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Over the past two weekends, players have been jumping into the Call of Duty Black Ops 6 beta ahead of its official launch on October 25th. Following multiple poorly received entries, including the most recent Modern Warfare III, it seems that we could be seeing Call of Duty return back to its roots and the glory days that made the series a global juggernaut over a decade ago.
I must preface this article by stating that I do not consider myself a Call of Duty fan. While there are very few entries that I have never played, it is not a series that I keep up with or put much time into. Usually, I will play through the campaign, dabble in the multiplayer for a handful of hours, and then abandon it.
According to my Steam account, the last time I played Call of Duty was February 2023 and I had put a total of 42 hours into Modern Warfare II. However, as the Black Ops 6 beta comes to a close, that figure has now exceeded 100 hours. So while I may not class myself as a Call of Duty fan, it is safe to say I am a Black Ops 6 fan.
One criticism that Call of Duty, and many other yearly released franchises gets is that 365 days is not enough time to make any significant improvements to the core game mechanics. Instead, most new entries provide very little value compared to the previous release, but active players need to purchase the newest entry because the majority of the community will be moving over. But, if you play FIFA 17 and FIFA 18, there isn’t much that separates them.
The WWE 2K series took a break in 2020 following the backlash from the incredibly broken WWE 2K20, with Take-Two Interactive canceling 2K21 to give the developers time to fix the game and ensure that the next entry was of higher quality and gave fans a new experience. This worked wonders as it could be argued that the WWE 2K series is in the best position it has ever been in and the games are the best entries since the Smackdown Vs Raw era.
The Call of Duty franchise has seen a new mainline release every year since 2005’s Call of Duty 2. But when spin-offs, mobile, and free-to-play titles such as Warzone are included, there hasn’t been a single year since the series began in 2003 that a new game hasn’t been released, with many years including multiple titles. This has now led Call of Duty to have a four-developer rotation consisting of Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Raven Software, and Sledgehammer Games, with the last two primarily taking on supporting roles although they are given the reins from time to time.
With technology advancing at a rapid pace, especially when it comes to the capabilities of what can be done in video games, it seems that games are just becoming too complex for yearly or short development cycles. In recent years we have seen more games delayed than ever before, and some large open-world games taking upwards of a decade between releases. The last GTA game was released in 2013 and the last Elder Scrolls game was released back in 2011 and the next entry is nowhere to be seen apart from an announcement of its existence many years ago.
Treyarch’s last Call of Duty game was 2020’s Black Ops Cold War, with other developers taking the lead for subsequent releases. This marks the first time that a developer has been given such a long break between releases, and the last few paragraphs were an incredibly long-winded way of saying, it was the best decision Activision has made in a long time and it has paid off when it comes to Black Ops 6.
Black Ops 6 feels like a breath of fresh air for the franchise and, for me as a very casual player, it gave me the same excitement that I felt more than a decade ago when playing entries such as the original Modern Warfare 2 and the first Black Ops games in the early 2010s.
Omnimovement, while it has been controversial, feels like how I’ve always wanted to be able to move in Call of Duty. As someone who regularly plays Fortnite, the fluidity in the game’s movement helps to make the experience much more enjoyable, fast-paced, and exciting, especially when compared to earlier seasons in the game. Omni movement reminds me of those changes and now I don’t feel restricted, however, my boomer fingers and reaction times often see me get outplayed by this mechanic.
One criticism I have is that the time-to-kill feels a tad too quick for me. There are many times when I haven’t been able to react to the sight of an enemy, by the time I ADS I am already dead, with me audibly shouting “HOW?” many times at my monitor as I am wondering how I was taken out in a split second. An argument could be made that due to weapons such as the Shotgun and Sniper Rifle being able to take down opponents with a single round, the TTK for other weapons needs to be quick to counteract these weapons. It does seem that this is a common criticism and it will be interesting to see how Treyarch reacts to it when the full game launches next month.
Although the overall response to Black Ops 6 has been positive, I have seen numerous people claim they prefer Modern Warfare III and will be sticking with it, which is valid. But, if you fondly remember the glory days of Call of Duty and have fallen out of love with the series in recent years, I do think it is worth giving Black Ops 6 a shot. With the game, and every future release, now launching on day one on Xbox Game Pass, the cost of entry is at an all-time low. If you own an Xbox or PC, subscribe to Game Pass for a month and give it a try, I think you will be happy with how this entry plays compared to the more recent titles that we’ve seen so far in the 2020s.