Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Being the sixth game in a sub-series of a major franchise that churns out sequels every year, my expectations weren’t particularly high going into Black Ops 6. That’s not to throw shade at Treyarch, but it feels like we reach a point every few years where a particular Call of Duty format succumbs to a creeping fatigue, prompting a harsh pivot from the next developer to take the reins.

This isn’t the case with Call of Duty Black Ops 6 – if anything, it’s the best the series has been since Infinity Ward’s 2019 Modern Warfare reboot and, personally, marks my favourite entry since Black Ops 2 launched more than a decade ago.

Even though the series’ timeline is quickly catching up to the contemporary setting of Modern Warfare, Black Ops 6 underlines how very different these two series still are. In this latest single player campaign, Treyarch continues to dip its toes in real-world history – this time it’s the event surrounding the first Gulf War – while also entangling its core cast of characters in a web of conspiracy where it’s never clear who the true enemy really is.

Following the events of Black Ops Cold War, and with our main man Mason out of the picture, players are cast as CIA operative “Case” – a classically silent protagonist flanked by returning favourite, Woods, and veteran Troy Marshall. After a botched extraction mission in Kuwait, and with the emergence of a shady new faction known as Pantheon, the trio is forced underground to root out this hidden threat before it can enact its master plan.

Although Call of Duty has its fair share of memorable characters, they rarely have as much depth as BO6’s ragtag band of rogue ops who are soon joined by the battle-scarred Adler as well as Felix, a pacifist expert engineer, and the wardrobe-swapping assassin, Sev. It’s not necessarily how these characters are written or acted (though the performances here are top notch, especially Y’lan Noel’s Troy Marshall) but rather how you interact with them.

Between missions, Black