Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War review

• November 14, 2020
• Revision
• Technolust

• Florin Cașotă

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is the 17th title in the Call of Duty series and gives you the opportunity to experience the tensions of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR.

Unlike the previous title in the Black Ops series, Cold War brings back the single player campaign and I can only be very happy. I understand and know that this campaign is no longer a main point in the development of these games, but multiplayer. This is where the money, season passes, and other mini transactions come in that bring Activision good money.

However, by offering a single-player campaign, the game can also appeal to casual players, and so after the campaign is over, they can also try the multiplayer mode.

The cold war is heating up

In this new title, you play with Bell and, along with your American teammates in other titles, Woods and Mason, but also new ones such as Adler, Park or Sims, you have the mission to stop Perseus, a Soviet agent who has reactivated after about 12-13 years of silence. So, you have missions in different places around the world where you try to find out what Perseus is doing, destabilize his spy network and so on.

Things start off normally, then, in the classic Black Ops style, get more confusing towards the end. You have minor upsets and an end to the story that can vary depending on certain choices you make. It’s an interesting campaign, but it feels too close narratively and thematically to the first Call of Duty: Black Ops.

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In terms of missions, they are varied: both in location and in gameplay. You will have insane missions with explosions, chases and extreme situations, but also more silent stealth, respecting the idea of ​​Black Ops. During the game you have the opportunity to try out different types of weapons and see how they work.

The action is set in the 80s, you have the times of that time, whether you are talking about Berlin, Moscow or other places. I particularly liked the American pop music inserts and it was very nice the mission to Russia, where you wake up in a model city built in the image of an American city and while the bullets fly you hear the specific pop music of the 80s.

As for the duration of the campaign, this is short. I finished it in almost half a day. I would have liked it to be longer, but I’m happy with that, considering the previous Black Ops didn’t have a campaign at all.

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Graphics and Ray Tracing

I ran the game on my newly updated system consisting of a Ryzen 5 5600x processor, Asus Prime x570-P motherboard, 16GB of HyperX Predator 3200MHz RAM, and an Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti video card. Under these conditions, the game ran smoothly and I had over 60 FPS on Ultra graphics settings (ultra ray tracing + dlss quality) with a resolution of 3440 x 1400 in most situations, and in the interior areas I also hit 115 FPS.

Whether you turn on ray tracing or not, the game looks great. The characters are very well done, as are their animations. The weapons are also excellently crafted and the attention to detail is outstanding. Last but not least, as I said above, the diversity of locations is good and it not only gives you the opportunity to play differently, but also to see graphics that you would otherwise have missed.

Returning to ray tracing, here you have a chance to see what this technology can do and I get the impression that many maps have been created on purpose to show you reflections and shadows. You will play missions in abandoned and dark places where you will have the opportunity to see how lights and shadows behave, but also in areas like Berlin where you can see how light reacts to rain, neon and other light sources. It would be a shame to buy the game and enter multiplayer at all low settings, without experiencing the visual beauty of the Cold War.

I haven’t tried any other game modes, but will be going into Zombies and Multiplayer modes after I’m done writing this review. I had the opportunity to experience a few hours of multiplayer gameplay in beta and enjoyed what I saw. It seems to me that it offers fun and “addicting” gameplay like Modern Warfare, but it also brings some changes that I like, like a slightly longer time to kill.

Overall, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War I wouldn’t say it’s a revelation like the first Black Ops, but it’s a title worth adding to the collection. If you are a fan of shooters and haven’t played Call of Duty in a long time, then Cold War would be worth a try.