The coldest war

The annual tradition is with us again as Call of Duty graces us with another entry in the juggernaut series. Much like past iterations, this year’s outing involves a trio of game modes that almost feel like they could be standalone games in and of themselves. This year also marks the debut of the series on yet another generation of consoles. All that said, this is one of the most polished and robust packages the series has seen to date, and it sure does look pretty on these new consoles.

I will start with the campaign, as that is where I find most of my enjoyment each year in Call of Duty. The Black Ops series has always been the most popular with this mode, as the team seems to take more chances with the narrative. This outing involves a series of missions taking place during the Cold War era, hence the name. The missions start off with some familiar run-and-gun action, but quickly evolve into various locales with interesting side missions and a branching narrative that requires finding clues and uncovering evidence to fill in the story. It isn’t groundbreaking by any stretch, yet it kept me interested throughout. It is a short campaign sure, but one that uses its time wisely.

MSRP: $69.99 (PS5/XSX) $59.99 (PS4/X1X)
Platforms: PS5 (reviewed), PS4, X1X, XSX, XSS, PC
Price I’d Pay: $69.99

The zombies mode returns as well, with a suite of features to expand the offering. The first is the traditional mode where players team up or go solo to survive waves while earning money to unlock new areas and weapons along the way. The differences this time around are the ability to bring loadouts to the battle. Players can opt to use their unlocked weapons in the mode, which offers up more options than the wall guns found throughout. I could also call a chopper to escape early instead of just waiting to die in the game. The core mode remains pretty identical, but can still be a blast with friends.

There is also the return of the twin-stick, top-down shooter Dead Ops Arcade 3. This mode feels like a bonus perk and is actually fun for a little while. If you are on a PlayStation console there is also a year-long exclusive mode for two players that is essentially horde mode. It is fine, but not worth the advertising and arguments online about exclusive content that it created.

Finally we have the multiplayer suite, which has become the topic of discussion each year. Every time I review one of these games I hop in to check out what the game has to offer, and am immediately destroyed on every level by people who play religiously throughout the year. Even with that said the amount of modes and customizability continue to be the gold standard for online shooters.

The standard modes are here, such as Gunsmith which allows players to customize their guns in a variety of fashions. The vehicle-focused Combined Arms makes for a break from the norm of the standard modes as well. Then we have the almost battle royale-style Fireteams, which pits teams of 40 against each other. If you just want the standard deathmatch modes those are of course still available, with plenty of massively talented snipers and kids half your age ready to take you down with a host of foul language. All kidding aside, Cold War continues the trend of excellence in multiplayer that the Call of Duty series is known for.

One of the biggest changes to this year’s game is that it is available on both current and next-gen consoles. I guess the next-gen ones are now current-gen, but hey, semantics. These new versions come with a host of new features. The biggest jump is of course going to be in visuals. Call of Duty remains locked at 60fps on everything, but on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X you can now get up to 120fps if you have the TV that supports it. There is also support for ray tracing in both versions. This is one good-looking game for sure. PlayStation 5 owners also get support for the new haptics and trigger feedback on the Dual Sense controller. I was not a fan of this, but I can see the appeal. Having different guns feature various levels of feedback when pulling the trigger is novel, but in practice it simply didn’t feel natural to me.

One small note during my review. The game tended to crash on my Series X after playing a while. I was given a code for PlayStation 5 to finish this review and as of this writing there is a patch dropping that is said to remedy this issue. Also worth noting that the Xbox One version of the game has several issues running on the new hardware as well, which hopefully gets ironed out over time. The game also allows for various modes to be deleted at will. This means for someone like me who doesn’t play the multiplayer outside of review, I can delete it to save space. This is huge considering this game takes up a large chunk of these new consoles smaller hard drives.

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.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.