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Black Ops 6 Campaign Review
a year ago
General
So this review will focus only on the story mode as the Multiplayer and Zombies are a live service and as such, I cant really speak on it until a year has passed. However, you can rest easy knowing that the pervasive bullshit in CoD hasn't changed from obnoxious grinds to game-breaking bugs. Nothing much changes on that front anyways.
Now, the story mode is easily a solid James Bond experience that you didn't know you needed. The story puts you in the shoes of "Case", BO6's obligatory mute protagonist as he works with Woods and Adler to stop a bioweapon from hitting the USA. There are new faces including Sevati "Sev" Dumas, an assassin from Avalon (Fictional city-state based on Monaco) seeking revenge on the Guild a crime syndicate based in Avalon, and Troy Marshall a Rogue CIA Agent who is leading the effort to find the mole within the CIA working with the terrorist group Pantheon.
The story is very hit and miss in terms of narrative as it is interesting going on a globetrotting adventure to find out the mystery but several story beats fall flat. The main villain for one has little presence in the main game until the ending and you don't feel a sense of urgency or hate towards the villain. In addition, you never really see the main villain commit evil acts that makes your mission to stop Pantheon personal. I think that 3arc should have make the main villain known from the 2nd mission but in such a way that they taunt you and make you jeopardize the mission. This would have made the villain more impactful and led to a better ending. I also feel that the Guild could have acted as the fake villain for the first half of the game before the big reveal but its done in such a way that YOU know who the real bad guy is but you can't even say anything to your team so they go after the real bad guy.
Thankfully, the characters are decent and none are too annoying as they all have their own personal stories and snippets you can learn more about in between missions. Most of them is just the backstory for the team you're working with and other mission related banter that's at least worth listening to.
The game has a hub mission called "The Rook" where you get debriefs, talk to your team, and spend money found on missions for upgrades. Its a neat hub with its own puzzle but once you've solved the puzzle, theres really no reason to explore the hub any more besides just to purchase upgrades. I was able to get all upgrades in a playthrough with enough money but I found that I barely had enough money to buy blueprints you could use in MP. This is an oversight because the game doesn't offer you efficient ways to get money and once you've opened all the safes in each mission, they remain open so you cant restart the mission and grind out safes. Enemies give very little cash and each blueprint costs 3K each for a total of 9K you have to grind. This fucking blows because how are you supposed to grind 9K for the blueprints? If you still want them, then save up all your money and buy the blueprints first if you don't care about trophies / achievements.
Now BO6's levels are honestly really good with some stinkers in between. The best missions are the ones where you have to do spy shit such as sneak around and rig games in a casino to convincing guards to sabotage their own weapons. The game excels here as there's always some form of contextual clues that will help in your mission such as looking at the list of winning hands in poker so you know how to rig the poker game in the future to your advantage. The little puzzle minigames such as cracking codes and safes open helped keep the game varied and made sure you felt like you were an actual spy with gadgets and the jazz. The game however suffers when it remembers its supposed to be a CoD game such as making you clear a boring open-world mission just to get to a much more interesting level after.
But there were two missions that really soured the experience; the first one being the mandatory drug trip mission and the final mission. The novelty of the drug trip mission falls flat on its face as it reuses assets from zombies just to make a scary level so the level that's supposed to be creepy just feels out of place and does not belong. I found myself getting tired of the mission before I was halfway done just because of how boring and repetitive the enemies were. This mission is supposed to show why the bioweapon is scary but it cant even do that right. Compare to Nova 6 in Black Ops 1 where you watched people fucking MELT in front of your face to Black Ops 3 where you watched Taylor and his crew move like creepy mind-controlled drones. Hell, Cold War's drug trip mission was better in that it was a CYOA style with Adler delivering the best sarcastic voice lines should you choose to fuck around in that mission. I would have scrapped the whole thing and made it more like Resident Evil 7 / 8 where you're no longer the super-soldier but just a scared person who has to pay attention to their ammo and pick fights carefully.
Another point of contention is the final mission where BO6 continues the same issue that Cold War had, they had short final missions that didn't feel like the Very Definitely Final Dungeon. For instance, CoD 4 had you clear out a missile base before chasing Zakhaev down, WaW had you storming the Reichstag, MW2 had you clear out a PMC base, etc. But in here, the final mission feels like it should be the 2nd to last mission as that's where the climax happens and once its done, you expect to actually go to the HQ of the real bad guy and rip shit up. But no, you end up with an unsatisfying villain death for a villian who barely had an impact on the story. Did 3arc run out of time & ideas to make a proper final mission?
The gunplay and combat is about the same; if you've played one CoD, then you've played them all so there's nothing interesting worth talking about here as the game's Omni-Movement is really just for MP and Zombies than story mode.
In conclusion, I think the game had some great ideas to make a Spy Shooter and it works very well in that respect but the game kneecaps itself with trying to be a Black Ops game that it causes some of their excellent and fun missions to be hampered by rushed, boring, and pointless filler missions. If 3Arc actually had balls, they could break free from Activision and the CoD name so they can actually make the spy shooters they want to make. Unfortunately, 3Arc just dosen't have it in them to tell Activision to fuck off.
