IThere’s one claim I’m not entirely proud of: I’ve played every Call of Duty game since the series launched in 2003. I’ve been there for the extremely good times (Call of Duty 4) and the extremely bad times (Call of Duty: Roads to Victory). And while I may have cringed at some of the narrative decisions, the casual bigotry rife on the online multiplayer servers, and the general “America, yes!” mentality of the entire series, I’ve always come back.
In that time, I’ve seen every attempt at fundamentally tweaking games (from perks to boosters, thanks Advanced Warfare!), but after spending a weekend in the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 multiplayer beta, I think developer Treyarch may have come up with its best yet. It’s called Omnimovement.
In short, this seemingly minor addition allows players to run and dash in all directions, not just forwards, and with a certain amount of aftertouch, so you can slide around corners or spin in the air. I can appreciate that being able to run sideways or launch yourself backwards over a couch might not sound like such a big deal in a game that moves at such a fast pace anyway, but it really does seem to have changed things. The beta test only featured three of the full game’s 16 online multiplayer maps, and only a smidge of the online game modes, but it’s already ridiculously fun.
At any given moment during a match, there are people flying. everywherePlayers are diving out of windows, down hallways, off the balcony of the ridiculously sleek and modern penthouse on the Skyline map. They’re sliding backwards across the polished floor of the video rental store on the Rewind map, attacking each other from various heights, dodging gunfire or remote-controlled car bombs at the last possible second. In decisive moments, it feels like a giant John Woo shootout: equal parts ballistic and bloody.
But rather than being chaotic and unbalanced, which is how jetpack-era titles like Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare might feel, it actually seems to be bringing more depth and variety to the moment-to-moment experience. You can slide under gunfire, giving you a way to escape previously lethal encounters. You can also take cover very quickly, which is incredibly useful in modes like Domination and Hardpoint, where you have to occupy and protect certain areas. I’m noticing that I’m lasting longer between spawns, and I’m able to think in a more spatially interesting way.
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How did this take so long to happen? A recent interview with gaming site VGCTreyarch associate design director Matt Scronce and production director Yale Miller talked about how the game’s unusually long four-year development cycle (CoD games are typically two years at most) meant the team was able to experiment with core elements and also polish new features they were toying with. Omnimotion emerged from that process. The team even read technical papers from the Air Force Academy about how fast humans can run backwards.
In other ways, the game feels solid rather than wildly innovative. Skyline is the most fun map, with its stylish multi-level interiors and hidden air ducts, while Scud is your standard CoD Middle East map, with sand trenches, caves and a wrecked radar station. Rewind is a deserted mall with shop interiors, fast food joints and car parks, and a very long line of sight along the shop fronts that might as well be called Sniper’s Avenue. The new game mode, Kill Order, is classic old-school FPS fare: one player on each team is designated as a high-value target and opponents have to take them out to score. This leads to extremely close-knit skirmishes and lots of mass chases across the map with HVTs trying to hide in little nooks and crannies – sort of like a Benny Hill sketch but with high-quality military weapons.
There are a few new weapons, including the Ames 85, an M16-like automatic assault rifle, and the frenetic Jackal PDW, the kind of tiny Skorpion-style machine pistol that Arnie used in his 80s action movies. The latter has an alarming rate of fire, but is also accurate at long ranges, so it absolutely dominates beta matches; it’s very likely to be nerfed long before the game’s release. The most controversial addition is probably Body Shield, a new ability that lets you take an opposing player hostage by sneaking up behind them and double-tapping the melee button. The victim can then be used as a human shield for a few seconds, and Treyarch has said that you’ll be able to speak to the hostage through the headset microphone, which will inevitably lead to the most obnoxious homophobic taunt imaginable. Just what Call of Duty needs.
Black Ops 6 looks to be a great addition to the series, at least as far as multiplayer goes. I’m not proud that I spent an entire weekend gleefully recreating my favorite scenes from the Hard Boiled movie, jumping around modernist interiors while firing shiny, fetishized rifles at strangers. But I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and somehow I’m not ready to stop just yet.