Few things in gaming are a constant as the yearly sports title. Every year EA Sports drops Madden and FIFA, 2K drops NBA 2K, and Activision drops Call of Duty. Yes, Call of Duty is a yearly sports title now. What started out as a narrative World War II action game with a tacked on multiplayer mode has become virtual paintball for millions and millions of people every year. Yes, the campaign is still a draw for some (myself included) but the bulk of players come for the competitive multiplayer, the battle royale, and the co-op horde mode of the year and if you called it CoD 2020 no one would bat an eye.
This year the series returns to one of its most successful sub brandings, Black Ops. We’ve had four previous Black Ops games but I’d argue that the subseries has had diminishing returns for this entire gen, with III and IIII (yes, they used 4 I’s instead of the proper IV Roman numerals). The latest isn’t BlOps 5, instead adding its own subheading Cold War so now the official title is Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War or CoD BlOps-CW. Like it’s name implies we are returning to the time when the BlOps series was at its best and I’m going to say it was a great choice.
On the campaign side, you are going to get exactly what you expect. Ever since Modern Warfare 2, the series has been an action movie roller coaster ride. Hold down your trigger (or don’t in some cases) and walk forward to see things explode and exciting stuff happen. This year the game kicks off with a rooftop chase after a fugitive and a high speed chase straight out of a Fast & Furious movie and if you aren’t down with that kind of nonsense then this isn’t going to work for you because it never really settles down from that amped up start.
The story is pretty standard action fare. The Russians are working to throw the balance of power their way and the US and UK team up to make sure that doesn’t happen. While it makes sense from a timeline perspective, it’s a bit weird having Reagan and Gorbachev as characters in the game. They are not there much but their presence does overshadow everything.
Gameplay wise, the game has you create a character, which I believe is a first for the series. You’ll name them whatever you want but they’ll just call you Bell so… there’s that. As Bell you’ll do a series of missions for the CIA with support from MI6. Some of the missions will have choices and while I think the choices had an impact on how things progressed, I’m not 100% sure outside of the final choice, which dictates how the finale plays out. It’s neat regardless though as it gives you a bit of agency in how things play out as opposed to it just being a straight amusement park ride. There are also optional side missions, which isn’t new for the series but is a welcome change from the standard linear approach. Still, it’s Call of Duty, you point your gun at the bad guys and pull the trigger. You either like it or you don’t. I do and I think this year’s ride is a fun one.
Multiplayer offers up three different suites. Competitive, Warzone, and Zombies. Competitive has your standard suite of game modes including Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, and Control to be played on the nine available maps. Nine maps doesn’t seem small to me, and offers me an opportunity to learn them all quite well but compared to previous releases in the series, it is sparse pickings. That said, I think the maps are really well designed, with lots of fluctuating verticality and sightlines. They are also a bit bigger than past killboxes and this has extended the time to kill marks. I enjoy it because I don’t die immediately after spawning (now it takes a bit longer for me to die) but I can see longtime CoD fans not being a fan of the change.
Warzone is the Battle Royale and it’s the same as what is in last year’s Modern Warfare, I believe even matching players of the two games together. It’s a decent mode but I didn’t get heavily invested in it before and I don’t see myself playing a ton of it now. And that leaves us with Zombies. Developer Treyarch’s fan favorite mode that I’ve never been a big fan of. Currently there is one zone and it seems that as more competitive maps get added, we’ll get more Zombie zones to play in. I likely won’t be joining in, unless I’m playing locally because my one foray into it this time was met with the stereotypical CoD trolls. Zombies, being a cooperative mode, encourages talking to your teammates but by talking I mean, just yelling at you for not being as good or knowing where to go in a level you’ve never played before. That said, there is also an Arcade mode for Zombies that is a completely different game. Instead of a first person shooter, this Arcade Ops mode is a top down, twin stick shooter and it’s pretty awesome.
From a pure value perspective, Call of Duty is basically four games in one at this point as each of the modes is fully fleshed out in its own way and depending upon what you are looking for, you’ll get your money’s worth. That said, I wouldn’t be opposed to Activision selling Call of Duty piecemeal. I’d be quite happy just buying the campaign and the competitive multiplayer portion and forgetting the rest exist, provided I got a slight discount for doing so.
Anyway, Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War is a winner for me. I’ll likely return to the campaign to see if making other choices changes things and I’ll continue to play the multiplayer because it’s the new hotness with nothing else really playing in that space in the near future.
4*
