'Call of Duty: Black Ops 6' Review: The Best In Years

This review dives into Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s campaign. For impressions of its multiplayer, check out and more like 2017’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

There are some masterful, atmospheric moments littered throughout Black Ops 6’s eight-hour campaign. | Activision

Black Ops 6’s eight-hour campaign constantly pulls inspiration from some of the best games around as it continues. One mission has you collecting a series of keycards in a haunted facility that feels like roaming through the dark, dank halls of Bioshock’s Rapture. Another has you breaking into a casino and switching protagonists to pull off a Grand Theft Auto V style heist. A personal favorite has you disguised as an enemy soldier quietly sabotaging armaments and completing optional side objectives like a modern take on Perfect Dark.

By the time the credits rolled on Black Ops 6, I had a hard time picking my favorite level of the bunch. Sure, the story beats were mostly a blur. But playing through such a wide variety of cool scenarios that each felt like a fun riff on a non-Call-of-Duty game left me surprised in the best way.

Bishop Takes Rook

The Rook features a series of hidden rooms, puzzles, and riddles that the player can solve between missions. | Trone Dowd

While it’s a relatively small addition to this year’s Call of Duty, it’s worth calling out the bits in between all the action. Black Ops 6 features a hub world called “The Rook,” an abandoned home in the middle of Bulgaria turned into a remote safe house for the game’s protagonists. It’s where players will spend their time getting to know their teammates and their motivations through simple, Mass Effect-style dialogue trees. It’s also where players spend money found in levels to buy new equipment, health upgrades, and perks for weapon handling.

While adding some progression is a great incentive for replaying the game (as many levels offer alternate pathways), it’s uncovering the overarching mystery behind The Rook that makes it such a great addition. There’s a series of hidden messages, puzzles, and riddles for players to discover. Solving these puzzles unlocks hidden passageways and provides some history into The Rook. It’s a gameplay wrinkle that breaks up the in-field action. These sections remind me of a cross between the Riddler trophies of the Batman: Arkham series and the 2012 mobile puzzler The Room.

The reward for getting to the bottom of the puzzle is a little underwhelming. But the journey of piecing together this mystery is a glimpse at something special. Call of Duty would be stupid to abandon this concept in future titles. And if this does return, I hope to see future iterations add even more puzzles that aren’t afraid to challenge the player’s intellect. A hub world full of several multistep puzzles could be an awesome yearly addition to the franchise’s annual offering.

The Best Call of Duty in Years

Russell Adler is basically Robert Redford playing a protagonist ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel. | Activision

Black Ops 6 is easily the best Call of Duty campaign in years and one of the year’s best first-person shooters. It strays from what one might expect from a Call of Duty campaign (an onslaught of set pieces with a few moments of respite to break up the action) in favor of an anthology of cool and memorable ideas for levels. Its story doesn’t go anywhere Call of Duty hasn’t before, but the variety of its mission design more than make up for it.

Raven Software, the lead developer on this year’s campaign, has delivered a showcase for why it deserves a shot at crafting its own action game divorced from the Call of Duty franchise. Hopefully, the studio’s new owners at Microsoft take notice and get the team working on an original B-project sooner rather than later.

8/10

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 **is available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC. Inverse was provided with an Xbox Series X copy for this review.**

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