Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Reviews
Call of Duty needs to lean on three pillars every year. If one staggers, like multiplayer, the taste in the mouth that leaves is not what we demand of an annual product, and that is the case of Black Ops Cold War. Luckily, it shouldn't take much more than the start of the Seasons and the arrival of new content to fix.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a shooter that you shouldn't miss. The excellent campaign and fun online modes guarantee hundreds of hours of entertainment and fun.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Whether you're buying Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War for the campaign, multiplayer, or Zombies, there's so much to enjoy, with great handling, cross-progression, and much more.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War brings the Black Ops subseries back to its roots, delivering an explosive campaign, fast-paced multiplayer, and a compelling Zombies experience.
What I didn't expect from the new Call of Duty was downtime, and the suggestion, at least in the first half, that guns, while great for going in blazing, can provide just as potent a thrill when holstered.
But it’s not the best Call of Duty game I have played, and the specter of returning to Warzone battle royale games looms large over this game. That’s why I rate this game as 4-out-of-5 stars (and yes, I might rate it much closer to 4.5 stars out of 5, as it is a shade better than the Watch Dogs: Legion game I played recently). I don’t think it’s as good as last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which was so disturbing and thoughtful and had an excellent and long single-player campaign.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War does very more-of-the-same in places — it’s the franchise’s 17th instalment, after all — but when a formula has been so fine-tuned, it’s hard to expect the developers to monkey around with it too much.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the guns feel great and the maps are equally well designed, but I need more, Treyarch. I can’t even customise my Operator, and there’s like, hardly any to choose from really. It didn’t take me long to unlock practically every weapon and see every map, and I can’t envision myself sticking around for too much longer if the game doesn’t get updated pronto. And I think this is the heart of the issue. It’s like Cold War has stalled on the way to a patch it scheduled in advance to save time, and we’re now just awkward passengers growing more impatient as we wait for it to lurch forwards.
But CODBLOPS: Cold War doesn’t reach the levels of self-awareness required to overpower its poor taste. It feels written to justify the actions of ruthless men and doesn’t offer the most basic character development required to give its deathsquad the benefit of the doubt. As a game, it’s a predictable ride. As a piece of fiction, it is servile.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will be a great game with time, but its launch is disappointing thanks to technical issues and a lack of content.
Black Ops has absolutely returned with a vengeance. The fast, frantic pace is still there, and the gunplay is still just as great as you remember it. While the campaign may be the weakest part of an overall phenomenal package, it's still very satisfying and the espionage narrative packs a punch. The modes people are going to play the most, multiplayer and Zombies, are the strongest parts of Black Ops Cold War, and offer the best first person shooter gameplay in video games. PS4 and Xbox One players may be missing out on several improvements offered by the next-gen systems and PC, but it's not enough to detract from an amazing experience. My appetite for Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is definitely growing, and like Duran Duran, "I'm hungry like the wolf".
The sixth conspiracy-fuelled blaster has airstrikes, zombies and macho platitudes a-plenty, but its lack of 80s pop culture is a missed opportunity
The short but solid Campaign and back to basics multiplayer lack major innovations but offer plenty of run and gun fun all the same
The campaign brings enjoyable new mechanics to the formula but multiplayer and Zombies both fall short of expectations and needed performance, with weaker gunplay and an unstable framerate respectively.
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War continues the trend of adding a ton of bang for your buck. While I don’t participate in some of the modes there is still enough here to keep me interested enough to make it worth my time and money. The campaign is the best I have played in a while. The multiplayer suite has something for everyone, and the zombies mode continues to be a nice diversion. There is something for just about everyone here, and it is a nice showpiece for these new consoles to boot. The series shows no signs of slowing down, and as long as the quality continues to trend upward I am perfectly fine with that.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a good game that should be easier to stomach for franchise veterans than Modern Warfare. The campaign is fulfilling, albeit short. The faster-paced multiplayer is also easy enough to jump into and have fun with. It's just a shame that I can't shake that feeling that Treyarch's true vision has been held back by Activision forcing its ideals onto them.
The single-player and campaign modes are actually really great stuff. But like nearly all Call of Duty games, that is the content you'll breeze through within your first week playing if even for just a few hours a day. The bulk of the ride ends up being multiplayer and zombies and that is where the problems really lie. This is a game that I'm sure will eventually get the extra content, balancing, and bugs worked out along a series of patches and end up being much better than it is today. But unfortunately the buggy, laggy, unbalanced, and content-sparse game we get at launch is the only one I was given to review. And the balance of the excellent single-player with below average multiplayer ends up for an average overall experience.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War takes you back to the past, not only in setting and theme, but in its gameplay style and more. It all feels so classic. Between multiplayer, Zombies, and the return of a proper (and surprisingly less-linear) campaign, there is plenty of value for the soldier in all of us.
As solid as the package is, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has to be one of the safest series instalments for quite some time. Multiplayer is seriously starting to show its age with tired ideas and even duller gameplay, leaving the campaign to rescue things. Its open-ended approach allows player choice to take prominence while Zombies is just as deep as ever. A passable effort for the start of the PS5 generation, but Activision must buck up its ideas for next year.