Call of Duty Thread - Potential return to form? Or nothing but cope on the horizon? You decide!

[The Last Stand]

24 hours into Black Ops 6's multiplayer before prestiging, I can say I'm enjoying myself with the overall experience. However, there ARE some design choices that have me shaking my head of WHY they were needed.

Omnimovement is a game changer for first person shooters. You don't even NEED to dive in all directions; strafing backwards or sliding forward is enough to change the tide of a gunfight. I'm conditioned now that omnimovement is a standard for FPSs as aiming down sights.

So far, the campaign takes a similar route to Cold War with open ended missions that encourage stealth but allow guns blazing. I don't mind the non combat segments as it allows adequate pacing within your role as a ex-CIA operator. Why the need for the hub area be interactive and allow upgrades through collecting money scattered through missions? That reeks of unnecessary Warzone integration.

High contrast was enabled by default in my playthrough. Allies are highlighted blue, enemies red, NPCs white. There should be an option to disable or lessen its effects during campaign cutscenes. It also negates the effects of the spy camera gadget since everybody is highlighted upon line of sight.



This is misleading. The weapon blueprints aren't unlockable through challenges or campaign progression. You have to BUY them with the money found in missions. AFAIK, safe cracking does not regenerate upon replay so you'd have to replay missions to find money TO "unlock" those special blueprints. Yuck.

 

[EenGevolg]

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This is misleading. The weapon blueprints aren't unlockable through challenges or campaign progression. You have to BUY them with the money found in missions. AFAIK, safe cracking does not regenerate upon replay so you'd have to replay missions to find money TO "unlock" those special blueprints. Yuck.

Nine safes should be enough to buy three of the blueprints (you're good at CoD, you don't need the upgrades, right...?), the way to go would probably be Onyx Echo (LR unlocks at level 49), Pocket Aces (Jackal at 43), and Truth Serum (AMES at 19). The knife is unlocked from cracking the safehouse safe, while the Marine SP is available from the start, so it's not as useful to get the blueprint.

 

[The Last Stand]

Nine safes should be enough to buy three of the blueprints (you're good at CoD, you don't need the upgrades, right...?),

Now I'm frustrated at a level where you're in this building with ZOMBIES in it and you have to find four key cards to progress. There's this miniboss that disappears in a room in random that you're locked in until you kill it.

Two things I hate: key cards and hide and seek enemies. Why is zombies even involved in the campaign?

 

[EenGevolg]

Now I'm frustrated at a level where you're in this building with ZOMBIES in it and you have to find four key cards to progress. There's this miniboss that disappears in a room in random that you're locked in until you kill it.

Two things I hate: key cards and hide and seek enemies. Why is zombies even involved in the campaign?

One reason is probably that it's just part of the Black Ops mindfuckery. Also, between the casual-friendly Liberty Falls, the upcoming guided easter egg mode, and this, it seems as if a big focus this year is to try to onboard new players towards the zombies mode.

 

[The Last Stand]

One reason is probably that it's just part of the Black Ops mindfuckery.

AFAIK; nu-Modern Warfare reboots the trilogy to have it in line with every subsequent Call of Duty for Warzone. Meanwhile, Cold War onward still recognizes World at War/Black Ops as canon in that new universe.

Woods regularly mentions Panama, where is that coming from?

Also, between the casual-friendly Liberty Falls, the upcoming guided easter egg mode, and this, it seems as if a big focus this year is to try to onboard new players towards the zombies mode.

World at War did it better with having Zombies as an unofficial epilogue of sorts. I know Zombies then was a last minute passion project until Black Ops. Forcing it into a campaign loses its luster and can be disjointing.

 

[Problematic User Forever]

Now I'm frustrated at a level where you're in this building with ZOMBIES in it and you have to find four key cards to progress. There's this miniboss that disappears in a room in random that you're locked in until you kill it.

Two things I hate: key cards and hide and seek enemies. Why is zombies even involved in the campaign?

The whole thing feels like a Zombies map they had to repurpose into a single player mission, so I'm assuming it will be used for Zombies in a season or 2.

 

[Caddo Cobgang]

Zombies can get really fucking difficult, not that im complaining, I am enjoying it, one of my teammates decides to exfil at Round 26 and we all agree, but at the exfil site we just get fucking swarmed and cant do anything, I had a Pack-A-Punched AK and Shotgun so I thought id be fine, but wow do they just fuck you with armored zombies in higher rounds

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

Hearing great things about the campaign, people are shocked at how good it is, i remember cold war was surprisingly good too. Sort of ironic how the best RPGs are stuck inside an FPS shooter. reminds me of how PSVR lied about its specs and actually gave you double the FPS and graphical quality as it was supposed to have.

where is that coming from?

2 or 3 of BLOPS, its where one of the guys gets crippled and his son is inspired to become a FPS protag in the far off year of 2023!

 

[Blackstar]

BLOPS 2, 3 was completely unrelated to the previous campaigns aside from a single reference to the events of 2's campaign.

 

[The Last Stand]

I thought Treyarch rectonned Black Ops 3 and the Vita game, Declassified, out of existence.

