Well, here are. After a month of the initial release, I can confidently share my thoughts on Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War. I wanted to wait long enough for a couple of meaningful patches to update that game and see if the improvements would give it a better review or if the patches would give anything meaningful at all. The verdict? They kind of don’t. I try to keep in mind that this title was originally being made by the developers over at Sledgehammer and that Treyarch was called in to take over 2020’s release one year before the game dropped. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if this game is made up of coding from one studio and mixed from another or if this game was built from the ground up in 12 months. All I know is, something is off about this game. I’m pretty good when I play Black Ops: Cold War. I don’t fare so well when I am obviously playing against a couple of cheaters on the enemy team, but even then, I manage to find ways to shut down the handful of jerks I come across that are using rapid fire mods, wall hacks and aimbots. Cheaters aside, I’m definitely above average with my strategies and gun gameplay. I can’t say I don’t like the game because I do. I like alright, but it is as they say, a step back. Treyarch is known for the more arcade playstyle in their games. You don’t expect too much realism with the fast pace movements, and that’s some of the charm Treyarch offers with their games. Unfortunately, the way the game looks and the long list bugs that dropped upon release and not to mention the large number of map exploits, it is clear that this game wasn’t ready and you know what? I don’t blame Treyarch. I blame Activision. Instead of taking a loss for the year and maybe even using Warzone as a backup for revenue, Activision forced this game out the door and put immense pressure on Developers involved with the game. If this was a launch PS4 title, it would seem to fit right in, but it’s a launch next gen title that was rushed out the door and took away any magic we fans might have seen with the first CoD title on a PS5 or Xbox Series X/S. The campaign is ok. The story was kind of dull, but it had it’s fun moments. I completed the story on the default difficulty mode in about 4-5 hours. It felt like I was playing through a bad 80’s action movie. I know that sounds like an insult, but a bad 80’s movie is kind of a compliment since so many of us think fondly on crappy over the top films that have bad writing and even worse dialogue. I guess it’s charming in its own right. I don’t play CoD games for their … Read More
Black Ops Cold War Reveal – How Cool Was That?!
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War got its first official reveal (August 26th) and it was definitely a different kind of experience. At least it was for me anyway. For the first time in CoD history, a game was revealed from within a game. I’m talking about Black Ops Cold War being revealed within the Warzone. If you haven’t heard about the initial reveal, I’m going to fill you in a little and explain. Unfortunately, if you did miss the reveal, you won’t be able to try again at this point. Sorry if that’s disappointing. I wish I could tell you otherwise. Playing through the Know your history game mode, you’re chasing clues and figuring out where to go next. You’ll be on a timer, so if you don’t get it right the first time, you’ll have to do it again. The game mode is active for 1 hour at a time, but it’s not a difficult puzzle to work through, so you should have no problems. Once you have completed all the clues/missions during the play through, you will be treated with the reveal trailer. Of course, the trailer was all over the web almost immediately after the mode first dropped, so you might have watched it already, but don’t let it discourage you from playing it anyway. You’ll be treated to several drops along the way and a couple more once it’s been completed. Not only will get a few cool drops in-game, but it’s also a lot of fun to play. I played with two of my friends and we had a blast. We were laughing as we would get into gun fights along the way and figuring out exactly what to do next. We actually completed it on our first run with 1 second to spare on the clock. Phew! That was a close one! The Know your history mode was a huge success for the Call of Duty franchise and it has people itching for more. Not only do we expect to see more announcements like this in-game down the road, but there is also speculation that this could have very well be the start of some new game modes within Warzone. As it is, Warzone gets different style game modes dropped in and out, but it mostly caters to BR and Plunder. While we have seen some large scale TDM modes so far, a lot of us are touting the idea of a National Treasure (The movie. Sorry if you don’t know it) type game mode. Where a clue leads to another clue and so on and so forth. I personally think it would be cool if we did have a National Treasure mode where all the squads had to track down different clues and not all the same ones like with Know your history. As players collect their intel, they have to survive until they have found the last clues before the timer runs out. If … Read More