Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Campaign Review: First Person Success

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Our verdict:

The Black Ops 6 campaign is a strong addition to the 20+ year-old franchise, bringing the series back to form with varied mission designs and the new omni-movement system. While the story has its issues, it is overall a solid experience that Call of Duty fans will love.

Pros

  • Stunning visuals
  • Omni-movement
  • Varied missions

Cons

  • Formulaic
  • Mediocre story

Black Ops 6 Campaign at a Glance

Category Our rating (Out of 10) Comments
Graphics 9 The graphics look incredible, with realistic effects for gunfire and stunning set pieces. Some characters clip through the terrain, and some textures look undeveloped.
Gameplay 8 The omni-movement elevates the fast-paced action of the campaign. Missions offered variety in mechanics and some level of freedom in how players tackle them. The game did crash on several occasions. AI is still lackluster.
Story 8 The story suffers some pacing issues, including a rushed ending, but it is one of the stronger stories told in recent years. The zombie’s implementation is a unique surprise.
Replayability 7 Missions allow you to tackle them in various different ways, encouraging replayability for some missions but not all. Crashes may deter you from experiencing it again.
Overall 8.25 Black Ops 6 is a solid addition to the Call of Duty franchise. It draws from the franchise’s strengths but doesn’t do much to revolutionize it.

A Step Forward

After the disappointing experience brought on by 2023’s Modern Warfare 3 campaign, there was a lot of uncertainty on whether the Black Ops 6 campaign would turn the FPS ship back on course.

The campaign is miles better than its predecessor, with much more focused gameplay that delivers action-packed moments while allowing players to tackle objectives as they see fit.

Whilst the story doesn’t quite hit the mark like the original Black Ops, especially with a seemingly rushed ending, it is one of the stronger stories told in recent years.

Despite what Treyarch advertised, this is in no way a significant overhaul to the otherwise generic formula Call of Duty has followed for the past 20 years. Players who have never been enticed by Call of Duty won’t find much incentive to play this, but this campaign will land a strong impression on long-time fans – if they can get past the myriad of performance issues.

Our Black Ops 6 campaign review will go over everything to know about the first person shooter story mode without giving away any major spoilers.

The Numbers, Mason

"The Rook" is the player's base of operations similar to COD Cold War
“The Rook” is the player’s base of operations similar to COD Cold War. Source: Joey Morris via Techopedia

The Black Ops 6 campaign has 11 missions in total, if you don’t count the in-between visits to ‘The Rook”. It is in line with the majority of the Black Ops series. A player naturally following the story will take anywhere between seven and nine hours, depending on personal skill and difficulty. That is if you have enough room in your console to store the game, which takes up a whopping 56GB alone, with nearly 100GB in total to store the entire game.

However, once you load up the Treyarch-developed title, you are greeted with stunning graphical fidelity. Once again, Call of Duty utilizes the full power of the current generation consoles, with vibrant and detailed environments brimming with small intricacies to bring the entire piece together – and some of the slower-paced missions allow you the time to properly take it all in.

Although rough at times, the Black Ops 6 characters remain impressive on the Xbox Series X. The details are exemplified by the smooth transitions between in-game cutscenes and gameplay, ensuring that a beat was never missed as the game maintained a steady pacing for the most part.

Although there are some models in the game, particularly when it comes to shiny objects and hair, that doesn’t exactly hold up in comparison. In some cases, some enemy models do clip in awkward ways when interacting with the environment upon death. In some circumstances, the AI enemies would take some time to load before they begin moving or firing at the player.

Performance is the biggest setback for the Black Ops 6 campaign experience; although updates further down the line may resolve these issues, they are still worth noting. The first couple of hours of gameplay remained mostly trouble-free, with the worst being occasional framerate drops and extended loading times.

However, further along in my Black Ops 6 playthrough, I encountered several instances of crashes, which stings even more due to how far apart some of the checkpoints are in the game. In addition, I had particular issues with status effects, where being poisoned to restrict my movements on rare occurrences would cause the game’s framerate to run staggeringly slow to the point where I thought my game was frozen.

For the price tag of $70, there is a lot of baggage to go through before you can experience what is otherwise a very solid experience in the game. With a revised movement system, solid gunplay, and varied mission designs, the game is only held back by a series of performance issues.

Wait, Zombies!?

The main protagonist, Case, experiences hallucinations induced by the effects of The Cradle
The main protagonist, Case, experiences hallucinations induced by the effects of The Cradle. Source: Joey Morris via Techopedia

The story in this game is much more compelling and interesting than the two previous Modern Warfare campaigns; however, if you’re looking to recapture that nostalgic Black Ops feeling, you’ll most likely be disappointed.

