For Your Consideration - Call of Duty Black Ops Coldwar

Nice cover, it looks like Jon Bernthal twins. Besides that, I have to say, never have played something intense and had a lot of mixed feelings around it. This isn't a bad Call of Duty, I think it takes the shooting blueprints that Modern Warfare set up and replicates it but with a few twists and adjustments that make it seem a little better but also irritating on other areas. Treyarch and Sledgehammer takes whatever formula that Modern Warfare made and decided that everybody was high on drugs so they do slip and slides, jumping around and running amok.

The consistency and pacing of Black Ops 4 is somewhat gone from Coldwar, instead its more on the twitch shooter's spot and kill instantly type of deal. The game doesn't do much of a good job allowing newer players to reel in with this play method because it can pretty brutal to play especially with higher rank players busting you over.

But I had fun, I got used to the combat and realized that all the previous Call of Duty games from Black Ops 4 are irrelevent now. I am still skeptical about getting this game however, one would be the Netcode issue, I still live in a third world country and Singapore being the server that everybody plays, it feels as if the Asian server can be quite taxing on the casual fun aspect of it. But there are good trade offs for some of that as well. Also, old school radar is back, brilliant.

First off, the sound design. Oof, I can't tell enough of how good the sound is, bullets will wizz through in every clockwise direction and you can tell where they're coming from. Doing quick recons, following your instincts before going for the assault or taking defensive positions. Field equipments can't always be used, as they are on a cooldown after use.

Streaks are also on cooldown just to avoid some MLG level killing sprees on the map. You can eliminate them like helicopters and planes easily with field equipments or equip missile launchers as secondaries. And rest is somewhat of a carbon copy of Modern Warfare 2019 except it plays on a more frantic fashion depending on certain modes. Also, this game is hitscan based rather than projectile, so yeah you can hit just anybody you want from any distance. Probably means it's less grounded as well. Also best part to mention for last, scorestreaks doesn't reset at death, but your multiplier will so it'll take awhile for you to get them back.

The casual modes like Deathmatch, Dominion and such are easy pickings, with easily laid out objectives that are simple to follow. Unfortunately during my playthrough at times, the biggest hurdles I've come across are people not following the objectives and would often run amok looking for kills. I've even heard people missing out the dog tags in kill confirmed to have high K/D ratios but low scores in game thus losing the matches.

Bob and weave man, just bob and weave

So besides the 80's theme and the fact that playing it you feel like operators are coked up on narcotics enough to pull sick stuff like jump kills or whatever(Guess that's why the war on drugs exists or reagonomics is just too much to deal with), the sequel pretty much has all the similar custom weapons class settings every boots on the ground modern shooters.

Weapon Class system mostly stays the same, pick 5 attachments(pick 8 with wildcards) for each weapons which thank god cause WW2 was all like "only primary can have that more attachments". The crazier part? Shotguns are easy secondaries, yes not the sawd-offs but the pump and SPAS-12 too. No need to pick a particular perk for it either.

Wildcards are something that could really make and break a game, it provides additional ammo, extra attachments for primary weapons, extra perks and so on. Like, this is the big game changer for this game believe it or not.

To sum this up, I'll say that Cold War is a crazier game than last year's Call of Duty. It improves in some areas, makes some good adjustments on some while on the flip side, you have those that can get really annoying like the Skill Based Matchmaking system that is still an issue to this day. Consider your game of Moshpit or Control ruins thanks to players focusing on getting kills for a beta which will reset everything. Also, everything is already unlocked, what was the point?

Lastly, I wanna say, am kind of mixed on one of the Featured modes; Moshpit. VIP Escort and Fireteam are singlehandedly the best. Fireteam is much more open-ended and with your squad of 4, you need to take out so many of the other squads and follow objects like activating dirty bombs to spread toxic fumes around the map. Sounds like a lot of fun and with only 40 player cap, it's a more self-contained version of battle royale. While VIP is this 6v6 escort mission where the VIP needs to be escorted otherwise he is eliminated by timer or by the other team. Moshpit has none of the strengths in the two modes because it's this large scale map battle with vehicles to use. Just playing the one mode, I got fed up thanks to the SBM. It's too frantic, lacks grace and you can't tell how to follow missions because you're not told at first what to do. Also, some of the vehicle gun turrets are ridiculous.

Anyhoo, am not good at CoD as you can see. I also have the bad case of Netcode issues, but hopefully on release that is fixed. Because MW2k19 made more progress on that, am sure Treyarch will follow up. They can't afford to mess this up, then again, with backing of several skeletal studios including Sledgehammer, am sure they'll hit the high marks. This could be a big release since it has all the major game modes including the return of campaign and zombies, how that works we'll live to see later on. Till then, godspeed.