Going in, perennially the best-selling game of the year and a product of consistently high quality, but Call of Duty also seemingly possesses an inability to overcome its inertia. I played the original, World War 2-centered trilogy, but really cut my teeth on the series during the halcyon days between CoD 4 and the original Black Ops. Nearly two decades later, it feels like I'm still playing some souped-up version of Modern Warfare, with a fresh coat of paint courtesy of 2019's soft reboot of the same name.

This isn't singularly a detractor, but a through line to Black Ops 6, a game that doesn't really feel new despite some bells and whistles, but instead familiar, stable, and optimized. When you play Call of Duty, there's no mistaking the fact that you're playing Call of Duty – it feels a lot like last year's game. This puts the series in recurring conflict with itself: there's no reason to disrupt the tightly designed, clearly successful formula, but there's very little room for significant iteration on the surface, leaving Black Ops 6 as a game with some interesting, but ultimately not groundbreaking, ideas.

The latest in publisher Activision's marquee FPS series is primarily developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, but shipping Call of Duty every year is an almost unparalleled undertaking, with Black Ops 6 seeing from Infintiy Ward, Sledgehammer Games, High Moon Studios, Beenox, Activision's Shanghai Studio, Activision Central Tech, Activision Central Design, and Demonware. Black Ops 6 has had a particularly long development cycle compared to the rest of the series, though, and it's evidenced by a wealth of content, all of which delivers quality gameplay that's nonetheless weighed down by the series' immense scale.

Black Ops 6's Campaign Is At Its Best When Trying New Things

But It Doesn't Get Experimental Enough

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's single-player campaign delivers a ably interesting narrative, with enough variety in gameplay and setting to keep your attention throughout. The story itself does well to avoid some of the more overtly propagandistic elements of the Modern Warfare subseries, and remains compelling despite a few fairly predictable turns. Wonderful performances for the main cast bolster the character-focused plot beats and missions.

Similarly, Black Ops 6 utilizes an under-explored era, the Gulf War, but eschews any attempt at analysis of recent real-world history for CIA conspiracies and shadowy, multinational cabals. Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait are merely a backdrop, with Operation Desert Storm used as little more than an excuse for bombastic set dressing.

There is plenty of spy thriller charm to be gleaned from Black Ops 6, though. Infiltrating a swanky political event in Washington DC (with then-Governor Bill Clinton in attendance) or orchestrating a casino heist make for some welcome espionage gameplay to break up the shooting galleries that largely dominate Call of Duty campaigns.

To this end, there is also a fair number of puzzles to be solved – including an optional one that's a distinct highlight of the whole game – and even several dialog trees to navigate for extra bits of characterization. The main cast are fairly rote characters, but excellent performances coupled with CoD's exceptionally high production value help to make them respectable vehicles for the plot.

Black Ops 6's campaign really shines when it starts to blend genres. A handful of segments are genuinely unnerving, approaching a survival horror experience, and some missions that dip heavily into the Black Ops subseries' science fiction leanings can at first feel like too sharp of a turn, but end up being some of the game's more memorable sections. These are the more successful experiments, giving the campaign some endearing variety, but there are also times when Black Ops 6 seems to be grasping at something greater than a Call of Duty campaign.

One fairly open level sets the player loose with scattered objectives and a laundry list of optional side missions. It's both interesting and somewhat of a let-down; kind of like the survival game crafting elements injected late into the campaign of 2022's Modern Warfare 2, it's fun to see CoD try new things, and if it was more fleshed out, it could be a genuinely exciting evolution for the series' single-player. However, it remains relatively shallow – at once not overstaying its welcome, but also feeling under-baked.

Black Ops 6 Multiplayer Is Intimately Familiar

CoD's Signature Gameplay Still Reigns

PvP multiplayer is the most familiar aspect of Black Ops 6, occupying a well-trodden space that's remained largely unchanged since Call of Duty 4 laid the foundation. The game's most significant mechanical innovation, omnidirectional sprinting aka omni-movement, does make gameplay more agile, but it also seems to generally contribute to the dissolution of structured encounters, giving everyone so much mobility that any given match can devolve into chaos. This can be somewhat mitigated by carefully selecting which game modes are enabled.

Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, and Free-for-All typically become frustrating frenzies as everyone zips around the map with little to no direction; objective-based game modes like Domination, Hardpoint, and Headquarters usually result in a more compelling round. With its 16 brand-new maps, Black Ops 6's multiplayer is a clear reminder of why Call of Duty has dominated sales charts and the multiplayer FPS space for so long: the gameplay is simply fun. Especially in the wake of 2019's Modern Warfare, which revamped the punchiness of the series' gunplay, the series' moment-to-moment action remains satisfying, even if it never approaches the complexity of other competitive shooters.

