Analysis | COD: Cold War has a lean campaign and gigantic quality



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Black operations is one of the main series in the franchise call of Duty. As the name suggests, it is based on the squadron having to do operations on the sly, outside the official records, motivated by a problem that could wipe out humanity.

No case of Cold War, the issue revolves around the clash between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the face of an undeclared tension between the two parts of the world. It is in this scenario that the player needs to kill as many people as possible, massacre others, as well as torture prisoners in search of important information.

Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War it is divided into four modes. The campaign, which puts the player at the center of the battle between the two countries; multiplayer, which adds battle royale mechanics to gameplay; Warzone, which is actually the same battle royale launched separately by Activision; and Zombies, the game’s cooperative campaign.

In a simple way, Cold War is a portrait of Activision, which has been able to use all the learning accumulated in recent years to make a game with impeccable technique. As a tradition, there is also a mixture of historical revisionism and exaggeration of deaths in the countryside that deserve attention. However, they don’t spoil the good hours of play the title can offer.

For those who love the series, it is a new dish full of ideas and good proposals. Let’s go to them.

History

The narrative begins in the so-called American hostage crisis in Iran, where the special operations group discovers the existence of an enemy called Perseus. Thus, the player and his team embark on a paramilitary and clandestine mission in search of this person. The plot runs through interesting points in Cold War history, with fighting in Turkey, East Germany, Vietnam and other locations.

Since the game has several modes to produce, don’t expect the campaign Cold War something giant with plots to develop. The narrative is very simple, with few side missions and a storyline to be completed in five or six hours of play.

The plot of the game involves finding out who Perseus is (Photo: Wagner Wakka / Canaltech)

The player plays a character codenamed Bell. The interesting part is the customization, which also affects the modifiers during character creation. For example, you can get headshot bonuses when you are more calculating, or you can sense enemies more easily by being paranoid. Small changes that contribute to a more varied gameplay.

The most interesting part of the campaign Cold War it is certainly in its espionage character. Since this is an operation that, theoretically, should take place under the hood, we must make as little noise as possible. Hence, there are certain stages and maps where the player is rewarded for hiding, even without killing any or a few opponents.

The spike is on a map that takes place inside the KGB headquarters, in a meeting that includes Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union. Your mission as an infiltrator in the agency is to steal a card that gives access to the bunker so that the rest of the group can invade the place.

The meeting is a tense moment with Gorbachev (Photo: Wagner Wakka / Canaltech)

Then, you have to walk around the rooms and enter hidden forbidden areas to get that card. This positively breaks that hectic pace that call of Duty you have to shoot, hit and bomb all the time.

It is interesting for a special narrative of a clandestine operation to have these moments of more espionage and less action. It helps create tension in the air and overcomes the feeling of invincibility that the series has.

The fact that the campaign is also small allows for major improvements in environments and mechanics. The KGB building, for example, is extremely detailed, with several rooms to visit and limited regions.

The KGB building is one of the best moments of the campaign (Photo: Wagner Wakka / Canaltech)

Added to this is the fact that the game has different endings, also made possible by a plot that does not intend to stretch too much. This makes it the story mode of Cold War enough, without edges and with good rhythm. A nice request in the midst of games that add content to justify its high price.

Multiplayer

Although the campaign is very well developed, what brings and gives longevity to the Call of Duty franchise is its multiplayer. About this, Cold War it also doesn’t disappoint.

The game again brings the main modes already established in the franchise, such as knockout, capture of regions, escort, among others. The novelty in this regard lies in the way the mode has begun to include features of the battle royale.

As mentioned at the beginning of this review, the game has Warzone, which is the battle royale mode itself and makes no significant changes. However, Cold War it borrows many of the mechanics of the mode and implements them in its base multiplayer.

For example: With larger maps, players must use more vehicles such as motorcycles, jet skis and cars to navigate the environment. Another novelty borrowed from the battle royals is throwing helicopter players every time they die, needing to fall on the parachute map, as in Warzone.

Dirty Bomb maps are huge (Photo: Wagner Wakka / Canaltech)

In multiplayer, the main novelty is in Dirty Bomb mode, where the battle royale elements mentioned so far are stronger. Here, 40 players are divided into groups of up to four people to install a bomb, collecting uranium from the map.

The mode is quite interesting, as it impresses with the richness and size of the map. We are talking about an online mode for 40 people in which there are trees, houses, vehicles and many objects around the environment, without this causing problems of execution, even on PlayStation 4.

In fact, when it comes to maps, one of the most interesting is the Moship, created by connecting several ships moored on the high seas. The high point is that falling into the water usually makes the player vulnerable, so the level becomes an obstacle to overcome alone.

Zombies

Finally, co-op mode was released this time along with the main game. There is multiplayer here too, but the proposal is that players on the same team work together to fight hordes and more hordes of zombies.

The highlight of Zombies mode is that it allows itself to be less serious, offering all sorts of crazy things, from weapons to enemies to face. So, expect a more “out of the box” game than you might experience in a Call of Duty campaign or multiplayer.

This time around, the developers also appropriated multiplayer maps for cooperative mode. This meant that Zombie environments also had high levels of detail in other modes, which wasn’t the case with other titles in the series.

If you’re the person looking to enjoy more than just the game campaign, but don’t have time to improve to become competitive, this mode can be very efficient at ensuring extra hours of fun.

Good version?

Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War delivers everything it promises. The campaign is a short experience, but it brings together good times and balances durability and diversity well. So here, less is more.

The game is packed with details no matter how you play (Photo: Wagner Wakka / Canaltech)

Important news were also the multiplayer modes included for a long time in the saga. The absorption of battle royale into the basic combat mechanics of the series shows an important milestone for Call of Duty.

Depending on player acceptance of this appropriation, it is possible that in the coming years we will see even more of the approximation between conventional multiplayer and battle royale in the franchise. What makes Cold War a potential key game in COD history.

Finally, content reduction was welcome to refine environments, maps, mechanics, movement and creation Cold War a game with a very high technical level. OR Canaltech got to try the versions for both PlayStation 4 and PC (the images were all taken from this version). In both, with graphics and frame rate variations, the title performed well, with no execution issues.

The predilection of developers is already visible to take advantage of the SSD speed of the next generations. This is because in the PlayStation 4 version there are small locks when you are in the mission briefing that masks the loading, which did not happen on PC with SSD. Other than that, no problem.

If you are a lover of the series, you have everything to enjoy this new game. In case you are just curious, of those who do not delve into multiplayer, this Call of Duty has room for you too.

Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War was co-developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, with publication by Activision. The game was released on November 13 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S and PC, via Battle.net.

This analysis was done with copies for PC and PlayStation 4 provided by Activision.

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