Image: IDG
At a glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
Long 10-hour campaignVery well writtenExcellent actors who bring CoD to James Bond levelFinally staged on a much larger scale againBeautiful locations: casinos, coastal towns, luxurious villasBooming 7.1 soundGraphically on a new level for CoD
Cons
AI glitches here and there when Sadam’s guard simply runs in front of our assault rifleRare object pop-ins, for example in the Iraq level
Our Verdict
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a genuine epic-action single-player experience with a campaign that’s not only the longest in the series’ history at 10 hours, but also full of Constant surprises. In addition to its thrilling action, the strong acting and the sometimes truly congenial mission designs are also impressive.
Ultimately, Black Ops 6 delivers what we’ve been missing in recent years, complete with intelligent, emotional, and smart storytelling, well-written characters, and truly epic action that could well be a Game of the Year candidate.
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The single-player campaign of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 isn’t just a feast for James Bond fans. It has everything that makes CoD, CoD.
The bombastic staging. The blockbuster action. The mass battles in Washington DC. The moment when a CIA black site is raided by special forces from a secret organization and half the government district is reduced to rubble. All classic stuff that’s great to have again.
But it also brings the spirit of Sean Connery’s Bond, who could undress women with just one look, when we wrap a senator’s wife around his fingers or catch our good friend Bill Clinton red-handed at his governor’s party in the capital city.
Keep reading for why we love Call of Duty: Black Ops 6‘s single-player campaign and how it seriously blew us away.
The best campaign in a long time
IDG
We think of Roger Moore when we’re deliberately captured by a drug cartel, given a little tour of the mansion, and made to feel like the boss is in control, revealing his secret plans.
That’s how James Bond used to be characterized. He didn’t always shoot and punch his way through, but instead infiltrated opponents undercover and elicited his adversary’s plans through dialogue.
We really like this because Raven Software has tackled one of the major weaknesses of CoD campaigns in recent years: they were too samey, too familiar, too much of a copy of the better originals. MW2 and MW3 were 10 times more ambitious than their new versions, if we think of the invasions of Washington, New York, Paris, and Hamburg.
CoD has lost its blockbuster epicness in recent years because the single-player campaigns were conceived far too small, too safe, too bland. They felt more like limited series, not Hollywood cinema.
Black Ops 6 turns up the heat again. Almost every level has its very own atmosphere — the splendor of a casino here, Governor Clinton’s presidential campaign there — and we’re treated to stretch limousines, the Secret Service, and dubious politicians.
Many missions have alternative endings
If you want to, you can almost always shoot your way through. But there are also ways to act more like a gentleman agent. You know, Sean Connery instead of Daniel Craig.
IDG
What we really like is that the missions are designed as self-contained experiences that often contain multiple different endings.
For example, we can play the Washington mission in Sean Connery style as a gentleman who organizes a few photos that show Clinton in bed with his secretary to thus obtain the photo that overcomes the retina scan at the entrance to a security center…
…or play in a way that lures him into an ambush, knocks out his secret service, beats him up in the kitchen, to then get the needed photo. You know, the Daniel Craig way.
With Black Ops 6 offering a whopping 10 hours of fun, you can expect plenty of high-octane moments — but the campaign also takes its time to savor moments.
IDG
Daniel Craig was an extremely rough Bond, one who favored brutal hand-to-hand combat over the good old Walther P99, one who was often quite bloody in the shower afterwards.
He’s a new generation of Bond, not the cool Brosnan type who could fight his way through a ship, jump into the sea, swim ashore, and check into a five-star hotel wet in boxer shorts as if he owned the place.
Raven Software likes to quote James Bond when appropriate: Casino Royale in this case. The iconic scene between Daniel Craig as 007 and Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre is almost a 1:1 homage in its choreography.
IDG
In general, Black Ops 6 has a lot of replay value. If you want classic Call of Duty, you’ll get it. Just as Daniel Craig easily kills 50 Russian Speznas elite units within 10 minutes in the last third of No Time to Die, we can also shoot our way through if want to.
