FRIST_008 Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Review

Black Ops 6 breaks the stereotype that "Call of Duty is a dumb corridor shooter". I only play the single-player campaign, and here a whole team made it, not just to tick a box. Presentation. Expensive pre-rendered cutscenes with lighting, facial animation and graphics on the level of a crime movie, when most games have long since made do with in-engine cutscenes. There are also in-engine scenes with dialogue choices, like in an RPG. The choices don't affect the story, same as in Assassin's Creed or Horizon, but for a shooter that's already quite a lot. RPG elements. Your own base, which you build up and where you upgrade with in-game currency. Money is hidden around the levels and drops from enemies. Challenges in the spirit of Wolfenstein, do it this way or don't do it that way, can easily be done on your first playthrough. Lockpicking feels like Skyrim and Fallout. Hub and puzzles. A small open hub with real puzzles: an escape room, an investigation with an infrared lamp, a mechanism in the basement that you start not with a single button but by following a whole written manual, a safe whose code is hidden somewhere in the house. Freedom of approach. Stealth kills, using an enemy as a human shield, bodies can be carried and hidden, and a level can be finished without killing anyone at all. There are missions in the spirit of Hitman and Sniper Elite, and even a peaceful scene where you're just a photographer at a ball with a map in your hands. Some levels are open, with points of interest: whether to clear them or not is up to you. The shooter is still there. They let you shoot to your heart's content, for example when rescuing hostages. There's melee combat with an axe, like in a medieval RPG, Cerberus and hordes of zombies, all justified by the story within the single-player campaign. There are bosses that need tactics and a special approach, which Battlefield still doesn't have. And there's horror: mannequins that move while you're not looking at them scare you without a single jump scare, and the gun in your hands doesn't help. The enemies are a joy even on medium difficulty: they rush you head-on, flank you and mix the two, so they won't let you hide in one spot. Bottom line. A short, decently meaty campaign of 6 to 20 hours instead of yet another open world with a hundred hours of empty wasteland. The story is cohesive, every character has their own drama and a complicated past; the game is a bit better than Cold War. Black Ops has long been more than just shooting bots, and even after everything I've listed, it still has ways to surprise you.