Black Ops Cold War - Review and Xbox One X 4K Gameplay

Call of Duty is back in 2020 with Black Ops Cold War! We've got a gripping single-player campaign, fun but familiar multiplayer, and a reimagined zombies mode.

It’s available for PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, PS4, Xbox One and PC. I played it on the Xbox One X.

The campaign takes place in the early 80s at the height of the Cold War between Russia and the United States, and it’s your job to stop nuclear war from happening. It fits in-between Black Ops 1 and 2, but the story stands on its own. It still makes sense to players who didn’t play the older games, but if you did, you’ll appreciate some of the callbacks. Woods and Mason are here, supporting the main playable character, Bell.

You get to customize Bell a little bit, choosing their first and last name, gender, and two perks, like additional health or increased bullet damage. Sadly, you don’t ever get to see what your character looks like, which feels like a step down from Black Ops 3’s character customization.

There’s also no voice acting for your character, which is disappointing. Silent protagonists aren’t new to COD, but this game gives you dialog options that allow you to make decisions, and it feels out of place when your character doesn’t say anything.

The campaign takes you all over the world. From the rivers of Vietnam, to the rainy streets of Berlin and the immaculate office buildings of Moscow. There’s a lot to see, and it takes about 5 or 6 hours to beat.

If you enjoyed the twists and turns of Black Ops 1, you’re going to like Cold War’s story. This is definitely a story worth playing the campaign for. Like Black Ops 2, this game has several endings, and you’ll want to see them all.

The graphics don’t look quite as gorgeous as last year’s Modern Warfare, but it still looks pretty decent. It’s just that Modern Warfare raised the bar so high with its graphics and animations, and Cold War is a step below that.

Multiplayer:

The multiplayer brings us our favorite modes like Team Deathmatch and Domination, the usual perks and scorestreaks, and a new 40 player mode called Dirty Bomb. There’s 10 teams of 4 players, and each team fights to collect pieces of radioactive material around the map to deposit at different locations. It’s similar to Plunder in Warzone, but the maps are much smaller.

There’s only 8 maps at launch, which is disappointing, and not all of them are great. But there’s a few gems, and they’re adding free new maps every few months.

They’ve also added the gunsmith from Modern Warfare, so you can customize your weapons with up to 5 attachments.

At launch, there were 14 operators, with more being added throughout the year. There’s a lot of characters from the campaign who aren’t here, so I imagine we’ll see Mason, Hudson, and others in a Battle Pass in the future.

Even though it doesn’t feel like a radically new experience doesn’t mean it’s bad. I’m probably going to put lots of time into this game over the next year, especially if they start adding better maps as time goes on.

Zombies:

The zombies mode is back, and it’s a little more realistic, a little more grounded compared to where it was in previous games.

The starter pistol is no more. You can now choose your own loadout, just like multiplayer. You also can play as any of the multiplayer operators. And your weapons share levels and attachments between multiplayer and zombies, a big improvement from Black Ops 3 and 4.

In Cold War Zombies, it’s more clear what you need to do to move on to the next step of the level. It was way too obscure in previous games. I think people who might have been turned off of zombies for being too unwelcoming in the past might enjoy this.

The game ships with only one map, Die Maschine, which takes the classic map, Nacht Der Untoten, and expands on it. It’s a great map, but we’re going to need more maps to keep it from getting stale.

Black Ops Cold War tells a thrilling story in its single-player campaign, and backs it up with solid gameplay mechanics in multiplayer and zombies.

At the same time, it feels like there’s a lack of content in the game compared to previous years, especially with a price increase to $70 for the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions. There’s only 8 standard multiplayer 6v6 maps at launch, and only 1 zombie map. Activision promises a full year of free maps and modes, so the game is going to slowly start to get bigger. But as of now, you might get tired of seeing some of the same maps over and over again. If you’re interested in an exciting story campaign and want to spend some time mastering zombies and multiplayer, I don’t think you’ll regret it. If you’re looking for more polish and content and haven’t played a Call of Duty game in a while, you might want to check out Modern Warfare 2019 first.

Music courtesy of the amazing Mixkit: https://mixkit.co