Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

Every year, Activision releases a new Call of Duty game. 2020 saw the release of the newest entry into the black ops series, entitles Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. The development of the game was made a mess due to Sledgehammer, the original developer, being replaced with Treyarch midway through development. And on top of all of that, they lost a lot of time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With that out of the way, let's jump into the story. The story follows a player-made protagonist nicknamed "bell" as he or she tries to prevent a nuclear war. Aside from that, theirs not much else. Some old favorites return such as Alex Mason and Frank Woods alongside new characters like Adler and Park. That's about it. While it may seem that the story is very bare bones and lackluster, that's how most Call of Duty campaigns are and compared to other Call of Duty games, Cold War's story is very good. Since the main protagonist is player-customized, you can choose which perks they can have, which keeps the game from feeling the same every time. Alongside that there is a rather cool body shield mechanic which allows the player to use an enemy as a body shield after they hold down the melee button. This ability literally prevents almost any and all frontal damage done to the player and really makes the game feel quite easy, even on veteran difficulty. That's where the next problem comes in, the campaign is too easy, even on the hardest mode I found myself cruising through each level with very little to no deaths, which is the first for me because veteran difficulty has always been very, very brutal. Moving onto the multiplayer, which where this game does not do well at all in. The multiplayer is pretty similar to your average call of duty with all of it's modes and even some new ones such as VIP escort, which sees you escorting a player controlled VIP to an extraction point; all while avoiding the enemy team. And fire team dirty bomb, which is more or less a ripoff of warzone and its a terrible mode at that. But I could talk about how bad that mode is all day, so I'm moving on. Luckily, the customization options are very well done and for the first time ever, you can see the percentage increase or decrease an attachment brings to your gun's performance. The gun play feels solid and animations, while not as good as modern warfare, are well done as well. But the game truly falls flat in it's core gameplay. As I said, shooting is fine but the time to kill is way too high and as of right now, smgs absolutely dominate each and every single match. The use of skill based matchmaking doesn't help either because it seems that you're always thrown into a sweat fest where every person is trying their hardest to win, even in casual modes. Going back to what I said earlier, the mp5 dominated the game for days, maybe even weeks until it was nerfed. Now with the introduction to season 1, the new mac 10 is the meta, and probably will be for a few weeks. The maps aren't even that good, the old 3 lane map design is very old and they don't even try to hide it. Moving along to zombies, the mode luckily feels and plays just like any other zombies game, which is good. There are also many places to go and things to do within zombies which keeps the game feeling different almost every time. But the lack of zombie content really brings it down. There's one map. That's it. One. It gets so boring playing on the same map that after a few games, I'm tapped out. Overall, Cold War has a lot of changes to make to it if it wants to match the outstanding Modern Warfare 2019. But as of right now, the game's story is mediocre at best and the multiplayer isn't even worth going to, for now at least. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War receives a 5/10