One of the most anticipated titles in the Call of Duty Franchise ever. A new Black Ops to continue the series. But not only that, it will also have the most content for zombies and a Battle Royal mode. However, this fourth Black Ops game will be lacking a single player story mode. This is also the first time that the game will be released with a specific version for PC, not a port afterward but a dedicated PC version. Now that this big one has been released, did it hold up to the expectations? Let’s go over each mode separately.

MULTIPLAYER

The classic Multiplayer mode, Seek and Destroy, Team deathmatch, Hardpoint,… you name it, all classic modes are here each with its Hardcore version. Pick your operator and create your class, go out on the battlefield and win the game. Well, that’s still exactly what it’s supposed to be. It feels like the best experience that we already know from the developers at Treyarch. None of the double jumping and jetpacking that was so disliked by the community. At this, they did an amazing job.

That being said there are/were some issues, some of the guns do need a bit of a rebalancing. But this is easier said than done since on console the SMG’s seem to be a bit underwhelming while on PC, with a different aim technique the SMG’s are actually a bit too strong in comparison to the Assault rifles. So balancing needs to be different on each platform which makes this a bit harder to go at.

Then there has been the giant community outrage over the multiplayer servers. In the Beta, Treyarch showed us 60hz servers that seemed to run as smooth as butter. However, after release, the community found out that the servers were only running at 20Hz which accounted for a lot of wall jumping/dropshotting/ping abusing. These are not fun ways to get killed of course, but a lot of these findings might also be a bit of an excuse for dying. After a few weeks of testing and tinkering with the servers, the devs did bring them up to 60Hz again so we will have to find other reasons for dying too often. May I suggest blaming hackers again as per usual?

Zombies

The Zombies mode that came with Black Ops 4 is actually amazing. The standard game version comes with three new zombie maps each with their new and sometimes over the top Easter eggs to find. Treyarch also did an amazing job to disable the Easter Eggs until a later date as to give the community enough time to get the game without being spoiled already. Once the Easter Eggs had been unlocked, the search began, and it didn’t take very long to find the secret endings.

At release and even a few weeks after release, there were still a lot of issues with bugs in this mode, however, certain Easter Egg parts that weren’t working properly. And on PC specifically fatal crashes that would just shut down your game while you were fighting the endless hordes of zombies.

Before release, Treyarch did mention they would revamp the perk system a bit and with this delete the once loved per Juggernog among some others. For the veteran Zombies players, we know that you MUST HAVE Juggernog to get far in any zombies map. So, there was a bit of outrage over this even weeks before we got to play it. However, now that the game is out and we’ve played the new version of zombies, almost all of the community agree that it was a good thing to get rid of juggernog and rebalance the game a bit more around other perks.

Blackout Battle Royal

Now for the Battle Royal game mode. This was highly anticipated by the PC community. Some of the Biggest BR Twitch streamers went in a bit of a Battle-Royal-Depression right before release, they were sick of the bugs and glitches in PUBG and they didn’t ever really get into Fortnite so they were in desperate need for the next big thing. And on came Treyarch with their Blackout Beta. This Beta was amazing to play, it felt like the best BR ever made and everyone was immensely positive. However, after the beta we had to wait for 3 weeks until the release. For some, three of the most boring and long weeks of their lives.

Then Blackout released, and everyone started grinding the game, a lot of mechanics are vastly different from other BR games. Blackout isn’t as correct in terms of ballistics as PUBG but then again it isn’t a cartoon where you have to build like Fortnite. Blackout also introduced perks into the BR genre. Perks like Awareness that lets you hear footsteps better or Dead Silence that makes you yourself almost impossible to hear are seen as a bit of an unfair advantage by some. And that actually might be the case but Treyarch is working hard to balance these as well. The duration of awareness has already been lowered which means you will have to be a bit more careful when you use it.

