First Impressions - Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Beta

Every year, I tell myself I won’t buy Call of Duty, and yet every year I do. After playing every single entry in the franchise at launch (except whatever the one set in space was, and the original few that came out when I was still wearing diapers), I’ve realised that it’s officially one of my addictions alongside cigarettes and expensive firearms. But unlike with most of my vices, I’m in no rush to stop using it, or playing it in this case, because at the end of the day, $70/£70 isn’t that much money to spend on something in this economy. There are far worse ways to spend my free time, too, and the point is that I was pretty apathetic when sober me remembered that drunk me bought Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 so I could play its beta early. And after sober me spent almost an entire weekend playing that closed beta, and then took a day off of work to play the open beta that just recently ended, I’m no longer apathetic about my purchase. Instead, I’m actually excited for the full game’s release in about two months, because apparently the series won’t suck this year.

To be fair, that’s a pretty low bar, and it’s one that comes with a disclaimer saying that the beta, and presumably the full game, still has the same five issues Call of Duty has had since Modern Warfare 2019. You still need to deal with the ever-obnoxious CoD HQ (effectively a launcher within whatever launcher you bought the game on that you need to launch before you can launch the beta or MW2019 / 2022 / 2023 / Warzone), stupid skins that will no doubt get even dumber when the title launches, skill-based matchmaking that always puts you in lobbies with people who have the exact same K/D ratio as you, constant server issues that are more annoying than anything else, and glitches that will probably be fixed sooner rather than later. None of these things ruin the overall experience, because at this point, they’re just kind of part of the experience. Popes shit in the woods, you need to pay taxes, and Call of Duty has problems that rarely prevent you from playing but are still a pain to contend with. 

Before my editor types anything, I’m fully aware I’m glossing over some serious issues with the beta, but I’ll wait to ramble about them until I see whether or not they still exist in the full game. Instead, what I do want to ramble about is how Black Ops 6’s beta was actually enjoyable for a whole multitude of reasons. I’d say the most impactful one of those is its “omnimovement” system that allows you to sprint/dive in any direction à la Max Payne, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate, because almost everything about the beta was noticeably better compared to its predecessors. The new movement mechanics were, of course, the biggest one, as it upped the speed of gameplay to something that’s a bit slower than Apex Legends but a hell of a lot faster than the aforementioned Modern Warfare 2019, but the reduced time-to-kill, good maps, balanced weapons, and simplified levelling up and perk systems all played an equal role in making me actually have fun with the beta. 

I can’t believe I’m typing this, but for the first time since I started reviewing video games for Jump Dash Roll, there’s too many changes to Call of Duty this year to discuss in a first impressions piece. Although Black Ops 6’s beta was still a CoD title at heart for better and worse, it felt like an actually good game that I wanted to play more of after I’d typed up this article. Its core gameplay loop wasn’t any different than it’s been in the 15 or so entries into the franchise since Modern Warfare 2007, but unlike with most of those entries, it was genuinely fun. It did, of course, have those five issues I mentioned earlier, but the new movement mechanics and better balancing effectively cancelled those problems out as far as I was concerned.

So, not to repeat myself again, but I can’t believe I won’t be copy-pasting bits and pieces of my previous Call of Duty reviews come October 25. The beta didn’t redefine the series, but it did apparently refine it enough for this very pessimistic games reviewer to enjoy it. Over the past two weekends, I felt like I was 12 years old and dive-shotting in the original Call of Duty: Black Ops, except I was doing so in much better-looking virtual environments with gameplay that’d been significantly tweaked for the better. My fun could be explained with the same reason a cigarette after a long flight tastes so good (the long flight in this metaphor being the break I took from the franchise after reviewing and promptly forgetting about the maladroit Modern Warfare III from 2023), or it could be because the myriad developers behind one of gaming’s biggest institutions have finally realised how to make a good game. Only time will tell, and I’ll be counting down the days until that time while perpetually making sure my boss doesn’t schedule me to work the weekend of October 25th.