The game takes place after the events of Black Ops Cold War and between the events of Black Ops 2 in the year 1991, with the main narrative adopting the typical ‘story you never knew’ premise. It overall plays with the idea of ‘keep your friends close, your enemies closer’ as Troy Marshall and Frank Woods assemble a squid to take down Pantheon, a soviet organization from Cold War that has seemingly taken over the CIA and brands anyone who opposes them as traitors of the United States. Russel Adler has been accused of having gone rogue and works with the player and the rest of the team to thwart a CIA-developed bio-weapon called The Cradle.

You take control of Case, or as they are later referred to as Case One, who had previously been exposed to The Cradle in the pantheon’s experiments ten years before the current events of the game. There are many similarities between Case and Bell from the Cold War surrounding themes of the ‘nothing is as it seems’ approach.

Because of The Cradle, they experience hallucinations that cause them to hear a voice in their head, influencing their actions throughout the story. This also causes them to see people infected with The Cradle as zombies… no, this isn’t the zombies mode. This is actually in the Black Ops 6 story. It’s been a while since a CoD game has genuinely taken me by surprise in recent years, but the implementation of the zombies strangely doesn’t feel too out of place in the story and results in more imaginative boss fights.

The game’s story is fairly strong in its contents, though the characters outside of Woods and Russel Adler don’t leave a huge impression. With backstories and motivations disappearing as soon as they have arrived. The game also suffers from some pacing issues, including a fairly rushed ending.

You’re Getting Shot Up

The 11 missions have varied mechanics and gameplay and offer multiple approaches to players
The 11 missions have varied mechanics and gameplay and offer multiple approaches to players. Source: Joey Morris via Techopedia

A good first person shooter should have solid gunplay, and Black Ops 6 gameplay continues the revised firing mechanics first introduced in Modern Warfare in 2019. Every bullet fired from weapons feels strong and forceful, although this isn’t really reflected against enemies – particularly armored enemies who are bullet sponges.

The main Black Ops 6 gameplay does implement the highly advertised Omni-movement system across its missions, which helps make this game one of the fastest boots-on-the-ground titles in the COD franchise. Does it make you feel like an action hero? Not really, as most of the time, the best way to deal with a situation is to hang back and pick enemies off from a safe distance.

The enemy AI in this game is… passable, to say the least. They are a lot more responsive than the enemies you faced in Modern Warfare 3 (let’s be honest; anything was an improvement to that), but they aren’t exactly the most lively bunch either. With the majority of them still either standing idly by or just remaining in cover, obstacles waiting to be removed as opposed to active participants. But best believe if you are caught out in the open, especially on higher difficulties, your health bar will disappear in a heartbeat if you’re not careful.

The Black Ops 6 missions themselves are what you typically expect from a standard Call of Duty campaign, with mostly linear missions that offer some variety of gameplay. Some of these missions offer replayability by offering multiple approaches to tackling a mission. And this doesn’t just apply to the story. Moment-to-moment gameplay allows the player to decide between opting for stealth or going out guns blazing and rarely penalizes you for favoring one approach over another.

There are also more varied gadgets at your disposal. In one particular mission, you are given a grappling hook that allows you to not only navigate the level but also aids you in one of the boss fights.

Variety is the spice of life, and this game does its utmost to ensure each mission it offers is distinct from the others, though this results in some underwhelming moments. There are your typical stealth missions and sniper sequences with open-ended maps, albeit a lot more limited and in need of a few tweaks.

While I appreciate that Treyarch is trying to vary the Black Ops 6 gameplay as much as possible, this mission felt like it was forcefully jammed into the main story and completely broke the otherwise natural pacing the game had maintained up until that point. You can choose to tackle the main objectives if you wish, but those who want to experience it in full by completing the side objective will find themselves in this section for quite a while, potentially an hour.

Despite the changes, it is still your typical Call of Duty campaign with few revisions to truly set it apart from the rest. Whilst long-time fans will feel right at home with the return of a familiar formula, it doesn’t introduce any significant overhauls to entice players outside of the regular fanbase. The only exception is its occasional multiple-choice features.

The Bottom Line

The Black Ops 6 campaign is a must-play experience for die-hard Call of Duty fans. But rather than a step forward for the franchise, it is a return to form after years of setbacks.

Omni-movement, gunplay, and varied mission designs make this one of the more memorable campaigns in the franchise. However, its performance issues and questionable design choices make it a rough diamond among its legendary peers.

The Black Ops 6 release date is October 25, 2024, so you can play the game right now. It’s available for $69.99 on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC via Steam and Battle.net.

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Joey Morris
Gaming Writer
Joey Morris
Gaming Writer

Joey Morris is a Gaming Writer for Techopedia. He has spent several years writing on his own blog site and for other creative publications. He has written reviews, features, and even a digital magazine. He has also produced podcasts, video essays, and held interviews with various experts in the gaming industry. He enjoys playing video games as both a profession and passion.