But one of the biggest complaints are the throwables. 9-bangs, concussions, cluster grenades, they all seem to be a bit on the strong side. If you get hit by a 9-bang you are then blinded for a small eternity and you can only hip fire, you can’t crouch or lay down or anything. You’re just a sitting duck. On the other side of this debate, you can also use a perk like reinforced to counteract the negative effects. Treyarch did nerf 9-bangs and clusters as they can no longer stack in your inventory. You will need to give up more of your precious inventory space to hold the same amount of 9-Bangs.

Conclusion

That sums up the three big game modes for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. In my personal experience, this is the best Call of duty game to this date. I am a PC player so the added involvement in the PC community is very appreciated. However, the game has its flaws. Balance changes might be welcomed a bit faster and the communication about certain topics should be a bit more transparent. Treyarch is very active on forums and is actively communicating with their players. But, when the outrage over the 20Hz servers started, it took them too long to address this. I’m not saying that they should have fixed this immediately, just be a bit more open as to why the servers aren’t what we expected.

Treyarch did an amazing job on this title but what will this game bring us in terms of shelf live? Will this game be around until the next Call of Duty comes out? Or maybe until the next Call of Duty by the same devs comes out? Only time will tell but historically Call of Duty isn’t known for its long shelf lives. Let’s hope for the best

8.5/10

Tested on PC

Another man’s perspective… 

Author: Michiel Vonck

Call of Duty is still one of the most popular franchises out there and can still compete with a lot of other top games on the current market. This isn’t about innovation and this isn’t about a new amazing engine that the game’s running, it’s all about keeping the veterans happy and lure in the new ones. As a veteran myself, I can say this is the best Call of Duty multiplayer experience ever created but I can’t find anything, except maybe the “Blackout” modus, that’ll keep my interests. This is what I think about the new Call of Duty…

Call of Duty has won me over a hundred times over, especially when I was a kid but I can’t help but feel that this time, it won’t. In the beginning stages of the COD- franchise, the game was a big hype among the young and it was a great step forward for FPS games during that time. A great multiplayer experience with an amazing progression system and playing my own Die Hard Hollywood scenes were the causes of sinking 100’s of hours into this game. I loved it and nothing could ever be compared to it until the release of the Battlefield franchise… That moment was the start of the Battle of Giants. Each of these games tried to maintain their community’s core and steal some of the other ones to become the most popular franchise. Eventually, either game maintains their veterans and both exist next to each other.

” It seems like the developers just become more greedy and lazy along with it… “

Overviewing both game’s history, it’s all about each game’s mechanics and innovations that kept their community’s interests. Both developers were actually trying to stay interesting and working non-stop to release a game yearly to become the next great thing and always be a step further than the competition. It was actually becoming a bit goofy as both developers produced a game by keeping the community’s preferences in mind but the idea behind it was this constant battle of just being the best… They give players this fake feeling of taking your interests into account and actually thinking about their own pay grade. Then again, being completely honest, who could blame them? I mean, it’s their job so why wouldn’t they? I just have this feeling that the developers USED to create a game to be the best and truly worked out ideas to become innovative and next-gen but nowadays, it seems like the developers just become more greedy and lazy along with it…

Call of Duty is a perfect example to justify this rant about the whole “laziness” of the gaming industry. Let’s start by saying the following, they released a new Black Ops game without a singleplayer. They tried to justify this decision by saying that most of the community doesn’t play the campaign but they just go straight for the multiplayer experience. I don’t agree with this… The singleplayer campaign was one of the reasons Call of Duty made it to the big stage. They were amazing in creating a cinematic first-person shooter with a decent story about betraying and being betrayed, just like any other Hollywood action movie. By just removing this part of the game, a lot of veteran players were disappointed because the Call of Duty campaign was the best thing about the whole thing. Even though the campaign wasn’t always that good, the developers made sure that you felt like a hero. If you compare this feeling with the multiplayer experience, that feeling quickly fades away and becomes replaced by a feeling of “being trash”. In my eyes, they just removed it to win some time because they needed to feed their feeling of “releasing a Call of Duty game” almost every year. They tried to replace this Campaign mode with backstories for the specialists. This is a great idea and they even made cool cinematics to introduce each specialist’s skills but don’t tie it up to a tutorial mission. The franchise has been out long enough for people to understand the basic mechanics of COD. Then again, at least they tried…

