Here's a Rundown of Everything At the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Multiplayer Reveal Event [09/09/2020]

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is the newest title in the Call of Duty franchise. Developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, Cold War’s multiplayer makes the bold claim of mixing traditional boots on the ground combat with new, innovative gameplay. In a livestream on Wednesday 9th September, Activision showed off gameplay of its cross-gen multiplayer shooter. From the iconic Team Deathmatch to the unique VIP Escort, there is a lot to dissect and discuss.

Gamemodes

As mentioned above, classic Team Deathmatch is back alongside other fan favourites like Domination, Kill Confirmed, Control, Hardpoint and Search and Destroy. There are a few tweaks with Domination, where instead of capturing flags, you are securing an area, similar to Hardpoint. Speaking of Hardpoint, you will now be able to see on the map where the next Hardpoint is ten seconds before it changes, so you can’t blame your bad memory for not rotating.

People love escorting things in games.

Right?

With Cold War being a Treyarch game, a few new modes are included. One of them is VIP Escort - a 6v6 mode where one person is randomly assigned as the VIP. The VIP will have a pistol, smoke grenade and access to scorestreaks, while the other players will choose their class as normal. One team will need to protect the VIP and extract them, while the other team needs to kill the VIP. It doesn’t matter how many of your teammates are alive, only the VIP, and it is first to 4 rounds. Finally, you can down and revive players, similar to Blackout (the Battle Royale mode) from Black Ops 4.

Unfortunately, Ground War doesn’t seem to be included in Cold War. However, there is a 12v12 mode called Combined Arms in its place, which seems to take place on the larger maps such as Armada. In the reveal, 12v12 Domination was played here and it looks fast and chaotic. It features five areas to capture instead of three.

Finally, the last thing Treyarch announced was a new way to play called Firefight, a new mode with more teams than ever before. They showcased “Dirty Bomb”, a mode where you need to collect uranium and deliver it to a rendezvous. The map develops while you play with mechanics such as poisonous gas, so every experience will be different.  Firefight has up to 10 teams of 4 depending on what one you play. These remind me a bit of the War mode from Call of Duty: World War II, so it’ll be interesting to see how these Firefight variants work.

Guns and Create a Class.

Sorry for all the watermarks but all the gameplay footage from the event had twitch streamers’ overlays on them. Which isn’t awful at all.

In any multiplayer shooter, the guns and how you loadout of your character are key to the success of the game. Treyarch has always been pioneers in class creation (most notable with the first Black Ops’ “Pick 10” system), and they continue to innovate. For Cold War, you can have a primary and secondary gun, lethal, tactical, three perks, a field upgrade and wildcards.

Treyarch was quick to flaunt the changes they have made, starting with primary guns having over 50 attachment options in at least six different categories, all of which can be chosen at Treyarch’s Gunsmith. You can pick five of these attachments or eight with a wildcard. A subtle but welcome change is that instead of getting red and green bars to show an increase/decrease to stats due to an attachment (e.g. the fire rate), it is replaced with percentages (+2% fire rate). Guns that have been seen so far include (but are not limited to): AK74-U, M4, M16, MP5, LW3 (Sniper) and Pellington 703 (Sniper).

Wildcards are back and allow you to adapt your class to your needs. Some of these include doubling your lethal and tactical (grenades, throwing knives, etc.) equipment, adding three more attachments to your primary weapon or having three more perks at your disposal.

Field upgrades such as a minimap jammer and a proximity mine are earned by time, and not by score or kills.

Scorestreaks

Scorestreaks are back but also have changed. Before you needed to use a perk to keep your score on death/decrease the score needed, but in Cold War, you’ll keep your streak through death. In addition, you will gain multipliers to your score if you string kills together in one life. Scorestreaks seen included; Chopper Gunners, UAV, War Machine and artillery strikes. These streaks take more score to get to compensate for the lack of score resetting. Initially, I was very hesitant about this change. However, after watching gameplay and seeing how streaks like Chopper Gunners take around 30 kills to achieve, I am a little less apprehensive. This is one of those changes where we won’t know the impact until a few months into the game. 

Movement and Systems

Treyarch has changed the Black Ops movement vastly across almost every entry and this time they’ve spent a lot of time adapting and improving the systems with which you traverse. The movement looks fluid and clean. Sliding is back, and your character will start and end in a crouched position. When you jump, you will have a slight movement decrease to improve realism and feel, while when you sprint, you will gain a burst of speed before slowing down to the normal running speed. The wall-running and double-jumping of Black Ops III is truly a thing of the past while the physicality of Black Ops IIII is being focused on once again.

Neon lights are a requirement for any next-gen launch title, I think.

Audio has improved, with sounds closer and more focused on you (such as gunfire in your direction) being louder and external sounds (like fire from afar) being quieter. It also uses more advanced 3D sound systems and uses all haptic feedback such as vibrations in the PS5 controller.

Character animations are also improved, with Treyarch trying to improve the feel and look of the game. While these might not improve the gameplay itself, they do look better and will hopefully make the game feel more complete.

