Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - Review
I have had a love/hate relationship with the Call of Duty franchise over the many years that it has been rumbling along the video game landscape. My first interactions with the series came all the way back in 2003 with the first edition in the franchise surprisingly titled “Call Of Duty”, LAN parties (Gen Z’ers you might need to look this one up) were very much a thing and Call of Duty was pretty much one of the games religiously played at these magical gatherings.
Through the years the franchise has made some great strides as well as some serious mistakes (Infinite Warfare and Ghosts anyone?) Throughout the years COD also switched to a multi-developer model, with one team releasing the new game whilst the next team would be developing the next game in the series thus guaranteeing that virtually every year there would be a new addition to the franchise. This is one of my frustrations with the whole franchise and reasons for my love/hate relationship with the series. With multiple studios with different visions for the game releasing content every year then it becomes hard to create a consistent gameplay experience, many of the COD releases I love are hated by many others and vice versa, it creates a divide in the fanbase because you never know what to expect with any new release.
Infinity Ward struck gold with their 2019 release of Modern Warfare and the free Battle Royale mode Warzone, it is my absolute favorite online shooter bar none, the quality and detail, the vast amount of game modes and weapon customisation are just perfect, so much so that I hope that it was a “lightning in a bottle” moment for the long running series. It is with this in mind that I approached the next title in the series, Call Of Duty : Black Ops Cold War, developed by Treyarch and Raven software. Set in the 80s during the cold war a time of high tension between the United States of America and the at the time communist USSR, a time of agents and double agents, a time where as a young child I was convinced that someone was going to push that big red button and launch a nuke and destroy the world as I knew it. This is a time close to my heart as it was the time I grew up in and the time that shaped some of my still current world views and also tastes in music, it was with a strong sense of nostalgia that I booted up the game and looked forward to giving it a red hot go.
The campaign in Cold War is set around a bunch of secret government operatives trying to track down a soviet agent known simply as “Perseus” for many years Perseus has been considered dormant until recently where a plot involving blowing up Europe with a stolen American nuke is uncovered. Your crew is led by newcomer to the series Russell Adler, who looks like the battle scared, hard assed but calm and collected operative you would expect to lead such major missions. The start of the campaign sees you assembled in a briefing room when in walks The President of The United States Ronald Reagan, who gives you a rousing speech about how important this mission is to the future of the free world. The graphics (especially in the cutscenes) are of such high quality that seeing good ole Ronald on my TV delivering a speech to the team caused waves of nostalgia to wash over me, it was a pretty special moment for a video game, later on you even get to sit down at a table next to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Kremlin!
Cold War is the first game in the series to let you actually create your own character and while the character creation is far from something you would see in most modern games in regards to the way you look, this hardly matters due to the fact that you don’t see yourself in the campaign at all, you can choose your gender from male through to non-binary to make sure everybody in the game refers to you via your all-important pronouns though, which is great, it would be horrific if the whole mission to save the free world got disrupted by somebody's feelings being hurt due to lack of correct pronoun use. The interesting part of character creation comes from being able to flesh out your ‘psych profile’ with the options you choose here having the potential to significantly alter how you play the game, for instance I chose the options of a survivor with violent tendencies which gave me bonuses to both my health and the damage output of my weapons, both very handy bonuses to have. The campaign sees you trot the globe through several locations from Vietnam through to Cuba, blowing up things, mowing down enemies and causing massive explosions in the style that the Call of Duty franchise is known for. It is not all same ole’ same ole’ here though as some welcome new elements have been introduced.
You have a mission central of sorts which acts as a hub for starting missions and you can wander around and chit chat with other operatives in your squad gaining some insight into their back stories and so forth, however none of the dialogue choices have any major impacts on the way the story plays out. All of the missions and the two side missions I encountered are started through the evidence board in your hub, and by collecting various items of evidence (which also require a bit of detective work and code breaking) from the missions you play through you actually give yourself a better shot at completing the optional side missions 100% successfully, I cannot say if this has an impact at all on the story as a whole as I wasn’t able to complete it, but we will get to that later. One of my favorite missions in the campaign is a great showcase for what is hopefully the future direction of the series, it sees you infiltrating KGB headquarters allowing you to complete your objective in a variety of ways, similar to the hitman series of games.
You can do anything from planting evidence to frame another character all the way through to poisoning them to obtain the highly important keycard that allows you to progress on with your mission, sure the way you tackle the mission doesn’t lead to a change in the outcome at its conclusion, but still this felt like a big step forward for the franchise. The campaign is quite short, even if you do decide to tackle the optional side missions, I estimate that you could easily plow through the campaign in 3 to 4 hours if you tried hard enough, I say estimate because I was unable to finish what I presumed was the last mission of the campaign set in Cuba due to constant crashing, which even included one hard crash that completely turned off my series X, which was very hot to the touch at the time even though I had only been playing for an hour at that stage. Events like this are inexcusable in a Triple A title, sure problems like this can most likely be patched out, but that’s not the point, major crashes which shut down consoles should not be happening in any game release let alone at this price point.
