Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is here to turn the tides of the battle. Treyarch and Raven Software show what proper development time can do: a properly fleshed out singleplayer experience that stands as genuinely valuable addition to the package rather than being a tacked-on experience that players can easily skip. Here’s our review to tell you exactly why the Black Ops 6 campaign is worth playing.
The first Black Ops had one of the best campaign experiences you can have in the franchise, and it was quickly followed by Black Ops 2—what I consider to be a perfect sequel. Since then, Call of Duty campaigns have been mostly hit or miss with last year’s Modern Warfare III representing a significant low. It doesn’t take much to make a fun Call of Duty campaign. All we need is an interesting premise for the conflict, cool set pieces, and a good variety of well-designed levels. Black Ops 6 has all that and more in what looks like a proper return to form for Call of Duty campaigns.
Sixth time’s the charm
The Black Ops titles have always stood out to me as Call of Duty games that you can always trust to be absolute peak at its best and still really good at its worst. Now on its 6th mainline entry, you’d think the story would get so overstretched to the point of absurdity. The answer is yes, but only in the way a Black Ops game can ever get away with. Remember how you spent most of the first game being yelled at by someone asking you about numbers?
You can always rely on a Black Ops campaign to fully commit to the bit. Trippy visuals, confusing timelines, multiple perspectives, unreliable narrators, and not really knowing who to trust. It’s action espionage at its finest. The iconic cast of characters such as Woods and Adler bring so much character personality that’s beyond the typical rugged military protagonist. It has come to a point where I like to call the Black Ops games a military soap opera. And Black Ops 6 continues to push the series forward in ways that I hope other Call of Duty developers will further build upon.
Black Ops 6 is set about a decade after Call of Duty: Cold War. The story takes place during the Gulf War. You’re first mission is to extract a person of interest. One thing leads to another, and the mission goes south. This then catapults an off-the-record investigation into a sketchy unknown force called Pantheon. What you do in the shadows will never be known but has major implications in the biggest battles recorded in history.
While I won’t delve too deep into the plot, I will say that it gets more interesting throughout, and it’s further complimented by fantastic mission design. A huge part of the marketing for this game was that it’s the first Call of Duty in a long time that has had a full 4-year development cycle, and it shows. It takes Modern Warfare III (2023)’s horrible attempt at providing open mission design and takes it to a whole new level of polish.
Your call for the duty
Last year’s campaign was filled with copy and pasted parts of the Warzone map in which you’re just given superficial goals to complete all within the context of an extremely underwhelming story filled with uninteresting characterization. While Black Ops 6 still has the typical linear COD missions you’d expect, it eventually introduces a semi-open world structure in what I will claim to be one of the best things the almost 2 decades old franchise has ever done.
The closest I can compare it to is the open-world aspect of Metal Gear Solid 5. While you have your main objectives to complete, you also have a ton of side quests that further enhances the way you choose to approach certain tasks. Want to go in guns blazing with a chopper? Take out the anti-air guns near the area. Need to have a better survey of the camp before doing a full execution? Seek out scouts and talk to them about any information they might know. It all ties together to Black Ops 6’s attempt at providing as much player choice as possible.
While stealth is encouraged, it is by no means required. Going in Rambo mode or ninja style are equal parts fun, mostly helped by the series-staple gunplay that has been perfected for years at this point. Say what you will about Call of Duty, but they know how to make sure that using a weapon feels good. Whether you are throwing a knife for a silent ranged attack, popping heads with a silenced pistol, or just running around like a maniac with a shotgun, there’s a ton of fun to be had here.
Levels are also set up in a way that allows for proper player expression. It is no Dishonored or Splinter Cell Blacklist levels of textbook level design, but it definitely gets the job done and it is more than enough to place it above and beyond what you’d expect from a COD campaign. Black Ops 6 is also well aware that it’s a good-looking game. It takes every chance it can get to flex great facial animations, dense interiors, and some of the best looking VFX in the industry. The audio has also received a significant bump in quality, which Treyarch has been very vocal about leading up to launch. Seeing and hearing all of it in action was definitely impressive.
The all-new omni movement system is also a major contributor in increasing the rule of cool in the action. You can do your best impression of a John Woo action flick or a John Wick sequence. I had a lot of fun just sliding and dolphin diving around the extremely broken and gullible enemy AI. Definitely bump up the difficulty to Veteran or above here.
In between the main missions, you’ll be coming back to a safehouse that you can upgrade for better perks and gear, find hidden secrets, and talk with the team via Bethesda-style dialogue options. I loved every bit of this. It really shows that the developers aren’t just concerned in putting you in a rollercoaster ride that never ends. It’s not afraid to let you slow down and spend time with your own character, the rest of the cast, and experiment with the gameplay systems to your own liking.
Speaking of character, Black Ops 6 unfortunately follows Cold War’s silent protagonist approach. Given how Treyarch has struck gold with Alex Mason from the earlier titles, it never made sense to me why they would opt for a character that doesn’t speak. Even though you have dialogue options in the game, you don’t hear a word of it. Part of me thinks the studio is not confident in creating another character that will be as successful as Mason in which true enough, I’ve had zero reason to care about the person I’m controlling. While the rest of the cast is still great, Woods and Adler in particular, my controlled character just feels like a blank cardboard.
The silent protagonist works in some games, I believe it really doesn’t when it comes to a Call of Duty campaign. We experience the wildest things and survive through the most dangerous missions and my guy is just out here being nonchalant. It doesn’t work and it just breaks immersion that the rest of the cast, visuals, and designers have worked so hard to create.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Campaign Review Final Verdict – 8/10
The Black Ops 6 campaign is light years better than whatever MWIII thought they had, and it is definitely one of the best in the Call of Duty franchise as a whole. A well-made 8-10 hour adventure that’s packed with fantastic content from top to bottom. The only real major issue I have with it is the ending itself. It feels rushed, abrupt, and a cheap inevitable setup to continue the story through Warzone seasons.
While it still hasn’t reached the point that I would say Black Ops 6 is worth getting just for the campaign alone, it definitely provides a strong case for being a valuable part of the package. This is a COD campaign that you should not skip.
This review was made using a game code for the PC provided by the publisher.