Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War arrived on November 13, 2020, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. Treyarch led development, with Raven Software as a co-developer and Activision publishing. It is the seventeenth main Call of Duty and the sixth entry in the Black Ops sub-series, following Black Ops 4 in 2018. Metacritic’s published critical score is 7.7/10. That number is about right: a campaign with real nerve, wrapped around a multiplayer suite that plays it safe.
Trailer, via IGN.
Russell Adler and the Hunt for Perseus
The single-player story is set in 1981. You play as CIA operative Russell Adler and his team, hunting a Soviet spy named Perseus, who is working to destabilize the global balance of power. The game sends you through East Berlin, Vietnam, Turkey and Soviet KGB headquarters, and it puts historical figures in front of you rather than at a distance.
A Custom Character and a Non-Linear Campaign
The structure is the best thing here. You build a custom character, picking an intelligence agency, skin tone, nationality and gender, plus personality traits that grant in-game perks. Missions are non-linear, with multiple ways to hit an objective. Between them you work out of a safe house, reviewing evidence, talking to NPCs and planning the next move on an evidence board.
Multiple Endings That Stick
Black Ops Cold War commits to choices that carry weight. The campaign has multiple endings that depend on decisions you make across the story. That is a bigger swing than this series usually takes, and it gives the safe-house downtime actual purpose.
Three New Modes in Multiplayer
The multiplayer component adds three modes on top of the standard Team Deathmatch, Domination and Hardpoint rotation:
- VIP Escort: two teams of six, one escorting a randomly selected VIP to one of two exfiltration sites, the other trying to kill the VIP. Sides switch each round, first to four points wins.
- Combined Arms: two teams of twelve on large maps with transport vehicles, fighting over five or six capture zones. First to 400 points wins.
- Fireteam: Dirty Bomb: ten teams of four on large maps, collecting and depositing materials.
The ideas are sound. VIP Escort is the one with a genuine pulse, because it forces a team to protect one player instead of scattering.
Zombies and Split Screen
Zombies returns as the cooperative mode, and the package also carries single-player, multiplayer, co-op and split-screen support across first-person play. The Cold War arsenal you build in the campaign carries into multiplayer and Zombies, which ties the modes together more tightly than a menu screen would.
Ranking What Actually Matters
From strongest to weakest:
- The campaign’s non-linear missions and evidence board, which give the 1981 setting room to breathe.
- Multiple endings that reward paying attention.
- VIP Escort, the one multiplayer addition with a clear identity.
- Combined Arms and Fireteam: Dirty Bomb, fine and forgettable in equal measure.
The Warzone Reveal
The marketing rollout matched the game’s mood. It started in August 2020 with cryptic messages inside Call of Duty: Warzone, online puzzles for fans and a website cataloguing historical Cold War events, before a full reveal on August 26 during an in-game Warzone event.
The Verdict on Black Ops Cold War
Black Ops Cold War earned its place as the best-selling title of 2020 in the United States, and it received generally favorable reviews. The campaign is the reason to come back. Adler’s hunt for Perseus, the safe house and the branching endings are the most interesting things Treyarch has done with this sub-series in years, and the 1981 setting gives the whole thing a colder, more grounded feel than the numbered entries.
The multiplayer is where the ambition thins out. Three new modes sounds like a lot until you play them; only VIP Escort changes how a match actually feels. Combined Arms and Fireteam: Dirty Bomb are large-scale noise, and the standard modes remain the ones people will still be queuing for a year later. Zombies does its job without surprising anyone.
This is a good Call of Duty, not a great one. It is worth playing for the campaign alone, and the campaign is worth arguing about. 7.7/10.
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