Call Of Duty Black Ops: Cold War
PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
It all adds up to a mesmerisingly unpleasant atmosphere that somewhat offsets the gungho nihilism of the plot
Developer/publisher Activision (Treyarch)
Format PC, PS4 (tested), PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Release Out now
What’s the difference between the special operators of the Modern Warfare games and the protagonists of Treyarch’s Black Ops series? Much of the time, there isn’t one. Both series are dramatisations of the US military’s ability to parachute wired-up jarheads into ‘unstable’ regions at whim. In Cold War, as in Modern Warfare 2, you will eviscerate people in doorways and snipe them from cliffsides. You will breach doors in slow motion and rain death from a circling gunship. But where the special operator is portrayed as a rational, surgical response to a world that is always one rogue element from disaster, the black ops soldier is a more ambiguous figure – ‘plausibly deniable’, existing in the redacted spaces formed by superpower paranoia where reason finds little purchase. Among other things, this permits a showier disregard for the rules of engagement. One of the first things you do in Cold War is gun down a group of men from behind as they watch TV. A little later, you’re invited to throw an interrogation subject from a roof after roughing him up – one of a handful of pivotal dialogue choices throughout the game.
Set in the ’80s with occasional jaunts back to the Vietnam War, Cold War’s singleplayer is a five-to-tenhour hunt for a legendary Soviet agent known as Perseus. Between missions, you sift through evidence about your quarry on an investigation board at your safe house, gossip with allies (the usual parade of wetworkers from opposite sides of the Atlantic) and replay chapters for bonus intel. Computer terminals let you poke through KGB memos, and there’s a dark room where you’ll find photographs from previous sorties. At times the game threatens to become an intelligence analyst simulator: there are two side missions with optional ‘best’ endings that require you to decrypt passwords and identify sleeper agents. For the most part, however, it treats this material as a retro aesthetic, rather than information to be decoded. Loading cinematics abound with period trappings such as perspex maps and magnetic tape reels.
We wish Treyarch had made more of the detective premise. It’s more stimulating than the gauntlet runs, stealth beats and vehicle getaways that comprise the missions. At the same time, the fact that so much of the intel is just decoration suits the essential postmodernism of Black Ops, the sense that meaning has been swallowed up and shattered by the fancy data-gathering devices that are so venerated in Modern Warfare. This loss of coherence allows for moments of enjoyable surreality, ciphers hiding within ciphers: one level is a megalithic caricature of a Soviet base which contains a mock-up of a stereotypical American town, complete with an arcade housing Activision games from the period.
You yourself are the Frankensteinian product of a CIA profiling screen, where you can assign traits such as resistance to explosives and a cursory background. This includes a non-binary gender option – a progressive touch that sits rather oddly alongside promotion of ‘cultural Marxist’ conspiracy theories in trailers. The past is a construct in several senses: the campaign’s best chapter sees you reliving a glitchy Vietnam War scenario, following or not following the narration’s instructions in a nod to The Stanley Parable. Elsewhere the game indulges in a less forgivable kind of revisionism, passing off the 1979 Iran hostage crisis as the work of Soviet agents.
It all adds up to a mesmerisingly unpleasant atmosphere that somewhat offsets the gung-ho tedium of the plot. In Black Ops, nostalgia collapses into nihilism: history has ended and all we have left is memorabilia, to be warred over indefinitely. Which brings us to the multiplayer. Cold War’s core 6v6 options are the usual spread of deathmatch and objective-driven modes, waged on maps that cater impressively to a range of combat criteria. Our pick is Armada, which is set on a battleship’s deck and offers an exhilarating mix of flanking routes and elevations. At the other end of the scale there’s Cartel, a jungle hideout that is far too ambush-friendly.
Cartel aside, the multiplayer is a smart balance of camping and run-and-gun. Knee-sliding now leaves you in a crouch, so lone wolves can’t just Bruce Springsteen their way around maps. Footstep noise is newly shaped by speed and direction, making it easier to catch attackers out. Dying doesn’t reset scorestreak progress, which means that struggling players have a little more opportunity to wreak havoc.
New modes reveal the gravitational pull of Warzone, Call Of Duty’s battle royale. A Combined Arms suite sees up to 24 players tussling over larger maps with vehicles. It’s not a patch on Battlefield, with vehicles either useless or overpowered depending on team coordination, but a nice change of pace when 6v6 gets too claustrophobic. Fireteam, meanwhile, sees 40 players fighting on dedicated maps in teams of four. The one Fireteam mode available at time of writing is a disappointment – a dragged-out spin on Domination in which teams prime and detonate respawning bombs. It involves too much legwork and lacks Warzone’s clarifying race to the centre. Least contentious and exciting of the new modes is the self-explanatory VIP Escort, which is given longevity by Warzone’s armour and revive-from-KO systems.
Black Ops is Call Of Duty’s id, the place where talk of ‘defending our way of life’ by murdering overseas is most obviously exposed as a brutal sham. That gives it a certain value, but only when judged against other games in a series that – as regards the campaign, at least – has no idea how to bring itself to a long overdue conclusion. The heart of Black Ops isn’t the campaign but PvE mode Zombies, which remains an amusing exercise in fending off ghouls while unlocking areas. Here, the shattered history you’ll pick over in singleplayer returns to life in a mindless, all-consuming tide.