Sometimes, getting back to the basics just feels… basic. Black Ops Cold War’s multiplayer aims to recapture what made the original Black Ops great by stripping back a lot of the mechanics that’ve been layered on in the past several games. It is fun, largely due to the gunplay feeling solid and familiar and the heavy burst of nostalgia with each pull of the trigger, but it doesn’t do too much to excite at launch, largely down to most of the new modes not quite hitting the mark and a general lack of content. I wonder if there is too much looking back going on in Cold War and not enough emphasis being placed on meaningful iteration, if not revolution. With longer time-to-kill, a visual step down when compared to last year’s gorgeous Modern Warfare, and a return to simpler map designs, this year’s Call of Duty multiplayer is somewhat of a backwards step for the series.Having put well over 200 hours into Warzone and Modern Warfare’s multiplayer over the last year, jumping into Cold War felt instantly different. The great-feeling gunplay is there, as you’d expect from Call of Duty, and it’s smooth and responsive as well. Each weapon sounds great when fired, too. Animations have been tweaked and improved upon since the Beta stage and each weapon has its own custom inspect animation. It’s these sorts of details that set Call of Duty apart from other shooters and is much appreciated. The addition of a field of view slider to the console versions is also a very welcome inclusion.
Not all of Cold War’s design decisions strike me as improvements, though. It’s clear that efforts have been made to return to more basic map design (especially when compared to Modern Warfare) but at this point I feel like Treyarch may have gone a bit too far in that direction.There are also more subjective factors in play like time-to-kill, which is longer in Black Ops than in recent games and not to my personal taste. Thankfully, there are hardcore playlists (which play more realistically with fewer bullets needed to confirm a kill) – which is how I tend to play Call of Duty multiplayer anyway – so this sweetens the pill quite a bit for me and offers the option for everyone, regardless of TTK preference.
https://www.ign.com/articles/call-of-duty-black-ops-cold-war-multiplayer-review