Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Review - The Best Addition Yet to the Battle Royale Genre

Written by Chris Woodside on October 14, 2018

Reviews: Despite forgoing a single player campaign for the first time in the series history, Call of Duty Black Ops 4 has more content than ever before.

Almost as soon as Treyarch Studios next Call of Duty game was revealed to be the first Black Ops game since 2015, reports began to leak that the series would be completely dropping a single player campaign for the first time, instead choosing to focus and improve upon the multiplayer gameplay that has made Call of Duty one of the most played (and highest grossing) first-person shooter franchises in the past decade. While this certainly ends up being a disappointment, particularly for gamers who may have been looking forward to continuing the tales of espionage that defined the Black Ops stories, it is not entirely unexpected either. With the rise of online gaming coming to a climax with this current generation of console hardware, the Call of Duty series was often and unfairly maligned for producing campaigns that felt disjointed, lazy, and overly formulaic. As the series went further into the future, none of those stories felt quite as well crafted as the masterpieces that were Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2. The series was always moving in this direction, and Treyarch does a wonderful job showing gamers that Call of Duty is more than capable of standing solely on their multiplayer feet.

Perhaps the biggest addition to the franchise this year was also the least surprising when it was revealed this past spring. With the introduction of Blackout, the series confidently plants its flag in the Battle Royale genre that has, up until this point, been dominated by Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Absent any sort of crafting or building mechanics, however, it is clear that Call of Duty has chosen to follow in the footsteps of Battlegrounds, and despite some frame rate and latency issues is almost entirely a success.

Without a doubt, Black Ops 4 offers the single best battle royal experience in video games today. It was only a matter of time before large, and wealthy, AAA studios began to test the market on one of the fastest growing and highest grossing game features on the planet, and Call of Duty blows their competition out of the water. What makes such a feat even more amazing is they do so without offering any new, groundbreaking feature that distinguishes their battle royale mode from Battlegrounds or Fortnite. Black Ops 4 Blackout mode simply does everything better.

One of my biggest complaints with Battlegrounds from its days in early access was the frustrating mechanic of having to bring up a screen wide menu simply to heal yourself or attach modifications onto your weapons. Oftentimes, this would not be too much of a problem if you remembered to take care of weapon modifications hidden inside a structure, but if you were in a situation, particularly late in the game, where such cover was impossible, you were putting your sole life on the line simply to put a scope on your sniper rifle or recover a minuscule amount of health. Black Ops 4, smartly, does away with that. If you pick up a scope or other firearm modification that is compatible with the weapon in your hand, it will automatically become attached, ensuring that you do not need to worry about being stalked or killed.

Another improvement made in Blackout mode is the well-balanced progression system. In other battle royale games, you and your team are uniformly rewarded with a chicken dinner should you be the last person or team standing. There is no benefit to choosing a more risky and aggressive playstyle that sees you kill a large number of enemies, rather than hiding in the middle of a large body of water, out of sight until the final minutes of the game. While Blackout mode does reward players once you get to the final ten, those rewards become multiplied based on how many people you were able to kill. This serves as a major improvement to the genre overall, as Blackout is the first battle royale game to put a focus on rewarding the skill of players, rather than their ability to play hide-and-seek. This aggressiveness is the key to success in Blackout, thanks in part to one of my favorite additions that Call of Duty introduces.

In any other battle royale game, the only danger you will truly encounter is other players. Blackout turns this dynamic on its head by introducing a second enemy type besides just the other 99 players. Zombies. Throughout the map are strategically placed zombies that pose not only a danger of attacking you but by also attracting enemy players to your locations when you are forced to fend them off. The rewards for doing so are great, however, as some of the best loot in the game is guarded behind these zombie dens. Particularly late in the game, as the playing area starts to disappear, it can create fantastic strategic decisions as you decide if starting a firefight with 10 zombies is worth the risk in exchange for nabbing the gun sitting behind them that could win you, and your team, the match.

