Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

CALL OF DUT Y: BLACK OPS 6 is belligerently enjoyable

By Nova Smith

A protracted semi-open-world mission set in Iraq is very nearly the campaign’s lowest moment.

At some point when I wasn’t watching, Call of Duty’s campaign became a bad stealth game. Gone are the perspectives of the faceless soldiers, replaced with characters who look and feel like they came from a Netflix Original movie. When Black Ops 6’s campaign occasionally channels the bombastic scope of its predecessors, it rocks, but all too often it’s bogged down in tedious espionage.

I’m usually the CoD fan who actually cares a lot about the campaign, but it’s those shortcomings pushing me towards this year’s stellar multiplayer offerings. Black Ops 6 has lightning fast gunfights that exploit a weighty new movement system to give old and new modes alike a distinct, John Wooesque flair—and what’s more ’90s than that?

Black Ops 6 begins with an op gone wrong at the height of Desert Storm, with heel Russel Adler returning to prevent a high-value target from falling into the hands of a compromised CIA. Unknowns at the highest level of government are funding a literal black ops paramilitary outfit formed from ex-Eastern bloc soldiers operating under the name Pantheon, siccing them on your squad at every turn. Pantheon’s goons are occasionally bolstered by elite operatives, awkward miniboss encounters plucked from Warzone maps that prompt some of Black Ops 6’s corniest moments. It’s really funny to be gouging out some Cold War psycho’s eyes in an interactive cutscene moments before getting into a shootout with an armored guy who can withstand 27 headshots as he sprints around the room tossing out glowing electric bear-traps, or being ambushed by a hazmat suit-wearing operative who leaves Joker gas in his wake. Raiding Saddam’s palace in search of WMDs (yes, really) and then slinging surface-to-air missiles at graduates of the John Landis elicopter Academy was the only real moment of ‘hell yeah’ I found in the campaign, a gleefully stupid set piece that had me grinning from ear to ear. Unfortunately, that level is a one-and-done conclusion to an abysmal mini open-world mission that has you hitting Iraqi missiles.