Let’s face it, most of us don’t need to read our reviews or hear the opinions of others before going to our annual Call of Duty appointment. Those who don’t like it won’t like it now, the staunch fans are squeezing the betas and watching all the trailers, and those of us who just like the franchise know we’re going to have a great time with the campaign first from the Need to devote our lives to improving in multiplayer until the moment the pros arrive and won’t let you or be calmly reborn from the times when they ravage you. You already know what you are going to find before playing any of these, although the Black Ops saga is characterized by trying to innovate in some aspects. The latter happens to Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War this year, but with the exception of its story, and I don’t mean it badly, quite the opposite.
Also don’t be wrong, I don’t mean that it has a super deep plot or that it will shape your life, but that it has a very varied plot that progresses at the right pace and the story of which wakes you up to such a level of intrigue, who got me hooked every second of this complex spy movie-style psychological drama. I say complex because we’re obviously talking about another episode of Black Ops, which means that it has its secrets, plot changes, and scenes that are going to scratch your mind. The fact is that the factor that makes this campaign mode so special and different from the others is that it completely immerses your character in the plot and makes them a part of it. This stems from the different conversations you have, depending on the people and backgrounds you choose when creating your own character, even choosing what to say or do in different situations, or simply having the option of missions perform or optional levels. You feel part of the world and your actions will have more or less consequences. Once in the game you make the small mistake of stopping to look for more information and share it as it expands a universe that is intriguing in itself and can sometimes even change the course of the story. It doesn’t reach the level of Mass Effect or what Telltale Games can, but it does get more than enough mastery to play it all over again and discover it all, and in my case I’m already on the third and I think final final.
The gaming experience owes a great deal to the credit of everything I just discussed. I was able to meander through the jungles of Vietnam while silently wiping enemies off the map with a crossbow. I also destroyed everything that stood in my way of a helicopter. I shot down dozens of enemies in the typical scenes where you swing a tower. I used stealth to infiltrate KGB headquarters and a lot more that I don’t want to reveal here. All of this along with a very varied and diverse arsenal that, while having many options to choose from, does not include a neglected weapon as each one feels and sounds spectacular, which can obviously be carried over to the other game modes.
I’ve probably written more than some of you reading the review would like to know about Campaign Mode. So let’s go straight to the highlight of the franchise, the multiplayer mode. Before doing that, I want to make it clear that the reason I devoted a lot of the analysis to the story mode is because the multiplayer is exactly what we expected, no more or less. In Black Ops Cold War, this mode is much more agile and fluid than it is in Modern Warfare, thanks to the sliding mechanics that will now take you further and its arcade approach. The health meter is displayed above each player by default, so you can see how much life is left for the devil’s son who, after a few shots, had time to hide before deciding whether or not to end it. It’s a very successful feature that gives you a lime and sand at the end and that doesn’t change the way you play. Though there is no need to change anything as it mixes the classic elements that the entire community loves, like the traditional minimap and the option to create your own classes, with the new scoring stripes and the gunsmith. So how about the new maps and modes? Yes, almost nobody saw it.
As I wrote in my trailer a few months ago, I think that it depends on the card whether or not the VIP escort mode is fun, as it gets boring in the large and very open phases while in the Smaller stages are offered An experience that isn’t bad at all. Still, playing a more cooperative mode in a Call of Duty is a bit strange, despite the fact that the option to tag locations and items is finally available from the get-go. Combined weapon and attack teams create even more madness and madness than we are used to in games with 24 or 40 players. The fact that vehicles can now be used in combat raises the bar for the title, making larger maps feel better than ever even in the classic modes of the franchise, and I’m sure this will appeal to fans of the Battlefield.
Speaking of cards, I now understand why Treyarch and Company decided to show the ones they included in the beta as they are without a doubt the best. Personally, Armada continues to take the cake with this mix of narrow corridors inside ships and wide open spaces outside. I think some sites didn’t manage to get that mix as Cruce has too many rooms that leave you very exposed and the garrison NATO base has plenty of places for campers to pitch their tent perfectly for my taste but it’s just my humble opinion. You are sure to please the eight normal maps along with the two larger Assault Teams modes available from launch. However, if you don’t have enough, give your friends a call and prepare to kill some zombies.
Without a doubt, this is the part that cost me the most to analyze because one of the things I love most about Zombies Mode is annihilating hordes of these horrific creatures while I try so hard to uncover all of its secrets that the mode hides and they gain collectibles. And while most of those little things weren’t even in the game during analysis, what I could see and try made me want more, especially since they modified it just enough to get my attention even more to pull. . Enemies no longer drop power-ups on death, but there is now the option of throwing very powerful weapons on the ground as a “loot system” has been implemented. I can assure you that when you are about to die and a zombie drops a purple shotgun, it is just as satisfying as it is when you activated an atomic bomb or an instant death. In addition, there are a couple of things to add: The card design is very good. You can use the same classes that you created in multiplayer. Do you remember the popular perks? Now you can collect as many as you want and, as the icing on the cake, try doing an extraction of the area if things get dodgy. I know for a fact that I will continue to slaughter these pieces of meat we call zombies in the future, at least for an update or two.
The fact that both the Zombies and Multiplayer modes didn’t bring a lot of new features isn’t the only thing that disappointed me. It seems the title is arriving very, very close to the release date, which is understandable when you consider that Treyarch launched Black Ops 4 a couple of years ago. All three modes I’ve talked about are rife with glitches. For example, you know that something is not going well at all when your character suddenly teleports forward or backward in campaign mode as if there was a delay, and I played it on PS4 Pro. After that, many cinematics go back to around 20 FPS for no reason and on the other side of the coin, the excellent lighting that has been achieved, it sometimes seems that he has a stroke and starts blinking pointlessly, something that is not suitable for epileptics . After all, some load times are eternal and the enemies are not that they are elite, but worst of all, I very much doubt all of this will be fixed in the “day one” patch we were promised.
I hope this doesn’t leave you with a very bad impression, as both the fact that the multiplayer seems like an expansion and the technical issues only indicate that no new Black Ops have been played this year and that they are too premature were. There is no doubt that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a great title. It’s annoying because the campaign is great and has a storyline that keeps you stuck to the TV … and if you also add an immense arsenal of weapons that feel and sound like cinema, a handful of new maps and modes that are made for the Multiplayer modes are pretty cool, an exciting Zombies mode with its new loot system and how well the different modes of the title are linked together, the result we have months of fun ahead of us. Of course, as long as you don’t mind that you have to endure some technical glitches to begin with and that there isn’t any good news compared to its predecessors.