Black Ops 6 throws most game modes into a single Quick Play playlist, but this can be filtered to remove undesired modes since the game does not feature persistent lobbies between matches.

Much of Black Ops 6's gratification in its multiplayer modes comes from its inheritance of the Gunsmith system, where new weapon attachments are unlocked quickly and frequently. New weapons, gadgets, perks, and wildcards come regularly as well, constantly providing new loadouts to experiment with. Black Ops 6's multiplayer is satisfying and engaging when actually playing, but it's also bogged down by obnoxious facets that entirely cater to its live-service monetization.

Menu backgrounds are dominated by characters awkwardly pacing endlessly forward, the play of the game is preambled by a slow-motion splash screen of the featured player, and the winner's circle is a protracted look at otherwise pointless emotes. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a full-price game, costing a minimum of 70 USD. These superfluous elements singularly promote additional purchases and provide bloat to an experience that is otherwise largely pleasant, bogging down a product that players pay good money for.

Zombies Is Round-Based Again, Though It's Not Really A Return To Form

Omni-Movement Has Great Influence On Zombies Gameplay

Mostly separated from the woes of live-service gaming, however, is Black Ops 6's other major multiplayer avenue: Zombies. Far from its quaint and claustrophobic inception in World at War, Zombies is affected the most by the introduction of omni-movement. Round-based Zombies has returned, and both maps – Liberty Falls and Terminus – give you plenty of elbow room to dash and slide through the ambling horde. The tried and true strategy of running laps while kiting the undead, turning around regularly to unload a magazine, is exceptionally prevalent.

It's also wonderfully chaotic when you happen to lead your tagalongs head-on into those of your squate, folding any strategy either of you had going and causing all those involved to feverishly look for an escape. Much like the campaign and the multiplayer, Black Ops 6 Zombies is entirely familiar – all the cornerstones are there: the Mystery Box, Pack-a-Punch Machine, wall buys, doors to open, Perk-a-Cola (including the brand-new Melee Macchiato), GobbleGum, wacky questlines, the works.

There's some melancholy to be had in Zombies' loss of fundamentals. Long gone are the days of rebuilding window barricades to slow the deluge or clawing through the first few rounds with only pistol and knife to save points. Everyone can bring one weapon loaded with eight attachments into the game, but it's hardly consequential, because getting to the Pack-a-Punch machine on both maps is hardly a struggle. Black Ops 6 Zombies escalates very quickly in its gameplay, and the atmosphere has lost most of the horror and mystery that defined its earlier iterations.

But this all amounts to Zombies feeling in line with the rest of Black Ops 6, a game designed for those who have been there before. Put me in World at War's Nacht der Untoten map and I'd probably get bored rather soon, despite my nostalgia for it. Zombies knows what we're there for: to blast hundreds of enemies with laser-firing Pack-a-Punch'd armaments and figure out how to get our hands on some Wonder Weapons. To that end, it's not a surprise that it ramps up quickly, once again showcasing Black Ops 6's desire to deliver satisfying gameplay with very little barrier to entry.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

Content-Rich But Unambitious

It's hard to knock any Call of Duty title too terribly, especially one with as much polished content as Black Ops 6. This one simply aims to optimize and deliver on the pillar experiences of small-to-medium sized multiplayer maps with smaller player counts, core round-based zombies with a focus on rapidly powering up, and a beefy campaign which the last few franchise entries under-delivered on. The gameplay itself feels very good and Black Ops 6 is deserving of the series' legacy, knowing what players want and giving it to them, even if that means playing it a little safe regarding gameplay innovation. That legacy also weighs it down, though, especially since it's one of many games contained in the cumbersome Call of Duty launcher. Time will tell how Black Ops 6's perks, gear, Wildcards, and omnimovement affect the Warzone experience when season 1 launches next month.

Unpleasant menus aren't likely to hamper the experience entirely, though, so anyone with a ing appreciation for the series is likely to be content with Black Ops 6. Its protracted development cycle clearly paid off, but it also makes me wonder what kind of ambitious project the talent at Treyarch and Raven Software could concoct if it were unshackled from Call of Duty. Another year brings another iteration of gaming's FPS royalty, and perhaps more so than its relatives, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a rather convincing argument for why the series remains on top.

A digital code for PlayStation 5 was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review.