Here is a statement of fact that I am not entirely proud of: I have played every Call of Duty game since the series launched in 2003. I’ve been there through the extremely good times (Call of Duty 4) and the extremely not good (Call of Duty: Roads to Victory). And while I may have cringed at some of the narrative decisions, the casual bigotry rife on the online multiplayer servers, and the general “America, fuck yeah!” mentality of the entire series, I have always come back.
In that time, I’ve seen all the many attempts to tweak the core feel of the games – from perks to jetpacks (thanks Advanced Warfare!) – but having spent a weekend in the multiplayer beta test for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, I think developer Treyarch may have stumbled on the best so far. It is called omni-movement.
In short, this seemingly minor addition allows players to sprint and dive in every direction, not just forward, and with a certain amount of aftertouch – so you can slide around corners or turn in mid-air. I can appreciate that being able to run sideways or launch yourself backwards over a sofa doesn’t sound that important in a game that moves at such a fast pace anyway, but it really looks to have changed things. The beta test has only featured three of the full game’s 16 online multiplayer maps, and just a smattering of the online game modes, but already it is ridiculous fun.
At any given moment in a match, there are people flying everywhere. There are players diving through windows, across hallways, off the balcony of the ludicrously swish modern penthouse apartment in the Skyline map. They are sliding on their backs along the highly polished floor of the video rental store in the Rewind map, they are coming at each other from multiple heights, swerving out of the path of gunfire or remote control bomb cars at the last possible second. At crunch moments, it feels like a giant John Woo shootout – balletic and bloody in equal proportions.
But rather than chaotic and unbalanced, which is how the jetpack era titles such as Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare could feel, it actually seems to be bringing added depth and variety to the moment-to-moment experience. You can slide under gunfire, giving you a way out of previously lethal encounters. You can also get really quickly into a varied range of cover positions, which is incredibly useful in modes such as Domination and Hardpoint where you have to occupy and guard certain areas. I’m finding that I’m lasting longer between spawns and I’m able to think in a more spatially interesting way.
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How has this taken so long to come about? In a recent interview with the gaming site VGC, Treyarch associate design director Matt Scronce and director of production Yale Miller spoke about how the game’s unusually long four-year development cycle (CoD games usually get two years at most) meant the team was able to experiment with fundamental elements, and also polish the new features they were toying with. Omni-movement came out of that process. The team even read white papers from the Air Force Academy on how fast human beings can sprint backwards.
Elsewhere, the game feels solid rather than wildly innovative. Skyline is the most fun map, with its sleek multi-level interiors and hidden air ducts, while Scud is your standard Middle Eastern CoD map, with sandy trenches, caves and a wrecked radar station. Rewind is a deserted strip mall with shop interiors, fast food joints and car parks, and a very long sightline along the store fronts that might as well be called Sniper’s Avenue. The new game mode, Kill Order, is a familiar old-school FPS classic – one player on each team is designated a high value target and the opponents have to take them out to score. It leads to extremely bunched skirmishes and a lot of mass chases around the map with the HVTs attempting to hide in little nooks and crannies – sort of like a Benny Hill sketch but with high grade military weapons.
There are a few new weapons, including the Ames 85, a full auto assault rifle resembling the M16 and the frenzied Jackal PDW, the sort of teeny Skorpion-style machine pistol that Arnie wielded throughout his 1980s action movies. The latter has an alarming fire rate, but is also accurate to long distances so it’s absolutely dominating beta matches – it’s highly likely to get nerfed to heck before the game releases. The most controversial addition is likely to be Body Shield, a new ability that lets you take an opposing player hostage by creeping up behind them and double tapping the melee button. The victim can then be used as a human shield for a few seconds, and Treyarch has said you’ll be able to actually talk to the hostage via the headset mic – which will inevitably lead to the most unpleasant homophobic trolling you can imagine. Just what Call of Duty needs.
Black Ops 6 is looking like a strong addition to the series, at least in terms of the multiplayer. I’m not proud that I spent an entire weekend gleefully reenacting my favourite scenes from the movie Hard Boiled, leaping sideways across modernist interiors whilst firing shiny fetishised rifles at strangers. But I’ve been doing this for 20 years and, somehow, I’m not ready to stop just yet.
