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Call of Duty: Black Ops - soldier firing as tank gunner fires in the background Treyarch/Activision

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Black Ops 4 shines, thanks to PUBG- and Fortnite-inspired Blackout

This year’s Call of Duty is packed with features ... except an a la carte option

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is the most 2018 game release you can imagine, and it might be one of Activision’s most forward-looking moves in recent memory.

It’s a $60 game release — although you can, of course, pay much more — that’s made up of three different games with only a few mechanical similarities between them. There is no way to purchase just one game, you have to grab the bundle. And each game could operate as its own service, with ongoing updates and new content. Other companies may have been tempted to break them up or release at least one as a free-to-play game, but not Activision. The bundling strategy is nothing if not confident.

Black Ops 4 isn’t the most cohesive release, which makes it tricky to tackle from a review standpoint. So we’ve decided to do something different: Each game was given to a different writer to evaluate. While the decision to buy the package is all or nothing, some modes are definitely better than others, or at least aimed at different audiences.

Activision and Treyarch have an opportunity to try to redefine what a Call of Duty release needs to include in the modern gaming landscape; let’s see how well it worked out.


MULTIPLAYER

After 15 years, Black Ops 4 is officially beyond my capabilities

by Russ Frushtick

The following piece focuses on Black Ops 4’s “multiplayer” mode. Which is a silly name given that the entire thing is multiplayer. But suffice it to say, when we say multiplayer, we mean the traditional adversarial mode that involves game types like Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, Search and Destroy, etc. — not to be confused with the other multiplayer modes, Blackout and Zombies.

Well, it finally happened. After 15 years, I can no longer “hang” in Call of Duty multiplayer. For every Call of Duty multiplayer game, including recent release like WWII, Infinite Warfare and Black Ops 3, I’ve been a contributing member of society. I’ve been able to maintain a just-over-positive kill-death ratio, landing squarely in the middle of the scoreboard on most matches. I wasn’t a rockstar, but I wasn’t a groupie either. I was a roadie. I went in, I did my job, and I tried not to electrocute the lead singer.

That’s changed with Black Ops 4.

Black Ops 4 multiplayer makes some of the most interesting and substantive changes to the Call of Duty multiplayer format in years, a format which Activision and its various studios have been iterating on for more than a decade. It’s the biggest shift we’ve seen since Black Ops 3 three years ago, the first game in the series to introduce the idea of operators. Rather than blank-slate classes, these operators grant timed abilities, allowing me to set traps, scan the area or summon a grenade launcher from the ether.

Among the community, operators are, well ... controversial, to put it mildly. But I’m actually a fan. The operator abilities allow people who aren’t the best players on the battlefield (read: me) to have a little moment to shine. And with Black Ops 4, these operators have been expanded with secondary abilities, giving me more ways to contribute to the team.

As an example, my preferred operator, Recon, can drop sensor darts every couple minutes, indicating where enemies are within the range of the dart. Changes to the radar make enemy positioning a much rarer commodity, so that added information can really make or break an objective mode, and it’s great to see hunkered down enemies ping on the radar for my entire team. Other operators have fancier, more aggressive abilities: One guy summons a dog, much to the chagrin of whomever has to kill said dog; another has a radiation trap and flamethrower. The operators feel thought out, fitting into a wide variety of play styles.

Treyarch/Activision

Another major change I really dug: Health no longer automatically recharges after a few seconds. The only way to top yourself up to maximum health is to use a stim shot, which requires actually hitting a button and having a short animation play out. It’s another instance where player choice becomes paramount. There were a number of times where I’d have to pause and consider: Do I charge out ahead, or retreat and heal up? In previous games when I was close to death I would retreat into a corner and go prone until my health returned. Here I have to make a call of whether I should be prepared to fire at an attacker or get myself back to fighting shape.

But the biggest and most difficult change to overcome is just how damn hard it is for me to kill people. Part of the reason I’ve always gravitated toward Call of Duty is that it rewards tactics. If I smartly flank a team from behind, I could generally expect to get two, three or four kills for my trouble. Short time to kill, as it’s called, has been a hallmark of the franchise.