This is much more challenging in Black Ops 6 than before, though, because the special units of the secret organization called Pantheon use their forces more intelligently, to quickly surround us and throw grenades at us or even seal off entire corridors with electromagnetic fields.
But we can also take the stealth route with the silenced Glock, in Sean Connery fashion, posed for the cover of Dr. No with a silencer because he used it the most of all the Bond actors.
And just as the mission design is smartly conceived, the story is just as well written. Very black-ops style, very opaque, with lots of players laying their cards on the table late in the game. A bit like Casino Royale, where Le Chiffre was also just the way to the big fish.
Black Ops 6 delivers twisty storytelling
Every action game fan needs to experience Black Ops 6. This is CoD‘s BioShock moment: so unexpected and it works so well, opening up a whole new storyline in a fun way.
IDG
Black Ops has always been the Inception of the CoD world. A mind-melting parade with brilliant storytelling, where we don’t know what’s going on for a long time or who we can trust, where friends become enemies faster than Adler smoked his cigarette.
Black Ops 6 is generally well written and we like the pacing. It has no problem slowing down from time to time so that we can enjoy the magnificent levels and environments.
The development team had a lot more time than usual — a whopping 4 years — and you can feel that in all the masterful details.
IDG
A lot of work has gone into the lavishly detailed Casino Luttazi. You don’t just want to shoot your way through it; you want to sit down and play poker there, like in Casino Royale.
We also spend quite a lot of time in a villa where we get to know the team and Sev with a personal vendetta, a real quick-change artist who can go from an Afro look with Rasta curls to Mexican drug boss in two or three minutes. Like Halle Berry in Brosnan’s best film, Die Another Day.
Black Ops 6 introduces many new characters, all of whom are well written and strongly acted. Former Stasi hacker Felix Neumann, for example, is played by Tom Wlaschiha, who has already made a big impression in Amazon’s action series Jack Ryan.
IDG
Then there’s the ex-Stasi code specialist Felix Neumann, who’s basically the Q of the troupe, the laid-back guy who always has a new toy ready for us but also likes to cook for the crew from time to time.
Marshall is the classic US soldier. He’s a little too loyal, has often been screwed over by his country, but still wants to believe in the great cause. And there’s Adler, whom we knew as an older man but appears here as younger yet just as pissed off by Washington.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is all about epic action and is much bigger than its smaller-scale predecessors. These ambitions are evident in the storytelling, the sets, the action, but also the moments of surprise when friends become enemies.
IDG
And then there’s a story component that we’d rather not spoil, but will delight fans of the zombie storyline. It also involves brainwashing and mind manipulation, forcing us to ask ourselves: Are we doing this right now? Are we experiencing this right now? Is this just a hallucination?
Let’s just call it Call of Duty‘s BioShock moment, and it makes this entry in the CoD franchise one that’s a must-experience. Great writing, strong acting, bombastically staged, all in a fantastic package.
Our verdict on Black Ops 6
At last, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is once again a real action epic with a campaign that, at 10 hours, is not only the longest in the series’ history but also full of surprises and twists.
This is a true James Bond-style espionage thriller that we can play loud, impulsive, and raw, whether as Daniel Craig’s Bond or as Sean Connery’s Gentleman 007. You can sweet-talk wives, catch politicians red-handed, outwit retina scanners with high-tech cameras, track down bodyguard routes, work with your brain instead of bullets.
Black Ops 6 delivers much of what we’ve been missing in recent years. We get huge sets, like a Casino Royale-style casino where we don’t just shoot and blow up safes but also play poker like Bond against Le Chiffre. Recent CoDs have felt small, only taking place at a harbor or a military base; Black Ops 6 cranks it all up and more to great success.
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.
Author: Benjamin Kratsch, Contributor
Whether it’s the world premiere of Cyberpunk 2077, the interview with Daniel Craig about his time as James Bond, or the hottest smartphones and tech gadgets at the Mobile World Congress: wherever something is revealed, Benjamin Kratsch will be there. Since 2019 he has been writing for IDG about gaming, films, series, smartphones and digital lifestyle.
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