Activision and Treyarch have pulled the lid off of Black Ops 4 today by unveiling gameplay of the much anticipated title.
First up was the multiplayer reveal. To us, it looked like an evolution of Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 3. However, Treyarch confirmed that there is no boost jumping and no wall running and that it would be an “authentic boots on the ground experience”.
Specialists return (both old and new) with unique abilities including a direction that seems to be moving more towards team-assistance (likely where the rumors came about of being more like Overwatch). League play returns as well for dedicated players.
Of course, Zombies is a massive interest for the COD community and Blops 4 introduces three new narratives (on day one) that take place over different time periods. You will assume the role of entirely new protagonists (Charlotte, Bruno, Diego, and Shawn) while combating a secret order hell bent on ruling the world.
One of the story-driven modes has been introduced as well titled “Voyage of Despair” which takes the heroes to the Titanic, yes that Titanic, to battle zombie hordes on the ship. Meanwhile, another narrative shown was titled “Blood of the Dead” and pays homage to prior Zombies missions.
Team play is a big focus for Zombies so Treyarch is introducing new features like Mutagens which will allow you to modify your game in over 100 different ways, an in-game achievement sharing system, bot play, and a new mode titled Zombie Rush which is a simplified mode aimed at new players. Players will also be able to modify the difficulty of the mode again and a new tutorial will be available as well.
Treyarch then spoke about their partnership with Beenox on the development of the PC version of Blops 4 along with announcing that the title would be the first Call of Duty on Battle.net.
The biggest news of course, was the formal announcement of Battle Royale for Call of Duty. Titled “Blackout”, it will incorporate many features you’ve come to expect from the franchise with a map that “1,600 times bigger than Nuketown”. One thing we noticed right away however, is that no date was given for Blackout while the launch date was shown for multiplayer, zombies, and the PC version.
Our Take
At the end of the day, COD is COD and it will sell extremely well this Fall regardless of what many think of the next entry. This especially holds true with Black Ops being the most popular sub-franchise in the Call of Duty series. It’s clear after this reveal that the rumors of the campaign being cut were true and that they are moving a pillar of the series to Battle Royale as we rumored.
Regarding multiplayer we weren’t too impressed with what we saw but as always with COD we’ll need to get our hands on it to really get a sense of how it feels. Zombies was obviously a huge focus for the team, with three distinct stories and a load of features. And of course Blackout, bringing Battle Royale to Call of Duty, will be the news everyone will be talking about over the next few months.