While Blackout has, without a doubt, brought the entire genre of battle royale games to new heights, there is a certain lack of technical polish that can ruin an otherwise fantastic gaming experience. While this could in part be the result of a split player base between the Xbox One X and the original, less powerful, Xbox One, trying to find a good team to squad up with can sometimes be a challenge. I have had matches, both solo and with a full squad, that have run smoother than even some matches I have played of Battlegrounds on my high-end gaming PC. That said, there were some players that slowed down my frame rate, and experience, quite a bit. On top of that, there have been some other strange glitches that, despite having the option to fill my squad checked on, I would only be on a team of 2 or 3 in a squads match, putting me and my teammates at a significant disadvantage by being one player short. None of these bugs are truly game-breaking, but they do dampen the experience of what is otherwise an unbelievably smooth launch for Call of Duty’s newest mode.

Among the other two modes, Call of Duty deserves credit for attempting to shoehorn in a narrative to appease those who were disappointed to see the absence of a dedicated single-player campaign. This semblance of a story can be found in the infamous zombies mode that makes a return here in Black Ops 4. After choosing one of a handful of adventurers, you will be thrown into a historical setting in a fictitious timeline, such as a gladiatorial colosseum in Ancient Rome, or thrust into the early 20th century aboard the doomed Titanic. While Treyarch does a respectable job of attempting to tie in all of these maps into some form of an overarching story, players will just be too busy mowing down endless hordes of zombies to be able to follow the story beats--or even care much about them. Despite being an enjoyable arcade type experience where you constantly try to beat your high score from the previous run, Zombies is by far the least polished mode in Black Ops 4, and its entertainment value begins to wear thin after a few rounds unless you are playing it with a consistent group of friends.

When it comes to having a consistent group of friends to play this game with, Black Ops 4 feels like the first game in the series that truly demands that even for its traditional multiplayer mode in team deathmatch. Specialists appear to be much more defined than in previous years, clearly influenced from the success of Overwatch classifications, and it encourages you and your friends to master a particular specialization within your crew. Most of the matches I have played where multiple people chose the same class often were lopsided defeats at the hands of the opposing team. Another benefit of such strict specializations is for the accessibility it provides to new players. After having only played the Call of Duty series on and off, I often felt intimidated to jump into any of the games head on, as I knew there would always be players with years more experience than me. For those who will be making their first jump into the Call of Duty series, you can now take on a role that allows you to provide support for your team in a way that will not constantly see you respawning throughout a match. The accessibility here is also enhanced by a surprisingly thorough tutorial that is provided for each of the specializations, which also provides some lore into the Black Ops universe.

Apart from all of these changes and additions to the various gameplay modes that have been staples of the Call of Duty franchise for years, perhaps the most important changes that catapult Black Ops 4 from a good game to a great game are the small quality of life changes that make every mode just that much more enjoyable for both new players and veterans of the series alike. One of the most noticeable changes in this category is the versatility of the combat. The ability to multitask in ways that allow players to heal, throw grenades and other projectiles, or just complete other simple mechanics while shooting means that you no longer need to make a choice between attempting to extend your life by shooting yourself with a first aid kit, or attempting to headshot your opponent before they get another round off. This increased flexibility for the player allows for more fluid gameplay and less heat of the moment frustrations.

On the topic of being able to heal yourself, this is another major departure for the mechanics of Call of Duty gameplay. Building off of the changes first introduced in last year’s World War II title, players can no longer regenerate health when out of combat. With no health regeneration, choosing the right time to use a medkit (particularly in Blackout), becomes a much more strategic decision. Not only are you balancing your resources to ensure you don’t use a valuable med kit too early on in the match, but you also will never know when an enemy sniper is waiting for you to drop your guard and heal yourself before taking you out. While this may seem like a small change, particularly with the first step in this direction from last year’s Call of Duty, it has fundamentally changed the way I approach a match in this game.

For a series as monumental as Call of Duty to have released a high budget campaign every fall for the past 11 years, the decision to ship Black Ops 4 without one was a risky decision from Treyarch Studios. With no overarching narrative to fall back on, everything in the online modes would have to be executed flawlessly, in particular, the brand new Blackout mode. Luckily for both Treyarch and Activision, this decision turns out to be an overwhelming success. Players who may be hungry for another thrilling, action-packed campaign have good cause to be disappointed at its absence, but by not needing to put resources into a single player campaign, Black Ops 4 is able to shine where the series has always done best. Improving upon an incredibly polished traditional multiplayer and Zombies gameplay, in addition to the single best Battle Royale experience on the market today, Black Ops 4 will stand in the upper echelon of the Call of Duty franchise for many years to come.