“Bringing back memories, yet?”: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Campaign Review

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 by Activision, images by me

With the announcement that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 would be the first entry in the blockbuster franchise to launch day one on Game Pass, gamers knew it would only be a matter of time before our monthly fee went up. In a year where literally everything  I pay for has gotten noticeably more expensive, fair or unfair, the quality of Activision’s latest would be used to justify the price increase (it pains me to say this statement isn’t an exaggeration–every streaming service is bleeding me for a couple extra dollars AND I’m dropping 30 more a month for auto insurance AND 30 more for health insurance–just another tax for still being alive, I guess). Add Microsoft’s layoffs at regular intervals throughout the year, people openly questioning the $68.7 billion dollar acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a new Jason Schreir book, and Indiana Jones still a month out, Call of Duty arrives as a distraction. It’s a flashbang lobbed from Redmond, Washington that has come to a rest inches from our toes.

Xbox needs it to be good. 

If the title of this article didn’t give it away, this is a review exclusively for the single player campaign (which makes up roughly ⅓ of the overall package–even less if you include Warzone or the previous campaigns accessible through the same launcher). As much as I enjoy the other modes in short bursts, I have no idea what makes for a “good” multiplayer Call of Duty experience in 2024 and can’t speak for the people who have made it their religion. I’m even less well-equipped to discuss Zombies. The evolution of its scale, scope, and stories has been interesting to watch but the most I ever engaged with it was when the mode debuted in World at War–in 2008. 

And because it’s not exactly peanuts, I should address one last elephant in the room. When we got that first reveal, most of us began to operate on the assumption that this entry would consume over 300GBs of storage (for reference, that’s almost a full Xbox Series S or half a Ps5). As games continue to get bigger and more readily available through services like Game Pass, hard drive space is as precious as gold for console gamers (it always has been, when Metal Gear Solid 4 released it would install one chapter at a time and overwrite it as you progressed through the story–and that was 5GBs, I’ve since downloaded single updates for games that are 50+). I’m happy to report our fears were exaggerated. By a la carte choosing only the story and multiplayer, I was able to cut the install to a more reasonable 137GBs. If you focus on what you actually plan to play and erase as needed, it isn’t any more egregious than other AAA games (though still not convenient). 

Anyway, let’s talk about Black Ops 6

The Black Ops subseries of Call of Duty has regularly used real world political figures and historical events to weave its conspiracies, and while not always successful, you can expect the same pageantry here. The year is 1991 and I am three years old. The Cold War is over–which gives the characters an open invitation to shout things like “the Cold War is over.” We play as fossils from a bygone era, our international hijinks will not be tolerated. 

Oh, what’s that you say? We need to be tolerated just a little because the CIA has been compromised by a secret paramilitary organization known as “The Pantheon.” They seem to be developing a biological weapon and our task is to stop the impending attack and find those responsible (and then probably shoot them a lot). Character names get thrown around but you’re not exactly going to break a sweat following along even if you haven’t played previous Black Ops games. Why you’re in a certain place doing a thing a certain way isn’t subtle or shrouded in mystery. It’s a competent action movie that wants to be a psychological thriller. Like a flimsy pool you buy at the local hardware store in the heat of summer–it’s shallow, but it works. 

Your first steps towards vanquishing the Pantheon (the story is very clear that it’s THE Pantheon and not just any old Pantheon) is dedicated to building a team as we build out our safehouse. I have a soft spot for upgradeable bases in games and finding one here was a pleasant surprise. The old manor you revisit between set-pieces has its own secrets to uncover. Piles of cash you acquire on missions can be used to pay for permanent perks like more health or taking less damage from explosions. You also have the ability to interact with your squad members as they stir stew or rhythmically bob their heads to their Walkmans–but don’t expect more than one or two sentences out of them. This is, lamentably, not a dating simulator. 

The selective vow of silence is ironic because when you’re on a job, whether they’re by your side or keeping in touch over the radio, your brothers in arms have a habit of talking too much. The developers have constructed huge, intricate levels begging to be explored but, because of the thriller genre’s artificial ticking clock, I always felt I was being rushed to the next waypoint. Karen David whispering in my ear not to take a shot because there’s an enemy lurking just outside my scope’s FOV is good, hearing every variation of “hurry up” is not. This carries into the final stretch of the campaign as reality begins to bend. Even your hallucinations are nags. 


The story spans 11 total missions and they’re easily the most involved and experimental they’ve ever been. Variety is the calling card of the best Call of Duty games (now you’re in a ghillie suit, now you’re in an AC-130, now you’re shooting up an airport) and Black Ops 6 doesn’t lack variety. An early job has you sneaking past security at a fundraising event for Bill Clinton and completing different objectives that lead to different conclusions. Another leans into survival horror both in its structure and content. Probably the highlight for me is set in the dunes of Iraq and goes full open world with vehicles, tagging enemies on a spy camera, and clearing settlements. It’s not Metal Gear Solid V–but it’s not NOT Metal Gear Solid V.


Most levels have a pretty defined three acts and it does wonders for the pacing. You’ll complete a section entirely crouched and then be playing Time Crisis (literally, one chapter begins exiting a vehicle skid straight into a firefight). There are lockpicking mini games and logic puzzles to parse keypad combinations. You can hide bodies and (clunkily) close doors. Calling it a grittier James Bond is an accurate tonal comparison–especially when you’re playing poker or sniping bodyguards from a bathroom ceiling vent. 


It’s a good time–but it’s not perfect. I once blew my cover and heard a henchman two dining rooms over boldly announce he was going to throw a Molotov cocktail. Maybe see if you handle me by more conventional means before lobbing an incendiary device in your fancy restaurant? Someone is going to dock you a Michelin star for that. Just kidding–the destruction is disappointingly minimal. The air will fill with gun smoke and glass but soda cans stay sealed and billiard balls remain racked. 


These blips of strangeness, flaws in Call of Duty’s body armor, add up. Low hanging fruit? Sure, but the literal velvet ropes during a stealth section are hanging so low my operative could step over them if the devs hadn’t deactivated my jump button. One enemy reveal made me laugh out loud (honestly, one of my favorite parts) while another reveal when the narrative is struggling with darker material made me laugh harder (awful). Picking and choosing what counts as “realistic” is silly in a game where the facial animations are so impressive I can pinpoint the moment the characters realize they’ve been betrayed (graphics and performance are near immaculate on Series X), but the little blemishes tell me that immersion was probably never the goal, only that good time I mentioned above. There’s nothing wrong with that, 90% of games are meant purely as entertainment, but at no point in Black Ops 6 will you forget that you are, in fact, playing a video game. 

All the momentum it builds is dependent on what’s going to happen next, and for a project that employs this storytelling strategy, the ending falls flat. I’ve stopped enjoying being a participant in dream sequences with impossible architecture suspended over a void and the worst thing Call of Duty consistently does is ask you to defend an objective until you’ve killed enough anonymous soldiers. The finale manages to commit both of these sins and absolutely beat them to death. While these sections maybe only make up 10% of the total runtime, it’s a boring 10%. When the rest of the missions are so hell-bent on trying new things, saying something is more of the same is heavy criticism. 

But from the moment you start pulling the trigger and experience how the guns feel, you’re strapped into that roller coaster. I kept coming back every night until I finished and there was never any doubt in my mind that would be the case. If you’ve been away from the franchise or are curious about the ads that have flooded every commercial break for the last two months, Black Ops 6 is the perfect five to eight hour experiment to see what all the hype is about. 


After all, if you’re a Game Pass subscriber, you’ve already paid for it. 


76/100

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