I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to say about Black Ops 6 because I’m conflicted and confused. On one hand there are glimpses of Treyarch's magic that shine through in Black Ops 6, but on the other hand there are some glaring issues that just get in the way of enjoying the game. I’m left scratching my head wondering how many of the original Treyarch developers are even left at this point. I find it hard to believe that this game came from the same people that gave us games like Black Ops 4 and Cold War.
The core foundation of the game is good, so there is hope but man there’s just so much that gets in the way of me enjoying this game. The first thing we obviously have to talk about is the map designs. Now after playing the beta I was already less than happy about the map design in the game. Every map felt small with very little room to breath, horrible angles and very little map flow. Then Treyarch put out a tweet explaining the map sizes and saying there would be a variety of map sizes at launch. To be honest I was skeptical because if that were the case, why did we only see small maps at launch? Why would they only put tiny maps in for the beta knowing full well that this is a big marketing opportunity for the game. We all know the beta isn’t really a beta in the sense that they’re not looking for feedback to change but rather it’s just a promotion and a way to drive pre orders and early sales. Which, fair enough, it’s a smart business move. But it’s Treyarch, the best dev team for Call of duty so I gave them the benefit of the doubt when they said there would be a variety of map sizes at launch. Now that the game is here it just doesn’t seem to be the case. The way the majority of these maps are designed forces you into claustrophobic fights every second of the match. We may have a handful of maps that aren’t pocket sized. The only maps I would classify as medium sized are Vault, Scud, Red Card and Protocol which have their own issues i’ll get into in a minute. My main complaint is that the majority of the maps just don’t make sense for the pace of this game nor do they promote fluid gameplay. Every map plays like some variation of shipment and i’m sitting here wondering, is this really the future of call of duty. I’ve been a vocal opponent to tactical gameplay mechanics and always prefer more arcade styles of shooter games. But this is a whole new level of fast paced action. I’m also struggling to understand the philosophy behind making so many of the maps small. We already have face off which is 6v6 on the smallest maps imaginable, so who in the fuck thought it was a good idea to make the core 6v6 maps small as well? I hate to complain, I really do. I’ve been trying so hard to be constructive and not negative. But after watching Modern Warfare 2019 destroy call of duty and rip out almost every feature of the game I liked, only to turn around and have them add those features back 5 years later I have a chip on my shoulder. If you’ve been following me on this channel for a bit, you know I’m a big fan of black ops cold war and i’m a Treyarch fanboy in general. I’ve patiently waited through Vanguard, MW22 and Mw23 for Treyarch’s next game. And as it stands right now this just doesn’t feel like the Treyarch that built all the other black ops games. It seems like this is just continuing the trend from last years game modern warfare 3 were so many of the DLC maps in later season were just shipment plus sized maps. I have to ask, is this really what people want to play? Is this what call of duty is now? I mentioned the medium sized maps have their own problems earlier. I actually think Vault is one of the most solid maps in the game and should be the gold standard going forward but the main issue I have with these maps is that again they just have the balance and flow wrong. These maps typically have campy buildings or rooms in the center of the map and then very long wide open spaces around them. And that leads to again the map having no flow and no flank routes. It just feels weird. You’re either forced to go through the buildings and have to check 16 corners or sprint in a paranoid fashion across the open spaces to get into the action. When I look back to Black Ops Cold War we had amazing post launch maps that got the balance just right. Honestly in my opinion Moscow from day one is a perfect 10/10 map and I would put it up there in the call of duty map hall of fame. It does everything right, great theme and aesthetic, the right balance between simple 3 lane map design while also adding a little more variety for running flank routes, and the perfect amount of cover to move throughout the map or challenge power positions. Historically Treyarch has been the best studio when it comes to listening to player feedback and actually implementing changes we want so we’ll see how post launch goes for Black Ops 6.
