much money goes through these studios!

Okay rants over. One thing that Call of Duty always consistently nails is the bread-and-butter game modes and that is true here too. I prefer hardcore to the basics but TDM, domination and Hardpoint still reign supreme here. New modes like HVT are a fun twist on an established formula, letting a randomly assigned high value target gain armor and the ability to be revived but rarely did this result in the players actually playing it differently from team deathmatch. Hell, half the time I wouldn’t even realize I was the HVT until I caught a shotgun shell to the chest 4 times in a row. No the tried and true game modes still hit that excellence mark and offer the best experience over all. Gunfight also returns which has you executing teams of 2 with pre-determined loadouts. This mode can feel like a puzzle you are competing to solve against strangers also trying to solve the mystery of why you’re still unriddled with bullets. This mode is perfect for teaming up with a buddy who knows how to communicate and rocking the ever-loving crap out of some randoms.

Call of Duty has been at this for a while and during that time, I’ve thrown a lot of harsh criticism at them. But man, it is undeniable that when it comes to snappy, crunchy gunplay with a movement set that feels legitimately freeing NOBODY does it better. Which is why the constant server issues, poorly balanced lobbies and a million other smaller bugs are such a downer. Black Ops 6 puts all of its eggs in the omnimovement basket and I think for the most part it’s paid off. There is something so cinematic about the way this game handles its combat that I just couldn’t put it down. Like it or not Black Ops 6 is the peak of the series multiplayer ambition and is a solid 8 from me. Now to get through my prestige rank before season 1 starts. For Hardwired I’m Andrew Hamilton.

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