Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 review: "Both a return to form and a great entry point for new or lapsed players"

You'd be forgiven – certainly by me, I like you very much – if you'd developed a habit of skipping each new Call of Duty campaign, concentrating entirely on luxuriating within the multiplayer modes. After all, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is one of the best offerings we've had in years. But I implore you not to skip the solo offering this time around. Not only is it too wild a ride to pass it up, it genuinely evolves what this series can be.

Leaning more than ever into the Mission Impossible-like spy thriller angle that's always set Call of Duty: Black Ops apart from its cousins, it's filled to the brim with explosive setpieces and smart sections of open design that break up pacing and allow for opportunities of player-led exploration. Most importantly, it succeeds with its shakeup in a way that last year's entry, which had similar ambitions, very much did not – which our Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 review details.

Set during the Gulf War's Operation Desert Storm, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 plays with real-life history in some bold ways that don't quite come together in and of themselves. One mission sees you storm Saddam Hussein's palace, but he's not at home. Another takes place at a then-governor Bill Clinton fundraiser, but you only see him from afar, and he never speaks. Some of these moments have shocking twists, but there's the sense – particularly in the case of the mission within the former – that Activision is toeing the line with what's acceptable to use for their narrative, especially given the early '90s are fairly recent history (it was recent, right?). It's a balancing act Call of Duty has always struggled with.

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Instead, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is best when it's doing its own thing, and it's able to pull it off with all the impact of a well-specced shotgun. Even where it operates in a more traditional fashion, missions are far from the conveyor belt of shootouts you might expect. Optional objectives and routes buck the linearity trend of past series favorites, while losing none of the spectacle. The level design is often striking and beautiful, managing to combine incredibly well-crafted environments while retaining the feeling of player control when it comes to moving the objective forward. One mission, a casino heist, wonderfully plays with multiple perspectives to deliver some of the greatest thrills the series has ever offered. 

But even that's not Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 at its most creative. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (which this picks up from more or less directly) featured one surprising mission of hallucinatory horror. The Black Ops 6 campaign picks up this idea and runs with it as fast as its little legs will carry it, shifting set dressing from battlefields to unsettling and creepy laboratories that look like a mash-up of Control and BioShock in its design. Zombies, drug-induced visions, and other seemingly supernatural elements make up a surprisingly large chunk of the eight hours or so that the campaign will last you. This includes a boss that made me say some very naughty words before I was finally victorious. It all makes for a campaign that's a welcome and well-paced change from just blowing things up and shooting people in the face from great distances.

Dial up destruction

The changes and additions to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's online modes aren't as drastic, but they're no less effective. The headline here is 'omnimovement' (also present in the campaign), which means you can now sprint, dive, and slide in any direction. It's a little more nuanced than that, but that's all you really need to know. It's a subtle change, but a very, very important one. 

It might not seem like a huge overhaul on the surface – past games have played with speedy movement before – but in action it's intuitive and opens up a brand new angle on tactical play. Yes, people can (and do) dive and slide sideways from behind corners, and yes, it looks extremely cool when this tactic is successful. That's a tiny minority of the time in my experience, though. Usually people just helpfully slide straight into my hail of bullets, and once, I saw somebody dive right off the edge of the map.

Running sideways is a bit silly when you think about it, but in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 it means you can now sprint, slide, or dive into a blind spot without losing precious microseconds having to turn around to face whoever might be waiting for you there first. Speed, in fact, is a large part of the appeal here. You're always moving at a decent pace even before using tactical sprint, so the wait for the next firefight is never overly long. While some may still prefer the weightier feel of the earlier Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot games, Black Ops 6's pacier nature feels more finely tuned than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's attempt to speed things up – which, while we appreciated the effort, over-emphasized constant slides and hops.

Spec op(erators)

The weapons are missing the sense of heft that was typically afforded in the revised Modern Warfare trilogy, but this is more than made up for by the joyful movement. The maps have been designed to make the most of omnimovement, with plenty of waist-high obstacles to mantle, and low cover to dive behind. Lowtown is one of my favorites, its murky canals offering another layer of escape and ambush opportunities to literally dive into. I love the simple pleasure of sliding down a set of stairs, enhanced further by the subtle bumps and jumps of the DualSense if you play on PS5 like I do. 

It's disappointing to see Call of Duty continue to refuse to shake up the way it hands out perks, scorestreaks, weapons, and attachments. Depending on your preferred loadout and playstyle, it could easily take a dozen hours or more before you have access to everything you need in order to play exactly how you want to. If there's a playstyle you gravitate towards, get ready to grind out the ladder for another year running while you assemble it once again.

There's at least one fresh twist within the perk system, however – choosing to equip three perks of the same category gifts you a fourth that can give a significant boost to certain playstyles. Three Enforcer perks gives you a temporary boost to speed and health regen on kill; Recon lets you briefly see enemies through walls on respawn, and gives you a High Alert style indicator for off-screen enemies; and Specialist makes equipment visible through walls, deploys equipment and Field Upgrades faster, and boosts your objective scoring.

Almost class-like, it gives you a nudge towards fulfilling a certain type of role for your fireteam. Those playing with pals will definitely get a lot of value from the Recon specialist perk, allowing you to call out targets lying in wait over comms. Though it does mean you can feel a bit on the backfoot if you'd rather mix-and-match, forgoing a potential perk in the process. Still, I can't fault seeing a bit of experimentation in the tried-and-tested Call of Duty multiplayer formula. It gives us one more avenue we're excited to see evolve further down the line.

Looking at the bigger picture, Treyarch has been careful to take some welcome crowd-pleasing measures in order to ensure that multiplayer doesn't feel underbaked at launch. There are 16 maps, for example, so you'd have to be incredibly unlucky to keep getting outvoted and forced to play the same one over and over again. Four of those are Strike maps, the teeny ones used for Gunfight which, yes, is available to play from day one (as it always should be – the two-versus-two mode has fast become a firm favorite of mine).

Face Off is also available for immediate play, so if you like the chaos of six-versus-six games on maps that aren't strictly speaking designed to accommodate them, you're in luck. Many of the maps have already become firm favorites, often thanks to delightful bits of design detail of the quality we've come to expect from the series – look out for the actual functional diving board in Vault, which is a particular highlight!

With smart changes to movement and some key quality-of-life improvements, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 simply offers some of the best multiplayer shooting we've seen in years. I love the way that the grenade reticule now makes it easy to judge how long that frag you're cooking has until it's ready to backfire in spectacularly embarrassing fashion. The distinctive whirr of an approaching RCXD, the lovingly crafted reload animations, the remote control rocket launcher scorestreak which I found, to my utter delight, can be used to destroy a UAV with skill and a little luck… they're all jigsaw pieces that come together to make a very attractive picture. Now, if only they'd get rid of that clumsy Call of Duty HQ launcher.

Want go be a pro and need some tips? Check out our Black Ops 6 piano puzzle solution to kick you off with the Safe House's brainteasers; our Black Ops 6 zombie loot keys guide to help you get the most out of the Liberty Falls Map; or our Black Ops 6 best loadouts for some advice on getting your multiplayer build together.