Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Review: The King of FPS

Breaking through the limits of being the best FPS shooter around year after year may sound like a cash grab, but Activision somehow manages to make it worth the while each year. And this time, it has outdone itself on its three pillars.

Developed by Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Raven Software, MORE and many other notable teams and published by Activision, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is now available on the PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X | S, Steam, and Xbox Game Pass.

Load your weapons and equip the right mod. Let’s leap into Gameffine’s Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Review.

Become the Experiment

Biological warfare has been brandished as the most traumatizing form of warfare in human history. And that is exactly what Call of Duty has explored for their 2024 edition of the campaign. You play as an indefinite protagonist who has a well-labeled past but does not have his voice or face, just like the previous games. The campaign starts in an extremely threatening situation where you are tracking down an HVT named Alawi.

However, just as you put your hands on Alawi who is already being hunted by an enemy group named Pantheon, Russell Adler shows up through the storm and shoots Alawi dead.

Russell Adler at this point is already being hunted by the CIA after he is flagged as a mole due to the events of Black Ops 2. This is where things take an extreme turn as your squad is suspended because of the major blunder. Adler is taken into CIA custody, but before that, he passes on a codeword to Woods. Woods still trusts Adler and believes him, knowing exactly what the codeword means.

The codeword leads to an abandoned safehouse that Adler has been using for the past months while being on the run. He discovered major flaws with the CIA and a group of people running the Pantheon team. However, the bigger problem lies with the newly discovered biochemical weapon called the Cradle.

Every problem in the Call of Duty Universe is solved by putting a squad together, and that is exactly what happens next. Assembling a bunch of misfits who can infiltrate into cold regions, rob a casino, assassinate a cartel and save the world at the same time.

This is where your journey begins. Your name is Case, and your name means much more than what it looks like.

You’re a Hero

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is right in the middle of being tactically accurate and being a hero shooter. And to be honest, that’s more than fair for being a zombie game as well. The campaign finally kind of links with the zombie lore. And it does so well, that the zombies invaded the main campaign this time around. Gonna stop at that, so you can face it first-hand. As someone deathly afraid of horror games, this was not what I signed up for, but I felt brave after going through it.

Overall, we feel the campaign was executed quite well with a decent amount of total length of about 12 hours. The difficulty seems to be very accurate for each type and is ruthless on the veteran’s difficulty. The multiple-choice missions allow for multiple attempts at the campaign.

The only few drawbacks of the game would be the puzzles and lockpicking. Lockpicking is simply quite too bland, it can’t be that easy to break into doors. It simply feels like an extra step. Speaking of extra steps, the PC hacking puzzles made me feel like a local data entry operator. Putting in keys from a reference sheet time and again simply broke the flow of the game, especially with obvious keywords each time.

As for how the mechanics of the game have evolved, let’s address the elephant in the room – Omnimovement. If we had to use one word for this feature, it would be – Crazy. Omnimovement makes sense for an FPS shooter of such pace. Call of Duty’s multiplayer has never been about tacticalism. It has always found itself being a fast-paced shooter with a variety of weapons, load-outs and killstreaks. And with all of this, omnimovement has fit quite well. There are many bizarre clips, and players being deleted with insane trick shots, but all of that together makes the game more fun than it has been for the past few years.

B06 also introduces more weapons to the game accurate to the timeline the game is set in. Most of the weapons are powerful and fun to use in their way. Unfortunately, having most of the weapons and their attachments locked behind a progression is still bizarre after paying the even more bizarre price of the game. This would make sense if multiplayer was an FFA game and the devs wanted more time spent with the game, but this method on the fully priced game is simply bizarre even after all these years.

The game successfully carries on what it has done right with the shooting mechanics and has made a perfect addition of movement to it, making it one of the most favourite FPS shooters of this year. While the hype of Warzone has slowly started to fade with it only being significant in the Western market, the multiplayer section of the game looks promising this time around, especially with the game’s addition to the game pass, making it extremely affordable.

Speaking of the maps the blend is just about right if we ignore Vorkuta. A few of my personal favorites are Vault, Babylon, Derelict, and Skud. And their fitting for 12 players makes the entire lanes extremely filled all the time. The entire duration of the game, you will comfortably come across enemies, and with well-set respawn points, you will be protected from being farmed.

The game performs well on the PS5 for all game modes and is perfect for the fast pace action. As for the network, there is almost no packet loss and if you’re able to locate a server in a playable ping, you will get an amazing experience network-wise. Unfortunately, for Indian users, finding nearby servers is not an option all the time.

Lastly, speaking for Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Zombies, the game mode continues to be exactly what it was a few years ago with only a few changes. Players who are religious to the game mode will still have an amazing time with the given attention to the mechanics with the ever-increasing difficulty. The added features and powerups are a fresh experience to the game mode. But if you’re someone who is looking for an experience similiar to L4D2, there isn’t much of a story going on.

Zombies with health bars are unfortunately an immediate turn-off. Therefore I didn’t think of the game mode even once after I spent three good runs.

The Most Realistic Shooter?

Well obviously, not in terms of mechanics, but the visual quality is breathtaking every year. The amount of facial details, attention to quality and everything else is simply mindblowing. The campaign through and through was of an extremely high quality. The visuals, cutscenes, actions, dialogues, voiceovers, and even the OSTs hit the right spot through and through. This is what the fans wanted, and we are glad Activision fell through.

Even the multiplayer maps, which are featured in the campaigns once, are all done extremely well. But the one particular level that blew my mind away was the casino heist. The level of detail and textures in the casino ceiling was just incredible.

The performance of the game also fell through this time around, especially in the open-world missions of the game. This was a first, and the fact you can traverse through a large amount of maps was just mind-boggling. With a map of that size with multiple POIs, I think COD might just be ready for Big Team Battle mode. 25 v 25? Well, the Battlefield franchise might just be in danger if that were to happen.

Real Talk

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is a complete package of entertainment that is strong on all three pillars of game modes. The campaign is a must-play, and the multiplayer feels to be at its peak after a long while. The graphics are extremely well done, and the action scenes of the campaigns are guaranteed to blow you away. Except for the price listing of the game, everything else about the game is a big green flag.

FINAL RATING: 85/100