Don’t get me wrong! From what I’ve played, I can easily tell that this COD is the best multiplayer experience that has ever been released in this franchise but if you think about it, they’re just enhancing their own mechanics and steal a lot of ideas from other multiplayer games that stand out from among the crowd. Is it a bad thing? No, but it isn’t a good thing either. It’s just that “laziness” is pouring out of this game. Let’s talk about innovations! They removed the health regeneration, they implemented a great number of unlockable skins for your weapons and…. and…see what I mean? I don’t think there’s anything new here. Yes, there were a lot more things that have been implemented that’s “new for the COD multiplayer” but it’s nothing original. Let’s talk through this for a moment and let us search for these “taken” ideas because they not only took ideas from other games but they took ideas from the previous Call of Duty games. Yes, some parts are taken to enhance their own mechanics but some of these parts are literally just “copy/paste”. Yes, this has been said many times over previous shooter games, especially when people are talking about “innovation” but they literally just copied guns, skins, abilities, maps, … and pasted them into this “NEW COD”.

They did a fantastic job on creating unique weapon skins that can easily be obtained!

Let’s talk about the ideas that they took from other games… The “Play of the Game” element that isn’t as good as the Overwatch’s one. Even though, players like to be the “Best of the Match”, this element in COD feels random at most. Some POTG’s in COD are given to players with only one kill that left them in a critical state. This is not how POTG work. They’ll probably patch it in a couple of weeks but for now, we can try to convince outsiders that it’s their way to put some of the less fortunate players in the spotlight for the little effort they made during the match. They have the Black Market feature that’ll give players rewards for their hours spent in the game but it’s basically a rip-off from the Battle Pass from Fortnite. Even though I like this feature, it just doesn’t feel rewarding like Fortnite’s Battle Pass. The experience you have to get in order for you to go up a tier in COD is only for the strong-willed among us. This battle pass just feels enormously grindy and it’s just for the players who have no life outside COD. Several players have shared their thoughts on this and even calculated the hours you need, to get max level. For casual players, it’s just a no go! This Black Ops game also implemented skins for your weapons and characters but they also created emotes that can be used on the battlefield. Great! Especially when you can use these emotes to gain an unfair advantage of the enemy during a Blackout match. Some emote’s durations are long enough to scout your area safely behind a tree and surprise your opponent. It’s clever but unfair. The weapon’s skins are truly amazing and this is easily one of the best features the game has. They did a fantastic job of creating unique weapon skins that can easily be obtained! Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still have to put in some hours but they’re achievable, even for the casual players.

Most of the specialists are also the same from Black Ops 3. Yes, they tweaked the skills a bit and added some new specialists but in the end, there’s nothing new. They’ve only reviewed the specialists’ equipment and made it a better experience. Some specialists are more powerful than others but it’s more of choosing the playstyle that fits you the most. In my opinion, designing these Black Ops 3 specialists it was definitely one of the better improvements that they made these last couple of years. So it’s a good thing that they’ve added another layer of “creating your own class” but this isn’t anything new in the FPS world. Even though this COD is one of the best multiplayer experiences, I can’t help but feel that the COD franchise is stuck when it comes to innovation. The only real innovation (in my opinion) is the fact that they’ve added this stim pack to regain your health. This added a bit more “tension” to the game and I truly love it. The only thing I can mention about it is that the game is “sweaty”. You literally have to play the game for a couple of hours to really get good and even then you’ll quickly be dropped due to the small health bar. The body drop rate is even faster than before. My first hours were very difficult to maintain my interests in COD as the best players still have an advantage over the less fortunate players. In MW3 they introduced death streaks that could help to regain your stability during a match and this was a great improvement! But now, a few games later and they’ve already skipped this feature and the game’s again in the hands of the TOP players. Try to make a game fun for everyone, that’ll be the real challenge for the COD franchise. Talking about killstreaks, they aren’t very new…