Depending on the gun, it now requires between four and six on-target shots to down someone, unless you’re using a shotgun or sniper rifle. That is, compared to previous Call of Duty games, an eternity. You would think that a longer time to kill would make a game more casual, but in truth it skyrockets the skill gap tremendously. Whereas before I only needed to land a couple well-placed shots, I’m now forced to engage and maintain consistent aim over a longer period of time.

Treyarch/Activision

In previous Call of Duty games I could more often than not expect to be in the upper half of the pack, while now I’m finding myself closer to the bottom. And as much as I enjoy occasionally helping out the team with a sensor dart or two, I’m clearly far more of a detriment.

It’s worth noting that Black Ops 4 does support so-called Hardcore modes. With these, the time-to-kill is instant, with almost every gun dealing a one-shot kill, even for leg and body shots; unfortunately, this goes too far in the other direction, encouraging a spray-and-pray mentality, while making new elements like radar awareness and stim pack healing moot. If you’re just looking for a mindless shooter experience, Hardcore basically offers that, but it’s hardly what I’m playing Call of Duty for.

To combat the long time-to-kill in modes outside of Hardcore, the obvious solve to be competitive in standard modes would be to work more closely as a team. Team-shoot, taking down targets much faster, if you will. But if you’ve ever tried squadding up with a group of three or four friends, the inevitable outcome is that you get matched with similarly-grouped folks. And almost always those groups are far, far better than my casual, ragtag crew. I’ve had objective modes that ended 300 to 43. It got to the point where it was easier to break up our squad into groups of two rather than all play together, which seems antithetical to the multiplayer game experience.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 - urban chaos Treyarch/Activision

This is all to say that anyone brand-new to Call of Duty might hop into the game’s traditional multiplayer and not have a good time. Even a veteran like me has been scared off, maybe for good. In just half a week, Black Ops 4 multiplayer is dominated by masterful players who make just starting out a punishing experience.

It’s a shame, because on paper I really appreciate most of the major changes that have been made. With Black Ops 4, Treyarch made a game that emphasizes tactics over lone-wolf running and gunning. It seems like it should be more friendly to newcomers, offering new ways for them to contribute and a few extra chances to survive a gunfight. In practice, though, it’s a total slaughterhouse for competent-yet-casual players like me.


BLACKOUT

More like Breakout, as in the breakout mode of this year’s Call of Duty

by Austen Goslin

Blackout could have been a cash grab.

But instead of joining the PUBG/Fortnite fray with an uninspired copycat, Treyarch has created a fantastic and unique addition to the battle royale genre, while expanding how we think about Call of Duty in the process.

The premise of the mode should sound familiar: A large number of players — 88, in this case — start each match by parachuting onto a sprawling map filled with weapons and equipment they must collect and use to eliminate the competition to become the last player, or team, standing.

The map itself is where Blackout really shows off its Call of Duty flair. Rather than creating new cities and towns from scratch to populate Blackout’s map, Treyarch has instead taken fan-favorite multiplayer maps from previous Black Ops games and altered them to be a better fit for battle royale while also smushing them together into one semi-cohesive whole.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 - Blackout map overhead view Treyarch/Activision

Maps like Firing Range from the original Black Ops, Cargo from Black Ops 2 and even Asylum from the original Nazi Zombies mode all make appearances here. And yes, the zombies come with Asylum, which adds an interesting level of PvE if you decide to explore that section of the world.

The use of these maps, or their altered forms, gives each and every city in the game a unique and handcrafted feel. All of the sightlines and peeking angles feel carefully considered and intentionally designed; because they were, sometimes years ago, as multiplayer maps. Every single city — even the individuals buildings — is fun to fight in because they were designed to funnel confrontation instead of spreading it out. It’s a weird situation where the map itself is new and interesting, but I knew individual areas already.

These tight corridors from Call of Duty’s past provide a welcome break from the traditional battle royale experience of taking cover behind trees and rocks and fighting over long distances — which this mode still has plenty of when moving from city to city.

None of this would matter if the shooting wasn’t fun. Thankfully, the shooting is outstanding, as you’d expect from a Call of Duty-themed battle royale game. It’s the mashup of ideas I was hoping it would be, where the best aspects of each ingredient was able to rise to the top.

