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This article contains Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 campaign spoilers.
After spending far too many unblinking hours in Black Ops 6's phenomenal Zombies mode, the campaign's deeply weird Emergence level seemed like a hazy retinal afterimage. While investigating an abandoned laboratory in Kentucky, protagonist Case falls down an elevator shaft (which is starting to feel like a rite of passage for Call of Duty characters) and is exposed to biohazardous gas. The lab's lower levels are overrun with zombies, and your goal – to collect four scattered keycards to open an elevator – feels more Resident Evil than Call of Duty. Oh, and did that mannequin just move?
It's been two days since I rolled credits on Black Ops 6's campaign, but I'm still thinking about the inherent weirdness of Emergence. There were moments I adored, but I find it harder to say if I liked it as a whole package – largely because it was unlike anything I've seen in Call of Duty's history.
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The brain-munching elephant in the room is that Emergence is essentially one big Zombies level. Though the undead here are hallucinations brought on by clouds of psychotropic gas, their bites are every bit as painful as their cousins in Liberty Falls. But unlike Call of Duty's survival game mode, Emergence trades in arcade-y blasting for an attempt at genuine horror.
Surprisingly – shockingly, even – it works several times. The lab itself, a retrofuturistic complex pulled straight from Control or Prey, is divided into four branches: Cognitive Research, Administration, Joint Projects, and Advanced Combat Research. There's a zombified boss fight to complete for a keycard in each area, but the corridors linking each zone up trade thrills for chills. Some of it is subtle, like a wheelchair that wasn't there a moment ago. Other moments are more on the nose – or right in front of it, in the case of one mannequin that moves in for a much closer look when your back is turned. These are moments of quiet unease that I didn't think Call of Duty to be capable of, and although Black Ops 6's campaign revolves around similarly looser level structures, this is the most subversive of the lot.
It's not just the creepy factor that wins the day for Emergence. One boss fight begins with a tentacled horror pulling itself out of a camera lens, leading to a battle that's half Gary's Mod Prop Hunt and half wave survival, all while nostalgic World at War track 115 roars around you. Yet it's the deceptively mundane-sounding Administration branch that sees Treyarch go full horror. Your goal is to find scattered reports and file them for the director – a red mannequin in a locked office room. Other mannequins are posed around the area's bull pen, and after you grab the first report, they creak into life. Unfortunately for my heart, they only move when you look away, which turns Administration into a terrifying hunting ground where you're the prey. Turn your back, and you can hear the dolls creaking and skittering after you. Turn back quickly enough, and you'll catch them just as they freeze in motion – some scrambling in a pack, others reaching out to grab you. Moving to blast some of them apart means briefly looking away from other mannequins, forcing your nerves into a nails-on-blackboard shriek as neither fight nor flight seems particularly feasible.
Partly, I think Administration is so scary because you're not supposed to be in a horror game. You're meant to be in safe, sugary Call of Duty; blasting baddies and blowing up bridges and sometimes even blasting baddies on blown-up bridges. In the same way I don't watch John Wick for thought-provoking philosophical musings, I don't play Call of Duty expecting to be running away from terrifying mannequins.
While that expectation-breaking works to Black Ops 6's favor of Administration, I generally didn't enjoy its more off-the-leash approach in other areas. I will preface this by saying that I seem to be the minority for this, but I didn't enjoy the way you went back and forth from Emergence's hub zone, or mingling with suited donors at the fundraiser in Most Wanted. As much as I'm drawn to the idea of choosing to schmooze, sneak or steal my way through a level, the options there are all a little shallow and tend to feel like picking between path A or B to reach the same place. I play Call of Duty for ludicrously over-the-top shooting, Dishonored for immersive sim environments, and never the twain shall meet.
Then again, I probably wouldn't have been scared silly by mannequins if Treyarch catered only to my taste. As much as I want more of this, I do wonder if there are better ways to package it that lean into Call of Duty's more traditional strengths as an on-the-rails shooter. But hey – what do I know? I'm just a man, standing in front of a game, asking it to chase me with dolls a little bit more.