One of the best game modes on the current market is “Battle Royale”. A lot of gamers are fed up with this mode because every developer is focusing on this mode instead of being creative. They are trying to make a “Battle Royale” mode for every game and I’m still asking myself “Why?”… Yes, it’s a great mode but it’ll fade fast to the background because the mode isn’t original anymore. The “Blackout” mode of COD is a blast to play and I’ll bet that PUBG has lost a couple of customers when COD BO4 came out. The COD “Battle Royale” mode is just a better and more fluent experience than other FPS that are experimenting with this new game mode. The developers did this mode very good and it’s easily my most favorite part of Black Ops 4 but I can’t help but notice that they didn’t build this map from the ground up, they just copied maps from previous games and stuck them together. Again, this isn’t annoying for most of the COD players but I just feel that the developers are losing their creative touch and are more focusing on the “money grabbing”- part. They just know that they’re in a great position because even when a lot of these things in BO4 feel the same, the developers just know that it’s going to sell. They enhanced the BR game mode and they made it their own. It’s great to see the typical perks of COD being implemented in the BR mode because this will make the BR mode differently and a bit more challenging. But they’ll have to fix the “Emote” problem because this will make the game a lot more annoying than challenging. This mode has been the most innovating mode of BO4. They just need to remove the less useful perks with other perks to make the mode even better. Awareness, paranoia, … are all good perks that can definitely help you to achieve your “Victory Royale” but some perks like “brawler”, for example, don’t fit this game mode.

BO4 zombie mode is just something I don’t play very often because even though, it was a great mode in the beginning, I’m fed up with zombie games. Even with this popular mode, nothing new is happening, it’s good but it’s just not for me. The mode contains a couple of new missions that take on the form of little maps and are filled with brain-eating zombies and it’s up to you to get out safely. I bet that a lot of gamers love this mode and I’m still thinking that his mode is out of date. Try creating something new and step away from the comfort zone. This mode can be fun with friends, I imagine but playing this mode with random online players will just tear this mode down because you need the cooperation of others and great communication to succeed.

Final thoughts

Here’s my final thought on the game. Yes, I love the multiplayer and the “Blackout” mode but it sucks to see this Call of Duty game without a campaign. I don’t believe the statistics where they’re claiming that only a small percentage of the community actually plays the campaign. The COD franchise stood out with its campaign and multiplayer was just something to keep you interested after the campaign. Even though this is a great COD multiplayer, I can’t justify the price tag of this COD because you get less quality (or quantity) for your money. They should also consider fixing a couple of problems that they’ve had in the past to become the best multiplayer experience because matchmaking is still a problem that’s being ignored and this just blows my mind. How can a top-notch multiplayer game oversee this? Playing with friends is a blast but then you’re opposing team is full of prestige players and the fun just disappears. You’re also being forced to use “metagame “- equipment to compete with others. So this “meta” thinking makes the game less fun because you’re forced to use a gun or specialist or equipment that you’re not into, just to get some kills in the game and compete with others. It’s definitely something different this COD because even when you have to think about the metagame, some modes need to be played cooperatively and this one of those few parts where the game shines as a more tactical COD but the majority of players still play a couple of these modes like a gun nut going berserk and then you start to notice the flaws in the game’s setup. Even though it’s the best COD at the moment ( especially the multiplayer part), for me it’s above average. They improved and enhanced their game but they took their ideas from other games and made it their own… and no, this isn’t a bad thing because this results in a great experience but they’re losing their creativity or spark to maintain their yearly updates.

6/10

Tested on PC