Swimming returns to Cold War from Black Ops III, with the player being able to go underwater and see through it, as well as being able to use guns and utilities. Vehicles also return on some maps and modes, such as Armada, including a boat, zipline, tank and snowmobile.

 Finally, a big change is the footstep system. Instead of being quiet while crouching and loud when running, it all depends on how fast you’re going. You could be crouching at full speed and be louder than walking normally. Perks like Ninja will help reduce the sound further.

Mechanics play a huge role in whether a community will embrace a Call of Duty game long term or quickly decry it. This was apparent with the ‘jetpack era’, which was very controversial with fans of the franchise. However, I feel Treyarch has taken the criticism of their last two titles to heart and combined the fluidity of Black Ops III with the deliberate nature of Black Ops IIII to make a game that will hopefully be adored by both casual and competitive fans.

Maps

Five maps were shown in the multiplayer reveal: Miami, Armada, Moscow, Satellite and Crossroads.

Miami is a traditional map with different flanking areas, such as a beach and dark alleyways. It also has a main strip in the middle to allow for chaos. Lots of bright neon lights are on this map and even a nightclub with music. Is anyone else getting Black Ops 2 Plaza vibes?

Armada is a large map made nearly entirely of water in the North Atlantic, with several boats and areas for the player to explore and fight. Armada has a lot of unique quirks, such as a zipline to get from one boat to another.

Moscow is a three-lane map set in, you guessed it, Moscow. It has large statues and multiple buildings as well as a central plaza. I reckon that this map will be played a lot in the Call of Duty League (CDL).

Satellite is a desert-like map set in Angola. It has no buildings, but multiple different routes and focuses heavily around the middle part of the map. This map reminds me of Turbine from Black Ops 2 in terms of its looks and the wrecked plane in the center of the map.

Crossroads is another map that features vehicles, such as snowmobiles and tanks, and seems to the near mandatory snowy map of the game. Like Armada, it is a larger scale map.

I feel like we’ve definitely done the whole snowmobile shootout before in these games.

Overall, I like the look of the four maps as they all have unique elements to them. I am a little anxious about the two bigger maps and their use of vehicles, as typically that hasn’t worked out well in a Call of Duty games (see Call of Duty: World War II).

Connectivity

After Infinity Ward made Call of Duty: Modern Warfare cross-platform, Treyarch has followed suit. However, with the PS5 and Xbox Series X looming, they announced that Cold War will be “Cross Generation” too and thus, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and PC can all play with each other. In addition, any progress you make on one platform will transfer to another.

Beenox is bringing Cold War to Battle.net again, and are making more improvements after their initial year bringing Modern Warfare to the platform. They are upgrading from DirectX 11 to DirectX 12, are improving the latency and have partnered with Nvidia to bring raytracing and other performance upgrades to PC. They have announced that these graphic upgrades will be added to Warzone at a later date too.

Verdansk you very much for reading…

Huh? HUH! Good, right?

Warzone

Speaking of Warzone, the rumours of Cold War building on the battle royale is true. Treyarch is said to be both adding to and improving Warzone, with narrative additions and with new (old) guns. However they won’t be removing Modern Warfare’s guns or progression. They also announced this trend will continue going forward across all studios working on the Call of Duty franchise. Verdansk is here to stay.

While I do not have any Warzone experience, one cohesive game over the four studios is something I, alongside many other fans, have wanted for years. With this change, I can see Warzone trading blows in playerbase with Fortnite, and surpassing other battle royale’s like Apex Legends and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

Extra Notes

• There are no doors in Cold War, like in Modern Warfare.

• “Slide Cancelling feels like Modern Warfare” - Seth “Scump” Abner, Call of Duty Pro Player. (Note: Treyarch have said this is unintended and is working on a fix.)

• Dropshotting will give you hip-fire accuracy.

• Health Bars are above players heads when you shoot them, like in Infinite Warfare. This can be turned off.

• There is a compass HUD at the top of the screen, so you can give callouts in degrees.

• The minimap is back to normal, not like Modern Warfare.

• Each map has an intro sequence, like Modern Warfare.

• Theatre Mode is back.

• There will be an Open Beta in October, starting with PS4 on October 8th and then crossplay on October 15th.

• The Time to kill (TTK) is “slightly faster” than Black Ops 4.

• Fall Damage exists.

• Best play of the game replaces final killcam once more.

• Snipers do not seem to have aim assists, similar to other recent Treyarch titles.

• Zombies were teased at the end.

• 120hz is supported, as is 4K on the PC and next-gen consoles.

• Post-launch free multiplayer content will be announced closer to launch.

All in all, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is shaping up to be an interesting and unique iteration in the franchise. After a rough few years for the series, Treyarch are going to be hoping this title will sure up the recent success of Modern Warframe. While there are some question marks around certain design decisions, there are a surplus of positives for any gamer to enjoy. I look forward to playing the open beta in October.