The Yearly Call of Duty

     With the introduction of the newest addition to the Call of Duty: Black Ops series, Call of Duty: Black Ops Six (or BO6 for short) a lot of my free-time is spent grinding the various challenges within the game's many modes to choose. This Call of Duty compared to other titles in the series has had longer development than those previous. BO6 had 4 years of development, working off of the COVID-19 pandemic allowed Treyarch to focus their efforts on creating the Call of Duty to save the franchise due to sales diminishing further and further with the previous titles in the series. Personally, the Black Ops games have been my favorite since I was a kid. I started playing Black Ops One with my dad which eventually cascaded into it being my favorite game of all time. Particularly within the game's many modes, zombies has got to be my favorite. While mowing down endless hordes of flesh-eating mongrels it is impossible to not feel at peace for me. This will be my informal review of the game thus far. 

    Getting into the multiplayer mode within BO6 there are tons of new weapons along with fan favorite weapons returning from the previous Call of Duty titles. Personally I use sniper rifles and shotguns when playing multiplayer and from my experience, this is one of the best Call of Duty's to snipe in. The map selection has been changed this time around, moving away from large and very open maps, to smaller more compact maps that allow for a fast-paced combat. This may seem like a detriment to using sniper rifles but the way the maps are laid out have such good spots to hide and chip away at the enemy team while they are none the wiser. Keeping it short and simple on the grind for the camouflages this time around by decreasing the amount of challenges, while making the ones in place more of a challenge has been the best grind for the infamous "Dark Matter" camo since Call of Duty: Black Ops Three. Overall the weapons and maps play very well compared to previous Call of Duty titles.

    Now for the real meat and potatoes, the zombies mode. Zombies means a lot to me as the story has had so many interesting twists and turns along with the insane locations used in previous titles like BO2 and BO3 that have culminated to this point. First off, the locations to mangle zombies this year are amazing, with one of the best zombies maps since BO3's Der Eisendrache. Terminus is a map set in the middle of the pacific ocean, where a zombie outbreak has just occurred that leaves only a team of four to scour the militaristic island for clues to stop the spread of the virus that was once contained in the island's bio-lab. The second map is Liberty Falls, Virginia. The actual town of Liberty Falls has been recreated to a one-to-one scale model of the town in Virginia.  This has always been one of the common tropes within zombies with one of the best recreations of a real life place being in BO2's Mob of the Dead, where the developers recreated a replica of Alcatraz. Within Liberty Falls they brought back a fan favorite weapon known as the jet-gun. The jet-gun had been seen in BO2's Tranzit map and it was fairly lack-luster compared to the reenvisioning used within Liberty Falls. 

    Overall, BO6 is exactly what the community had hoped for coming off of a few lack-luster titles in the series. With the new mechanics and weapons in multiplayer freshening the battlefield, while the in depth story of zombies gets expounded upon in new and more creative locations, this will surely be a great year for Call of Duty fans to grind for hours on end with their friends.