 

[Mike Matei's Penis]

Hearing great things about the campaign, people are shocked at how good it is, i remember cold war was surprisingly good too. Sort of ironic how the best RPGs are stuck inside an FPS shooter. reminds me of how PSVR lied about its specs and actually gave you double the FPS and graphical quality as it was supposed to have.

2 or 3 of BLOPS, its where one of the guys gets crippled and his son is inspired to become a FPS protag in the far off year of 2023!

Gameplay wise it's very fun and there's a lot of variety, it's just not really a CoD campaign in the traditional sense (though we've gotten 20 years of those so probably a well needed shakeup)
The story is just very silly and after the open world Iraq mission it goes into full supernatural Doom/Fallout bullshit. I wish the ending scenes weren't about some woman we don't care about and focused more on Case like the mission with the 4 keycards, that was highlight of the game despite being bonkers.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

The story is just very silly and after the open world Iraq mission it goes into full supernatural Doom/Fallout bullshit

i just love that COD proves a competent team can knock out an open world game in like 2 years in the current environment, while Bethesda needed 10 for fucking starfield. imagine if activision got the fallout license instead of bethesda and we got a new rpg every year but with multiplayer.

 

[Jewthulhu]

Gameplay wise it's very fun and there's a lot of variety, it's just not really a CoD campaign in the traditional sense (though we've gotten 20 years of those so probably a well needed shakeup)
The story is just very silly and after the open world Iraq mission it goes into full supernatural Doom/Fallout bullshit. I wish the ending scenes weren't about some woman we don't care about and focused more on Case like the mission with the 4 keycards, that was highlight of the game despite being bonkers.

Pretty much sums up my thoughts. They really should have focused more on Case. The way the story is written, you could have thrown away the Case subplot and the story would have stayed intact, despite it being the most interesting part. You have no real connection to the CIA bitch until the end mission. I thought her story in that ending mission had some interesting bits, but it felt like there was no real setup or payoff to it.

The whole campaign story just feels fragmented. There's interesting ideas there, but they each feel confined to one mission.

Cold War had a similar problem with setups and payoffs (the big twist with Bell wasn't properly set up, and Perseus never got a proper payoff), but it didn't feel as disjointed somehow.

 

[Mike Matei's Penis]

The casino mission was very well done. Makes me wish Activision had done their Bond games in that vein.

 

[30+GameOvers]

I thought Treyarch rectonned Black Ops 3 and the Vita game, Declassified, out of existence.

That never happened, best to my knowledge. You simply can't pretend that games that you personally don't like aren't canon, not unless it's something at the level of Fallout 76 or the Amazon TV show that actively fucks the lore over anyways.
I'm just gonna say it: I'm tired of pretending like BO3's campaign wasn't absolutely kino. The fact that it didn't have anything to do with the other 2 games aside from a throwaway line and the Nova 6 gas is a plus in my book, not a detriment. People who seem to have a hate-boner for it just got filtered by it, and that's not something you want to do. Imagine being the guy for whom a COD campaign is unironically 2 deep for.
Declassified is another story, that game is actually awful and the tie-in to BO1 and BO2 seems to basically be Menendez's father getting killed by CIA spooks and that leads Raul swearing vengeance on them.

 

[Mike Matei's Penis]

Declassified is another story, that game is actually awful and the tie-in to BO1 and BO2 seems to basically be Menendez's father getting killed by CIA spooks and that leads Raul swearing vengeance on them.

I beat that entire campaign in Declassified on a plane trip, completely trash controls and I don't remember a single thing about the story, just felt like leftover BO1 missions and models, and you didn't even have checkpoints. That game is even more forgotten than World at War on PS2

 

[30+GameOvers]

I beat that entire campaign in Declassified on a plane trip, completely trash controls and I don't remember a single thing about the story, just felt like leftover BO1 missions and models, and you didn't even have checkpoints. That game is even more forgotten than World at War on PS2

At least that game has some neat stuff in it, like an American campaign in Europe(last one till WW2 all the way in 2017) and some leftover missions in Holland that were scrapped from the main game, if I recall.

 

[EenGevolg]

Zombies can get really fucking difficult, not that im complaining, I am enjoying it, one of my teammates decides to exfil at Round 26 and we all agree, but at the exfil site we just get fucking swarmed and cant do anything, I had a Pack-A-Punched AK and Shotgun so I thought id be fine, but wow do they just fuck you with armored zombies in higher rounds

Get a chopper gunner to use at the exfil, makes things a lot easier. You could also use mutant injection, supposedly that's better for really late rounds, but it feels slower than the chopper.

 

[The Last Stand]

I've finally completed that zombie mission on the campaign, Emergence. Found the safe, even answered the four orange phone calls, on Veteran no less. I HATED that mission. Bullet sponge bosses followed by finding four key cards to unlock an elevator.

WHY have armored enemies in a Call of Duty campaign?!

 

[30+GameOvers]

WHY have armored enemies in a Call of Duty campaign?!

They made more sense in jetpack games, since you had advanced movements and more futuristic equipment to make the fights interesting. Boot on grounds games, I imagine they're about as fun to fight as the Juggernauts in Modern Warfare games.