Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Borrows from the Best In Gaming to Great Success
The story leaves newbies behind, but that doesn’t stop this campaign from being a surprisingly compelling departure.
This review dives into Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign. For impressions of its multiplayer, check out our story here.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 starts like any other game in the 21-year-old series. You’re in the desert hiding behind cover and shooting at enemies alongside your teammates. While Black Ops 6’s opening level feels great to play, thanks to Call of Duty’s best-in-class controls, this was also an understated introduction to what the full experience is.
This opening hour gives the impression that this will be a by-the-numbers, globe-trotting campaign full of over-the-top action set pieces. In reality, this game is teeming with fresh ideas that all hit the mark regarding gameplay and pacing. And while Black Ops 6’s story quickly descends into a bunch of codename gobbledygook by the game’s halfway point, the sheer variety it provides feels like a curated playlist of cool scenarios crafted to maximize fun in a first-person shooter. For this reason, Black Ops 6 breaks the mold and creates the series’ most compelling campaign in years.
A Story for the Fans and No One Else
The plot of Black Ops 6 is a pretty by-the-numbers military thriller.
Black Ops 6 takes place shortly after 2020’s Black Ops Cold War. With the decades-long conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States reaching its conclusion and America remaining the only superpower in the world, the heroes of Black Ops now must contend with threats from within.
It’s 1991, and players assume the role of an operative named “Case,” the newest member of a Black Ops team led by CIA operative (and series mainstay) Frank Woods. On a mission, the team discovers a secret paramilitary force known as Pantheon working in the shadows right under the noses of the White House. When the CIA refuses to take the team’s warnings seriously, Woods, Case, and a ragtag team of espionage, tech, and combat experts take matters into their own hands to investigate this military force and uncover its intentions.
The story serves its purpose connecting players from one cool level to the next. But there’s little here in the way of actual narrative intrigue, particularly for newcomers. There are returning characters from previous Black Ops games in Woods and Russell Adler (the latter of whom is basically Robert Redford playing a protagonist ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel). And voice and motion-capture performances from the whole cast are top-notch. But without the context of why this team matters, much of the dialogue feels like generic banter between tough guys and gals.
As for the story itself, the endless stream of proper nouns referencing secret missions, locations, and global threats becomes a slurry of exposition after a while. While I’m sure fans who’ve played this subseries since its debut in 2010 might get more out of the experience, this will be a cliché military thriller for everyone else. By Mission 4, I found myself caring less about what the stakes were and more about what the next mission would have to offer.
Inspired by the Best
No modern Black Ops game is complete without a presidential cameo.
Thankfully, what these missions offer are some of the best levels in a Call of Duty campaign ever. After the straightforward opening mission, Black Ops 6 seems hell-bent on delivering slices of totally different experiences. The second mission forgoes the frontlines and has you sneaking through a Mediterranean village toward a church bell tower armed with a silenced pistol and knife. At the shrouded vantage point, you assassinate a cartel miles away on a yacht before attempting to slip away. The mission feels like the closing moments of a Hitman: World of Assassination level. It’s terrific.
The next mission puts you at a campaign rally for then-Gov. Bill Clinton. You’re deep undercover as a journalist and tasked with finding a way to gain the biometrics of a sitting U.S. senator in attendance. There are several ways to complete the task, each with its storyline and objectives. It’s a tense and thrilling mission despite the player never firing a shot until its closing moments. The level has all the ingredients and replay value of an immersive sim like Dishonored.
The next is a lengthy operation set in Iraq where players must take out a series of missile launchers in an open-world battlefield. Players decide how to approach each base and the objectives in between. It fulfills the promise that the open-ended missions of 2023’s Modern Warfare 3 set out to do, except it feels less like a repurposed single-player version of Warzone and more like 2017’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands.
There are some masterful, atmospheric moments littered throughout Black Ops 6’s eight-hour campaign.
Black Ops 6’s eight-hour campaign constantly pulls inspiration from some of the best games around as it continues. One mission has you collecting a series of keycards in a haunted facility that feels like roaming through the dark, dank halls of Bioshock’s Rapture. Another has you breaking into a casino and switching protagonists to pull off a Grand Theft Auto V style heist. A personal favorite has you disguised as an enemy soldier quietly sabotaging armaments and completing optional side objectives like a modern take on Perfect Dark.
By the time the credits rolled on Black Ops 6, I had a hard time picking my favorite level of the bunch. Sure, the story beats were mostly a blur. But playing through such a wide variety of cool scenarios that each felt like a fun riff on a non-Call-of-Duty game left me surprised in the best way.
Bishop Takes Rook
The Rook features a series of hidden rooms, puzzles, and riddles that the player can solve between missions.
While it’s a relatively small addition to this year’s Call of Duty, it’s worth calling out the bits in between all the action. Black Ops 6 features a hub world called “The Rook,” an abandoned home in the middle of Bulgaria turned into a remote safe house for the game’s protagonists. It’s where players will spend their time getting to know their teammates and their motivations through simple, Mass Effect-style dialogue trees. It’s also where players spend money found in levels to buy new equipment, health upgrades, and perks for weapon handling.
While adding some progression is a great incentive for replaying the game (as many levels offer alternate pathways), it’s uncovering the overarching mystery behind The Rook that makes it such a great addition. There’s a series of hidden messages, puzzles, and riddles for players to discover. Solving these puzzles unlocks hidden passageways and provides some history into The Rook. It’s a gameplay wrinkle that breaks up the in-field action. These sections remind me of a cross between the Riddler trophies of the Batman: Arkham series and the 2012 mobile puzzler The Room.
The reward for getting to the bottom of the puzzle is a little underwhelming. But the journey of piecing together this mystery is a glimpse at something special. Call of Duty would be stupid to abandon this concept in future titles. And if this does return, I hope to see future iterations add even more puzzles that aren’t afraid to challenge the player’s intellect. A hub world full of several multistep puzzles could be an awesome yearly addition to the franchise’s annual offering.
The Best Call of Duty in Years
Russell Adler is basically Robert Redford playing a protagonist ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel.
Black Ops 6 is easily the best Call of Duty campaign in years and one of the year’s best first-person shooters. It strays from what one might expect from a Call of Duty campaign (an onslaught of set pieces with a few moments of respite to break up the action) in favor of an anthology of cool and memorable ideas for levels. Its story doesn’t go anywhere Call of Duty hasn’t before, but the variety of its mission design more than make up for it.
Raven Software, the lead developer on this year’s campaign, has delivered a showcase for why it deserves a shot at crafting its own action game divorced from the Call of Duty franchise. Hopefully, the studio’s new owners at Microsoft take notice and get the team working on an original B-project sooner rather than later.
8/10
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC. Inverse was provided with an Xbox Series X copy for this review.
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