Next we have to talk about the weapon balance in Black Ops 6. I’m not going into every single weapon but I want to talk about weapon classes more broadly. Due to both the movement speeds and the map sizes, SMGs and shotguns basically dominate this game. There’s a weird imbalance between the Assault Riffles and SMGs at the moment. AR’s are difficult to use because they don’t have great mobility or time to kill up close, but they also feel very weak at those longer ranges were they should excel. That leaves a very narrow sweet spot for assault rifles to really excel in and I found myself constantly trying to position myself in a way that would give me the biggest advantage at those ranges. On the flip side SMG’s are great for fast mobility and movement speeds as well as killing fast up close, which all makes sense for the smg class. But outside of close range SMG’s are basically worthless. Now obviously they should be strong up close and weaker at ranges but the way that SMGs have worked better in the past is that they’re typically somewhat viable at those medium ranges as long as you can control the recoil. But in Black Ops 6 it feels like you’re shooting marshmallows outside of ten to fifteen meters. So you have this weird contrast between the assault rifle and smg class where if you’re outside the ideal range you have absolutely no chance of winning that gunfight. Then you pair that with how small the maps are and it just starts to feel uncomfortable and weird. Now maybe I just haven’t figured out the right builds for each weapon yet because I don’t have enough time in the game but that’s been my experience so far. Next we have the shotguns. These things are strong. And because the maps force you into so many narrow spaces you basically just get deleted. At times it starts to feel like you’re playing hardcore. What makes it feel even worse is that these shotguns seem to have a bit more range than they really should. I”m not really a fan of one shot weapons in general, especially when they have no downsides and require no skill. Because at least snipers require you to zoom in and be somewhat accurate with your shots, but these maps paired with shotguns in their current state require zero skill to use and are impossible to counter.
The spawn system in this game exaggerates this problem even more. My understanding is that due to the fact that Treyarch was forced to abandon their engine from Black ops 3, 4 and cold war to use the Infinity Ward “unified” engine, that the spawn system is baked into the engine. I believe it’s a squad spawn system meaning that you spawn in near your teammates based on certain criteria. The way that it worked in the past is that there would be predefined spawns on the map and based on enemy and friendly player locations it would choose the best spawn for you. That led to much more stable and predictable gameplay. The problem with the spawns now is twofold. Number one you spawn way too close to enemy players a lot of times. How many of you have had situations where you spawn in and are immediately getting shot? I’d bet most of you. The other issue is that there seem to be a lot of times where you’ll get a kill and somehow there is an enemy player that spawns behind you and takes you out. I’ve died from getting shot in my back more times in Black Ops 6 than in any other game I've played.
I’m running this game at 1440p 144fps and i’m really struggling to see enemies in a lot of different situations. It could be that I’m having to run a decent amount of graphic settings at low because of how rough the performance is but i’ve just found on some of the maps enemies are very difficult to see. Speaking of performance issues, Black Ops 6 in it’s current state still seems relatively unoptimized. I can run every other game I play at medium to high settings and have no problem hitting 144 fps at 1440p, especially while using dlss on quality. For some reason my PC is struggling with this game but cold war had some issues at first and they did a great job of optimizing that game overtime so I’m not super upset about this yet. Packet loss seems to still be an issue for alot of people including myself . It’s in a much better state than it was during the beta and I get it less often but once and awhile i’ll literally just have to back out of the match because the game is constantly stuttering. There also seems to be quite a bit of de-sync at times and this might actually be my number one complaint at the moment. This is leading to many gunfights just feeling off. Lots of shoot first die first gunfights or feeling like an enemy player is just sponging bullets only for them to turn on you and kill you instantly. This means that your performance in game has less to do with skill and more to do with getting a lucky server connection. People complain about this constantly when it comes to Xdefiant but for some reason I don’t hear a peep online when it comes to Call of Duty. Lastly there are a list of bugs that appear to be affecting consoles at the moment. The few that i’m aware just from playing with friends on console are the gold camo blinding you when you aim down sight and your loadout deciding to change attachments at random or even loading the complete wrong weapon.
So with all of my complaining out of the way, I want to talk about who this game is for and if I think this is just a rough launch for the game and if Treyarch will get it in a good state with future updates and balance patches. With the pace of this game and the way the maps are designed I have to ask, who is this game made for. At the moment it seems like the game is really catering toward the players who’ve had their brain and dopamine systems fried by tik tok. Everything is action all the time with very little flow or skill involved. I’ve been on the side pushing Call of Duty to be more arcadey and less tactical. I think the mix between the movement, weapon balance and map designs is just off at the moment. Unless it’s intentionally trying to force players into face to face gunfights to make every match feel like shipment with some variety. In it’s current state I don’t think Black Ops 6 is a bad game per se but it just seems to have a few things out of balance that dramatically affect the core gameplay. The foundation is there. At the moment i’d probably give it a 6.5 out of 10, but remember, Cold War had a rough launch and that game shaped up to be the best game since black ops 4. If we get good post launch maps, fixes to packet loss and de-sync issues and some weapon balancing to smooth out the gameplay, we’re in for a good year.
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