There’s a lot of hype coming into the next iteration of the Call of Duty franchise. And finally, the company listened and gave Treyarch enough time to develop a proper sequel to the vaunted Black Ops franchise!
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has a lot riding on it, after years of sequels that were a bit underwhelming (I’m looking at you Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) and trying to patch errors that were made by previous games, we might finally have a proper game that builds upon the history of Call of Duty.
We got to try the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Beta early and first impressions, it is good. Even if it is an early version of the game, it seems as if the years of development given to Treyarch have paid off, it’s already polished albeit with some minor grievances here and there. First off, does it feel like a CoD game? Yes, it very much does, they somehow have found a good middle ground when it comes to movement.
Past iterations were either too slow or too fast that casuals had a hard time keeping up with advanced players. This time, we feel like the movement will cater to both, a happy middle. The biggest elephant in the room for enthusiasts is definitely Omnimovement, the new engine which allows players to more or less move the way they want to around the map. Whether sliding side to side, jumping and diving in weird angles, omnimovement does work and it feels like an evolution of the movement that Call of Duty is known for.
Next up is gunplay, so far in our time, the guns feel solid. Just enough recoil for each of the guns that the player has a bit of a learning curve but not one gun was totally unusable which is a good sign. Another thing we noticed is that the guns don’t produce a lot of smoke which in our experience with previous iterations, there was too much recoil and smoke that some guns were really unviable in the meta. There aren’t a lot of variations to the guns in the beta but from what we’ve used so far, each of them does what they’re supposed to in the situation they are made for. For example, shotguns work well in close ranges, while rifles really beam from further out.
We just have a couple of things to complain about with the early access. First is the gloominess of the game. We get it, it’s simulating war and Black Ops is a darker title, but the general gloom all over the different maps just didn’t look good to us. Especially sometimes in the darker areas, players were barely visible. We don’t mind if things looked a little more alive or vibrant in favor of this dark and moody landscape. Second, there’s some texture bugs here and there, which for the most part is fine when you realize the game is months away from being fully released. Lastly, we’re not too sure yet about the whole “Body Shield” mechanic. We think it’s novel, to begin with, but we’ll see if we’ll fully utilize the feature in our play style.
Overall, the early access beta has been smooth for us. Usually, beta’s like these have game-breaking bugs, menus that don’t open, and a lot of other things that make you realize the game is a ways off, but for the most part, this one is polished, to say the least. We’re excited for this next chapter of the Call of Duty franchise as it’s really trying to evolve and be the next step in both gameplay and graphics. All signs point to a great game and we hope with a couple of months more of polish, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be one of the great ones in the historical CoD franchise.
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