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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Campaign | review

Madoc Meredith October 25, 2024

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a triumphant return for the series after a thoroughly disappointing release in 2023. It’s a bombastic global adventure that pulls out all sorts of tricks. You have your classic, non-stop epic Michael Bay moments. A sprawling mission that lets you tackle objectives your own way for over an hour. Even zombie-style horror that somehow makes sense in-universe.

My main problem is that the story gets a bit silly towards the end. It’s not just about the action and body, but also the psychological side. It’s available in Game Pass on cloud, console and PC from day one. So let’s explain why this title worked so well.

Spy games

For most of Black Ops 6’s campaign, you play as a “case.” Her character seems full of mystery, although for me it kind of came out of nowhere. Things begin with a typical, over-the-top operation in Iraq to capture a defector. Things are going sideways, as they often do with Call of Duty, and a global foray is underway. This is a Black Ops title, and developer Treyarch has fully embraced its “what if conspiracy theories were real” story.

Enemies and friends switch sides, usually with solid logic and occasionally a few “I must have missed something” scenarios. In the end, the most mysterious thing is your character, who still has some unanswered questions at the end of the game. The rumor for the Call of Duty title in 2025 is that Black Ops 6 will be released in an “Expandalone” style in the near future. I’m curious to see if Case and some of the team are still there if this turns out to be true.

If you’ve played the MP beta, you know how good this move feels in terms of controls. The Omni Movement system is here and aiming on an Xbox controller feels like a dream. By default there is strong aim assist, but I turned it off to have more direct control. Everything is snappy, the buttons are laid out in a familiar, logical way, and it’s GOOD Call of Duty. It’s one of the biggest IPs in the world, and here’s why.

Exotic places

Black Ops 6 is a damn good looking game. When playing on an Xbox Series The hair and other fine detail textures have a lot of shimmer, which can look a bit unsightly. You can opt for the game, which is around 60GB for the campaign, to be able to download high-resolution textures if necessary. I have 1GB of internet and it worked well, although there were pop-ins from low-resolution textures to high-resolution textures a few times during my 9 hours or so with the campaign.

It’s a globe-trotting adventure that travels from America to the Middle East and beyond. You are a small, obscure group and on missions you mostly work alone or with a small number of teammates. They cleverly break this up by running a long mission where you fight alongside a large group of soldiers to pick up the pace. As mentioned in the intro, you get linear, open-world, mostly stealth and classic bombastic CoD levels.

My favorite was the open hub style mission where you find yourself in the Iraqi desert attacking targets to help a large force. It felt like a single-player warzone, in a good way. You get various kill streak style powerups to use on your equipment wheel. You can access this by holding down the Up button on the D-pad. The game utilizes most of Call of Duty’s recent innovations, such as equippable armor, towers of zombies, and some fun surprises. While the desert levels feel like a typical “army invades the Middle East and shoots everyone there” mission, there are some beautiful civilian locations to add variety.

Taking the fight home

Two of my favorite levels of the 11 on offer (not counting the midterm missions at home) were a fundraiser for Bill Clinton and a casino. Fundraising requires you to address a specific problem. There are three options available to you. This happens again in a later mission and, together with the home upgrade system, offers a lot of replay value.

You have a home base called Rook where you can repeat missions, start new ones and solve puzzles. Additionally, you can have conversations in the tower and during missions where you have Skyrim-style conversations with dialogue options. Most of the time it’s just a matter of exhausting your choices, but sometimes you need to remember certain information to answer certain questions correctly.

There are three separate systems available to you in the Rook, allowing you to spend any money you find on missions to improve your character. I had a glitch with Black Ops 6 and it was a glorious one. After I found the combination to a safe in a later game mission, I got $10 billion instead of $1,000. This allowed me to purchase any upgrade and turn my character into a god of death.

The story is good enough.

The gameplay is great, the graphics are great and the story is almost great. Call of Duty titles always have a major downside, and Black Ops 6’s is a bit weak. I didn’t like the character, it just didn’t feel built properly. This may be because I’m missing important information during the levels. Treyarch is notorious for hiding a lot of puzzles/items in their titles. I searched high and low in the tower and on missions whenever I could and was still feeling a bit taken aback when the reveal came.

It definitely feels like the story, even though it’s mostly complete, is developing into much more. You get a lot of answers, but not everything. As I said, I’m curious to see if next year’s title picks up one of the few loose storylines. The text and voice acting are as high quality as you would expect from a title with this insane budget.

The OST tracks blare and set the fast pace for the fight. Some classic ’90s nine-inch nails going off during a helicopter machine gun mission were also a treat for my old ass. Like I said, graphically it looks pretty darn good on a Series X, aside from the shimmering on certain objects. It’s not noticeable in combat, but the game has a surprisingly diverse selection of mission types and you can see it in the slower parts. Once again the “power of the cutscene” rears its ugly head and sees how your hard-fought “victory” is sometimes lost at the end of a long battle. Maybe it’s just me, but in so many games I get bored of it. You work your ass off and then lose because of the script, no matter what.

Bringing things to a conclusion

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign is excellent. While the story may not have been perfect, it was logical enough to make me happy. It’s available at launch for Xbox Game Pass console, PC and Ultimate members in the cloud, console and PC. I would only recommend buying it if you also like MP and Zombies, as $70 ($60 on Xbox One/PS4) is a steep ask. However, if you’re looking to shoot the absolute shit out of a bunch of people, there’s nothing better than a good Call of Duty campaign. It helps that this one is great.