Graphically Cold War is at times impressive in all its ray tracing glory, especially in cut scenes, the KGB headquarters map was another graphical highpoint for me, however the gun models seem to have had much less care taken with them and appear low detailed compared to Modern Warfare, the same can be said for the character models with some of them appearing very washed out and low detailed, whilst others have an acceptable level of graphical fidelity, this creates a jarring environment where low quality and high quality models co-exist in the same landscape practically screaming at the top of their lungs that more time was needed before this released. The same goes for sound, whilst the music and general explosions and gunfire related symphony are okay, they do sound muted and never quite reach the amazing heights of its predecessor, Modern Warfare.
But who cares about the campaign right? Everybody is here for multi-player! This is a statement I really can’t disagree with as the meat and bones of any installment in the COD franchise is its various multiplayer modes, unfortunately in the case of Cold War you may be disappointed, especially if you are expecting the plethora of modes offered in previous games.
Sure, you have your standard modes from kill confirmed through to domination and hardpoint along with a VIP mode that tasks your team with protecting a VIP (with one of you randomly chosen to play the VIP) and escorting them all the way through to exfil thus winning you the round, of course the objective of the opposite team is to ruin your day by killing the VIP and now allowing exfiltration to happen. This is a nice mode to have in the rotation but I can’t say that I enjoyed it very much especially playing with randoms online, as due to lack of communication and everybody including the VIP running off in different directions rather than strategising a plan it mostly just results in a frustrating version of team death match, I could however see this mode being a lot of fun if you are playing with a coordinated group of friends or even in a competitive e-sports environment. At release there are only a handful of operatives you can play as (presumably more will be added over time) and due to the era that the game is set in there is also a distinct lack of guns and attachments available in the game, I am presuming due to trying to remain true to the time period, however this is a baffling step due to the fact that during the campaign the game takes several steps on occasion that are from reality.
It would have been nice if they could have added some fictional weapons to the arsenal here which could have been justified as secret weapons that never actually saw the light of day. Perhaps I have just been spoiled by previous games in the franchise, but the choice here seems lackluster even when it comes to skins and weapon charms. The gunplay itself is also a huge step away from the weighted and punchy feel of its predecessor, in Cold War movement seems very floaty and the guns really don’t have any punch to them sonically and just feel weightless when fired. I really did not find many enjoyable moments as I played through the modes in multi-player and this is most likely because Modern Warfare outshines it in every way. Zombies does make a return this year though, which should please the cult-like brigade of fans that it has, and whilst zombies has never been a favorite mode of mine I found myself having much more fun in this mode than standard multi-player, the added touch this year on being able to vote as a team on whether to exfil and escape with your life after certain conditions are met made for a nice touch too, unfortunately though at launch there is only one map available here, so once again you really aren't spoiled for choice.
It’s hard not to be really disappointed with Cold War and this is especially the case due to its predecessor being such a fantastic game. Cold War really does suffer from a lack of polish from the gameplay through to the gun models it really just does feel like it has all been hastily put together and shoved out the door in time for the release of the next gen series of consoles. This is without even mentioning the horrific bugs that are apparently overheating and shutting down consoles and the massive frame rate drops that I experienced during play. Apart from zombies and a few moments during the campaign there really aren’t that many redeeming features here, even at the heart of the game in the multi-player modes the lack of items and unlocks left me uninterested in progressing through the ranks. Hopefully the massive bugs can be squashed and more content is added to the game as time goes by but in all reality the platform the game is built on is wonky and sometimes the only way to fix that is to knock it all down and start again, the rumors I’m seeing indicate that the next installment will be a sequel to Modern Warfare, which if true, honestly has me excited. My advice is to skip over Cold War, keep playing Modern Warfare and wait for the sequel.
The Score
6.0
Review code provided by Activision
The Pros
+If you are a millennial the setting feels very nostalgic and most likely close to your heart
+Graphics in cut scenes are fantastic
+Some nice baby steps taken with innovation in mission design
The Cons
-Combat and gunplay feels floaty and doesn’t deliver a punch
-Graphically and sonically the game is a mixed bag, the gap in quality feels jarring
-Lack of choices, in maps, guns, game modes and customisation
-Game breaking bugs and crashes including hard resets and console overheating
-Lack of something to work for in multi-player makes progression mostly meaningless