The shooting itself has been overhauled in general for Black Ops 4. It still feels familiar, but instead of a random pattern of bullets, each gun has a unique and predictable spray pattern, making every gun more reliable.

This has the added benefit of making the guns consistently usable over the long distances they have to cover in Blackout. The frequent 100+ meter shootouts would be frustrating slogs if the guns were unpredictable, but the reliable patterns turns these into intense fights that make up some of Blackouts most exciting moments.

Treyach/Activision

Other changes to the Call of Duty formula improve Blackout. Rather than blink-and-you’re-dead time to kill of battle royale games like PUBG, players in Blackout can take quite a bit of punishment which means there’s almost always time to react when you’re getting shot. It ratchets down the moment-to-moment tension of survival and trades it out for a much faster pace once the bullets start flying.

Blackout was released in a finished state alongside the rest of Black Ops 4, as opposed to the early access states of other battle royale games, and it shows. The frame rate is consistent, every bit of movement feels smooth whether you’re jumping off of a building or vaulting through a window and even the server performance and hit registration have been impressive so far.

Occasion and barely noticeable issues aside — like picking up the wrong item when it was lying next to something else on the ground, or a bit of difficulty in determining which floor footsteps are coming from — Blackout is technically impressive and, more importantly, reliable. You die because you didn’t think through your engagement, not because the game itself feels janky.

Just like the rest of Black Ops 4, Blackout is a slower, more tactical Call of Duty than those of the recent past. But slower Call of Duty still makes this one of the fastest battle royale games, and that pace serves the game.

With the new and improved shooting and health making every fight fun, the carefully crafted map and the reliability with which it all runs, Blackout’s unique combination of speed and tactics make for an outstanding battle royale experience.


ZOMBIES

Black Ops 4’s co-op horde mode excels

by Colin Campbell

“Here’s a zombie. You’re going to want to shoot it.” So begins Call of Duty Black Ops 4’s Zombies tutorial, a laconic introduction that encapsulates the entire game, but also, tongue-in cheek, sells itself short.

The joke is that this game is obviously so much more than a straightforward matter of pointing a weapon at an enemy and pulling the trigger. It’s a complicated and ornate carnival of a game, almost to the point of absurdity.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s Zombies section is a humming theme park of interlinked systems, strategies, goals and obstacles that manage to almost … almost … make us forget that the central game of shooting things is a simple one we’ve played many times before.

In these days of ubiquitous entertainment, simplicity demands adornments; frills to complement the thrills. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 takes this maxim to ludicrous lengths. Yet its central competence as a shooting game is never lost.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Zombies - Blood of the Dead Treyarch / Activision

Easter Eggs

The Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 package consists of three main sections: multiplayer, battle-royale and a cooperative four-player battle against waves of zombies. In the latter, I team up with random players, friends or bots, and I try to survive for as long as possible.

Zombies have been a part of Call of Duty for years, starting life as an Easter egg, growing in size and popularity. Now it essentially sits in for Black Ops 4’s missing single-player campaign.

There are three maps available in the core game, each of which tells a story, featuring a small cast of basic characters who have goals to achieve.

One map — a remake from Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 — takes place in a standard first-person shooter warren of military offices and prison cells. This little world of filing cabinets and kitchens serves as a reminder of a time when the Black Ops series still held tenuous connections to the real world of combat and warfare.

The other two maps are more colorful, revealing how Call of Duty has moved on from starchy tales of derring-do, to magical mystery tours of the bizarre. One takes place in a Coliseum, during a Roman gladiator fight. Its aesthetic is a witches’ brew of ancient monoliths and Tomb Raider-esque underground chambers.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Zombies - IX Treyarch / Activision
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Zombies - IX Treyarch / Activision

My favorite is set aboard the Titanic, in the moments after the great ship hits an iceberg. Some supernatural force has turned everyone — apart from me and my teammates — into zombies. The Titanic is infested with undead Edwardian ladies, sailors and emigrants, eyes aglow with malevolent necromancy.

Titanic Struggle

I begin on the forecastle of the Titanic, armed with a crappy pistol. The first wave of zombies offer basic shooting practice, but also an early lesson that the bastards come from all directions. It pays to watch my teammates backs and to trust that they are watching mine.

