Playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s multiplayer this week I felt something I hadn’t felt when dashing about in Call of Duty for a little while: just ever so slightly bored.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 review
- Developer: Treyarch, Raven Software
- Publisher: Activision
- Platform: Played on PS5
- Availability: Out now on PC (Steam), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S (Game Pass)
It’s a strange one, because in isolation, Black Ops 6’s multiplayer is actually very good. The headline addition this year is what the developers at Treyarch and co-developer Raven Software have called Omnimovement. I’m a big fan of this. Less so the actual Omnimovement itself, which is perfectly fine (in short: it’s quite fun and a bit silly, and it suits the whiplash rhythm and exaggerated tone of what Black Ops 6 is going for this year). I’m more into the idea that we’re back to giving actually-quite-subtle gameplay mechanics a ridiculous, proper noun name again. All of a sudden it’s 2013 again, discovering Call of Duty’s answer to the threat posed by Battlefield 4’s Levolution.
The gameplay impact is, as mentioned, ultimately quite low-key, but also undoubtedly positive. The basic premise of Omnimovement is that you can now sprint in all directions, rather than just forwards, and combined with both sliding and diving (each introduced to the series a little while ago now), it makes for some wonderfully silly traversal. Regularly you’ll find yourself ambushed by players skidding out from behind crates and popping up over waist-high cover like an increasingly comical game of whack-a-mole. It’s the fastest, most hectic, and most relentless CoD’s multiplayer has been in the post-Infinite Warfare era, when a handful of die-hards demanded the series get back to “boots on the ground”.
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That frenetic speed is enhanced – and exacerbated – by Black Ops 6’s maps. Again, this is something that works wonderfully in isolation: map design in multiplayer is generally excellent. With Subsonic, we have a tight map based around a single, central hangar with a stealth bomber parked inside, a ring road of sorts and just four entrances, but others are even more miniscule, dovetailing nicely with the new movement system designed around reactivity, fluidity and speed. At that truly tiny end of the scale, it gets openly comical with Stakeout, a map based in a single, one-story apartment of maybe eight rooms and a balcony with barely enough room to beat a rug. It’s one of the smallest CoD maps I’ve ever played. You won’t survive for more than five or 10 seconds at a time, the entire interior an utter whirlwind of sprinting, diving, sliding, bullets, and explosives of all kinds.