Is the Decades-Old Franchise Cool Again?

Looking back, it’s hard to believe that there was ever a time before Call of Duty. Omitting the gap year between the first two entries, Call of Duty (2003) and Call of Duty 2 (2005), there has been a full mainline game released in the franchise every year since, and that’s not including the multiple free-to-play spin-offs like Call of Duty: Mobile (2019), Warzone (2022), and Warzone Mobile (2024).

With hundreds of millions of units sold and thousands of active users daily, it’s also never really slowed down, regularly topping annual sales charts, Twitch streams, and the source of esports leagues and live events. In fact, since the dual launch of 2022’s Modern Warfare II and Warzone, the series has completely transcended the basic idea of standalone video game. It’s now an ecosystem — a place where you can get whatever flavor of COD you want from an endless wellspring. It’s ubiquitous; just part of the cultural fabric that everyone knows, even just a little.

Here’s the thing: I don’t care about Call of Duty.

I used to! There was a time back in college where it was the only game that mattered to me. 2007’s Modern Warfare and its 2009 sequel were mainstays of my college years. The guttural howling of dorm dudes fragging each other was the soundtrack to higher education. But by 2011’s Modern Warfare 3, the dopamine fix felt spent. Call of Duty, released year after year, became too safe, too reliable. It was a network sitcom to ignore while everyone else was still tuned in. Released like clockwork every fall, it became a game to pick up at the launch of a new console when there was nothing else out, the bundle buy with another game that’d actually get finished.

Suffice it to say, the announcement of this year’s Black Ops 6 (out Oct. 25) didn’t exactly inspire glee. The trailer was interesting enough, featuring the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Saddam Hussein, and a menacing George H.W. Bush as key players in its fictionalized conspiracy yarn. But as someone who isn’t familiar with the deep lore of the Black Ops sub-series, separate from the two (different) Modern Warfare sub-series and others, it mostly looked like more of the same.

But after going hands-on with the game at Activision’s recent Call of Duty NEXT event, followed by two beta weekends, a strange thought occurred.

Goddamn it, is Call of Duty cool again?

What is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6?

Black Ops 6 is the latest continuation of the franchise within a franchise that follows its own narrative continuity and mechanics. Unrelated to other sub-series like Modern Warfare or Vanguard, the Black Ops series began with 2008’s World at War and was most recently seen in 2020 with Black Ops Cold War.

Initially created by developer Treyarch, it’s now a multi-studio behemoth managed by both Treyarch and Raven Software working on the many different aspects and modes of the game. The Black Ops series follows its own storyline centering around fictional conspiracies that impact its own version of history, usually bouncing between period settings like Vietnam and the Cold War and a dark future. Games like Black Ops III stretch the story’s timeline out as far as the year 2065, giving the game an almost science fiction bend in terms of the technology available to players.

Like Cold War before it, Black Ops 6 goes back to the basics a bit, set during the early Nineties with a greater emphasis on the spy thriller aspect than the super-soldier stuff. The story mode is still something of a mystery to anyone who isn’t a true-blue Black Ops fanatic winding up their own cork board strings to figure out the plot. Unlike the game’s multiplayer modes, the single-player campaign has mostly been teased through trailers, although reactions online have been mostly positive, with many fans hungry for a robust narrative experience that the series was originally so famous for before shifting its focus onto the multiplayer side. Last year’s Modern Warfare III was heavily criticized by many for having an anemic campaign, while 2018’s Black Ops 4 didn’t even have one at all.

But for the most part, the multiplayer modes of Black Ops 6 are where the biggest thrills arise, and during our time with the game, almost every match lived up to the promise. The dedicated Call of Duty “Multiplayer” mode is technically its own thing, built around its own progressions systems and individual match types like Team Deathmatch, Domination, Hardpoint, and more. Separately, there’s the fan-favorite “Zombies” PvE (players vs. enemies) game that was introduced back in 2008’s World at War. Zombies is known for being an integral part of the cyclical Black Ops releases, as it doesn’t appear in other sub-series like Modern Warfare. Completely independent of the whole package is Warzone, the free-to-play version of Call of Duty that plays like a sprawling battle royale, akin to Fortnite. It remains the current backbone of the never-ending COD universe, with the annual paid titles informing the shifting look and feel of its gameplay.

So yeah, Call of Duty is a lot. Almost too much, really. Being an annual release makes Black Ops 6 just another stop on its roadmap, but a surprising one, nonetheless.

What’s New in Black Ops 6?

In many ways, most of the updates in Black Ops 6 feel like a series of mea culpas to regular players who have seen many of their favorite features get lost in the perpetual sequelization of the franchise.

For fans of the action movie fantasy of the single-player campaign, the game looks to be going big, with ludicrously over-the-top set pieces like the sequence of a motorcycle going full Tony Hawk, leaping off the hood of a Capitol police car. With another twisty plot reframing history to somehow be even darker than the one we’ve got, it’s sure to be a slice of B-movie schlock that feeds into the base impulses of the most ardent conspiracy theorists.