I earn points for shooting zombies, which I can use to buy new weapons, stored in glowing window boxes. Earning points is central to progress, because it also unlocks new areas of the map, allowing me to go in hunt of better weapons, upgrade stations, goals and Easter eggs.

Subsequent zombie waves come in ever greater degrees of intensity and difficulty. Bosses stagger alongside lesser specimens, each requiring the use of more esoteric and powerful weapons.

Teamwork is crucial. I can only survive being hit a few times, before collapsing to the ground in need of resuscitation from a teammate. This is a special misery because it inconveniences individuals, and weakens the team. I find myself motivated to stay alive.

As I move through the Titanic, I stumble into elegant ballrooms, spartan cabins and submerged engine rooms. Zombies emerge from windows, which I can block and guard, while my mates look after their own corners.

I find an assortment of potential boosts and perks. These include drops such as full ammo, a bomb that kills all enemies, double points or instant one-shot kills. New weapons and ammo are complemented by a magic box that spews out a random weapon, occasionally yielding a top-notch gun.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Zombies - Voyage of Despair Treyarch / Activision

At the start of each game, I assign myself perks, such as an ability to see through walls, or super-fast revive powers. Classes are defined by perks and come prepackaged, or I can pick my own selection of perks, based on how I play. But perks still need to be unlocked in-game, by finding perk stations and spending points, and they are lost if I’m downed.

I also have potions which I drink to grant myself temporary powers. And I have secondary mega-weapons that I use when I’m in a fix. They’re fantastic, but they have long cool-downs.

I seek out artifacts that unlock new areas, picking up objects that can be crafted into shields and other useful devices. I find magical pedestals that unlock a weapons upgrade machine. I go in search of Easter eggs, following byzantine rigmaroles of finding stuff and crafting and killing zombies in very particular ways.

In short, there’s a lot going on in this game.

Freak Show

The zombies are frightening, especially when they appear in unexpected places. But mostly, they add to a general sense of a carnival “freak show.” The four playable characters enhance my expectations of fresh new horrors with their vaudevillian barks, which sing alongside the droll boasts of my human teammates.

The characters’ two-dimensionality is only a step above the creatures they kill. The plot they inhabit makes zero sense. But it doesn’t matter, because in this game, story is a thin overlay to the really important stuff, which is gunplay, group strategy and upgrade acquisition.

The developers at Treyarch have done an outstanding job in the feel and variety of weapons, the design of levels and the parceling out of special powers. They’ve also found ways to appeal to the widest possible audience, offering an extensive create-a-game editing library that allows everyone to personalize their own experience.

Black Ops 4’s Zombies mode is extremely challenging, even on its Normal setting. I recommend all but the most competent players to start out as a Beginner. The harder settings are for true believers, who consider anything less than a full round of 100 percent headshots to be a personal failing.

In the editor, I create games for myself and my friends in which we have extra health, better weapons from the start, lesser enemies. This helps me to mitigate an occasionally unforgiving experience, in which packs of zombie dogs overwhelm me in seconds, or I find myself facing three undead tigers, alone and armed with a piss-poor rifle.

At the high end of the skill spectrum, I can craft meaty challenges against waves of zombies, entirely populated by the toughest enemies. Whatever my fleeting preferences, these editors offer new ways to approach a small number of maps.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s Zombies mode is like a well-run fairground. It is noisy, macabre and faintly ridiculous. Behind the gaudy paintwork, its cogs and machines are carefully tended and generously oiled. This is slick co-op shooting, delivered with the high competence of a developer that knows its trade.


Summing it all up

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is a package with three games, and each one is above average in its own way. At least one of them is extraordinary. But maybe this is what Call of Duty will be moving forward: A collection of barely related game modes and options that are held together by the barest of threads, with only some of them including any kind of single-player or offline content.

Fans of multiplayer Black Ops game modes get a feast, and Activision gets to run an experiment about what people do, and maybe don’t, want from these releases. The next question is how well these games are supported in the coming months, and how much more content is added with the game’s season pass. But for now, even at the base, $59.99 level, there is a lot of game packaged into this vaguely Call of Duty-shaped casing.


Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is being reviewed on Windows PC using final “retail” Battle.net download codes provided by Activision and a PC copy purchased by Polygon. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.

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