It has become a tradition. The day of the release of a new Call of Duty arrives, and I stay up from midnight when the servers open until the sun rises playing its campaign. There will be time to continue hooked to its multiplayer after experiencing it in the beta because, despite the eagerness I have to return to the classic zombies, traditions are not broken. Except for Call of Duty Black Ops 6, which completely shattered it.
It promised to be a special night. One that I have been waiting for since the campaign of Call of Duty Modern Warfare III left me with a bitter taste and little sweetness. The long-awaited return to the roots, to the spirit of that Black Ops 2 that stole countless hours of sleep from me, has been my most anticipated moment of the year for months. The multiplayer of Call of Duty Black Ops 6 may have already shown signs of that nostalgic rush, and I still hope that the zombies will also do the same, but the campaign… The campaign is far from what I expected.
The new way to understand Call of Duty
I have no intention of getting into spoilers or ruining anyone’s surprises. There will be time to delve deeper into it when it’s time for the analysis. But I did want to take advantage of this sleepless night so that those who arrive with the same expectations as I did and leave with similar feelings to mine, know that they are not alone.
As was the case with almost all previous ones, except for small exceptions that dared to experiment just enough like in Cold War, the campaign of Call of Duty shows to have lost all its personality. It seemed to have abandoned it because although the intentions of adding variety in abundance are evident here, at least there are visible and tangible ideas. Not the ones expected from the frenetic and explosive action that placed this saga on the pedestal where it was, certainly, but ideas nevertheless.
How to explain those ideas without spoiling the surprise for anyone, but justifying not understanding at all what this mishmash is about? Well, it’s not particularly complicated. I can tell you that in its 7-hour campaign, there are two or three classic moments, this time especially brief and with a sense of rhythm that leaves much to be desired when connecting one moment to another. And also that a couple of levels manage to maintain that essence of what the Call of Duty were over a decade ago.
The rest? A lot of stealth with level design that doesn’t showcase its shootouts if you opt for the action you were looking for. A lot of going back and forth with a recycling of closed scenarios that cling to the most outdated conventions of game design (looking for key cards, key cards of different colors). And a mishmash that manages to fit almost everything in, although not necessarily well.
Diversity as the flagship
There’s the dreamlike level where you jump between stones and navigate narrow pipe mazes as if suddenly this were Only Up. An open world with fast travel where you drive while clearing camps as if it were a Far Cry. The one where you choose phrases in a conversation with a mute protagonist, play cards, and do lockpicking mini-games as if you were in Skyrim. The one where you use a hook to fly through the level as if you were Spider-Man while being chased by zombies and monsters in the biggest exercise of filler minutes the series has done so far.
Oh, and closely related to the last one, the one that tries to be a Bioshock without much luck. The moment it ended up completely taking me out of the experience through more walks, final otherworldly bosses, and the aforementioned colored key cards. A move that is repeated a lot, by the way. I lost count of how many times I had to look for three or four things to progress. And if anyone doubts it at this point, yes, we’re still talking about Call of Duty Black Ops 6. The CoD of diversity.
It would have been appreciated if, at least, in an attempt to be something more than just a collection of shootouts and blockbuster spectacles that seem to bother so much and need to be left behind (I still don’t know why), that risk would have been worth it narratively. That this story would really have been able to leave me speechless with its twists and characters. But that’s not the case.
In addition to putting Adler and Woods, the two most charismatic characters in Black Ops right now on the bench in terms of the plot, the narrative twists that Call of Duty Black Ops 6 proposes, when they manage to shine somewhat, are lukewarm at best. And when they fail to reach that level, they border on absurdity and predictability that is hard to stomach.
The final stretch, especially with its corresponding search for pieces to assemble a puzzle and kill some zombies, drags on to exhaustion to further complicate things. And do you know what the worst part of it all is? That the blame is on me.
That the campaigns of Call of Duty have been something else for a long time, and no matter how much I insist on wanting to relive those stories with last-second jumps, slow-motion shootings, and explosions that warm your back because they just missed you, that’s no longer here.
That the market, the new generations, or the fact that doing this instead of that is much cheaper, is what sets the trend. And that I, or you if you have felt identified in a sense, have been left out. Like the grandmother who complains because now everything is Halloween and no one remembers All Saints’ Day, we have been left without tradition.
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