Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

Concise Review:

CONSOLE BRICKING PERFORMANCE ISSUES! And a TON of smaller but frustrating other bugs throughout all aspects of the game. A truly awful state at release. No polish at all.

Generic mediocre campaign. Not awful. Not memorable in any way.

Surprisingly fun little zombies mode that is more of a fun bonus mode than anything. Gave me about 7 hours of casual entertainment.

Poor multiplayer maps (and too few) but the gameplay is still solid and the guns feel fantastic so the multiplayer still has great moments. The lack of map variety isn’t quite as bad if you jump around and play all the different games modes but it’s still not ideal. The create a class system is a highlight for the game. It’s very fun to experiment with different strategies. The breakdown on attachments is well done and allows you to craft exactly what you want.

Journal Style Review:

The cutscenes and load screens are very choppy at the beginning. It doesn’t look great. It’s actually pretty upsetting. The opening campaign mission was reasonably fun though. Pretty action packed from the get go and the vibe was fun.

I swear the graphics are actually worse than modern warfare... I’m not sure how or why. It’s a bit disappointing though for sure. 

I don’t fully understand the style to the campaign yet. This whole evidence board thing. I’m not sure I will like it. First impression on the campaign is that it isn’t bad, but not in the same league as modern warfare.

The multiplayer so far is pretty good. The guns feel great still and the speed of gameplay feels appropriate. The multiplayer feels familiar but solid.

First round of zombies was pretty fun. Second and third weren’t bad either. On the very first night I probably had the most fun on zombies. It’s hard to tell how long the thrill will last but it was a fun change up.

Back to the campaign... and what the fuck is up with the cutscenes always starting off glitchy and slow and the audio doesn’t line up, then it goes super fast to catch up. It’s wrecking the cutscenes. Last couple missions have been medium quality. Probably would rank the campaign at a high B+ at the moment.

These big team battle games have been fun for a few rounds but the lack of maps is very noticeable. And I don’t like the maps that much either. They are pretty generic.

Ooh I just played the fireteam dirty bomb game though and that was my favourite for sure. It’s pretty fun. I really do like the feeling of the guns. The style of this game was interesting as well.

VIP escort was more fun than I thought it would be. I played a few games but then I went right back to the dirty bomb game. It was clearly my favourite. It’s nowhere near as good as warzone. But it’s a mid tier A-. Which is pretty good and so far the best part of the game.

Campaign froze on a load screen and crashed the game. Pretty lame. Also, I don’t like the evidence board. I don’t like feeling like I need to search every room each mission. I don’t find collectable hunting enjoyable and that’s essentially what this is. Especially in a FPS campaign.

The Vietnam mind fuck mission was pretty cool....but then the campaign ended waaay faster than I thought it would. While I like the twist at the end, it didn’t make up for an otherwise pretty generic shooter campaign. This campaign has brief moments where I thought it might do something special, but then it didn’t. Pretty average, which is a disappointment compared to the last. Campaign gets a low B+.

I was having a pretty fun game session and then near the end of a good game of dirty bomb where I’m close to winning and have like 38 kills 10 deaths, the game crashes and my Xbox is very loud. This game is clearly asking a lot out of the old system.

This game is more arcadey than MW but I still really think the guns feel so good. The kills are fantastic and it’s honestly pretty fun so far trying to figure out what guns, attachments, perks, etc are the best for different situations. It’s true the game does feel content light. Especially compared to the massive amount of content in MW. But when you jump around and play all the different modes it makes it a bit better. I had fun playing free for all, the big team battle one, dirty bomb, and zombies. That keeps it fresh and because the guns all feel so good it’s fun to play different game modes that let you try out different styles of load outs. This game lacks so much polish when compared to MW but it’s still doing something that’s pretty damn fun.

I got paired up with some guys that knew all the tricks in zombies. They carried me and it was great because I finally got to figure out a bit about the upgrades. This zombies game is actually sweet. It’s goofy but probably the funnest “horde” type game I’ve ever played. I’ll have to think on it but it might be. I typically don’t care too much about horse modes.

I’ve read online that people are complaining it takes too long to level up guns. I do notice it’s takes awhile. But I guess I don’t have any issue with it yet because it hasn’t been too slow for me. It’s kind of fun unlocking items slowly because it gives you more time to try stuff out.

Okay I’m learning a bit about the frustrations of dirty bomb. So many people spawn from the sky it is super easy for someone to drop right behind you. It can get frustrating. There is always some motherfucker who parachutes in behind you. You also need a good team who works together if you want to play the objective. If you don’t have a team who communicates you might as well farm kills on the outskirts of the objective. It’s still fun farming kills but not nearly as enjoyable as working your way in as a squad and executing a good bomb detonation.