But the most hyped changes are steeped in multiplayer, where the classic “Prestige” system returns. Prestige used to be the thing players touted for clout, wherein reached a certain level cap meant they could opt to start the progression grind all over from scratch with a little doodad that showed other players just how much time and energy they spent becoming the very best. The original version of prestiging died off around the time the live-service aspect kicked in, but its return has many players feeling nostalgic about ways in which they can shove their accomplishments in other people’s faces (in a fun way!).

Zombie mode also goes back to its roots with a sequential, round-based dynamic that lets up to four players work cooperatively to fight off the undead hordes, gathering gear and upgrades through increasingly difficult waves. There’s now an extraction mechanism that gives teams the option to cut-and-run with a sense of achievement after enough intervals rather than simply compete until their inevitable doom.

Warzone, too, sees a big update with an entirely new map based on the iconic Nuketown arenas that have been a staple throughout the years. Warzone plays differently from the standard COD experience by focusing on individuals or small squads airdropped onto an open-world arena of mayhem, and generally plays much more slowly than the Call of Duty of old. For old heads (like me), it’s a more mundane experience than the traditional experience, which is frenetic and stressful. But given the F2P game’s breakout success, reinvigorating the user base and opening the game to players weaned on Fortnite and PUBG, it’s become an integral part of the ecosystem. For many, it’s the de facto way to play Call of Duty.

With so many modes, Call of Duty’s biggest weakness over recent years has been a lack of shared progress between them. Now, that’s changed too. With global gameplay systems, all the weapon attachments, skins, and more that are unlocked in one multiplayer mode can be transferred to the others seamlessly within the same user profile. It seems obvious, yet somehow it wasn’t a thing!

The final big change is also the most critical – and has many veteran players reeling. That’s the new “Omnimovement” feature. Without playing the game, it’s kind of hard to explain. Imagine controlling a standard first-person shooter game. You move forward with the left stick, aim with the right. You can run in one direction based on where you’re looking, but your field of view is restricted to what you can see while barreling down a lane, even when strafing and spinning. Omnimovement changes that, allowing a near 180 degrees of sight even while running, laying prone, and most excellently, diving through the air like a John Woo protagonist.

To dumb it down, think about how action figures of the past had limited points of articulation. They were stocky and static, barely able to lift their appendages. Then at some point, they became these super malleable playthings for the collector’s mantle. Luke Skywalker in the Hasbro years might as well have been a ceramic doll, now a Marvel Legends Spider-Man can go full Zoolander staring back at you. That’s Omnimovement in a nutshell, except in the middle of a virtual bloodbath.

It’s a game changer.

Is Black Ops 6 good?

It’s difficult to say whether the changes in Black Ops 6’s systems will be a hit in the long-term. While some of the obvious changes like the return of Prestige and classic zombies are a clear play for the nostalgia of older players, the new Omnimovement could be a dealbreaker.

Anecdotally, as someone who gave up on Call of Duty back in the Obama era, it feels like a reawakening. At the recent Call of Duty NEXT event, we had the opportunity to spend a few hours with the new system, playing on a souped-up PC. Full transparency, I’m primarily a console gamer. I’ve literally never played a Call of Duty with a mouse and keyboard. Yet, when matched against multiple seemingly better players, all of whom understand the jargon that had content creators foaming at the mouth in the pre-demo presentation, I managed to kick some serious ass.

Call of Duty has always played fast, yet tight. Unlike its peers Medal of Honor or Battlefield, it was less about strategy and more tailored to the twitchy reflexes of players juiced up on energy drinks. Over the years, I found that I simply couldn’t keep up with the kids. Black Ops 6 changed that. Despite not having seriously invested time in a Call of Duty game since 2011, I found myself cracking off headshots and ludicrously lucky hip fires in times of frantic desperation, mostly thanks to the new movement systems.

Many players immediately took the gaudiest route, leaping through windows for maximum Last Action Hero impact, but the benefits go beyond that. Picture a room breach where you can enter quietly, peering effortlessly around the threshold walls. When a bogey storms through the opposing door, you drop them with a crack shot. Another flanks, but with a quick crouch and axis-bending spin, they’ve been fully John Wick’d. Even when the try-hard careens through the skylight, you’re able to roll onto your back seamlessly to bring your barrel to sight for an aerial execution.

It fucking rocks.

Following the in-person demo, there were two beta test weekends that opened the game up to a wider swath of players online. Here, even on a PlayStation 5, I was able to dominate a handful of matches, eliciting feelings of hubristic joy that I hadn’t known since college. For the first time in over a decade, Call of Duty felt fun again.

Of course, the scales of the game will ultimately balance themselves as the dedicated comb through every aspect of Black Ops 6 to once again become the apex predators. But as the uphill battle looms, there’s a sinking feeling that Omnimovement, combined with the multiple quality-of-life improvements added, will make this the year that Call of Duty is just cool again. Knowing that “gitting gud” at the world’s biggest multiplayer shooter is practically a part-time job, that may be more of a warning than a recommendation.