Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

Editor’s Note: All photos in this review are screengrabs from reviewer’s actual gameplay.

Just the other day when my friend and I were talking over PlayStation getting ready to jump into the new Call of Duty. We were debating about how many CoD games there have actually been and it’s crazy to think that the series is well into double digits. The newest iteration to the franchise, Black Ops Cold War, is not only the sixth Black Ops game, but the seventeenth in the mainline franchise if you don’t count Warzone as its own thing. 

For a series that’s now delivering its seventeenth iteration, it’s really been using the same formula since its fifth iteration – Call of Duty: World at War. Only adding a battle royale mode called Warzone recently, there have become three core components that players have come to expect from a Call of Duty game: a cinema-caliber campaign, an expansive and competitive multiplayer mode with all the hits, and an ever-expanding zombies mode with a crazy and complicated easter egg to uncover. However, the franchise always manages to find ways to reinvent itself and there’s no better showing of that than Black Ops Cold War. 

First and foremost, it has to be said that the game initially got off on a bad foot for me in regards to how Activision handles installing the game. As someone who’s internet connection isn’t the best, downloading this game was a royal pain in the ass. It is nice that you can pick which multiplayer mode you want to download first but downloading the campaign through three separate downloads is just mind-boggling and takes forever. It’s frustrating how you’re not only downloading main parts of the game, but on top of that you’re also dealing with big updates to download. So even when you’re done downloading the multiplayer, you still can’t get in because of the updates. It definitely leaves a rough first impression, but once that’s all done, it’s easy to how the game brings together some of the franchise’s best studios (Treyarch, Raven, and Beenox) to deliver a true culmination of the franchise’s best elements. 

For the second time in the series, players are taken into the tense paranoia of the Cold War – where the rules of combat changed, and the world was left holding their breath in fear of ultimate destruction. The Cold War wasn’t the traditional kind of war that saw soldiers fighting on the battlefield, but rather a political battle for intelligence and power. Often times, the CIA and the KGB would be tasked with finding cracks within the opposing countries to exploit and using sleeper agents, espionage tactics, and finding damaging information to gain an edge. Basically, it was a giant chess match between the US and former Soviet Union to always be ten steps ahead of the other and Black Ops Cold War captures this incredibly well within its campaign. 

The Black Ops Cold War campaign reunites fans with famous franchise characters Alex Mason (voiced by Chris Payne Gilbert), Frank Woods (voiced by Damon Victor Allen), and Jason Hudson (voiced by Piotr Michael) as they team up with decorated CIA operative Russell Adler (voiced by Bruce Thomas) for a black operation to hunt down and stop a radical Soviet operative only known as Perseus. The series once again delivers a high-octane story full of explosive action, trippy psychological twists, and features plenty of familiar faces – both from the franchise and history itself. 

Seeing the likes of iconic historical figures like Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev (who I hope can get a zombie mode like JFK and Nixon did in the original Black Ops) interacting with iconic CoD characters is definitely something special. It’s even more special to see Mason and Woods, who’s more like an action-hero here, make such a strong return and have a new ally in Adler, who is like a bad-ass mix of a young Robert Redford and Kurt Russell, as work to take down Perseus and stop him from setting off nukes across Europe. 

Although most of the missions consist of the usual running and gunning to new objectives and utilizing various weapons and tech, the campaign actually offers an experience more fitting to its Cold War setting. Throughout different points in the campaign, players will have to take a stealthier approach to combat and complete objective that aren’t always about killing a specific person. Sometimes players will have to steal information from a key Soviet figure’s house or determine the best course of action for obtaining access to a classified area as a spy. Even interacting with missions was unique with how players use an evidence board to go to the next mission and even have side-missions that let players flex their puzzle-solving skills. For side missions, players will collect pieces of evidence throughout mainline missions in order to make decrypting a floppy disk and picking out the right suspects possible. 

Playing through the Black Ops Cold War campaign was legitimately special for the first time in a while with how it reflects the tone and time of the Cold War and the way your decisions impact the final outcome. Dialogue choices make a return here giving players more power on the outcome of certain events. Choices like lying or telling the truth about what you know in pivotal turning points, choosing to kill key Soviet figures or capture them and turn them into informants, and whether or not to perform side objectives end up playing a big role in the kind of ending you get. It’s great how the ending kind of reflects on the decisions players have made throughout the campaign and even explains the impact it had on the greater conflict at hand. The campaign is another great showing of how the franchise always looks to reflect the time it takes players to and offer new experiences for players to enjoy. Not to mention, it’s got some incredibly rad easter eggs and connections. 

Throughout different levels, players can actually find and play old Activision arcade cabinet games. Iconic games like Chopper Command, River Raid, Boxing, Barnstorming, and Pitfall are available for players to find and play throughout the campaign. The biggest easter eggs though are that the Black Ops series and the Modern Warfare series are finally confirmed to take place in the same universe as there’re multiple hints to these two series being connected here. Not only do we see a Burger Town, where Army Rangers took a stand against the Russian invasion in Modern Warfare 2, in one of the levels, but we get a guest appearance from Imran Zakhaev (voiced by Ondrej Habinak) – the main antagonist of Modern Warfare. It’s a great connection that totally catches you off guard and makes you wonder if there’s a future for Call of Duty’s two most popular stories to collide one day. 

