Note: This review is specifically about the Zombies mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. For our thoughts on the other modes, see our Single player campaign review or ours Multiplayer review in progress.

Have you ever wondered how we got here? Not in an existential question: “Where do we come from?” In a sense, but more specifically: “How did a one-off co-op survival mode in a video game become where quotes about the horrors of war appeared on the screen after death?” ?” The?” 16 years later, it’s hard to reconcile the original Nazi Zombies mode from 2008 World at war Was once with the monsters, Resident Evil 6-inspired Campfest I played with red eyes for several hours last night. I’m not saying any of this in a bad way, mind you; Black Ops 6’s interpretation of the mode is exciting and unique thanks to all-new movement mechanics and good map design. Zombies hasn’t been what it was in World at War for a while now, and I still need to play a lot more of this year’s version before I’m ready for my final review, but that one thought still hit me pretty far : How did we get here, man?

Let’s get to the fucking heart of this, shall we? Black Ops 6’s Zombies mode features two all-new maps: Terminus, a prison complex converted into a bio-research station, and Liberty Falls, a small West Virginia town whose slice of quaint Americana will soon rival The Worst Day Ever (Spoiler: Things don’t seem to be going well for Americana). The story itself is a direct continuation of the Zombies campaign in the 2020s Black Ops Cold Warand if, like me, you’ve largely forgotten what’s happened over the past four years, there doesn’t seem to be much of an attempt to catch up with you. This means you’ll hear a lot of dialogue full of proper names could They could be important or funny references, but instead I found myself saying, “I vaguely remember this person,” a little too often.

Most of all, I wanted the voices in my ear (and the characters I was playing) to shut up. They have what I’ll call “The Modern Video Game Character Problem™,” which is to say, they all talk too much – mostly because they just say their thoughts out loud half the time. I’m not saying that every single one of them is a deeply annoying, extremely unfunny, incredibly unlikeable person, but I’m not not I’m not saying that either. Their mid-battle banter resembles something compiled from a Schwarzenegger movie written by ChatGPT – I’m not expecting any poetry here, but at least give me Gears of War level banter, you know? All I can hear are lines like the one where someone complains that the zombies make them so angry that they “boil their piss” or that we need a mop to clean up all the brains we spill so often, Before I want to, point my weapon at my allies instead.

So so far the story is mixed, but you know what it isn’t? The gameplay. The biggest change here is Omnimovement (zombie movement?), Black Ops 6’s complete overhaul of Call of Duty’s core movement mechanics. You can sprint, slide and jump in any direction and even chain these moves together. You also have full 360-degree freedom of movement, meaning you can do cool things like sprint backwards, do a retreat jump, mow down the zombies that come at you from any angle, and then get up and keep moving , before they even manage to close. We haven’t seen zombie-killing moves like this since Resident Evil 6, aside from a few suplexes here and there. (Dear Treyarch, please add suplexes. Love, Will.) While this makes Treyarch miss out on perhaps the easiest post-launch patch layup, my point is that this is the case feels goodand I like it. I like it very much.

I also like the cards themselves. I think I prefer Liberty Falls over Terminus so far because I like the height, with extremely entertaining ziplines that let you whiz from rooftop to rooftop. I also like the more traditional structure of “pay essence to open doors and gain access to new locations” versus Terminus’ twist of “restore power to the generators and defend them from zombies so you can earn the ability to “Opening doors,” but that doesn’t mean Terminus doesn’t do anything cool. Eventually I found a small raft with an outboard motor that I could take to the smaller islands around the main area. I died pretty quickly because when I landed on the beach a horde of zombies jumped out of the ground like a bunch of really angry, undead cabbages, but c’est la vie, right? C’est la undead? I don’t speak French.

I’m a little more conflicted about the way the cards control the progression of the story. Based on what I’ve played so far, you don’t really do much “defense” in the zombie version of Black Ops 6. Instead, you’re constantly moving, unlocking new areas and trying to complete this map’s main quest as you go through rounds. You can do this however you like. In my experience, this means a lot of running for your life and trying to earn enough essence (which you get from defeating zombies) to make your way to the next area, buy a new weapon, or a weapon , which one likes to upgrade in a pack -a-Punch Machine that does exactly what it sounds like. Treyarch plans to provide an optional, more guided, story-focused version of the mode later to preserve the sanctity of the Easter Egg Hunt (whatever that means) – this will disable Easter Eggs and side quests, but I wish that was here now, so I can see the difference it makes. These maps are really big and as someone with an absolutely terrible sense of direction I just want to get a feel for where I am allegedly before I focus on optional things.

What I really don’t like, at least so far, is the meta progress. You don’t unlock the ability to create your own loadouts until you reach level 4, and even then you probably haven’t unlocked anything fun and customizable to any of your weapons. Furthermore, progression feels painfully slow; After an hour and a half of play, I reach level four, which seems too long to wait for this basic functionality. I’ve only played solo so far, which certainly slowed me down, but the lag still doesn’t feel good. Additionally, the lack of customization in the early stages made my runs (two on Liberty Falls, one on Terminus) feel the same in a way that I didn’t like. Hopefully playing with friends will solve this problem, but I’m cautious moving forward.

There’s a lot I haven’t touched on yet, like map progression and upgrades (my first impression is actually “there might be too many mechanics here”), so I want to spend more time with this year’s Zombies mode before I finish it Read this review and rate it sometime next week. At the moment I’m looking forward to playing more and I’m still a bit impressed with how we got here. Undeath sure is strange, isn’t it, soldier?