Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Review

Call of Duty is one of the most notorious video game franchises and carries a reputation as one of the most acclaimed and addicting multiplayer series. When Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 was announced, many were annoyed that the sub-series within the franchise known for telling great stories would abandon single-player for a multiplayer-only experience.

It delivers a by-the-numbers Call of Duty experience that will satisfy those who love the multiplayer experience but won't win over those who left the series behind or were never interested in the franchise.

Treyarch attempts to create a narrative for the specialist within Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 while simultaneously delivering a tutorial. Specialist HQ provides an in-depth understanding of each of the ten classes and their backgrounds, and after completing the training, it pushes the specialist into a local match against NPCs. Each specialist can earn up to 3 stars, with increasingly harder NPCs, but what's problematic is that the player has to watch the tutorial video introducing the mode every time.

Outside of the training, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is separated into three modes—competitive multiplayer with your traditional modes such as Team Deathmatch, Free-for-All, Control, and many more. Blackout is the game's battle royale mode, and Zombies offers three maps and a Rush mode where players compete in all three maps.

If you're new to zombies, a beginner mode provides easier handicaps such as increased health and vulnerable zombies. Each option has its own leveling and experience system with unique unlocks tailored for that mode. 

The traditional competitive mode is as you expect. Players compete in a variety of multiplayer matches to earn experience and unlock new weapons, attachments, and cosmetics items. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 uses the Pick 10 system, where players choose ten items for their character, allowing much more customization. When playing local, everything is unlocked, which is a nice touch.

The specialist system has been built on Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 with more unique elements for each class. For example, Firebreak can use a Reactor Core to damage enemies even behind the cover, and Seraph can deploy a tactical beacon for everyone to use. Players can select the same class but must coordinate if they wish to take advantage of the other's abilities.

One player can use Recon to search for targets and then use Ruin's Grav Slam to surprise a group of unaware enemies. Everything is on a timer, including grenades, which prevents players from stocking up charges by gathering points like Scorestreaks.

The most significant change to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4  is how health is handled. Unlike previous games, where it regenerates over time, here, health is separated into brackets. Health will only regenerate to the current bracket and players must use a healing Stim Shot to regenerate health, however, if you take damage while it's healing the effects are lost. This can work to the player's benefit as you can quickly regenerate health in a sticky situation, but it also works against you if the cooldown isn't up.

Multiplayer modes are separated into categories: Featured, Core, and Hardcore. Players can choose a specific mode or a rotation type that mixes other modes without having swap screens. With the exception of Blackout, all modes are available for local and split-screen play.

The competitive multiplayer isn't groundbreaking, but it's a more refined version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. Bullet impact is strong, the weight of your soldier running is noticeable, and earning experience for new items is just as addicting. It's what we've come to expect from the franchise, and it's done just as well as you would presume. 

Blackout is Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's newest mode. Capitalizing on the popular battle royale genre, 100 players dive onto a large map with up to 3 other allies as the map shrinks; here, it's called The Collapse. As expected, players start off with nothing, slowly build their arsenal with scavenged equipment, and try to survive.

The map is vast, with lots of options for ambushing targets and providing support to allies. Unlike more traditional Call of Duty, players have access to vehicles and consumable items that make you aware of your surroundings and make less noise.

The interface has been customized to provide players with a quick way to drop and customize their loadout. It's nothing groundbreaking compared to other battle royale titles, but it plays well, and those who love the genre will find many reasons to keep playing.

The last option available is Zombies. As always, up to 4 players survive waves of increasingly more powerful zombies while gathering points to earn new weapons, upgrades, and unlocking pathways. Like past games in the genre, you're given no direction and have to find the correct path through trial and error while surviving the horde. While some take enjoyment in finding out the cryptic clues, it can be maddening when the NPCs tell you to locate a specific item and only search everywhere to no avail.  

You're given more options on how to survive, such as classes that yield different benefits, potions that generate buffs, and weapon modifications earned by using the weapon. Grenades regenerate based on how many zombies you kill, and players have access to a temporary power unique to the class.

This includes Scepter of Ra, Hammer of Valhalla, Charkrams of Vengeance, and more. Some are unlocked through leveling. You can further customize your powers by changing the effects of the temporary boosts littered throughout the level. Instead of reviving, you can choose to discharge an electrical burst or any other ability from the pool. 

The campaigns themselves are set in unique locations with different enemy types. Voyage of Despair takes place on the Titanic, IX is set in a time-altered version of Rome, and Blood of the Death is a remastered version of the classic map.

Each one is well-designed and carries that intense zombie action popularized first in Call of Duty: World at War, but it's much of the same. If you find yourself struggling, a beginner mode is available until you reach level 20.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 looks and sounds amazing. Regardless of what mode you choose, the developers ensured that each map, character, and gun was intricately designed. The menu itself features some of the most detailed character models I've seen in the franchise. Sound design shares a similar quality with players able to detect where players are based on their footsteps and what gun is being fired if you're dedicated enough.

There are 20 primary and seven secondary weapons to choose from, each with attachments. Knives now take up a secondary slot and must be equipped to use it. Strangely, there's no firing range to test these guns out. You can choose to partake in a local match to try out different combinations, but a firing range to try guns out would've been ideal.

As you might expect, there were graphical issues present, but nothing too game-breaking. However, during my experience, I would occasionally get booted to the Xbox One dashboard when playing competitive multiplayer.

In addition, during Specialist HQ missions, my game wouldn't connect to the match due to failure to connect with the "host" despite being a local match against NPCs, forcing me to rewatch the entire tutorial of how Team Deathmatch works. Coupled with this are the several hard crashes I faced while playing, and it became a game within a game to see when the next crash would happen.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is what you would expect from the franchise without the single-player. The multiplayer modes give exactly what is expected, with refined mechanics to make Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 stand out from the rest of the franchise. Blackout offers what fans of battle royale come to expect with a Call of Duty theme to it. If you enjoyed the multiplayer from past games, then Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Weeks provides a week's worth of enjoyment.