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But the way it’s played and how it feels is unique, letting Treyarch carve out its own space in the market.
#Call of duty black 4 black ops full#
There is a damage-dealing circle that shrinks to dictate the intensity and direction of the fighting, and you still parachute - or in Blackout’s case wingsuit - down to the surface of an abandoned island full of supplies and firearms. Even the solitary Blackout map cribs liberally from PUBG’s introductory Erangel sandbox, with its rolling green hills, abandoned manufacturing plants, and seaside towns.įans of battle royale games will instantly recognize the basic setup. Immediately, you’ll see it looks like PUBG, but with better graphics and performance. Blackout is Treyarch’s take on battle royale, and while the comparisons to Fortnite are obvious, the mode is much more like PUBG in tone and feel. It’s also the reason the game is likely to be played for many months to come. None of that would really have been possible without Blackout, Black Ops 4’s standout addition. Casual players seem to be returning in droves, too. It is no surprise that the title is topping the Twitch charts in its first week, giving mainstays Fortnite and League of Legends a run for their money and keeping the competitive community in thrall. (Sometimes it feels like it’s primarily for those that are literally hyperactive teenagers.) But setting aside its aesthetics and the untouched core game design, Black Ops 4 is a creative and fascinating deviation from the formula. It’s still very much COD at its core: the game is brutally fast and overtly militaristic, and it’s designed solely for the hyperactive teenager in all of us. And perhaps most importantly, PUBG and Fortnite helped establish battle royale as the new, hottest genre in the industry.Īnd now there’s Black Ops 4, a game that takes elements from all of the above and remixes them in a clever way to create the most cohesive, forward-looking COD game in a long time. Blizzard’s Overwatch completely rethought the competitive team-based shooter, creating a global phenomenon and e-sport almost right out of the gate.
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Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege delivered unprecedented levels of strategy and customization through its use of a robust class system. Meanwhile, innovation in online multiplayer games was changing everything.īungie’s Destiny opened up all new avenues for treating shooters like persistent, online services. Space warfare? Why not.Ĭall of Duty stagnated creatively years ago, when its creators ran out of good ideasīy the time Activision announced that last year’s entry would return to WWII - after a particularly vocal online backlash against the sci-fi Infinite Warfare - it seemed like the franchise had hit a dead end. But starting roughly around 2014’s Advanced Warfare, COD began to stagnate creatively, forcing its creators to turn to increasingly unrealistic and far-out ideas.
#Call of duty black 4 black ops series#
The series remains a best-seller as new installments continue to make gobs of money from its diehard fanbase. For a while, it’s seemed like publisher Activision and the small army of developers it employs to make COD games each year had simply run out of good ideas. To be fair, the narrative around COD was one of lowered expectations. Black Ops 4 could have been a mismatched jumble of ripped off game elements, but developer Treyarch has instead reinvented the franchise in a way that may have lasting effects on how people play Call of Duty well into the future. It also lacks a single-player mode, marking the first ever modern COD game to strip itself of a story campaign - and it’s become more focused and fun as a result. The game contains very little that hasn’t been done first by others, but it approaches those features in a way that’s so polished and unique that it doesn’t really matter if they’re particularly original. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is as impressive as it is anomalous.