GAME ON!

Big dog in the house Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 FPS/Multiplayer

The shooter landscape has experienced a shake-up in the past couple of years. Where once the regular Triple A games in this genre could expect healthy returns by kicking out a new iteration of an old template with some new tweaks, matchtypes and modes, now they are having to take note of a new genre of game that has been eating their lunch with startling regularity: the Battle Royale.

The two leaders in this genre, Fortnite and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, who not only dominate gaming headlines with stories about their regular updates and player antics, they routinely strip the lobbies of more traditional shooters. This may explain why Activision announced in May that it was jumping on the Battle Royale bandwagon and it fell to Treyarch – the studio tasked with this year’s iteration – to make a go at it.

Before addressing Treyarch’s answer to this call

Blackout, it’s worth taking a look at the game’s other two modes – Multiplayer and Zombies.

The former sees the return of the Specialists From COD: BLOPS III as well as a couple of new faces. The pace of the matches is less frenetic and the “boots-on-the-ground” approach Treyarch has taken (no jet jumps or wall running) makes the mode feel smoother and enjoyable.

It would have been nice to have more match modes and variety in a couple of maps, but the satisfying shooting and new heal-mechanic – which forces players to think tactically – will keep players glued.

Zombies is slick and stacked with content boasting two storylines, deep maps set on the Titanic, Colosseum and Alctraz, chargeable weapons, puzzles, and a new mode, Rush, which is a fast-paced kill box where reflexes and twitch-shooting is paramount.