Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 (Review)

So on the next stop of "how can we rehash what was already good", we have Call Of Duty. Now it's easy to roast CoD, they usually tend to make it easy. CoD hasn't been good for sometime. The lack of real inspiration from any of the three studios has kind of lead us to this path. Everyone is saying Call of Duty is BACK BABY! But is it really? Well if you couldn't guess, my answer is, well not really.

Of course that's the short version, and the version that didn't play for nearly 20 hours. Look, I love Treyarch, and at one point, I loved Call of Duty. But let's put aside the miscues of other CoD games, and just focus on this one, and the other Treyarch made versions. So first, is the lack of a single player campaign. Now many have come to the defense of this, saying "It hasn't been good for a decade!" Which I will continue to point at 2012, with none other than Black Ops 2. Black Ops 2 was THE best CoD, hands down, fucking fight me mate. Single player had multiple endings, multiplayer was near perfect, with so many of the maps being iconic and just so well made. Guns were great, and Zombies hadn't yet lost it's appeal. Even the original Black Ops story was pretty damn good, even if I hated the MP. So no campaign did bother me a lot. These games were some of Treyarch's best work. They also made the fantastic World at War game. Black Ops 3 wasn't as good, with a step back from 2. However, 4 is a leap back from even 3. It left me asking "what the fuck?"

Black Ops 4 tries to remedy this, I'm not sure if it was added after the backlash, or if it was always planned, but with the Specialist HQ, they sort of copy Rainbow Six Siege. Sadly, kind of like with Assassin's Creed, this will be a bit of a theme you'll notice. A sort of callback to when the franchise was best, rather than moving it forward. A lot of ideas borrowed from other games that just did it better as well. Once again, I'll reiterate that it's not a bad thing, as long as you make it your own, and you move the ideas forward. BO4 does do this enough by putting their twist on it, but with some of the rumors coming out that they scrapped the first version of this game almost half way through feels true. If this isn't true, I can't imagine what they did with their two and half, to three years. But focusing back up, the "story" has cutscenes that are presented to you, to give context to the different operators. You get an idea of where they wanted to go with the story, and just never got the opportunity to actually tell it. It feels like wasted story board material, sadly enough, as what is presented, focuses back up on characters from BO and BO2. The reason BO3 didn't resonate with me, and maybe even many others, is because the first two focused on the same characters and were able to flesh out backstories and motivations really well. But than to just toss them aside, without harkening to them in really any way, and moving forward with new characters that were not fleshed out, shoved in a convoluted story, was always head scratching. So it was nice to see the callbacks, but once again, sadly felt wasted.

So let's move on.

The thing that ultimately replacing the story mode, Blackout, how is it really? Well, it's alright. Fun, but, kind of lacking in many ways.

Look, it's one of the most stable BR games we have on the market right now. Probably why people are flocking to it so quickly. Yes, it captures that "just one more match" feeling perfectly. Call of Duty's gunplay, mixed with if PUBG got it's head out of it's ass, and I can see why people love it. The problem for me? It doesn't add anything new. Fortnight has an everchanging map as well as building. PUBG has multiple maps and had vehicles first. Royale Realm, a PC only BR game right now, has classes. Blackout is just PUBG with far more polish.

The rewards and progression is also a bit whack. Blackout's progression at this date, is subpar at best. It feels tacked on, as progression will only tick up if you place high, complete challenges, or get kills. If you don't do anything, you won't go anywhere, and the only thing to unlock are skins. You don't feel nearly as rewarded as you would playing Fortnite in the same amount of time.

What's next on this bumpy ride? Multiplayer did both fairly good things, fairly bad things, and has yet to fix one glaring hole that bothers me that most don't call out enough.

