CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS IIII
Like Fortnite, but too weak
You know your game is a success when the biggest first-person shooter franchise around starts cribbing your homework. Over the last year, Epic Games’ battle royale sensation Fortnite has captured every facet of pop culture interest, so it’s no surprise the makers of Call Of Duty have finally taken note.
Black Ops IIII’s headline mode, called Blackout, mimics the action of Epic’s cartoony shooter, then plasters it over the existing Call Of Duty mould. That means fluid blasting features heavily, as your marooned survivor tries to outlast another 99 players on a remote island laden with fully-auto implements of death. While Blackout is fluid and, on occasion, compellingly nerve-shredding, it also feels rote and tired.
If nothing else, Black Ops IIII is at least a robust package. The survival shootouts of Blackout are ably assisted by the shooter’s traditional multiplayer modes – including twists on team deathmatch and the basesnatching Control – while the now decade-old COD Zombies also shuffle back onto the scene. Though the former suite of online match types are thankfully more welcoming than before (owing to the fact that your soldier can now withstand more bullets), the increasingly tired, ever cluttered Zombies fails to capture the magic of the original undead-slaying mode that debuted all the way back in 2008’s Call Of Duty: World At War. The fact that the action also looks offensively blurry doesn’t help matters. Where once COD was a sharpshooter savant, now it feels like a confused student trying to copy off others. Dave Meikleham
Should that be Black Ops IV? The Romans used both addition and subtraction methods for numerals. So it’s fine.