Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is a massive step up from the awful MW3

COD BLOPS 6 is here to return the franchise to its high point.

COD: BO6 screenshot. / Activision

I can’t put the feeling I had playing last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 into eloquent words. I’m a games journalist, and therefore I don’t pay for many of the games I play, and yet, at the cost of nothing but my time, playing MW3 made me feel like I’d been robbed. It was such a vapid, shallow campaign experience, with practically nothing of original value being brought to the multiplayer – it was literally a selection of older, “classic” Call of Duty maps inserted in MW2’s multiplayer suite.

I’ve already done a full review of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 digging into exactly how atrociously disappointing it is, even a full year on with all of the updates and fine-tuning you could ask for, but it’s too late. That game is utterly miserable, and the panicked adjustments that dev teams made to Warzone 2.0 since launch? Utterly cowardly, essentially reverting it into a clone of the original Warzone. Once the most profitable video game franchise in the world, last year Call of Duty floundered, struggled, and drowned, all amidst a Microsoft acquisition.

Black Ops 6 is a fully-fledged COD game, unlike MW3. / Activision

It was a rush job: executives decided that Call of Duty couldn’t skip a year (especially not when it would be the last COD release overseen by former CEO Bobby Kotick), and Modern Warfare 3 was shoved out of the door to absorb money from the wallets of players that just couldn’t go a year without a new COD. The upcoming Black Ops 6 just wasn’t ready yet. With that extra year in the oven and new overseer Microsoft at the helm, can Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 wash the nasty taste that MW3 has left in my mouth for the last year?

Early impressions, against all odds, point to yes. We’ve had the chance to play Black Ops 6’s new multiplayer mode with a limited number of weapons and maps over the weekend (you can play COD: BO6 this weekend for yourself), and a handful of new mechanical changes make Call of Duty feel like a better experience – not just over MW3, but over any COD game from recent memory.

Sliding and diving is amazing. / Activision

Omni-movement is the big thing that separates this game from its dozens of predecessors. Your character can now sprint in any direction. Sideways, backward, diagonally – it’s all fine and legal. This will vastly increase the lethality of hip-fire weapons, but the changes don’t stop there. You can now dive and, when prone, aim at any angle. No more awkward shuffling around to get a shot on your opponent, just dive and aim. Sliding is still present too, and is just as versatile.

These minor changes massively speed up the pace and flow of your average multiplayer game. Everyone is moving faster and more nimbly, with enemies sliding and diving around corners while blasting bullets. It looks cool, and when you manage to bamboozle a foe or three in the heat of battle, it feels amazing. You can even hold enemies as human shields instead of going for a fancy finisher if you manage to sneak up behind them. In my games this was rare – most players prefer to shoot first and ask questions later – but it adds another layer of complexity and possibility to each match. For example, if you sneak behind foes defending a point, you could grab one to use as a shield while blasting any allies they have nearby.

Multiplayer maps are great in the Beta. / Activision

The guns feel great, too. They’re distinctly “lighter” and less impactful than what you might be used to from the Modern Warfare series, but they still artfully shred through enemy health bars, ensuring the time-to-kill in multiplayer is still low and satisfying. The few new maps we saw were also great. Derelict acts as a classic three-lane map with verticality allowing you to break the conventions of those map designs, while Gala is an open-plan hall with limited amounts of cover and a central building with an upper floor, offering great strategies for both snipers and swift SMG sprayers.

I didn’t think I would care for another Call of Duty game, not after how cold I felt coming off of MW3, but after the first Beta weekend finished, I found myself wanting to play a few more games. It’s still early days and this is just one part of the package, but Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 looks set to be a true return to form for a struggling series.