So let's take the good first. More health is the biggest one, and though most are upset about this, it actually made me happy. CoD has been turning into an instant shooter, an even worse version of what most would dub a twitch shooter in my eyes. This pulled back on that a little. It does make the skill gap a bit different, in what I see as a good thing. However, there is a negative spin with this. With more health, AR's and Submachineguns are DOMINATING in MP even worse than usual, with their heavy hitting, and large magazines. Overall, with more health, it makes it more tactical. Another thing that was rather positive was the reintroduction of specialists. It made me laugh when some people were like "OMG! Specialists!" But they were in BO3 too. However, they bring them back here, and some got retuned, some are new, and for the most part, they are quite a bit of fun. Big issue here though, grenades were abandoned to just the different classes. Some classes don't have any grenades, which makes them a bit weaker than to others. While yes, you get less grenade spam, it also means less options to get players who DO camp out of tight spots.

Health regen being take out was a great thing too. Paying attention to your health, and making sure you heal is another important part that has tactical play to it as well. Heal too early, and you'll get shot up with no heal item for 5-6 seconds, which means the world in most games. Heal too late, and you'll give some lucky player the easiest kill of the night. Now on to the bad.

Maps are too fucking small. Still. This is the glaring hole for me. I get it, the maps don't have to be the size of Battlefield maps, but they are still getting smaller! Groups of 6 on a 4x4 map are just running around like a heavy metal moshpit stomping on anyone that gets in their way. Teams are ridiculously unbalanced for the most part. I think I had a handful of matches where the games were really close, but for the most part, it was an ass kicking from one side or the other.

Weapon loadouts are at an all time low. About 25-26 weapons make up the arsenal, when Black Ops 2 had 36. That's a big difference, and it gives more options to play differently. More options, gives players different looks and playstyles, nothing is wrong with that. Perks? BO4 has 12? BO2 had 16. Sure there might have been some that were quite a bit weaker than others, but really, they could have been tweaked and balanced, not just given up on. Which really points another worrying thing, the lack of a real identity. In a lot of ways, this is a "best of" playlist of all the other Blacks Ops games. 14 maps, and like 5 of them are from Black Ops 1 & 2. Remastered for Black Ops 4 to help fill the roster, which to me, is fine. But if you're going to put in 1/3 of the maps from other games, why not go a step further and bump it up to a silly amount? I know, it sounds like I'm being greedy, but really, it's me wanting to see someone, anyone push the boundaries. I'm mad Battlefield V is starting us out with 8 maps. so of course I'm made that we got 14, than we will get another 12 over the course of the next year for BO4, is that really enough? Specialists come back like I said from BO3. But they didn't expand or add a few more to give us more options. This game could have been stuffed with content, especially with a lack of SP, but instead, it just has enough. That's disappointing. There isn't much to say about Zombies from me. I think it's the most story based we have gotten, sure, but I'm just so burned out. Don't get wrong, if you love Zombies, you'll find that there are SO many Easter Eggs to find, that's great, but nothing pushes the mode to make people like me sit back and go "WOAH!". I know they are suppose to be fixing some of the bugs here soon, if they haven't already, but there were a ton of bugs and crashes at launch, and for the first week of the game, which was a bit brutal, as well as a bit of a turn off.

Honestly, I can bash so much of the game, but it really comes down to you. Are you okay with removing Single Player, for 2 more Zombie maps and a Blackout Mode, worth $60? This game really needed to not hold it's punches in my eyes, especially cutting something like a SP campaign, when we have great games that got better, with that SP. Games like DOOM and Titanfall 2, and even BF1, showed you can have a solid, well done campaign, while delivering on that MP. I guess to me, this isn't Treyarch's best work. I know they can so much better. My final verdict is... 6/10.

This is no 8/10 or 9/10 like some are out there preaching. It can be fun, but man, for me, it was pretty frustrating too. I saw the potential, but like so many other times, it was just missed. I hope they continue to improve on the good things I pointed out, and continue to improve on the things I pointed out that were bad to me. I love Treyarch, but Emily posed a really solid question to me, maybe they are just burnt out on CoD? It's fair. Maybe they are? We all know Activison can force people on projects far longer than they should be, just look at poor Beenox and Spiderman. But anyways, I'll talk to you guys soon. Red Dead Redemption 2 time is upon us, and I want to talk about Daredevil season 3 too soon. I love you guys, and I hope to see you soon.