I recommend this if you grew up playing 007 and Perfect Dark or someone who likes story based FPS of the 2000's. I can also recommend this game to those who played the Hitman Reboot trilogy and want something like that but more action focused.
In both cases, either get it on Gamepass or wait until it goes half off.
Now, the story mode is easily a solid James Bond experience that you didn't know you needed. The story puts you in the shoes of "Case", BO6's obligatory mute protagonist as he works with Woods and Adler to stop a bioweapon from hitting the USA. There are new faces including Sevati "Sev" Dumas, an assassin from Avalon (Fictional city-state based on Monaco) seeking revenge on the Guild a crime syndicate based in Avalon, and Troy Marshall a Rogue CIA Agent who is leading the effort to find the mole within the CIA working with the terrorist group Pantheon.
The story is very hit and miss in terms of narrative as it is interesting going on a globetrotting adventure to find out the mystery but several story beats fall flat. The main villain for one has little presence in the main game until the ending and you don't feel a sense of urgency or hate towards the villain. In addition, you never really see the main villain commit evil acts that makes your mission to stop Pantheon personal. I think that 3arc should have make the main villain known from the 2nd mission but in such a way that they taunt you and make you jeopardize the mission. This would have made the villain more impactful and led to a better ending. I also feel that the Guild could have acted as the fake villain for the first half of the game before the big reveal but its done in such a way that YOU know who the real bad guy is but you can't even say anything to your team so they go after the real bad guy.
Thankfully, the characters are decent and none are too annoying as they all have their own personal stories and snippets you can learn more about in between missions. Most of them is just the backstory for the team you're working with and other mission related banter that's at least worth listening to.
The game has a hub mission called "The Rook" where you get debriefs, talk to your team, and spend money found on missions for upgrades. Its a neat hub with its own puzzle but once you've solved the puzzle, theres really no reason to explore the hub any more besides just to purchase upgrades. I was able to get all upgrades in a playthrough with enough money but I found that I barely had enough money to buy blueprints you could use in MP. This is an oversight because the game doesn't offer you efficient ways to get money and once you've opened all the safes in each mission, they remain open so you cant restart the mission and grind out safes. Enemies give very little cash and each blueprint costs 3K each for a total of 9K you have to grind. This fucking blows because how are you supposed to grind 9K for the blueprints? If you still want them, then save up all your money and buy the blueprints first if you don't care about trophies / achievements.
Now BO6's levels are honestly really good with some stinkers in between. The best missions are the ones where you have to do spy shit such as sneak around and rig games in a casino to convincing guards to sabotage their own weapons. The game excels here as there's always some form of contextual clues that will help in your mission such as looking at the list of winning hands in poker so you know how to rig the poker game in the future to your advantage. The little puzzle minigames such as cracking codes and safes open helped keep the game varied and made sure you felt like you were an actual spy with gadgets and the jazz. The game however suffers when it remembers its supposed to be a CoD game such as making you clear a boring open-world mission just to get to a much more interesting level after.
But there were two missions that really soured the experience; the first one being the mandatory drug trip mission and the final mission. The novelty of the drug trip mission falls flat on its face as it reuses assets from zombies just to make a scary level so the level that's supposed to be creepy just feels out of place and does not belong. I found myself getting tired of the mission before I was halfway done just because of how boring and repetitive the enemies were. This mission is supposed to show why the bioweapon is scary but it cant even do that right. Compare to Nova 6 in Black Ops 1 where you watched people fucking MELT in front of your face to Black Ops 3 where you watched Taylor and his crew move like creepy mind-controlled drones. Hell, Cold War's drug trip mission was better in that it was a CYOA style with Adler delivering the best sarcastic voice lines should you choose to fuck around in that mission. I would have scrapped the whole thing and made it more like Resident Evil 7 / 8 where you're no longer the super-soldier but just a scared person who has to pay attention to their ammo and pick fights carefully.
Another point of contention is the final mission where BO6 continues the same issue that Cold War had, they had short final missions that didn't feel like the Very Definitely Final Dungeon. For instance, CoD 4 had you clear out a missile base before chasing Zakhaev down, WaW had you storming the Reichstag, MW2 had you clear out a PMC base, etc. But in here, the final mission feels like it should be the 2nd to last mission as that's where the climax happens and once its done, you expect to actually go to the HQ of the real bad guy and rip shit up. But no, you end up with an unsatisfying villain death for a villian who barely had an impact on the story. Did 3arc run out of time & ideas to make a proper final mission?
The gunplay and combat is about the same; if you've played one CoD, then you've played them all so there's nothing interesting worth talking about here as the game's Omni-Movement is really just for MP and Zombies than story mode.
In conclusion, I think the game had some great ideas to make a Spy Shooter and it works very well in that respect but the game kneecaps itself with trying to be a Black Ops game that it causes some of their excellent and fun missions to be hampered by rushed, boring, and pointless filler missions. If 3Arc actually had balls, they could break free from Activision and the CoD name so they can actually make the spy shooters they want to make. Unfortunately, 3Arc just dosen't have it in them to tell Activision to fuck off.
I recommend this if you grew up playing 007 and Perfect Dark or someone who likes story based FPS of the 2000's. I can also recommend this game to those who played the Hitman Reboot trilogy and want something like that but more action focused.
In both cases, either get it on Gamepass or wait until it goes half off.
