Call of Duty is a first-person shooter franchise that has come under fire in recent years for being a pure cash grab that does not care about its paying customers. The game development company, Treyarch, is hoping to distance the franchise from these accusations with their new release, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
If you ask any Call of Duty players their favorite game in the franchise, they will almost always answer with an older release of the franchise. While the older games had their fair share of issues, many fans consider those issues more enjoyable than paying $60 for a Call of Duty each year for the recent titles. Unless you’re a content creator, or Esports player who makes money from playing the newer releases, fans have said the new games are not worth buying.
The main difference between the newer games are the maps that you play on. While new maps are refreshing, the games have come under criticism for making gloomy and poorly routed maps that are not nearly as good as some of the earlier COD Games. So this, paired with the returning game modes that do not give a new way to play the game. Guns have the same damage and fire rate, making the games almost identical. There have been no major selling points of the new Call of Dutys besides better graphics, which many casual players can’t even notice.
However, Black Ops 6 is doing something different. They have introduced omni-movement, which allows players to sprint, slide, and dive at any angle. Traditionally, you were restricted to doing these movements solely forward, which has become the norm for most first-person shooters. While not the biggest change ever, it gives fans new ways to get kills, mess around, and have fun. One fan of the game, Rafael Amorim, has praised the game for its “fluid” movement and “fast-paced” action.
The game doesn’t just feel different due to the new movement though, as the increased time to kill makes the game finally feel like there is skill required. Amorim believes the time to kill is “pretty balanced…quick but not too quick”. This differs from many of the previous titles where they were more run-and-gun based, so whoever has the better reaction time would win the fight. However, there is now a more prominent strategy with aiming, positioning, and recoil control due to the slightly longer time to kill. On top of this, the game contains more balanced weaponry, with each class having distinct advantages for certain playstyles, which is a nice change from the submachine gun dominant previous titles. More players are playing snipers now than ever before; a staple of the classic COD games. When more players use a diverse weapon-class selection, from Assault Rifles to Light Machine Guns, it allows snipers to shine in long-distance battles. Which Black Ops 6 has set up perfectly.
Despite all of this, Black Ops 6 is not perfect. There are still unbalanced weapons that make fights against them feel impossible to win. The AEK-973 is a perfect example of this, with many players complaining about the unfair gun damage and speed. This, paired with the still equally somber and depressing maps as other titles, makes it hard for some to consider it as good as a vibrant game such as Black Ops 3. Yet, some players such as Amorim haven’t “noticed [many] bad things” except for the $70 price tag that comes with the game. While many big game titles have been consistently priced at $60, recently games like BO6 have ventured into the $70 price range, upsetting many former Call of Duty fans.
From the high points to the same recurring low points prevalent in every recent COD game, BO6 is definitely unique. It is without a doubt a game anyone could play and have fun, but many are still debating if it’s as good as the original games. Has this year’s Call of Duty development team, Treyarch, finally begun to make games that could be considered classics in years to come? Or is this edition still fundamentally the same as all the recent games? Many fans can’t decide yet, but once they do, that’ll be what determines if the industry-high $70 price tag is worth it.