Also I had a bad zombie round where I died all the time and then I always felt like I was underleveled. It takes a long time to wait for teammates to finish the round and when that happens like 6 times it starts to get boring. This was partly on me because I was running off solo and wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings. I did learn a lot more on how to upgrade guns though.

This game is riddled with performance issues and bugs. They do these character intros for new operators but every single one has no sounds and the video is completely fucked up. It’s a complete waste having that intro the way it is. 

It crashed again but this time shut down my Xbox...

I hate the ship map with the zip lines. It’s the worst.

The game froze again while playing dirty bomb. This is either the 4th or 5th time it’s happened. The most crashes of a game I can recall.

This game is disappointing because even with all the flaws it has, I still like it. It has some great moments. It’s just in between the great moments are glaring issues. MW was amazing in pretty much every way, minus a few connection issues in warzone during a few updates.

I just played essentially a perfect game of zombies if you don’t include the secret stuff. I picked up a gold weapon, fully upgraded it and never died for a long long time. I wasn’t downed until like round 26 and I had a self revive anyways at that point. I had a ton of perks, I had self revives, I had chopper gunners. I completely crushed the bosses. Took no time at all. I was impeccable and the best part was my teammates sucked. I eventually got bored and tried to get my team to radio out but they wouldn’t so I let myself die at round 28. I stopped focusing because I wanted to eat and the game had been nearly two hours long. I had 1700 kills and next on the team had 500. Fantastic round by me. A lot of fun. I probably won’t play a ton more though. Unless The temptation to upgrade items and play with the new upgrades. I must have unlocked like 10 of those unlocks me things. It was a very enjoyable experience though.

I’ve played dirty bomb a ton but it is starting to lose some of its excitement. I’m less enthused about the rounds where my team sucks and I simply have to try my best to farm kills and deposit uranium. Also, I’ve maxed out the shotgun that is my favourite so I don’t get the excitement of new attachments. I tried to use the other shotgun but it is way worse for dirty bomb because of the armour plates. I’ve been playing the more traditional game modes more now. They are fun and I’m not close to stopping playing the game, but as of now I don’t anticipate this game scoring higher than a mid tier A-. 

Ive been playing pretty well and figuring out exactly how to craft the best classes and guns. I really like the way this game does attachments and how it breaks it down to exactly what it does. It really lets you craft your weapons. It’s one of the best parts of the game in my opinion. I made the best class ever for dirty bomb with 6 perks, the greatest Pang Pang gun ever, and an unreal shotgun. I feel unstoppable.

I’ve finally figured out sniping a little bit more. I had a couple good games. I have a silencer and a couple other attachments that are okay for it so I’m getting better. I’m getting the hang of the bullet drop and time a bit more. 

Part of my enjoyment of this game is that I feel like I am pretty good these days. The kills I am getting are at least looking sweet. And I’m winning more dirty bomb while putting up huge numbers.

I have realized this game is so buggy that I don’t even comment or notice all the glitches anymore. I get dirty bomb glitches where the depositing uranium bar will constantly stay in the middle of my screen ducking up my vision. Even after I die. Also a few random times I’ve spawned and everything is grey. There is no colour. And the worst one is how the damn optical sights sometimes don’t load properly. It’s really annoying.

I can’t believe it took me this long to become good at sniping. But now I’m great. I’m hitting insane shots.

Sometimes it takes textures so long to load properly. The game feels like it has some degree of sub optimal performance going on like 60% of the time. Whether it’s the textures on the map or the optical sites, or the detonating thing staying on screen, or the grey screen, or whatever else is going to fucking going. There is often something. It’s pretty rediculous. It’s starting to affect my enjoyment more now.

It completely bricked my Xbox again. The unit goes into full reboot. It’s pretty concerning really. If it does this to the Series X then I won’t be playing it much. It sounds unhealthy for the machine.

Had a good stretch of VIP games though. It’s an alright game mode for a little bit. But it’s no where near as good as gun game is in modern warfare.

I’m losing a bit of steam. The enjoyment has plateaued and is starting to decline. I anticipate I play this until cyberpunk and then I probably don’t really ever touch this game again, maybe in the future after substantial updates and content releases. I’d play if they made a warzone with this system. But unless something new and interesting is added I can see the finish line.

I got the series X and I played the normal
Xbox version on it (because I hadn’t downloaded the series x version yet) and it crashed my series X twice so I stopped fucking playing this game. I can’t believe it. This game has tragic performance issues. I’ll give the series X version a chance to perform better once a patch comes out to fix these fucking issues but I’m putting this game on the shelf for now. Which is a bummer because I was excited to play it on the SX. Now because of these fucking crashes I probably don’t play this game again until after I beat cyberpunk. And who even knows if I will get back into it.

Jumped back in again to see what’s new. I like that they added gunfight as that was a favourite mode in MW. Gun game was also fun for a couple rounds.

Final Score: A-