As per usual, even after the campaign, there’s plenty more for players to experience with the return of multiplayer and zombies. As a whole CoD multiplayer is pretty much as good as it usually is as it carries over some great mechanics from past CoDs, like being able to change and edit your custom classes in-game and filtering out game modes, but also adds new mechanics that are surprisingly forward-thinking. Players now get put into new lobbies after each match so that they always encounter new competition and not be stuck with opponents that are constantly kicking their ass. 

There’s also new game modes called Fireteam that are actually reminiscent of a squad-based Battlefield game with vehicles players can commandeer, larger maps and longer games, as well as smaller squads that players can work together in and pick their spawn on the map. It’s definitely something that players will want to bring their own friends and clans into to dominate and have better communication and it’s made easier with how this game handles shifting parties to new lobbies and even different game modes. However, I’m more of a classic TDM, Kill Confirmed, and Domination kind of guy and there’s plenty to talk about when it comes to those. 

As a whole, the core modes of CoD multiplayer are just as good as usual with the required win totals being a little more, so the games are noticeably a little longer – which is fine. The perks are little disappointing since their impact isn’t felt all that much or isn’t as game-changing as usual, but there’s a new addition of wildcards that can give players a bit of an edge. There’s a much stronger variety of weapon attachments that make customizing your weapons much easier and the options are actually very robust with how each attachment works for a distinct part of the gun. The operator/character choices are nice with players even being able to play as Adler, Woods, and other characters from the campaign. The scorestreaks are pretty much as expected with players being able to call in a variety of things like artillery strikes, attack helicopters, the iconic RC-XD, and UAVs to help them in battle. All of this is great, but the real determiner of a great Call of Duty game is always the maps and this game brings some solid maps. 

There’s actually a strong variety when it comes to the size, scale, and design of the different maps. While a more condensed map like Crossroads is definitely more suited for some close-quarters weaponry, there’s plenty of more open maps like Satellite and Miami that are a sniper’s dream. I will say though, I have noticed that the best tactics seem to be an assault rifle or a powerful SMG as a primary and a shotgun for the secondary because of how the maps can full players into tight spaces – especially when playing Domination on Checkmate. To be honest, the shotguns in this game are totally game-changing and can make a big difference in fast-paced situations. Hell, we even get Nuketown back again in an 80’s inspired graffiti form. Overall, multiplayer continues to get some much-appreciated fine tuning that’s made even better with how leveling is now connected to zombies mode. 

Player and weapon leveling are now interconnected between zombies and multiplayer, so players now have the option to level up in either game mode. So, if you’re having trouble leveling up in multiplayer, you can head to zombies and likely have better luck. It’s a great addition I didn’t even know I wanted and it’s actually funny how my friend and I are similar levels, but by playing different modes. It’s unclear if this will be the same case when Warzone is finally added to the game, whenever that happens, but it’s still a great way to connect the different modes and it actually plays a relevant part in zombies. Instead of just starting with a pistol, players can now pick their starting weapon based on what they’ve unlocked through leveling and they definitely need it as zombies is back and more brutal than ever. 

Black Ops Cold War actually takes players back to where it all began as they can now explore the ins and outs of a revamped Nacht der Untoten after all this time. It’s crazy how much they’ve expanded the original map as players now get to explore the desolate surrounding of the small concrete building as well as the underground lab that’s beneath it. As its core, zombies mode is still the same, but it is noticeably a little tougher. The zombies are definitely a little more aggressive, the hellhounds emits a noxious gas when killed, and there’s a powerful new enemy-type known as a Megaton that splits into two when its health is drained and becomes even tougher to kill. Dead Ops arcade mode also makes a return, so players can have some top-down zombie killing fun. Not to mention, there’s still an elaborate easter egg for players to rack their brains over and has them running throughout the map to figure out. Now, even though zombies mode is still the same for most part, there are some elements brought together from past iterations to create a fresh take. 

There’s crafting that players can take advantage of to craft equipment and even some scorestreak bonuses on the fly, a sort of “ghost mode” like from Mob of the Dead that players will want to utilize for the easter egg, and there’re also some secondary abilities that players can have, like being able thrown mines or become invisible, to help defeat hordes or help revive teammates. These abilities along with perks that players can buy in-game can be upgraded and to make buying things like Jugger-Nog or Speed Cola more effective than ever before. Even the Pack-a-Punch machine is more user-friendly as there’s no wait time for your weapon to be upgraded anymore. There’s even a new mode called Onslaught that keeps players contained in a small area as they fend off waves of zombies on the multiplayer maps. It’s a little annoying how far the zombies spawn at times, but the aggressive nature of the zombies this time around definitely makes things challenging quickly. 

The fact that even in it’s seventeenth iteration that Call of Duty still manages to subvert expectations for the experience it can offer and continue to fine-tune its formula speaks to the talent behind the franchise and Black Ops Cold War is a testament of that. It acts a culmination of what’s made this franchise great while treading new ground through its Cold War setting. In short, CoD is still CoD, but Black Ops Cold War continues to make it better. 

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is now available at video game stores everywhere.