Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Review
By: Wyatt Donigan
Tags: Features, Gaming, Digital Life, Call Of Duty, Videogames

Multiplayer

Now on to the meat and potatoes of any Call of Duty title. This franchise lives and dies by its multiplayer and so far, Cold War is living life to its fullest (for the most part).

As I mentioned earlier, the gunplay in this game is absolutely fantastic. All of the staple weapons feels fluid and great to play with, even if one of them (I’m looking at you MP5) is a bit broken right now. The time-to-kill feels perfect and I don’t think I’ve had this much fun playing multiplayer in years. It probably doesn’t hurt that I don’t suck as much as I once did, making things much more enjoyable than they used to be.

Speaking of enjoyable, one of the biggest surprises in multiplayer this time around comes in the form of the brand-new mode Fireteam: Dirty Bomb. Call of Duty has done big team modes in the past, but this mode goes in a bit of a different direction and the result is a frantically addicting mashup of Combined Arms and Warzone.

This 40-person mode sees 10 teams of four wage war across what is basically a mini battle royale map complete with gliding in and everything. The goal here, though, isn’t to be the last team standing but to rack up points by collecting uranium and detonating one of the five dirty bombs found across the map. Crates are scattered throughout the different houses and shacks just as you would find in Warzone and contain the valuable uranium needed to set off the bombs. Of course, given that this is a multiplayer mode, you have to do all this while fighting off 36 other players.

The maps are bigger than your standard multiplayer maps but smaller than the actual Warzone map, so the action is almost always fast and frantic. Team coordination is a must as you fight to control areas and set off these dirty bombs. While I’ve admittedly played the staple multiplayer modes the most, Fireteam: Dirty Bomb has been a welcome reprieve whenever I hop in for a round or two.

One of the other major positives here is the revamp to both the Prestige system and Scorestreaks. The Prestige system has been a staple in Call of Duty for years, but it wasn’t without its issues. Having your progress reset and being forced to re-earn guns and attachments never felt fun. Treyarch did away with that this time around by allowing you to retain all of your progress upon Prestiging. The result is getting all the cosmetic goodness of Prestige without any of the headaches of needing to grind for the same stuff over and over.

Then there’s the Scorestreaks. I know this paragraph is going to make me sound like a filthy casual, but that’s fine because it’s true. In all my years of playing Call of Duty, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten an Attack Helicopter or an AC-130. I’ve definitely never gotten a Nuke. I’m the player who already used Perks that allowed progress to stay upon death. So when Treyarch announced that Scorestreak progress wouldn’t reset on death in Cold War, I was all for it. I understand how it may feel cheap to the diehards, but let us have some fun too! Also, you still need to go on long killstreaks to get the big fancy Scorestreaks, so there’s still a skill gap between the best of the best and people like me.

I would be lying if I said that multiplayer was perfect in Cold War, however. Things aren’t all roses and rainbows despite how much fun I’ve been having. The most glaring issue here by far is the map selection or lack thereof. Cold War launched with just eight maps in total, an incredibly small number for a multiplayer-focused franchise such as this one. When you also consider the fact that two of the maps (Cartel and Miami) rank among some of the worst in the franchise’s history, you essentially have just six maps that are fun to play on. Granted, Nuketown is coming on November 24 and then Season 1 will presumably have some maps with it on December 10. But for these first three-four weeks, it gets a bit repetitive playing the same maps over and over.

There’s also the fact that, once again, the game has launched without any sort of ranked mode. For a series that prides itself on being at the forefront of the multiplayer shooter genre, I just don’t get how it never launches with a ranked mode. It’s quite maddening and mindblowing at the same time. Especially when you look at the fact that the SBMM (skill-based matchmaking) has been cranked up to 11 this time around. Why not include League Play at the start instead of six months later like in Black Ops 4? It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Now, there is a challenge in-game that mentions League Play, so at least we know it’s in the cards. That still doesn’t lessen the blow of it not being here at launch, though.

Alas, Map selection is something that will inevitably get better over time, and League Play is indeed on its way. I’d rather have great gunplay and fundamentals with a poor map selection and no ranked than the inverse of that. While I wish Treyarch would have just done everything from the outset, there’s still the fact that they’ve only had about a year-and-a-half of full development for this game after taking over for Sledgehammer Games in May of 2019. Without the usually three year incubation time, some things will surely fall through the cracks.

At the end of the day, the foundation is absolutely there with multiplayer and I will be playing a ton more in the coming months.