Changes Pay Off for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 | Review

JOHN WINFREY

The Call of Duty franchise is polarizing, as is expected for one of the highest selling video game franchises of all time. Any major change will be met with a huge amount of scrutiny. Treyarch and Activision did the unthinkable this time around and removed a pillar of their foundation. In its place, yet another addition to the saturated market of battle royale shooters. Only this time, they created a version that stands head and shoulders above the competition.

Treyarch took a huge gamble with their latest sequel to the Black Ops series when they announced BO4 wouldn’t feature a campaign mode; something that’s been a staple in every game in the franchise. The controversy was rightfully earned. Many players feel like single player gaming is under attack. The requirement to be online at all times is just as threatening. Not everyone wants to be tethered to the internet to enjoy themselves after a hard day’s work. Multiplayer gaming takes away from the experience, especially for those who aren’t competitive or just aren’t as good as the others online.

If you can get past the big change, you’re in for a treat. This has been my favorite CoD since ‘World at War’, a game that also took huge strides and had an even bigger impact with their Nazi Zombies mode. BO4 comes with the best form of Zombies we’ve ever seen. The studio put their all into all 3 game modes (Multiplayer, Battle Royale, and Zombies.) The zombies mode has an actual storyline and expands upon the leveling system from previous Black Ops iterations.

Multiplayer is as great as it’ ever been, but the real Belle of this Ball is the Battle Royale, formally titled “Blackout”. The newest and biggest trend in gaming has a new king as Treyarch has clearly worked tirelessly to research the competition and create the best BR in the young genre. Fortnite and PUBG are taking a backseat for the meantime. Blackout has some of the same aspects; you drop out of an aerial vehicle and fight to become the last man standing while running from a giant killer storm. The combination of the best aspects of the other games is where BO4 sets itself apart. There are few dull moments like you have in PUBG. The action is there, you don’t even have to look for it. The building aspect of Fortnite is long gone, and I won’t miss it. This is CoD giving one lucky or highly skilled player the highest praise one game at a time.

If you couldn’t tell, I love Black Ops 4, and I will be playing this game for a long time. It’s only right that it broke records it’s first weekend and has toppled Fortnite as the stream king. BO4 is being played by every hardcore gamer in the world and will be around for along time. Even past it’s inevitable successor that’s sure to come next year. Dare I say it’s a 10? Yeah, I did it.

MARCUS BLAKE

With the newest edition of the Black Ops Call of Duty series, Black Ops 4 brings us a whole new level when it comes to the first person shooter. This game is built solely for the online multiplayer and it’s also Call of Duties dabble into the Battle Royale games like player underground or Fortnite. My initial thoughts were this is a great game for you and your friends to get online together and shoot thanks. There’s definitely a lot of fun that comes with multiplayer modes. but I have to admit that this is not my favorite Call of Duty game. I completely understand that video games are going more towards online play. Overwatch proved that you can have a strictly online game and it be a big it. I’m not necessarily opposed to this, but I just don’t think it should have been within the Black Ops series.

Let’s get to the Krux of it…. You have three highly entertaining and engaging modes. The multiplayer, the blackout or Battle Royale mode, and then of course zombies. I will go ahead and say that this is one of my favorite zombie Call of Duty games. I don’t know if the blackout mode is truly any better than Player Underground… both have their advantages and disadvantages. The strongest feature of this game is with the multiplayer mode. The 8 member team and different scenarios filled with high octane battles are a lot of fun. It’s not that by the very beginning when you’re just a newbie and you get killed all the time, but as you start to level up it is a great mode. The gameplay is pretty good, but you will have more advantage in competition when you get the right scopes. I do complain about besides because you can be pointing straight at a guy and nearly empty a clip into him and somehow they kill you.

But as I mentioned before, it’s the zombie mode that really makes this a fun game. Starting out on the Titanic with zombies and having to get enough dollars to be able to buy better guns is an interesting scenario, but I love the fact that you’re basically starting out on an iceberg wrecked Titanic and having to fend off zombies…. totally better than the movie.

But as fun as this game really is, I do have a serious complaint that there is no single player campaign like in past games and that is where I think Black Ops 4 has its biggest fail. I don’t mind a strictly online Call of Duty game, but don’t make it a part of one of your series within Call of Duty, Have it be its own separate thing. I was expecting a single player campaign along with all of these great multiplayer modes that what end up surpassing Black Ops 3 but they just didn’t deliver and I miss being able to play a solo campaign.

So in my opinion Black Ops 4 is a fun game and if you want to jump online with your friends, then this is a fun game to do it went. John and I have had some fun in the multiplayer mode, especially playfully talking shit ith some of the online users. But I don’t know if this game is really worth $60. It’s a $40 game at best for me. Now if it had a really great solo campaign like in previous Black Ops and I think this game would have been truly fantastic. all this game did was make me miss the solo campaign to where I’m going back in playing other Call of Duty games that I haven’t played in a while like Call of Duty ghosts.

So after the initial 2 weeks with Black Ops 4 and the fun is starting to wear off this will be an every once in awhile game for me with my friends. Nothing more. Black Ops 4 is not great, but it is a lot of fun. And since it can’t be great, mainly because it doesn’t have a solo campaign, it’s merely just okay.