Black Ops 6 has come to PC Game Pass, and as is customary for Call of Duty, it's dragging behind it a big burlap sack filled with eclectic game modes gunning for our attention. Each mode is bound by the super-speed, bunny-hopping, killstreaks, and gaudy gun skins we've come to know and love the series for (now with added omni-movement to add a bit of action-movie flair), but there's still enough mechanical novelty in there to shake up the the tried and true CoD formula.
If you're someone who prefers planning Christmas gaming playlists to music ones, you'll be pleased to hear that there's a mode for every occasion in Black Ops 6, so we've compiled a few of our favourites to jump into with buddies, and the scenarios you might want to play them in.
Whole place to yourselves: Gunfight
Playing with the wider CoD gaming community is great and all (well, sometimes), but there's something quaint and old-school about gathering four buddies, packing yourselves into a small private map, and having the arena to yourselves as you blast each other away in 2-v-2 shootouts.
The rules of Gunfight are simple: your loadout is randomised each round, and there are no respawns, forcing you to play a little bit more thoughtfully than in the meat-grinders of Hardpoint and Deathmatch. Playing with pals, you also have more time and freedom to play around with the new Max Payne-style maneuvers available to you in BLOPS 6, making Gunfight a fun little training ground before you head out into the wider Codosphere.
Working as a team: Search and Destroy
We're not going to lie and say that, for the regular player, Black Ops 6 is a game of tight teamwork and coordination in the manner of a Rainbow Six: Siege (also on PC Game Pass, by the way) or a Hunt: Showdown. But if you want a mode that slows things down a bit to make it easier to work as a unit, then Search and Destroy is it.
The mode is as old as time (or at least Counter-Strike): one team defends a pair of bomb sites, the other team needs to place a bomb at one of the sites and guard it until it explodes (or one team needs to wipe the other one out). There are no respawns, so things quickly whittle down here, and the finality of being killed instinctively makes you work more as a team. A great mode if you and your buddies want to really zone in on the game rather than chit-chat.
Lighthearted lols: Prop Hunt
There's no mode in BLOPS 6 that's more of an outlier from the relentless whirlwind of K/Ds than Prop Hunt. One team plays as hunters (regular gunmen), the other team takes on the form of everyday objects—varying in size and shape from traffic cones and plant pots, through cement mixers and washing machines, all the way up to vans—and has 30 seconds to hide in the level before the other team begins searching.
There's something delightfully giddy about you and your buddies coordinating to look like an innocuous trio of traffic cones logically placed by the road, or hiding inside of each other as boxes of various sizes. Then, when you get spotted, hilarity ensues as you drop a stun bomb on the hunters and quickly slide away in traffic-cone form across the level.
Co-op carnage: Zombies
Whether you find yourself on a losing streak in Team Deathmatch or just need a change of scene from all the diamond-encrusted sniper rifles and superhero skins, the totally revamped Zombies mode offers something a little (well, very) different. With two vast maps filled with perk-granting candy dispensers, weapon upgrade stations, and countless holes for the living dead to shamble out of, it's a very different feeling to earlier CoD games' more linear zombie romps.
It's good mindless fun, even if sometimes the missions can drag a bit as zombies turn into bullet sponges in the latter stages (also, maybe I've been spoiled by the satisfying gore system of Dead Island 2, but I do wish the zombies were a bit more dismemberable and splattery here) Minor quibbles aside, the vast open maps are impressive, and there's even some semblance of a story for you and your buddies to follow, though realistically you'll be too busy culling the relentless hordes to focus on it.
There are so many modes this year that we could go on, but we don't want to spoil the joy of discovery in you finding your own BLOPS groove. Grab it on PC Game Pass, and find the Christmas CoD playlist that works for you and your pals this Christmas.
