Hey all. I’m back with a look at the beta for this year’s Call of Duty. It’s my Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 beta preview.
As a long time player of the Call of Duty series, I am always excited to find out what the latest title has to offer. It’s great that Activision lets players dive into the multiplayer action for a few weekends and then uses that feedback to improve their games before they officially launch them. So, let’s see what the Black Ops 6 beta has to offer those who enjoy multiplayer, and how everything differs from Modern Warfare III.
Gameplay: The gameplay hasn’t changed in any extreme manner from last year’s Modern Warfare III. There are still changes and I’ll be sure to cover them here, but know that at least in terms of the beta, not everything is a really positive change. That is to be expected in a beta, so hopefully many of the problems will be fixed before the final rollout.
Let’s start with some really good changes that should have gamers excited to try out Black Ops 6 once the full game releases. One huge new advantage is that every player now has the ability to equip a knife in addition to a secondary weapon. Because melee weapons offer one hit kills, and the fact that you can easily get to your knife by holding down the melee button, this can be a perfect go-to move whenever you close with an enemy. Players who like fast movement or maybe stealth should get a lot of use out equipping a knife.
And those who master movement will also undoubtedly be able to make better use of that knife, which brings us to the new and revolutionary Omni-movement system. That is a really good change as it really does make the gameplay different. Those who are really skilled with mouse and keyboard player sprinting, or with sliding or diving in any direction will be able to really give themselves an advantage in combat.
It’s a good new feature but frankly being able to dive to the right or left won’t matter much to most players in multiplayer because doing so makes it incredibly hard to shoot. That said, those who really master keyboard and mouse gameplay, like elite e-sports teams, will surely turn this into a superpower in multiplayer matches. It will be interesting to see just how big of an impact this will have outside of those professional competitions, or once we get access to the single-player campaign.
One of the more questionable changes in the beta that’s at the top of my list is how the guns are configured and used. For example, the Tac-Stance, or Tactical Stance, is no longer an option for any gun without specific laser attachments, which is a really bad decision. Tac-Stance was a great middle ground between the modern aiming down the sights required for any real accuracy that most FPS use these days compared with the purely firing from the hip method used in titles like Halo. So, this change seems unnecessary given that the Tac-Stance was already pretty unique for the Call of Duty series.
In general, all of the guns in the beta seemed just a little bit off from Modern Warfare III. They were not quite as smooth and seemed to be pretty nerfed in terms of damage. Maybe because players could not mod their guns much in the beta, it made them seem underpowered. However, while most weapon mod benefits we could access were somewhat nerfed, there were little to no downsides to most of those mod attachments, so that kind of balanced things. You won’t get any major benefits from those mods, but also no drawbacks from using them. Given that, there is no reason not to mod even though it probably won’t be too game-changing.
Another issue I had with the mods and attachments is the amount of utter tedium we had to endure to unlock every gun’s full attachment list because most guns now have nearly doubled the level requirements. For example, the basic assault rifle has more than 40 levels compared to the 27 we saw in the previous title. That’s a lot of grinding if things don’t change post-beta.
But overall, Black Ops 6 still is a Call of Duty game, so there’s still plenty of things players will surely enjoy. I for one enjoyed the new Kill Order game mode I played on day 3 of the first weekend of the beta. It’s a mode where each team has a player that becomes the VIP (HVT or high value target) and you are tasked with going after them. Where it differs compared to other similar modes is that eliminating the VIP is only worth a few more points towards your victory versus other team members. The person designated as the HVT does get some perks to help out, which is nice. For example, they gain the automatic ability to be downed rather than dying immediately, so theoretically a skilled team could prevent extra points slipping away by helping to revive their VIP.
In total, the beta did a good job of showing players some of the new changes they can expect from Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. For me, I was honestly more excited about Modern Warfare III following the really excellent beta testing of that title, which turned out to be a great indication of a stellar game. The beta for Black Ops 6 was a bit less polished, although it did demonstrate some of the new and unique features in action. Perhaps it has a bigger hill to climb to match Modern Warfare III, but it definitely has a shot at achieving that level of greatness with a few key changes from the beta. And I am very much looking forward to how it all plays out after the October launch.
Developers: Raven Software, Treyarch Invention
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Steam, Xbox One, Xbox Series X